Whom is still rocking an Athlon / Phenom II (even X6), or a Core2Duo/Quad? X58 users too.

[Eug]

Judging from my own half-similar Celeron N3350 in power saver mode (@ 1.1GHz), I don't think it's the CPU performance itself that's the issue, but the IGP. C2D-era IGPs are pretty useless under 10, have horrible driver support and just not enough performance to run the newer Windows DWM compositor properly. Not to mention not being DX11 compatible, which is more-or-less required for a good 10 experience IMHO.

You could get by on 7 since you could always fall back to the older GDI+ compositor. Which pretty much anything can run. Windows 8+ removes that fallback, and so relies on the DWM compositor at all times. Which older GPUs simply lack the horsepower to run.

Have you tried a lightweight Linux distribution, just to see how it runs?

I haven’t bothered since the laptop has a low quality display and a dying battery, and I have so many other tablets and laptops in the house.

You may be right about the iGPU. Pentium SU4100 has GMA 4500MHD, which incidentally was a reason I bought that laptop, as it has hardware h.264 decode. However, I wonder how Celeron N3350 scores in Geekbench 5 in power saver mode.

 

[Eug]

Really, from a raw performance standpoint I was still OK with my Xeon E5450 @3.7, the main reason I went to an AMD Ryzen 1600 setup was that Gigabyte board only allowed 4 gig of RAM max, it's just not enough anymore. Sure, there were used boards around, but they started getting kinda pricey. I could not justify a MOBO purchase without the ability to get into newer CPU's and more features, I got lucky, a member sold me a Ryzen 1600 for $50.

Yes, judging by even the stock clock speed performance of Xeon E5450 in Geekbench 5, it should be fine, as it fits into the “decent” category of my list above (GPU not withstanding), which as fast or faster than an iPad 7 with Apple A10 SoC.

However, if I had not been able to upgrade my Athlon II X3 435 desktop to 8 GB RAM, I wouldn‘t have bothered upgrading it to Phenom II X6. I would have just gotten a whole new machine.

If I were to upgrade to a more modern setup, it would be for these main reasons:

4K h.265 HEVC video streaming
HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2
USB 3 (or USB 4)

CPU performance can’t be ignored, but it is of secondary importance for my usage.

 

[Spjut]

@heymrdj

I think the latest mitigations for that Intel iGPU security flaw caused iGPU performance on anything Haswell and older to tank. Hard.

More Details On Intel's CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability, a.k.a. iGPU Leak - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

It definitely hurts Haswell and Ivy Bridge. I'm guessing it's bad for Sandy Bridge too, but I can't find direct references.

Intel claims that the final fix has no performance loss

Intel Sends Out Latest Patches For Mitigating Graphics Flaw On Ivybridge/Haswell - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

I've never experienced Windows 10 to be slow on any of the old GPUs I've tested though, both 8800GT, HD 4870 and various of AMD's DX11 GPUs.

The cases I have seen though when people complain about slower performance on Windows 10 is for old IGPs and old ATI DX9 GPUs that only got Vista drivers.

And I wonder if sometimes people blame Windows 10 because they don't know that nowadays for instance Chrome defaults to VP9 instead of h264 on Youtube, which will run on the CPU. Whereas it defaulted to h264 back in the day and almost all DX10 GPUs had hardware acceleration.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Still ticking this has been the most stable system I've owned.

 

[BUTCH1]

Still ticking this has been the most stable system I've owned.

Yup, although my current Ryzen 1600 is a lot faster the Xeon was very, very stable, I still get an occasional USB hiccup with this rig, nothing that a reboot won't solve but you get the feeling Asrock rushed out these drivers ASAP to quickly capitalize on the whole Ryzen release.

 

[mopardude87]

I don't use integrated graphics much, I prefer a nice beefy GPU, like a 290 minimum.

