Hardware Requirements for Internet PC

[BillW50]

In

Control-Shift-Esc does it on XP (at least) and, I feel, is a little
less fraught than the usual 3-fingered salute.

Earlier Windows versions, double clicking on the desktop popped up
something. I don't recall what it was now. Was it the Task Manager?

 

[BillW50]

In

I disagree that 900MHz isn't enough for any arbitrary video playback.
As my two uses a 400MHz Celeron with a very wimpy Trident Cyber 9525
video with only 2.5 MB of video RAM. And under Windows 98, it has
enough power to keep up with full screen DVD playback and can handle
youtube video streams up to 700k. Under Windows 2000, it is terrible.
As now it can only handle streams up to 100k.

Sorry as my two... Toshiba 2595XDVD from '99 era.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per BillW50:

I wish DPCs would show up in the Task Manager list. As when you have
high DPC usage you can see the CPU is busy, but you can't find out why
with the Task Manager. Although Process Explorer will show them.

My version of PE has an option to tell the system to pretend it's
TaskMan and it seems to work.

Is there a reason to even use TaskManager once Process Explorer
is installed.

 

[glee]

In

This used to be true. As back in the 80's and 90's if your machine was
5 years old, it was now way too slow for newer software.

Although something happened really special somewhere at the end of '06
and just before Vista was released. As memory was very cheap and
multicore machines was plentiful. And XP was enjoying a long run and
it still continues somewhat.

I now have 16 laptops from this era alone. I love them. As they can
run older software and all of the newer software as well. You can run
older Windows and even the latest Windows 8 on them. I consider them
the best of the best. And so far, I have no interest in running any
machine newer than this. Nor do the newer machines offer me anything I
am interest in and won't run any of my stuff any faster than what I am
doing right now.

I don't recall anything like this in PC history. Okay the Commodore 64
did sell for over 10 years without much in the way of changes. But
that is the closest thing I can think of to compare it with.

You're talking dual and quad core systems. The first dual-core
processors for home computers weren't available till mid-2005. In 2006,
there were still a LOT of single-core systems being produced,
particularly lower end desktops, and many laptops. Those single-core
systems today will have many problems running newer software,
particularly but not limited to anti-virus apps, and will often bog down
with online sites like YouTube, which now require much greater processor
usage.

You apparently did not shop at the low to mid range during that
period.... most users did, however.

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

You're talking dual and quad core systems. The first dual-core
processors for home computers weren't available till mid-2005. In
2006, there were still a LOT of single-core systems being produced,
particularly lower end desktops, and many laptops. Those single-core
systems today will have many problems running newer software,
particularly but not limited to anti-virus apps, and will often bog
down with online sites like YouTube, which now require much greater
processor usage.

You apparently did not shop at the low to mid range during that
period.... most users did, however.

There is a lot of truth in what you say. But only 5 out of the 16
machines from '06 I have actually have are multicore CPUs. The other 11
does not. Some of them that are not, you could drop a multicore CPU in
them though.

And yes, multicore machines do have lots of advantages. Although if two
machines everything is the same except one has a single core and one has
a multicore and you are running XP or earlier. you will get a 10 to 30%
performance boost from my experiences. But a faster single core can make
most of this up too.

And it is true, one misbehaving thread can hog the CPU under a single
core and make it appear that your machine has frozen up. This could
happen under multicore machines too, but it takes more misbehaving
threads to cause this same effect.

I don't see this problem very often, so it isn't usually a big deal.
Although if it ever does, there are process managers that can tame such
things anyway. Process Lasso is one of the better ones. And many of
these utilities will give you some of the advantages of having a
multicore machine anyway.

Now in my experience where a single core just doesn't cut it is when you
are running Windows Vista/7/8. I just can't satisfactory performance out
of them without a multicore processor. There are probably some
applications that don't work well or not at all with single cores too.
But I haven't run into any of those yet. ;-)

 

[BillW50]

In (PeteCresswell) typed:

Per BillW50:

My version of PE has an option to tell the system to pretend it's
TaskMan and it seems to work.

Is there a reason to even use TaskManager once Process Explorer
is installed.

