Introduction
As far as I understand, DOS/4GW was the thing that allowed most games from MS-DOS era to access beyond the 640KB conventional memory limit. (For completeness, there was also EMS and XMS, but those were limited and those are off-topic for this question.) Many of such games included a DOS4GW.EXE and showed a DOS/4GW message upon launching, before executing the actual game code.
I also learned that DOS/4GW is a subset of DOS/4G. The W suffix is because it's bundled with Watcom C/C++ and Fortran compilers. Thus, most games from that era used the Watcom toolchain.
Then I discovered the existence of DOS32A.EXE, or DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender. It's FLOSS and claims to be a drop-in replacement for DOS/4G(W).
Questions
Why should I use DOS/32A instead of DOS/4G(W)? I'm asking from the point-of-view of an end-user who just wants to run some software and play some games.
DOS/32A claims to be faster than DOS/4G(W). What does it mean? Faster to launch? Faster to run? More performance in-game? (Sidenote: most games are limited to the refresh rate of the (S)VGA graphics, around 60~75Hz.)
Are there other reasons? Maybe compatibility? Or bugfixes?
Are there any downsides?
Are there differences specific to MS-DOS, DOSBox, FreeDOS or other kinds of DOS?
Essentially, why would I want to replace the DOS4GW.EXE (shipped with the game) with DOS32A.EXE? And why would I want not to replace it?
