P4 3.06Ghz enough to run Win7?

[86waterpumper]

it would be funny to see a test like you mentioned escrow4

this socket 754 system I have...it has a 3000+ newcastle chip in it. I o/c it last night close to 2.2ghz and it still would not play even 360p youtube properly. I am running windows 7 with the latest version of chrome. It seems like it should have enough horsepower to pull this off weren't these at least as good as a p4?

The video is crappy onboard and using the standard vga driver. Could this be the cause of the lagging? I know things like netflix a dedicated video card doesn't help but what about flash? I can get a 3200+ venice chip which would o/c to 2.4 ghz for like 5 or 6 bucks but I'm not sure 200 more mhz clockspeed is going to help that much? I know not to put much money into this, I don't have any money in it right now. It has 1.5gb ram I am gonna try to find another 1gb stick for a buck or two and toss the 512.

 

[Torn Mind]

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

Astute assessment right there. You're absolutely correct! Totally slipped my mind. The Dell had a discrete card(ATI X600) that absolutely sucks by modern day standards(can't do 720p), but still beats out that IGP.

 

[Techhog]

All of you are complaining, but... I had a 2GHz Pentium 4 at one point. How do you think I felt? That thing could not run XP well at all... Granted, that was with 512MB of RAM. Frankly, I think even then the RAM was a bottleneck.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I still have an old PIII 266mhz with either 256 or 512 mb older-than-DDR ram and a gt 6600. :awe: Haven't tried anything on it because it lacks a psu and HDD.

 

[Matt1970]

I still have an old PIII 266mhz with either 256 or 512 mb older-than-DDR ram and a gt 6600. :awe: Haven't tried anything on it because it lacks a psu and HDD.

A 266 would be a PII and I wouldn't run XP on that.

 

[Blue_Max]

Yep, memory is the main issue. CPU wise, even a 2Ghz P4 with 1GB would run Win7 perfectly fine.

Agreed. In fact, this one should have Hyperthreading so it'd be pretty decent... if it had more RAM. Even XP needs more.

This is now a Ubuntu box.

 

[Blue_Max]

All of you are complaining, but... I had a 2GHz Pentium 4 at one point. How do you think I felt? That thing could not run XP well at all... Granted, that was with 512MB of RAM. Frankly, I think even then the RAM was a bottleneck.

Funny you should say that... I remember getting a P4 similar to the OP and being surprised how much "snappier" Windows seemed to be compared to the Skt.478 P4 before it. It was only ~20% more clock speed but I didn't know what "hyperthreading" was all about and didn't realize what a difference that (or real multi-core computing) makes!

 

[Insert_Nickname]

A 266 would be a PII and I wouldn't run XP on that.

I have seen XP on a 133MHz Pentium. It runs, but don't try doing anything with the system..

 

[hertswenip]

I second needing more RAM, today's internet is much, MUCH more demanding than it used to be. I dug out an old Athlon 900mhz with 1gb RAM, I've tried loading lubunto, WinXP, and Win7 on it. Under all OS's, even when the CPU isn't maxed out on the task manager, the thing is unusable to browse the net cos it's constantly using heavy HDD caching. I think you need at least 2GB for Win7 to consistently run snappy.

 

[BUnit1701]

A 266 would be a PII and I wouldn't run XP on that.

Heheheh, why not? I used one as my primary system after chipping the corner of an Athlon XP back in 2004-2006. Was dog slow, but better than nothing. Played Half-Life decently.

 

[86waterpumper]

A decent work-around is to use a fast thumb drive for ready boost. This is pretty worthless at 4gb and above, but I can def. tell on this system I have with 1.5gb ram that it does help and cuts down the swapping. The problem is, a good many older systems, (mine included) refuse to boot with a usb device plugged in....:/ So this makes it a real pain in the rear to plug and unplug the thing

 

[aigomorla]

if all u need a browser why windows it?

Linux it, or Chrome it

Heheheh, why not? I used one as my primary system after chipping the corner of an Athlon XP back in 2004-2006. Was dog slow, but better than nothing. Played Half-Life decently.

cuz it would probably most likely end up being 2-3x faster on linux or another OS outside windows.

 

[Torn Mind]

I still have an old PIII 266mhz with either 256 or 512 mb older-than-DDR ram and a gt 6600. :awe: Haven't tried anything on it because it lacks a psu and HDD.

