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Most likely, you'd get better performance out of your old hardware running GNU/Linux, I wonder why dual-booting isn't an option (if you only play your game from time-to-time, you could have more fun the rest of the time by booting into a better OS).
Not entirely true. I tried Debian on this laptop and it took longer time to boot than XP. Maybe the infamous systemd makes a difference but it is not that important since I reboot once in week or two weeks. Also the Firefox works slower on Debian. I suspect that the compiled code is less optimized on Linux for Turion64 CPU than it is on Windows compilations of Firefox. Also Bluetooth module did not work well and I was unable to disable WiFi and Bluetooth separately using button. Linux have it's uses for me like Tails, Whonix and BackTrack, but it falls short on other usability and compatibility uses. I know people love opensource OSes like Linux and BSD and I like them too. I also have reserved feelings about WinXP because it was worst Windows until Vista and Win8 came out. But I have no other options and no harddrive space. Linux is not drop-in replacemet for Windows like ReactOS atttempts to be.Well, if you've done the experiment, then I assume you know the deal with your hardware. One last thing I'd add is that it matters a lot which desktop environment you're using, and with GNU/Linux you have a lot of options. I run debian on an older laptop (but I guess not as as old as the one you're talking about), I always use LXDE desktop (lightweight desktop envionment), and LXDM and that make a huuuuge difference compared to gnome or kde or even xfce. Even faster is just a plain openbox desktop like with the fluxbox project. And, on systemd, I did notice a big speedup when that came down the wire, but like you, I don't reboot very often so it doesn't matter a lot to me.
