Thread: Slow XP?
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Old January 6th 18, 11:37 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
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Default Slow XP?

KenK wrote:
Shadow wrote in
:

On 2 Jan 2018 16:39:39 GMT, KenK wrote:

I have an old Compaq Presario 5000 running XP I got as a gift. It did
not include the XP install disk.

Specs ?

Download Speccy portable

https://www.piriform.com/speccy/builds

And tell us what it says.
RAM could be anything from 64MB to 1GB, CPU from a 600 Celeron
to a 1.6 Pentium ....
Video will also impact performance.
[]'s


My Computer sez:

Internal C - 133G
Internal D - 17G
Extenal G - 1 T

Oddly, My Computer in this system only provides drive info. System in
Control Panel sez:

Speed 1.59 GHz
512 MB RAM
XP Home Version 2002


That's enough RAM for WinXP. You can keep three programs
open with that much. Three older programs. Once Firefox gets
on there, that much RAM will handle one tab... maybe.

You'll need more than that for Ubuntu. I would think
1GB would be a start (a measurement yesterday showed it
idling at around 700MB or so).

Ubuntu DE is "molasses slow" unless the video driver helps
provide acceleration. I'm working on a little experiment
right now to test that. Some of the other distros (Lubuntu
or Xubuntu and so on), may use a DE with "less Compiz". At
one time, Compiz could be turned off, and Compiz started as
an animation system.

Without animation, or using a DE that doesn't rely on
buttery smooth crap, you could easily use your setup. But
Ubuntu itself, burns up a lot of CPU, just when rendering
these graphical animations of windows opening and closing.
(I have this running on the P4 2.8GHz test machine which
is up on deck for another experiment. The P4 machine broke
and I got it running again... two dead video cards later.
And windows opening and closing, is just as slow as when
I run Ubuntu in VPC2007 on this machine.)

Compiz can rail the CPU all by itself, and is a pig. Once
a "native" video card driver is installed, it can be a
bit better, but not by much. For compositing, a general
rule of thumb acorss several different OSes, is
128MB to 256MB of video card RAM, makes for good Compositing,
which is part of what Compiz does. (Compositing is supposed
to allow windows to be moved around the screen with a mouse,
with hardly any CPU input - as long as the video card
provides the acceleration.) If the video driver is missing
in action, things like MESA3D or whatever came after it,
use your CPU instead of the video card. And that's where
the molasses comes from. In other words, these ideas are
predicated on a "minimum hardware configuration" which
not all users have access to. Puppy by comparison, will
"run on a rock" - any old piece of older crap would do
for Puppy.

Compiz is just a bad idea. A waste. Which cannot be
turned off on modern Ubuntu (dunno why).

Puppy should work fine. It doesn't need a lot of RAM.

And that's a funny CPU clock rate. The older Intel processors,
the EIST would "idle" at 1200MHz and the multiple would go
up when the OS "called for more steam".

Actually, I do have a P4 which is that slow. It was a Mobile
one, which back in those days, used the same socket (S462
or S478). Mine only runs 1.5GHz. So they did make some
damn slow processors back then. That mobile wouldn't have
Hyperthreading either.

CPUZ cab show you more details.

https://s17.postimg.org/8c07b8u6n/I_...Geek_Squad.gif

To post images to that site, the address today is:

https://postimages.org/

Paul
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