Just tested it, Hibernate picks the same dialect

> because the Hibernate supplied SQL Server Dialects all use SQLServer2005LimitHandler.

Well that is not true:

https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-orm/blob/master/hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/dialect/SQLServerDialect.java

MSSQL Server 2000 is not 2005 (sadly), so we can not use the 2005 (or any higher dialect for that matter.)