P4 3.06Ghz enough to run Win7?

[crashtech]

The reward for the effort is too low for people who value their time, that's all. If it's just to play around with, fine I guess. Stuff like this is good for those who are learning, because if you fry it, it's no loss, really. But if you want it to actually DO something... it's a waste of time.

 

[Haserath]

A 2 GHz Pentium M is like a 3.8-4.0 GHz Pentium 4. #clockspeedisnteverythinglol

Just saying.

Nah, the M would be around a 3.2Ghz P4. Core 2 was quite a bit faster than the M and Core was 80-100% faster than P4.
---

I'm able to run the current version of Ubuntu(13.10) with a 3.4Ghz P4 and an X800. A SSD would make it spunky. Currently using an old 160GB drive.

It has 3GB of DDR2. The manager showed usage was around 600-700MB with Firefox open on Anandtech. Needs just a bit more than 512MB or it will be a snail in any recent OS.

 

[Majcric]

Yup speaking from experience I have the 64 bit version with a p4 3.0.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yup speaking from experience I have the 64 bit version with a p4 3.0.

Heh, how about that. Most of the Pentium 4 line was 32 bit, but there were a few 64 bit models around the tail end of the product cycle.

 

[John Connor]

Not really. You can technically run XP on 64MB RAM, but don't install either service packs, any sort of modern AV or use any of the bundled software. Forget about running a modern browser too, firefox with one tab open eats much more then that.

I said back then and I was running SP2 with 512 MB of RAM.

 

[John Connor]

I prefer Pale Moon over the standard Firefox and 3.6 is as good as current versions:
http://www.palemoon.org/download-v3.shtml

Yeah, I run Palemoon now and recommend it to people. Although Palemoon is my back up browser right now.

 

[pantsaregood]

A Pentium 4 3.06 shouldn't have any issues running Windows 7, but Flash will choke it. 512 MB RAM isn't desirable, but it will be functional. Hopefully that Radeon has new enough drivers to allow you to enable Aero - if you can't enable it, you'll take a significant hit to performance.

 

[ultimatebob]

A Pentium 4 3.06 shouldn't have any issues running Windows 7, but Flash will choke it. 512 MB RAM isn't desirable, but it will be functional. Hopefully that Radeon has new enough drivers to allow you to enable Aero - if you can't enable it, you'll take a significant hit to performance.

You're going to try running the Areo interface with 512 MB of memory?? Ha! Good luck trying to launch anything more complex than notepad without having the swap file constantly thrashing.

Seriously, though... switching to the basic theme from Areo saves about 50 MB of memory. It's practically a requirement when trying to run Windows 7 with less than a Gig of memory.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I said back then and I was running SP2 with 512 MB of RAM.

That's not comparable. Software has grown tremendously in memory requirement since.

I remember running win2k with 160MB RAM, ran great back then. Wouldn't want to try that now.

 

[86waterpumper]

I am tinkering with a socket 754 amd 3000+ system for my son who is five. It has 1.5 gb ram. It has a sata port, I think if I put a ssd on it it would be decent. Flash does hurt it but maybe I can o/c it some. Anybody got a old agp card laying around they aren't using? This thing has a onboard via chrome s3 video chipset...

slax linux looks like a pretty good choice to run on these type systems. I made a bootable thumbdrive with it last night just haven't had the chance to try it out yet

 

[Johnny4]

I`d rather go with windows 8 it is faster, i have installed win 7 on my desktop intel pentium 3gh, 768mb ram and i tell you it was very slow. Try win 8 it might be better. I have old laptop that goes better with win 8 than win 7 thats why i tell you this.

 

[sm625]

I was messing around with my Q6600 system, which I had reverted to stock clocks. It wuns Win7 x64 now and it cant even handle youtube 720p without stuttering. Talk about sad... It has an 8600GTS. By all rights it should be fast enough. It needs an OC to 3.0+ in order to not stutter.

 

[SPBHM]

I was messing around with my Q6600 system, which I had reverted to stock clocks. It wuns Win7 x64 now and it cant even handle youtube 720p without stuttering. Talk about sad... It has an 8600GTS. By all rights it should be fast enough. It needs an OC to 3.0+ in order to not stutter.

some software problem, my E2140 with the gma 4500 can handle 720p yt well (using IE on windows 7)

 

[Matt1970]

I was messing around with my Q6600 system, which I had reverted to stock clocks. It wuns Win7 x64 now and it cant even handle youtube 720p without stuttering. Talk about sad... It has an 8600GTS. By all rights it should be fast enough. It needs an OC to 3.0+ in order to not stutter.

You have something wrong there and the overclock is just compensating for it. Just one core of that Q6600 should be enough to run 720p video.

 

[John Connor]

Yeah, I currently run a Q6600 and don't have any problems. You have other issues! Hell! I run a Dual core 2 laptop and I can play YouTube videos just fine!

 

[Towermax]

A 2 GHz Pentium M is like a 3.8-4.0 GHz Pentium 4. #clockspeedisnteverythinglol

Just saying.

Yeah, clock speed isn't everything. But I wasn't aware that a Pentium M was *that* much better than a plain Pentium 4. I never owned a Pentium 4--had AMD at that time.

Thanks for the info--that explains why this D600 still runs everything so well.

