WinXP runs OK on a Celeron 300a

[Wag]

This one surprised me.

My normal PC (Athlon 2500+) went foobar, so I'm temporarily using one I had in the garage- Abit BH6, Celeron 300a (o/c 463), 3DFX Banshee, 8gb harddrive (33?), 2x DVD, 320MB ram(put some more in there I had).

Now it took about 4+ hrs to install XP, longer than that to d/l the service packs and everything. I didn't plan on using XP with it, but I lost the floppy for the ethernet card and I knew XP had drivers.

Fairly zippy even on the Banshee. Now I wouldn't play a FPS on it, but it's more than adequate for everyday use.

Now I understand why the computer industry needs gaming so badly- to drive hardware upgrades.

 

[EyeMWing]

/me slaps you across the face with his WinXP P2-233

 

[loup garou]

As long as you have a bunch of ram, it's not that bad. My office PC was a cel 433 w 512 mb ram and XP for the longest time, worked fine.

 

[Eug]

WinXP runs OK on a Celeron 300a

Yes it does. A 300a is sufficient for Word and surfing, esp. if you don't visit too many flash-based websites or whatever. You can speed it up even more by turning off the XP theme, among other things.

Now, when people with little money have asked me what used machine to get for basic everyday stuff, I usually just tell them to get a PIII 500 or above if they can get it for very cheap and then just stick lots of RAM in it. (A 300a does work, but it really is borderline.)

BTW, I just built a PII 350 with an 8 MB S3 video card and XP (with the normal XP theme) for my niece, and she's quite happy with it. However, I would have preferred to stick a PIII 500 in it but the PII 350 is the only extra one I had lying around. A PIII 500 is quite a bit zippier with those more complex websites.

 

[Snapster]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
/me slaps you across the face with his WinXP P2-233

I went one lower. P1-200MMX, 128MB Ram, 16MB graphics card.

 

[shimsham]

whew! now i can sleep well tonight

 

[Wag]

I did find 3rd party Banshee drivers dated May 2003.

 

[Amused]

I've had XP running on a PII 450 and a PIII600 with no trouble at all.

BUT, you MUST turn off all the fades, slides, scrolls, show windows contents while dragging and shadows in "Performance" to make it work OK on an old video card with minimal video memory.

Hell, I just turn off all that crap on all my systems now. It makes everything so much snappier.

 

[dawks]

My PII 400 with 256 megs ram is still chuggin along fine with XP. Its my daily machine with photoshop and dreamweaver running most of the time.

 

[aircooled]

I'd like to see win3.1 running on the 2500+

 

[thraxes]

My dads PII-266 Laptop runs on XP. Just give it a decent amout of RAM, turn of all the coulourfull gizos and watch that baby fly!! It even runs faster than with Win2000, so that ain't too bad eh?

 

[Wag]

Yeah, I changed to standard Win theme and turned all the perormance features off except the "smooth font edges". That one I like.

 

[MAME]

yeah, I hate it when people say 128 megs isn't enough or you need at least a p3 to run windows xp. It's PLENTY fast and responsive on my mom's pos p2 350 gateway.

I actually didn't have to turn off any special features. XP isn't so bad

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: MAME
yeah, I hate it when people say 128 megs isn't enough or you need at least a p3 to run windows xp. It's PLENTY fast and responsive on my mom's pos p2 350 gateway.

I actually didn't have to turn off any special features. XP isn't so bad

I can't understand why anyone on ANY machine would want the fade, slide and scroll effects on XP. It makes everything slow even on my 3.2@3.6 with 1 GB of RAM. I like a snappy user interface that does something without making me wait for a dramtic effect to finish.

 

[vi edit]

I can't understand why anyone on ANY machine would want the fade, slide and scroll effects on XP. It makes everything slow even on my 3.2@3.6 with 1 GB of RAM. I like a snappy user interface that does something without making me wait for a dramtic effect to finish.

Ditto. On a fresh XP load THE FIRST thing I do when windows boots the first time is head in and disable all the effects. They are annoying as hell.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: MAME
yeah, I hate it when people say 128 megs isn't enough or you need at least a p3 to run windows xp. It's PLENTY fast and responsive on my mom's pos p2 350 gateway.

I actually didn't have to turn off any special features. XP isn't so bad

I find a PII 350 with 128 MB kinda slow nowadays, just with surfing (eg. flash sites) and light work. A PIII 500 with 256 MB is a HUGE jump in performance.

And considering that PIII based used machines are cheap as borscht these days, I see no problem recomending a PIII with 256 MB for Win XP even to those who are short on cash.

But yeah, config'd properly, a PII 350 is acceptable. Like I said, I built one for my niece, and she loves it.

 

[Wag]

The first thing I do is disable the navigation "click". Then I disable the effects.

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: Snapster

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
/me slaps you across the face with his WinXP P2-233

I went one lower. P1-200MMX, 128MB Ram, 16MB graphics card.

Don't make me walk across the room and start a WinXP install on a Cyrix MII 166GP (I have two, actually. One is Cyrix branded, one is IBM branded) with a 1mb VGA board and 64mb of RAM.

 

[MAME]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: MAME
yeah, I hate it when people say 128 megs isn't enough or you need at least a p3 to run windows xp. It's PLENTY fast and responsive on my mom's pos p2 350 gateway.

I actually didn't have to turn off any special features. XP isn't so bad

I can't understand why anyone on ANY machine would want the fade, slide and scroll effects on XP. It makes everything slow even on my 3.2@3.6 with 1 GB of RAM. I like a snappy user interface that does something without making me wait for a dramtic effect to finish.

I agree. But which ones are the fade, slide and scroll effects?? I didn't have to turn off any features but I sure as hell went ahead anyway

 

[Wag]

Me Installing WinXP

 

[MAME]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing

Originally posted by: Snapster

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
/me slaps you across the face with his WinXP P2-233

I went one lower. P1-200MMX, 128MB Ram, 16MB graphics card.

Don't make me walk across the room and start a WinXP install on a Cyrix MII 166GP (I have two, actually. One is Cyrix branded, one is IBM branded) with a 1mb VGA board and 64mb of RAM.

Do it and report back please. We all want to know

 

[MournSanity]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: MAME
yeah, I hate it when people say 128 megs isn't enough or you need at least a p3 to run windows xp. It's PLENTY fast and responsive on my mom's pos p2 350 gateway.

I actually didn't have to turn off any special features. XP isn't so bad

I can't understand why anyone on ANY machine would want the fade, slide and scroll effects on XP. It makes everything slow even on my 3.2@3.6 with 1 GB of RAM. I like a snappy user interface that does something without making me wait for a dramtic effect to finish.

You are right. I just disabled a bunch of crappy effects and the UI is way snappier and responsive.

 

[EyeMWing]

Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.

But it was neccessary. They weren't about to pay me for some EPIA rigs (Which would be better suited to what those Optipli are tasked to) so I directed them to the next best thing.

 

[MAME]

so...you gonna put xp on those old rigs now or what? it'd be fun, come on!

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.

You can get a PIII 600 with CD-RW, 20 GB drive, and 128 MB RAM around here for about $175. And that's not even a true "used" machine. It's a refurb with 90 day warranty.

I'd much rather tell someone to get one of those than get an old PII 350 with 6 GB hard drive and no CD-RW for $100.