Actually with AnVir Task Manager, I don't use Process Explorer anymore.
I also had problems with Process Explorer with some copy-protected
games. I guess the copy protection thinks you are running something to
crack the copy protection or something.

 

[Stefan Patric]

[Big snip]

I disagree that 900MHz isn't enough for any arbitrary video playback. As

[snip]

My Asus EeePC 701/2 netbooks are underclocked to 633MHz. And they too
can keep up with arbitrary video playback without missing a beat under
Windows XP, even on an external monitor running 1440x900. Oddly enough,
Linux on the same machine can't even come close.

Which Linux distro? The one originally installed? Xandros, I think it
was. Awful.

I've got a EeePC 900 (900mHz Celeron, 1GB RAM, 4GB+16GB SSDs) on which I
installed Eeebuntu 3.x (an optimize version of Ubuntu for the EeePC)
wiping out the original Xandros, and it now plays any video, etc. without
problems. What a difference overall compared to Xandros.

Stef

 

[glee]

In glee typed:

There is a lot of truth in what you say. But only 5 out of the 16
machines from '06 I have actually have are multicore CPUs. The other
11
does not. Some of them that are not, you could drop a multicore CPU in
them though.

And yes, multicore machines do have lots of advantages. Although if
two
machines everything is the same except one has a single core and one
has
a multicore and you are running XP or earlier. you will get a 10 to
30%
performance boost from my experiences. But a faster single core can
make
most of this up too.

And it is true, one misbehaving thread can hog the CPU under a single
core and make it appear that your machine has frozen up. This could
happen under multicore machines too, but it takes more misbehaving
threads to cause this same effect.

I don't see this problem very often, so it isn't usually a big deal.
Although if it ever does, there are process managers that can tame
such
things anyway. Process Lasso is one of the better ones. And many of
these utilities will give you some of the advantages of having a
multicore machine anyway.

Now in my experience where a single core just doesn't cut it is when
you
are running Windows Vista/7/8. I just can't satisfactory performance
out
of them without a multicore processor. There are probably some
applications that don't work well or not at all with single cores too.
But I haven't run into any of those yet. ;-)

My experience has been quite different. I'm talking about XP with a
single core processor and a GB of RAM. There will be near 100%
processor usage on some web pages containing flash video ads, even
without a main video running on the page. Some scripting will also
cause the same issues. It will also occur on the same hardware with
Win98. It's pretty common to see quite high processor usage when online
at some sites, opening some newer apps, even the newer Java Control
Panel applets, with single cores under 2GHz.

There's a bit of difference among the single core processors too.
Sempron and Duron and Celeron (the low-end single cores) have more
issues than Athlon and Pentium, from the systems I have worked on and
worked with.

On the other hand, Windows 7 performs much better with a single core
processor on the same sites. I have a laptop with a Sempron processor
that performs flawlessly with Windows 7 and 2GB RAM..... much better
than XP with a Sempron processor, using the same software and going to
the same web sites. Some newer software, such as anti-virus apps,
assume at least a dual-core processor and as a result, there are issues
with too many threads doing too much for the single core.

YMMV.

 

[BillW50]

In Stefan Patric typed:

[Big snip]

I disagree that 900MHz isn't enough for any arbitrary video
playback. As

[snip]

My Asus EeePC 701/2 netbooks are underclocked to 633MHz. And they too
can keep up with arbitrary video playback without missing a beat
under Windows XP, even on an external monitor running 1440x900.
Oddly enough, Linux on the same machine can't even come close.

Which Linux distro? The one originally installed? Xandros, I think
it was. Awful.

I've got a EeePC 900 (900mHz Celeron, 1GB RAM, 4GB+16GB SSDs) on
which I installed Eeebuntu 3.x (an optimize version of Ubuntu for the
EeePC) wiping out the original Xandros, and it now plays any video,
etc. without problems. What a difference overall compared to Xandros.

Stef

Xandros, Ubuntu 8.10 netbook edition, Ubuntu 9.10 netbook edition, and
Puppy Linux. And I really liked Xandros, especially in easy mode which
boots in 20 seconds. Although the wireless to connect had taken an extra
minute. You could only use Firefox 2.0 tops with Xandros without
updating the kernel, and that makes Xandros unusable to me as is. As
Firefox 2.0 displays webpages worse than IE6 does.