I use the best of both worlds, i got my 1080ti as a secondary gpu that only folds the mass majority of the time. I got Intel HD630 enabled so i could play lightweight games and have a smooth desktop experience while the 1080ti crunches away. Gonna miss that when i installed my 3900x but its been decided i will opt for a gt1030. Good enough for retro games which have been a thing for me lately .Prob late this year and early next year gonna pick up a mobo like this as my plans have now changed and just go wild with dual Ampere 3080ti perhaps for folding/gaming. Need that many lanes honestly with my AE-5 soundblaster and upcoming MP600 as well.

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

 

[DrMrLordX]

Intel claims that the final fix has no performance loss

Interesting. Sadly I haven't seen those drivers tested yet.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I've never experienced Windows 10 to be slow on any of the old GPUs I've tested though, both 8800GT, HD 4870 and various of AMD's DX11 GPUs.

The cases I have seen though when people complain about slower performance on Windows 10 is for old IGPs and old ATI DX9 GPUs that only got Vista drivers.

Those are high powered desktop GPUs, for their time anyway, some of which are still at modern IGP performance levels.

The issues are older pre-Ivy Bridge Intel IGPs, which barely had enough performance to begin with. F.x. the 4500MHD in question has a whopping 10 EUs @ 533MHz. Compare with f.x. a HD4870 with 800 shaders, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs @ 750MHz.

And I wonder if sometimes people blame Windows 10 because they don't know that nowadays for instance Chrome defaults to VP9 instead of h264 on Youtube, which will run on the CPU. Whereas it defaulted to h264 back in the day and almost all DX10 GPUs had hardware acceleration.

Definitely something to keep in mind.

There was a way to force a fallback, don't know if there still is.

 

[Eug]

Still ticking this has been the most stable system I've owned.

Nice machine. Why is your Radeon listed 8 times though?

I went with the 1055T when I upgraded the CPU a few years ago because it's a slim desktop and is built for 95 W CPU. The fastest option for me was the 1065T, but I went with the 95 W version of the 1055T because it was significantly cheaper on eBay. (The 1090T is 125 W, along with the earlier 1055T chips.)

Here is AnandTech's review of the 1055T and 1090T:

AMD's Six-Core Phenom II X6 1090T & 1055T Reviewed

www.anandtech.com

My GPU is an onboard nVidia GeForce 9200, whatever that is. So, it's an nVidia motherboard with integrated nVidia GPU, running an AMD CPU.

EDIT:

According to this page, the GeForce 9200 is sort of DirectX 11, but really is more of a DirectX 10 GPU. Its performance in Windows 10 is fine though (outside of 3D gaming, etc.).

NVIDIA GeForce 9200 Specs

NVIDIA C78, 500 MHz, 16 Cores, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs

www.techpowerup.com

The GeForce 9200 was an integrated graphics solution by NVIDIA, launched in April 2007. Built on the 80 nm process, and based on the C78 graphics processor, the device supports DirectX 11.1. Even though it supports DirectX 11, the feature level is only 10_0, which can be problematic with many DirectX 11 & DirectX 12 titles. It features 16 shading units, 8 texture mapping units, and 4 ROPs, . The GPU is operating at a frequency of 500 MHz.
Its power draw is rated at 40 W maximum. Display outputs include: 1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video. GeForce 9200 is connected to the rest of the system using a PCI interface.

 

[Spjut]

Those are high powered desktop GPUs, for their time anyway, some of which are still at modern IGP performance levels.

The issues are older pre-Ivy Bridge Intel IGPs, which barely had enough performance to begin with. F.x. the 4500MHD in question has a whopping 10 EUs @ 533MHz. Compare with f.x. a HD4870 with 800 shaders, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs @ 750MHz.

I can see that being the case. For older products though, people will need to install the Vista/Win7 driver manually, otherwise they're limited to the Basic Display Adapter. Sandy Bridge is the oldest to have official working drivers via Windows Update AFAIK.

I did test my ancient Geforce 6200 card using the Win8 driver in one of my C2Q builds with Win10 before selling that PC, and although it was "functional" and I can't say I remember Win7 being faster, I didn't test it enough to say more. I looked up how to do the Windows performance index test in Win10 though and IIRC it was basically the same as in Win7.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I can see that being the case. For older products though, people will need to install the Vista/Win7 driver manually, otherwise they're limited to the Basic Display Adapter. Sandy Bridge is the oldest to have official working drivers via Windows Update AFAIK.

