Who has installed XP žn a Pentium MMX,2,3,4 pcs?

Discussion in 'Windows XP General Discussion' started by WindowsXPforever, Jun 24, 2018.

  1. WindowsXPforever

    WindowsXPforever

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    The title says
     
    WindowsXPforever, Jun 24, 2018
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  2. WindowsXPforever

    cmccaff1

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    You mean in all four? I have gotten XP working on each processor. In general you need at least a Pentium III to have superb speed on XP, but a Pentium 4 is easily the best of them all (Tualatin P3s outperform early P4s, however; the post-Willamette Pentium 4s rock).
     
    cmccaff1, Sep 16, 2018
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  3. WindowsXPforever

    Mike_Walsh

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    I've had XP running under a Northwood P4 in an old Dell lappie (coming up to its 17th birthday!).....but, to be kind, it was slow. It ran, but took forever to do anything.

    We had it from new in 2002, back in the days when Dell sold direct to the public, and you specified what hardware you wanted. In those days, I was green where computer hardware was concerned; 128 MB of RAM sounded a lot to me.....

    That page-file was just running non-stop!!

    Now, she runs 'Puppy' Linux.....which has given her a new lease of life. It wouldn't run Vista, or anything newer.....they all turned their noses up at the lack of hardware resources.

    -------------------------------------------

    Realistically, though,you'll not get it to run on anything prior to a P3. It's all down to the instruction sets built in to the CPU; XP needs minimum of at least SSEs. Pentium IIs only have MMX; original Pentiums don't even have that.


    Mike. ;)
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2019
    Mike_Walsh, Jan 17, 2019
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  4. WindowsXPforever

    cmccaff1

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    128MB of RAM? Sheesh--at the time that would have been a decent amount, but I can see why XP didn't perform too great. That's probably the minimum RAM you need to have XP somewhat usable, and even then it's barely sufficient.

    I still have my DC5000 SFF sitting in the closet, and I'm actually interested now in bringing it out of retirement. It's a 2.8GHz Prescott P4 with 4GB of RAM (the most it will take), a 40GB HDD, and a DVD+/-RW drive. It's quite a bit slower than the machine I'm using now, but I am interested in putting some older software on it and seeing if it can still fly in 2019 as a 'retro daily driver.' I might even up the ante a bit and go down to Windows 2000, just to make it more retro.
     
    cmccaff1, Jan 17, 2019
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  5. WindowsXPforever

    cmccaff1

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    By the way, XP actually does run on first-generation Pentium processors. I can confirm this firsthand, having tested it on my old IBM Thinkpad 380ED with 48MB of RAM (I had to use some 'tricks' to bypass the 64MB minimum), a 166MHz Pentium MMX, and a 2GB HDD (just barely enough space, but XP got on successfully). That's another computer of mine I would like to bring out of retirement...it still works after 20+ years, and with Windows 95 OSR2.5 (it was designed to run 95) it is quite fast.
     
    cmccaff1, Jan 17, 2019
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  6. WindowsXPforever

    ClippyBeer

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    The first machine I ever installed XP on was a Pentium II 400 MHz desktop with 512MB. It was OK at the time but forget about having more than 1 tab open for web browsing or multi-tasking! I also had it installed on a Pentium 4 640 (Prescott 2M) 3.20GHz desktop with 3 GB RAM - that was pretty much an optimal setup for multi-tasking, browsing, gaming etc. I now have XP SP3 MCE 2005 on a Compaq Presario V2135US laptop I inherited (Pentium M Processor 715 1.5GHz 512MB). This runs like a pig in mud with the XP constantly swapping out to disk if I have more than 1 program open.

    CPU and clock play a role in performance but my experience has shown me that 1 GB or higher RAM is required to use XP comfortably.
     
    ClippyBeer, Jan 18, 2019
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  7. WindowsXPforever

    Mike_Walsh

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    Well, the Dell lappie (an original Inspiron 1100) now has 2 GB of 400MHz DDR1 So-DIMM RAM sticks. Dell would always have you believe that the maximum this thing could handle was only 1 GB. However, upon doing some digging, I discovered that Intel had hidden the fact that the 845GL chipset would support a full 2 GB of RAM completely out of sight in the depths of a 2001 white paper they released on the 82845's capabilities.

    She came with a 2.2 GHz 'Celly', but now runs a 2.6 GHz 'proper' P4. Couldn't find a 2.8 at the time (and I would have loved the 400FSB 3.0 GHz, but they were only made in very small numbers, and are as rare as hen's teeth to find now - for equally silly prices, too.) Remember, these were 'full' desktop CPUs (in a laptop!), with equivalent TDPs; this one puts out 67W of heat.....

    The modern ultra-low-power CPUs we're all used to seeing in mobile devices today weren't even a gleam in an Intel engineer's eye back then. (The exhaust vent on this old girl does a fair approximation of a hot-air paint stripper when she's working hard; I think if she'd been capable of running an HT model, or even a Prescott, she'd have gone into 'meltdown' years ago..!)

    --------------------

    @ ClippyBeer:- Get this. In original specs (Celly & 128 MB RAM), the 1100 took around 5 ½ hours to install SP3....and I don't think she dropped much below 65c the whole time (perilously close to Tcase_Max for that chip). She managed it, though.....eventually!

    Just goes to show how much abuse those old Pentiums would put up with..... :D


    Mike. ;)
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2019
    Mike_Walsh, Jan 18, 2019
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  8. WindowsXPforever

    ClippyBeer

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    5 ½ hours to install?!? Ugghh..those were the days when I used to have patience for that!
     
    ClippyBeer, Jan 19, 2019
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  9. WindowsXPforever

    cleverscreenname

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    Yep, I've also had XP on Pentium 1,2,3,4 and AMD 350, 700, 1ghz and up. The lowest-spec was 166mhz MMX with 64mb memory. nLite can strip bloated parts out of XP, and the smallest useful XP ISO I've made is 74mb CD with a 165mb installed size. I bet that would purr right along on that old computer :)

    I hope that hard drive or CD had bad sectors, otherwise that's... concerning!! Hopefully he had other things to do in the meantime.
     
    cleverscreenname, Dec 2, 2023
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