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

My experience has been quite different. I'm talking about XP with a
single core processor and a GB of RAM. There will be near 100%
processor usage on some web pages containing flash video ads, even
without a main video running on the page. Some scripting will also
cause the same issues. It will also occur on the same hardware with
Win98. It's pretty common to see quite high processor usage when
online at some sites, opening some newer apps, even the newer Java
Control Panel applets, with single cores under 2GHz.

Wow I haven't seen this per se. Which browser are you talking about?
Both Trident and Webkit rendering engines work well for me.

There's a bit of difference among the single core processors too.
Sempron and Duron and Celeron (the low-end single cores) have more
issues than Athlon and Pentium, from the systems I have worked on and
worked with.

Almost all of my recent experiences with single core CPUs are with
Celerons and Athlons.

On the other hand, Windows 7 performs much better with a single core
processor on the same sites. I have a laptop with a Sempron processor
that performs flawlessly with Windows 7 and 2GB RAM..... much better
than XP with a Sempron processor, using the same software and going to
the same web sites. Some newer software, such as anti-virus apps,
assume at least a dual-core processor and as a result, there are
issues with too many threads doing too much for the single core.

YMMV.

Wow I haven't found any single core CPU where Windows 7 performs well.
Which one have you found to work pretty well?

 

[BillW50]

In

In glee typed:

Wow I haven't seen this per se. Which browser are you talking about?
Both Trident and Webkit rendering engines work well for me.


Almost all of my recent experiences with single core CPUs are with
Celerons and Athlons.


Wow I haven't found any single core CPU where Windows 7 performs well.
Which one have you found to work pretty well?

I haven't fired this one up (Celeron M430 @ 1.73GHz) in a couple of
years. But you had me curious and the only Celerons I usually use lately
are netbooks. So this was a good review. I turned off all throttling
processing utilities. And I visited a number of websites, played some
youtube videos. I used Maxthon 3 browser using the Webkit engine and
everything looks great here. And the CPU never hit past 70%.

 

[BillW50]

In

In

I haven't fired this one up (Celeron M430 @ 1.73GHz) in a couple of
years. But you had me curious and the only Celerons I usually use
lately are netbooks. So this was a good review. I turned off all
throttling processing utilities. And I visited a number of websites,
played some youtube videos. I used Maxthon 3 browser using the Webkit
engine and everything looks great here. And the CPU never hit past
70%.

I have been playing with this machine a number of hours now and it even
operates better than I remember. Besides a fraction of a second lag here
or there opening an application, I find it totally acceptable. And about
99% of the time it is really snappy (just as good as my multicore
machines).

What this Celeron isn't doing well at all is with my Avermedia TV while
converting to WMV format during real time. My Avermedia TV cheats when
it comes to watching or time shifting, as the MPEG decoder is in the
hardware (so the CPU really doesn't have to do much of anything). That
part is just perfect. Although I have noticed throughout the years that
converting one video format to another in real time with a single core
is just a lot of work for the poor thing to handle.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per BillW50:

Actually with AnVir Task Manager, I don't use Process Explorer anymore.

Should I be looking for an AnVir option to make AnVir take the
place of TaskMan? i.e. with the option set, Ctl/Alt/Delete |
Task Manager results in AnVir's window popping up instead of
TaskMan's?

 

[BillW50]

In

Per BillW50:

Should I be looking for an AnVir option to make AnVir take the
place of TaskMan? i.e. with the option set, Ctl/Alt/Delete |
Task Manager results in AnVir's window popping up instead of
TaskMan's?

I don't, but I don't think it would be a problem. There is a saying that
goes something like this that I think applies... whatever floats your
boat. ;-)

 

[glee]

Wow I haven't seen this per se. Which browser are you talking about?
Both Trident and Webkit rendering engines work well for me.