 

[Torn Mind]

Yeah, clock speed isn't everything. But I wasn't aware that a Pentium M was *that* much better than a plain Pentium 4. I never owned a Pentium 4--had AMD at that time.

Thanks for the info--that explains why this D600 still runs everything so well.

It's because the inclusion of the name "Pentium" makes it sound like they're similar chips when they are totally different. Netburst was meant to be this brand new awesome architecture that could reach ridiculous clockspeeds and become the performance king that way while the Pentium M was a quiet necromancy of the old P6 architecture(with heavy modifications, alleges the wikipedia article) that was born in the Pentium Pro and lasted until the Pentium III. Pentium M wasn't supposed to exist, but Intel recognized the need for a much better mobile performance chip because the Pentium 4 was LOLawful in laptops.

After I made the post you quoted, Haserath said it was more like a 3.2 GHz P4. After some thought and looking at some benchmarks at the Anandtech bench(that P4 660 vs some Celeron 400s), I agree with him. But its still a massive gap.

I've used CPUs with both architectures. I still have a Dell D810(freebie gift) with a Pentium M that could go all the way up to 1.86 Ghz. I upgraded another old "gift" desktop we had with a Celeron D 2.53 GHz originally to a to a 3.2 GHz P4 maybe two years ago. That Celeron was awful at stock and sort of tolerable at 2.7-2.8 GHz. The 3.2 Ghz was still laggy, but at around 3.3-3.4 GHz, web browsing and OS navigation reached "tolerable" levels.

I still preferred the laptop even at 1.46 GHz though, and 1.6 GHz was not that different from 1.86 Ghz. The ECS desktop board only supported single-channel DDR RAM though, while the Pentium M had DDR2 RAM in dual channel mode. Maybe that contributed to its slower feel.

The overclocking was done on an ECS board(PM800-M2) and a now-retired rubbish Okia case PSU. It's amazing that board survived this long; it still works.

The stock heatsink for the Celeron could not handle Prime95ing that 3.2 GHz Prescott either. If I had known Northwood was actually the better and that the extra L2 cache was offset by Prescott's longer pipeline...(was a newb one year ago to all of this)

 

[escrow4]

Pretty please Anandtech, do a review of an "old/Northwood" P4 and a more "modern/Prescott" (HA!) variant in Win 7 and Win 8.1, with 512MB, 1GB and 2GB RAM. Pit it against a G1610 with similar RAM amounts in a benchmark to the death with some subjective web browsing chucked in too - flash, 720p, 1080p, HTML 5 etc.

So worth it for the laughs and good old nostalgia.

With sugar on top?

 

[jacktesterson]

Win 8 is actually better on old systems than Win 7 in my experience.

 

[SPBHM]

Win 8 is actually better on old systems than Win 7 in my experience.

Windows 8 is not going to work with a P4 northwood or anything older... oldest CPU you can use is the Athlon 64 (and some Prescott P4s, because of NX bit, it's possible to install with some hacks but hardly a good solution)

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I still preferred the laptop even at 1.46 GHz though, and 1.6 GHz was not that different from 1.86 Ghz. The ECS desktop board only supported single-channel DDR RAM though, while the Pentium M had DDR2 RAM in dual channel mode. Maybe that contributed to its slower feel.

Did you run it with integrated "Extreme" Graphics? If so that and single channel DDR was definitely the culprit.

Pretty please Anandtech, do a review of an "old/Northwood" P4 and a more "modern/Prescott" (HA!) variant in Win 7 and Win 8.1, with 512MB, 1GB and 2GB RAM. Pit it against a G1610 with similar RAM amounts in a benchmark to the death with some subjective web browsing chucked in too - flash, 720p, 1080p, HTML 5 etc.

So worth it for the laughs and good old nostalgia.

With sugar on top?

A while ago I did a similar benchmark. Celeron G465 vs Pentium4EE 3.73GHz. They are more or less identical in performance, they trade blows depending on workload. The P4 is strongest in video encoding BTW.

It'd be interesting to see a performance comparison of the dual core P4's vs G1610. Its not likely to be pretty for the P4...

Windows 8 is not going to work with a P4 northwood or anything older... oldest CPU you can use is the Athlon 64 (and some Prescott P4s, because of NX bit, it's possible to install with some hacks but hardly a good solution)

Minimum requirement is Cedar Mill. That's the only P4 that'll run Windows 8 x64. 8 x86 should be good to go so long as the CPU has SSE2 support.

 

[SPBHM]

Minimum requirement is Cedar Mill. That's the only P4 that'll run Windows 8 x64. 8 x86 should be good to go so long as the CPU has SSE2 support.

no, you need NX bit, and it was introduced with the Athlon 64, later intel adopted with a new revision of prescott, so older prescott and northwood, while having SSE2 support cannot run windows 8.

 

[bonehead123]

Ram, bam, thank ya ma'am

The more the merrier, but yes, I have W7 running on several of the family's older P4 machines nottaproblemo .......

 

[Insert_Nickname]

no, you need NX bit, and it was introduced with the Athlon 64, later intel adopted with a new revision of prescott, so older prescott and northwood, while having SSE2 support cannot run windows 8.

You're quite correct. For some inexplicable reason I thought the NX bit requirement was only enforced in 8.1 x86...

 

[grimpr]

Forget Windows 7 on that system, try a lightweight Linux distro instead.

http://linuxmint.com/rel_olivia_xfce_whatsnew.php