XP vs server2003

February 6, 2006 2:30 PM

I'm thinking of cobbling together a windows box and have a choice of OSs, WinXP or WinServer2003, which should I use?

The machine I am currently using (the one I'm writing this with), runs WinXP SP2 (fully bought and licensed & I have the master install disks).

I also have a Win box running Server2003 (fully bought and licensed & I have the master install disks) that I just have no need for anymore. Its sitting in the corner, unplugged, without a monitor.

In an effort to consolodate some desk and office space, and to get value out of different hardware bought for each machine (harddrives, cards, dvd drives...), I am thinking of using all the best parts from each machine to create a monster PC.

I know which pieces of hardware from each I'm going to use, but I'm wondering which OS would be better to go with. I'm very happy with XP, but wondering if there would be any advantages to going with Server 2003, or pitfalls I'm just not thinking about.

What I do with my computer:

I'm not a gamer, but I do a LOT of photo editing, video editing, web design & print design. So I will need to run all my design software.

I also use Microsoft Office, firefox and thunderbird.

Absolutely necessary hardware consideration is that I have an ATI card that allows me to run 2 monitors rotated 90 degrees that must work.

Although I want to create this monster, I want to make sure I dont put an Abby Normal brain in it have have it turn into a disaster. :-)

Thanks in advance!

posted by sandra_s to computers & internet (15 comments total)

There is no advantage to Server for your purpose and several drawbacks to the "enhanced security" implemented in Server2K3.
posted by Mitheral at 2:47 PM on February 6, 2006

It's arguable that choosing Windows in the first place means you've got a disaster happening from first power-on :)

With any Microsoft operating system, you're committed to spending a fair bit of time figuring out how to stop it doing all the stuff you don't want it to do. OTOH, with any other system, you'll end up spending about the same amount of time figuring out how to MAKE it do what you DO want it to do. Basically, computers just suck :)

If the XP you have is XP Home, you're probably better off running 2003 just because you will occasionally bump into a use for one of the many features that Microsoft has crippled in XP Home.

If it's XP Professional, you're probably better off running that because 2003's "advanced security features" will cause occasional teeth-grinding.

Whichever one you end up with, I strongly suggest you configure it with a single Computer Administrator user for administrative stuff (like installing software) and one or more Limited Account users for day-to-day work. If you have XP Professional or Server 2003, limited accounts can easily be relaxed to Power Users if you're spending too much time fiddling with stuff that's unhappy to run limited, though you will of course increase the amount of damage that malware can do that way.
posted by flabdablet at 2:50 PM on February 6, 2006

Speaking as someone with a career in the field, I'm going to say Mitheral's got it right. There is no advantage whatsoever to running Server 2k3 versus Win XP in a desktop setting.
posted by CrayDrygu at 2:51 PM on February 6, 2006

It's possible you could need to run IIS 6 to test your web design? I don't know if you can do that on xp.
posted by juv3nal at 2:59 PM on February 6, 2006

I think I should also mention that I have no need to use this monster machine as a server :-)

To answer other questions:

This one is XP Home

I would be the only user.


Thanx!
posted by sandra_s at 3:08 PM on February 6, 2006

If you have no need for a server or IIS, go with XP Home. There's no advantage to 2003 Server for the uses you describe.
posted by normy at 3:21 PM on February 6, 2006

I would never recommend XP home. It's garbage and while it may meet a lot of your needs with client software, it's a product that should never have been made available in the first place.

Run 2003. You'll have some issues initially around the initial security settings in a default installation, but none of them are insurmountable. You'll also be using an OS that has a future whereas XP home is a complete dead-end.

If it was XP pro, then that would have been the best route to go.
posted by purephase at 3:21 PM on February 6, 2006

Ditto what everyone has said so far. If you're not doing server-type tasks, XP is the better choice.

Personally, I love my server. It runs Server 2003 Standard. But then, it's a server, not a workstation. My workstation runs XP Pro.
posted by SlyBevel at 3:24 PM on February 6, 2006

One massive drawback to XP Home is that (AFAIK) out of the box you can't use Remote Desktop to remote in. This would be a dealbreaker for me, and I'd personally pick w2k3 for this reason. This may not be an issue for you.
posted by fishfucker at 3:42 PM on February 6, 2006

XP Pro is appropriate for what you want. Home or 2003 Server are not so much. But you might also consider an abacus, as they are more reliable than Windows, or perhaps shoot yourself in the head, as that will solve all your current problems and guarantee you'll have no more computing hassles in the future.

You'll probably want to be moving to the next production Windows, anyway.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:53 PM on February 6, 2006

I used 2003RC1 and -RC2 as my desktop, and I actually enjoyed the server features/security quite a bit. Some products won't run (they want you to buy the server version). I could see how some security stuff would be a pita. I liked that it actually forced me to stop being lazy.

I've gone back to 2000 Pro, for what its worth. In my view, the 2000 set of software (Office, Windows, SQL Server) was the last truly worth using.
posted by devilsbrigade at 4:11 PM on February 6, 2006

"I could see how some security stuff would be a pita. I liked that it actually forced me to stop being lazy."