I think I also have a PII 266 Mhz. It actually still works even though it sat literally collecting dust for perhaps 7 or 8 years. Had an AT PSU with dual sockets for power plugs, that PSU whines but it still works. That computer was a gift from my piano teacher; her son was apparently in the military and that computer was already sitting in their basement circa 2001 or something. RAM slots were always inconsistent on that board though, as it often would only detect 32 MB of RAM and made the experience extra-awful since that meant pagefile thrashing time.

 

[Matt1970]

I have seen XP on a 133MHz Pentium. It runs, but don't try doing anything with the system..

I can imagine. I never saw XP on a 266 but I did see 2000 on one. I think the slowest I saw XP on was a 933 and wow that was slow.

 

[PliotronX]

I can imagine. I never saw XP on a 266 but I did see 2000 on one. I think the slowest I saw XP on was a 933 and wow that was slow.

Really? I ran XP beta on a P3 CuMine 700 @ 1GHz with 256Megs and it ran well enough for gaming with Quake 3 and whatnot. Of course that was before the subsequent service packs which were incrementally more resource hungry.

 

[aigomorla]

I hope u have a PATA HDD... :X

and id be more worried about the slowwwwwwwwwwwwww PATA speeds as well.

 

[mindbomb]

pata speeds are fine for a mechanical hard drive.
though you are right about actually finding a pata hard drive lol.

 

[crashtech]

I haven't thrown all mine away yet, though I think I trashed everything smaller than 80GB...

 

[PliotronX]

pata speeds are fine for a mechanical hard drive.
though you are right about actually finding a pata hard drive lol.

Yeah UltraDMA/133 offered bandwidth not far off of SATA150 (hence the 150). First gen SATA was just neater cabling and not having to deal with cable orientation (master/slave). I don't think any mechanical drive back then with areal densities far below what they are today could saturate UltraDMA/133 let alone SATA.

XP really didn't seem like a hog to me back then. It ran nearly as well as Win2k but had the improved TCP stack and better interface. Ah, fond memories of XP all around.

 

[VirtualLarry]

XP really didn't seem like a hog to me back then. It ran nearly as well as Win2k but had the improved TCP stack and better interface. Ah, fond memories of XP all around.

XP was great, in just about everything... except security.

Well, unless you were lucky enough to install XP Pro, and used SRP with a limited-user acount. Then it was almost bullet (well, exploit)-proof.

Edit: Oh yes, it was limited to 4GB of RAM too, which sucked.

 

[PliotronX]

XP was great, in just about everything... except security.

Well, unless you were lucky enough to install XP Pro, and used SRP with a limited-user acount. Then it was almost bullet (well, exploit)-proof.

Edit: Oh yes, it was limited to 4GB of RAM too, which sucked.

True that, to this day the most infectious systems are XP boxes even with SP3. I was lucky to never have contracted anything serious. I liked XP so much I ran the x64 version for a while, never buying into the Vista craze. Then 7 came along...

 

[Arkaign]

Yeah UltraDMA/133 offered bandwidth not far off of SATA150 (hence the 150). First gen SATA was just neater cabling and not having to deal with cable orientation (master/slave). I don't think any mechanical drive back then with areal densities far below what they are today could saturate UltraDMA/133 let alone SATA.

XP really didn't seem like a hog to me back then. It ran nearly as well as Win2k but had the improved TCP stack and better interface. Ah, fond memories of XP all around.

This is true.

I just installed Win7 32 SP1 Home Premium on a Pentium D (basically dual P4 of course), with 2GB of PC2-4200 and a 250GB PATA Hard Drive. And guess what? It runs fantastically. Snappy, plays 720p video smoothly, Chrome opens and browses quickly. OfficeLibre opens quickly. No issues. This is another refurb for a charity, so bringing it from the dead helps. It had no HDD, 1GB of ram, and a Celeron when I got it. Just threw parts from the bin in there and bingo, winner.

 

[Harpocrates]

All of you are complaining, but... I had a 2GHz Pentium 4 at one point. How do you think I felt? That thing could not run XP well at all...

I had a 1.4 GHz Willamette Pentium 4, with PC133, and a S3 Savage2000, a very well intentioned gift from my parents, but a flawed combo which didn't age well.

However, compared to the 75MHz Pentium it replaced, it was a huge leap forward!

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I had a 1.4 GHz Willamette Pentium 4, with PC133

There's your problem. P4's with PC133 where seriously bandwidth starved...

 

[SPBHM]

I had a 1.4 GHz Willamette Pentium 4, with PC133, and a S3 Savage2000, a very well intentioned gift from my parents, but a flawed combo which didn't age well.

However, compared to the 75MHz Pentium it replaced, it was a huge leap forward!

I had to retire my Savage 2000 card because of Windows XP, no proper drivers for XP,