Hardware support...

As mentioned above, over 1200 new drivers are included in Win98. For example, a 3DFX voodoo card, Riva128 and other high performance video cards are in the device list. This is a boon to simple installation or re-installation after that inevitable hard drive crash. I tested Win98 on the following diverse hardware configurations - all installed correctly and detected all hardware (something that cannot be said of Win95 and its endless process of install Win95, then IE4, then the kernal32 patch, then DirectX5.2, then the hardware drivers. This is simply not the case for Win98).

System #1

• P5-166
• Rendition Verite 1000
• 1.6 meg HD
• SB Pro
• USR 28.8 modem

System#2

• P5-292 MMX overclocked on an ASUS P2T4 AT board
• Voodoo2
• Matrox Millenium
• SB32
• GW2000 Telepath 56K
• Adaptec 2940
• Toshiba 12x SCSI
• Panasonic 7502 CD-R

System #3

I just installed the Intel BX board and a 400mhz CPU -- and all I did is delete everything in device manager and let Win 98 have fun. Everything -- I mean EVERYTHING -- installed perfectly. I also installed a viper 330 AGP card at the same time and Win 98 had drivers for it and installed it. Improved Stability - the real reason to buy windows98..

As a privileged beta tester for a number of simulations I have had the misfortune of having fresh code crash my Win95 systems one too many times. I am impressed - to say the least - that Windows98 does a far better job at catching errors and cleaning up the memory. Take a look at a few of the cool new crash screens for a number of our favorite sims.

Unfortunately, nothing has been done to deal with the resource problem. Under Win95/98 kernel, no matter how much physical RAM you have, one is still limited by "System Resources". Thus, if you open enough software or too many windows one can still run out of memory. For example, it is impossible to NOT crash Win95/Win98 by opening my Word97 PhD thesis. This 100meg document consumes numerous resources and still can only be opened by NT4 or NT5 beta (which has no resource limitation).

However, Win98 DOES improve memory cleanup after crashes. VXD's are now removed from memory which improves stability of the system after a page fault. So in summary, Windows98 has greatly improved stability when running SIMS under Direct3D or GLIDE but is nowhere near as crash-proof as NT4 or even NT5 beta.

Which sims work and how well - performance is IDENTICAL! The real question is, "How do the sims perform?" IN summary, compatibility is 100&% and performance under Direct3D or GLIDE is identical. F22:Adf, Janes LongbowII, QuakeII and numerous others all run with identical FPS: assuming one uses the standard VXD drivers! This is ugly - the promise of NT5/Win98 shared drivers is but a hopeless promise from Redmond until the new WDM drivers actually work. QuakeII will play but the sound stutters with WDM SB32 drivers. F22:TAW crashes on boot.

Click to continue . . .

The next release of DirectX, which included a massively overhauled Direct3D, will NOT be included in Windows98. There should be a service pack to upgrade Windows 98 to DirectX 6. in July. Direct3D under DirectX6 will add a more advanced software rasterizer, support for compressed texture formats, multi-texture effects, stencil buffer support, texture cache management, DMA optimizations, and further improved polygon throughput. This will mean Voodoo2 will be more fully utilized under DirectX6. Here is a summary of the features:

• Ø Multiple Textures
• Ø New support for the 3D instruction set implemented into the AMD K6 3D, IDT C6+, and Cyrix processors.
• Ø New Rasterizers
• Ø Geometry Pipeline Features
• Ø DrawPrimitives2 DDI
• Ø Texture Memory Manager
• Ø Flexible Vertex Format
• Ø Vertex Buffers
• Ø Bump Mapping
• Ø Standard Fixed-Rate Texture Compression
• Ø Opaque Texture Surfaces
• Ø Alpha in Texture Palettes
• Ø Luminance
• Ø Stencil Planes
• Ø W-Buffering
• Ø Z-Buffer Clearing
• Ø Full Screen Only Per-Channel Gamma Control
• Ø Motion Compensation DDI

Should simmers buy Windows98? This reviewer is of the opinion that one should upgrade only when you (a) improve performance dramatically (for example, installing a Voodoo2 card) or (b) improve stability and ease a nightmare. For this hard-core simmer - Windws95 is a nightmare. One must have OSR2.1 - only available for OEM dealers to even run on new motherboards. AGP and USB support is not fully implemented and a single aberrant program can overwrite numerous system files forcing one to reinstall the entire operating system.

Windows98 provides numerous Microsoft supported ways to update ones system, fix problems, and keep performance at a maximum. Thus, while Windows98 may not improve your performance under your sims today - it will save you from the nightmare and headaches of a fresh install.

It is my fond hope that NT5 will prove to be the OS of choice for us due to its incredible stability. Until then Win98 is our best and last hope for a stable platform free of the 640K barrier, but still plagued by the "Resource Limitation". Some things never change…