XP on newer platforms

Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?

wrote:
Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?

These are some benchmarks I ran a while back.
You can see the WinXPx32 used as a baseline,
does pretty well, when compared to the three
other OSes on the lines just below it.

SuperPI 7ZIP 1T 2T 4T (on 2C 2T E8400 CPU)
1.5XS 9.34

(WinXPx32) 3:19.546 21:32 12:09 11:16

Win7SP1x64 3:18.791 21:01 11:48 10:46
Win81x64 3:19.656 20:59 11:59 10:44
Win10x64 3:21.813 21:08 12:10 10:52

1T 12T 24T (on 6C 12T 4930K CPU)
Win7SP1x64 1:59.028 15:22 2:09 2:00
Win81x64 1:59.197 15:29 2:09 1:58
Win10x64 2:00.044 15:38 2:10 2:01

It's hard to remember now, but I may have had
a problem getting WinXP installed on the
second machine. I expect with enough effort,
it could be done.

WinXP home supports one socket. WinXP Pro
supports two sockets. You can have as many
cores as you want on a socket (at least, until
you run out of bits to handle them in Task
Manager - the affinity dialog supports
32 cores). So from that perspective, the OS
should have installed.

There can be subtle difference in the scheduler
behavior. The newer OSes understand the metrics
(cost) of moving a task to a different core a bit
better. In particular, you might get an extra
5-7 percent on one of those oddball multicore
AMD processors.

But short of dropping cores entirely, I don't
think WinXP would be all that bad.

And you can tell from the table, that Windows 7
isn't a bad alternative. As alternatives go.

One reason for the Win10 results to be off,
could be Win10 "doing its laundry" while
I'm trying to benchmark it :-) If it had
a "maintenance OFF" button, I'd have used it.
I try not to cheat on these benchmarks, by
compensating for the bad table manners of
any OS (don't stack the deck by waiting
for maintenance to finish or whatever).
If an OS has bad table manners, it should
suffer for it.

Paul

On Tue, 05 Jul 2016 18:35:58 -0400, Paul wrote:

wrote:
Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?

These are some benchmarks I ran a while back.
You can see the WinXPx32 used as a baseline,
does pretty well, when compared to the three
other OSes on the lines just below it.

SuperPI 7ZIP 1T 2T 4T (on 2C 2T E8400 CPU)
1.5XS 9.34

(WinXPx32) 3:19.546 21:32 12:09 11:16

Win7SP1x64 3:18.791 21:01 11:48 10:46
Win81x64 3:19.656 20:59 11:59 10:44
Win10x64 3:21.813 21:08 12:10 10:52

1T 12T 24T (on 6C 12T 4930K CPU)
Win7SP1x64 1:59.028 15:22 2:09 2:00
Win81x64 1:59.197 15:29 2:09 1:58
Win10x64 2:00.044 15:38 2:10 2:01

It's hard to remember now, but I may have had
a problem getting WinXP installed on the
second machine. I expect with enough effort,
it could be done.

WinXP home supports one socket. WinXP Pro
supports two sockets. You can have as many
cores as you want on a socket (at least, until
you run out of bits to handle them in Task
Manager - the affinity dialog supports
32 cores). So from that perspective, the OS
should have installed.

There can be subtle difference in the scheduler
behavior. The newer OSes understand the metrics
(cost) of moving a task to a different core a bit
better. In particular, you might get an extra
5-7 percent on one of those oddball multicore
AMD processors.

But short of dropping cores entirely, I don't
think WinXP would be all that bad.

And you can tell from the table, that Windows 7
isn't a bad alternative. As alternatives go.

One reason for the Win10 results to be off,
could be Win10 "doing its laundry" while
I'm trying to benchmark it :-) If it had
a "maintenance OFF" button, I'd have used it.
I try not to cheat on these benchmarks, by
compensating for the bad table manners of
any OS (don't stack the deck by waiting
for maintenance to finish or whatever).
If an OS has bad table manners, it should
suffer for it.

Paul

Thanks Paul. I was looking at some off lease 2 core duo 3.0mz
machines and I just wanted to be sure they would run OK with XP. Some
have a w7 p license, some don't

wrote:
Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?

The LGA 1366 machine I use most is a dual boot xp3/W7.
Both xp3 and w7 run all 4 cores / 8 threads quite well.
It's really up to the software though.
A couple of my games have checks for multicore operation.

wrote:
Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?

This depends on the motherboard, and what CPUs it can support. I'm running
a dual core Intel chip on my Dell XP computer just fine.

In fact, as I recall, I replaced the original single core Intel chip with a
dual core one, but I don't think a quad core was an option for my particular
Dell (I didn't buy the higher end models)

As to whether or not both cores are used - that depends on the software -
some programs make use of it, and some don't, as I recall. But a lot of my
software is older, and can't anyways, so there ya go. :-)

On 07/05/2016 06:52 PM, wrote:

Thanks Paul. I was looking at some off lease 2 core duo 3.0mz
machines and I just wanted to be sure they would run OK with XP. Some
have a w7 p license, some don't

I ran WinXP Pro on an E8400 C2D for several years until I upgraded to
Linux and it worked just fine.

Jon

On Tue, 05 Jul 2016 15:51:29 -0400, wrote:

Does 32 bit XP have the ability to actually use newer dual core and
quad core machines efficiently?


My current desk-top machine is a 4-Core machine. It came with XP
drivers. (The Motherboard is ASROCK H61M-VS) XP is actually designed
to handle multiple processors.

My copy of XP Pro has been working on this machine since 2011.

All of the quad CPU's are in use, but individual usage depends on what
I'm doing.

Ross