The included Sandy Bridge driver in 10 completely nukes OpenGL support, so I'd definitely install the last 7 driver for that generation too.

I did test my ancient Geforce 6200 card using the Win8 driver in one of my C2Q builds with Win10 before selling that PC, and although it was "functional" and I can't say I remember Win7 being faster, I didn't test it enough to say more. I looked up how to do the Windows performance index test in Win10 though and IIRC it was basically the same as in Win7.

Even the lowly 6200 still has twice the theoretical performance of the 4500MHD. If you drop down to something like the Gen4 GMA 3000 / X3100, the results are not pretty. Forget the Gen3 series, it doesn't even have hardware pixel shaders.

Just out of curiosity, is that a PCIe or AGP 6200? I don't think 10 includes AGP drivers.

 

[Eug]

I've been playing more with this Pentium SU4100 with GMA 4500 MHD and 4 GB RAM, and I am not convinced it's the GPU. The graphics seem responsive enough for OS OS navigation and OS effects. The main problem is that everything else is just slow. eg. Web page loading and rendering.

Drivers are Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1)

I'm not overly concerned with reviving this machine though. I was just curious. The machine is pretty much useless now since the battery only lasts less than half an hour and I'm not about to spend more money on it given how slow the CPU is. It's also limited to 4 GB RAM.

 

[Spjut]

The included Sandy Bridge driver in 10 completely nukes OpenGL support, so I'd definitely install the last 7 driver for that generation too.

Even the lowly 6200 still has twice the theoretical performance of the 4500MHD. If you drop down to something like the Gen4 GMA 3000 / X3100, the results are not pretty. Forget the Gen3 series, it doesn't even have hardware pixel shaders.

Just out of curiosity, is that a PCIe or AGP 6200? I don't think 10 includes AGP drivers.

That's PCI-E. I still resort to it when testing older PCs because it's the only spare card I have that doesn't require additional cables from the PSU.

I've sold off all my AGP hardware now. In hindsight, I should have tested them on Windows 10 just, but at that time, it just felt too much of a chore to put it all together for that purpose.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Nice machine. Why is your Radeon listed 8 times though?

I don't know. I use the system for storage and movie streaming it's perfect for that.

Cool story bro time: recently the Coolermaster V8 fan died so I decided to pull the cooler, replace the fan and refresh the thermal paste. Gave the cooler the usual careful twist to break the bond, well it didn't I pulled the CPU out of the socket bent 5-6 pins. Luckily I was able to straighten them enough to put the CPU back in the socket.

10 years of thermal paste baking=glue

 

[Spjut]

I've been playing more with this Pentium SU4100 with GMA 4500 MHD and 4 GB RAM, and I am not convinced it's the GPU. The graphics seem responsive enough for OS OS navigation and OS effects. The main problem is that everything else is just slow. eg. Web page loading and rendering.

Drivers are Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1)

I'm not overly concerned with reviving this machine though. I was just curious. The machine is pretty much useless now since the battery only lasts less than half an hour and I'm not about to spend more money on it given how slow the CPU is. It's also limited to 4 GB RAM.

Thinking about it, have you checked if the browser says hardware acceleration is active?

 

[ao_ika_red]

Thinking about it, have you checked if the browser says hardware acceleration is active?

GMA4500MHD can't do webrender and decode VP8/ VP9 from Youtube. To compensate this, installing h264ify add-ons should help relieving CPU load on youtube stream.

 

[derekpittx]

It was throwing in a big arse SSD that extended its useful life I guess. That and 8gb of ram and running it at 3ghz it seemed perfectly happy doing regular desktop stuff.

 

[potato masher]

Yes "doing regular desktop stuff" is how these old guys should live their retirement from the limelight. Until rot rips their caps or bits. Such a waste that so many get land filled before a very useful 2nd or 3rd go round. Like a running used car getting crushed instead of going on to a 2nd owner. For shame.