Yeah, I've had the same experience.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:28 PM on February 6, 2006

Depending on how much of a hardware "monster" you have in mind, this paper from Microsoft details some important performance advantages for the Storport storage management architecture of Win2K3 over the old Scsiport internals of WinXP. And it's a major reason why Anandtech and others got such lousy performance on RAID tests to the point of calling bullshit on RAID0 for desktop performance. What you need to understand (and the point is made in the MS paper, albeit not prominantly) is that you still get bit by Scisport, even if you don't run SCSI drives. That's because most IDE and SATA drivers, especially RAID drivers, are actually implemented as mini-ports to Scsiport.

Let me tell you what Storport has meant to me.

A few months ago, I did a major upgrade on my Windows PC. I wanted a machine which was generally fast and stable for most of my desktop Windows applications, including OfficeXP and Adobe Creative Suite, and which could dual boot Linux (although I have other Linux machines), but like you, I'm not a gamer. I do database development, and I wanted a machine that could act as a prototype testbed for SQL Server projects, and in a pinch, MySQL and DB2. And I wanted something that was 64 bit ready, to avoid any nasty surprises when Vista is released.

After all, I hadn't touched the hardware since early 2002, and my 2.4Ghz P4 didn't do hyperthreading, had a 533 FSB and an ancient GeForce MX440 video card in a dual monitor setup. I gutted and replaced that with a P4 830D in a SuperMicro board, a EVGA 7800GT video card, and to balance the dual processor goodness, a RAID50 disk array built around 8 15K 18GB Maxtor SCSI drives and a high performance SCSI caching controller. (Well, I had 6 of these fairly fast SCSI drives around already from some other projects). And after I loaded up WinXP Pro, I got about the same results for disk performance as the boys from Anandtech got from a couple of WD Raptors in a RAID 0, which is to say, the new rig was giving me a whole new level of respect for my old one...

Obviously, my new hardware wasn't the problem (but, boy, did I go over it with a fine tooth comb, making sure of that). But no matter what I did with stripe size, RAID levels, array layout or caching, the best I could get WinXP Pro to do was about 147 MB/sec, on a machine that had a theoretical I/O rate 4 times better than that. ++ungood, indeed.

But I knew from prior research that WinXP Pro x64 (64 bit WinXP) was, unlike the standard WinXP Pro, built around Storport, instead of Scsiport. So, I did a partition for it, downloaded the trial version of 64 bit WinXP, and am dual booting on the same hardware with the regular WinXP Pro. Overall, the machine is about 47% faster on the full suite of tests for PassMark,
running in 64 bit, than it is in 32 bit. Disk performance is the major reason for that, achieving nearly 367 MB/s in sequential writes, and about 2.5 times better disk I/O in mixed seek and random RW, and this holds up in tests from other test suites (HDTach and 3DMark05) as well. The main I/O limit for this machine is now CPU, since the P 830D is only a middling performer, in terms of raw performance. I'm thinking, now, P 940D, once the first batch errata are done...:-) Particularly if Vista ships in 64 bit, with further Storport tuning...

Of particular importance, this performance margin improvement is even greater when running with anti-virus software since in the real world, any Windows machine used with an Internet connection needs to be running anti-virus software. Overall, there is just no comparison in the performance I get from WinXP x64 on this machine, as opposed to its 32 bit older sibling. OfficeXP applications open in under a second even under WoW64, whereas, over on the 32 bit partition, it can take 7 to 9 seconds to get to an Excel spreadsheet. Firefox paints Web pages noticeably faster. Photoshop, well, I don't run Photoshop over in the 32 bit partition any more... You get the picture.

So, if you plan to do RAID, beware Scsiport. If any of your hardware can be assembled into a EMT64 clean machine, you can do WinXP Pro x64, but otherwise, to get Storport, Win2K3 is your only option. I agree with other posters that Win2K3 isn't an ideal desktop O/S, but if fast is what you are going for, and your processor/MB combination is 32 bit hardware, you may still want to choose it, if RAID is part of your plan, and "fast" is in your head...
posted by paulsc at 4:40 PM on February 6, 2006

You can install IIS on XP. XP Pro at least. Doubtful for Home. If you're just doing Web design and not Web programming, it really doesn't matter what server you use. Use XAMPP instead and make sure you're firewalled. (XAMPP is good since it's easy to set up and bad because it includes everything and the kitchen sink, including an FTP server and mail server.) I would use 2003 instead of XP Home just because I don't like Home. But it really doesn't matter in your case - 2003 would probably be a lot more of a pain in the ass to set up (you'd have to enable a few services to get it to function like a regular desktop) and Home is crippled in ways you probably don't care about (like, no Active Directory/domain logins).
posted by mrg at 4:49 PM on February 6, 2006

I use Server 2003 as my primary OS. I used this tutorial to set it up as a workstation. Rarely, I run into software I can't run on Server 2003... like IE7 beta. My machine is nothing flash hardware-wise either.
posted by Pigpen at 5:52 PM on February 6, 2006