Best system to run WinXP SP2

[Lepard]

First system:
Athlon 900Mhz
1GB DDR Ram

Second system:
Pentium 4 1.5Ghz
384MB PC133 Ram

This will not be for a gaming station or nothing. Mainly e-mail, internet searching, newspapers, reports, regular stuff. However I want the most responsive system possible. Obviously the P4 is faster but the RAM amount and speed are a big difference. So what do you guys and girls recommend?

 

[Shawn]

It'll run fine on both. Probably better on the Athlon rig because it has more ram.

 

[nweaver]

those old P4's are dog slow, the AMD rig will smoke the Intel one.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: nweaver
those old P4's are dog slow, the AMD rig will smoke the Intel one.

Agreed. I installed Xubuntu in an old 1.4GHz P4 and the CPU can barely keep up. I can't imagine running XP on it.

 

[gsellis]

In this case, I think the 1GB will also be significant over 384. While 384 runs most single apps well, multiple or big apps will take a hit. Especially if you use the hard drives you bought with that system. Consider putting a newer 80GB drive in it for faster performance than the 10-30GB that is probably in both of them.

 

[InlineFive]

I'd take the Athlon system easily. First it has lots more memory and second the Willamettes are sloooooow.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Noema

Originally posted by: nweaver
those old P4's are dog slow, the AMD rig will smoke the Intel one.

Agreed. I installed Xubuntu in an old 1.4GHz P4 and the CPU can barely keep up. I can't imagine running XP on it.

I run XP fine on an old 266MHz P2 laptop with 272MB of ram. Once you disable all of the unnecessary services it runs as fast as win2k but it boots faster.

 

[imported_LoKe]

I've got XP running on a P3/933MHz w/ 256MB of RAM with no major issues.