Opera 10.x, Opera 11.x., Firefox 6.6x, Firefox 11, IE7, IE8, IE9...
YouTube generally works fine, though slow loading on systems with less
than a GB RAM and an older single core.... it will use a lot of the
processor but not 100%. Vimeo on the other hand often has a lot more
scripting load and will not always show a clean video without stops and
jerkiness on the same older systems. Other web pages with lots of
scripting in ads including video ads can lock up any of these browsers
on a slow system.

Almost all of my recent experiences with single core CPUs are with
Celerons and Athlons.

Newer Celerons are much less troublesome than the older generation.

Wow I haven't found any single core CPU where Windows 7 performs well.
Which one have you found to work pretty well?

As I mentioned, I have a laptop with Win7 and 2GB RAM using a Sempron
single core and no problems at all. It helps to keep the background
programs and processes under control. I've seen machines with a
ridiculous number of background processes running for no good reason.

 

[glee]

snip
(Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
snip

Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems with
512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging down the
entire system.

How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?

 

[BillW50]

In

snip
(Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
snip

Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
down the entire system.

How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?

I monitor all of my processes all of the time for CPU usage. And Avast 7
will run on anything from Windows 2000 and up. And AnVir Task Manager
says in the last hour, Avast hit 17% for a second and the rest of the
hour it was under 1%. As far as the average user is concern, they
couldn't even tell it was actually running.

 

[BillW50]

In

snip
(Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
snip

Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
down the entire system.

(Good to know - I think - that I'm using a light one.)

How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?

I was referring to the suggestion someone made that most AV 'wares
these days assume they're on a multicore system, and cause heavy load
if run on a single-core system. I was wondering if they might have a
setting to prevent them trying to multiprocess. (Probably not, as
presumably it should be possible to do it - the detection of whether
multicore or not - automatically, so if they don't, they're not going
to bother.)

I run Avast 7 on slow single core CPUs all of the time. And you don't
even know it is running, as it only uses just such an insignificant
amount of CPU power.

 

[glee]

In

snip
(Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
snip

Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
down the entire system.

How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?

I monitor all of my processes all of the time for CPU usage. And Avast
7 will run on anything from Windows 2000 and up. And AnVir Task
Manager says in the last hour, Avast hit 17% for a second and the rest
of the hour it was under 1%. As far as the average user is concern,
they couldn't even tell it was actually running.

Yes, but is that with 256 to 512 MB RAM as in my example? It's not
*only* CPU usage involved. As in the case of many apps, it's a combo of
both RAM amount and CPU. Avira seems to be the best one for very low
RAM systems, from my experience, anyway.... on a number of clients'
machines.

I know with Avast 4.x on older single core processors I've tried it, no
matter the RAM amount, definition updating would nearly max out the CPU
at the end of the updating. I can't say if there is an improvement in
that area with Avast 6 and 7, because I don't use it on any machines.
From what you've posted in your other replies, it's been improved.

 

[Paul]

snip
(Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
snip

Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging down
the entire system.

(Good to know - I think - that I'm using a light one.)

How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?

I was referring to the suggestion someone made that most AV 'wares these
days assume they're on a multicore system, and cause heavy load if run
on a single-core system. I was wondering if they might have a setting to
prevent them trying to multiprocess. (Probably not, as presumably it
should be possible to do it - the detection of whether multicore or not
- automatically, so if they don't, they're not going to bother.)

In Windows, you can use Task Manager and the "Affinity" setting,
to force an executable to stay on a particular core. On a multicore
system, that would effectively reduce the loading on the system.
On a single core system, Affinity is not going to help you as
you only have one core to begin with.

Task Manager also has "priority" settings, and you can experiment
with cranking down the priority setting. If two processes want to
run 100% on the same core, they split 50:50. If you drop the priority
of one process by one notch, then one process might get 75% while
the other gets 25%. So priority doesn't prevent one from running
entirely, it just changes the balance between the two. If you use
too extreme a setting, sometimes a potential side effect is a
deadlock in the system. So don't get carried away.

But an AV program, isn't going to tolerate being manipulated like
that. AV programs are pretty sensitive, and they have to be able
to defend themselves against any potential malware attack. Undoing
Task Manager changes, would be childs play for them. They're
armor plated.

Paul