Anthony Carn,
Do not believe everything you read. WinXP is light years ahead of Win9x and I would never go back to Win9x OS's.
The nForce2 is an excellent chipset. It just has to have the right RAM to run it. It is very picky about RAM.
I am currently running 22 nForce/nForce2 computers and I have sold a ton of them. The nForce2 with a Barton AthlonXP and WinXP is a hard combination to beat in the Performance, Price, Features, and Stability Categories. The nForce chipset was designed with WinXP in mind, support for Win98SE was added as an afterthought. You really need to run WinXP with it. (Win95, Win98, and WinNT are not supported.)
The nForce Chipset was innovative in that it has dual memory controllers that double the memory bandwidth when two matched sticks of RAM are used. With nForce and WinXP, 2x256Mb of PC-3200 CAS 2.2.2. is optimal. It will give you the best performance you can get out of the chipset.
Take Care,
Richard