Get a new pc 🤣

Those Tuallies are probably thinking "OH GOD, NO!!!" 🤣

I don't have any experience with dual CPU but, if you exclude youtube videos and such, and you have plenty of ram (2GB is good) it should be ok for the rest, not having an HD as old as Tualatin is also helpful, I think Chrome is not the best web broswer for slower PCs.

I say this based on my experience with sub 2GHz single core CPUs, not specifically what you want...

as the previous post says, being more rational about it, buy a Celeron G1820 + H81 motherboard and the thing will fly on web browsing, and it's very cheap, but not as fun as dual tualatin for sure.

I've never tried Win7 on a Dualatin, but I have experimented with it on my single 1.59GHz PIII with 1.5GB of RAM.

Performance is OK as long as you disable Aero. With Aero enabled, everything (except for window moves) becomes quite choppy. The higher the screen resolution, the choppier it gets. At 1920x1200, web sites scrolled at a painful 5fps. The poor Aero performance did not appear to be GPU related; a 7800GS AGP was just as choppy as a 9800Pro.

Aero actually increases performance on modern machines by making things noticeably smoother and even lowering CPU usage in many cases. I'm not sure why it sucks the life out of older processors. Maybe it's the lack of WDDM 1.1 drivers for most AGP cards (I noticed both cards were running WDDM 1.0 drivers).

BTW, Aero is not completely smooth @ 1920x1200 even on my Athlon XP 2400+ system.

Anyway, with Aero disabled, performance is around 80% of what XP will give you, which is pretty good for such an ancient processor. Still, you can tell that Win7 was not written for such an old platform. It runs much, much better on any PCIe system. My slowest Win7 machine is a single-core Pentium M processor @ 2.66GHz with a PCIe GeForce GTX 260--there is absolutely none of that sluggishness, even with Aero enabled.

You could also give Win7 Starter a try, I've seen netbooks perform really well with those 😀

Just give it a try and those two rigs will compete with most high end Socket A and 478 builds but combined performance will still be lower than a high end PM rig. Win7 isn't a hog when tweaked right and go with Nvidia for semi current driver support but ATI will suffice. Your biggest problem is adobe flash x.x

nforce4max wrote:

Just give it a try and those two rigs will compete with most high end Socket A and 478 builds but combined performance will still be lower than a high end PM rig. Win7 isn't a hog when tweaked right and go with Nvidia for semi current driver support but ATI will suffice. Your biggest problem is adobe flash x.x

I wonder if one of those ATI HD4000 series AGP cards will work. They have flash video GPU decoding support.

NJRoadfan wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Just give it a try and those two rigs will compete with most high end Socket A and 478 builds but combined performance will still be lower than a high end PM rig. Win7 isn't a hog when tweaked right and go with Nvidia for semi current driver support but ATI will suffice. Your biggest problem is adobe flash x.x

I wonder if one of those ATI HD4000 series AGP cards will work. They have flash video GPU decoding support.

I believe they will, weirdly enough an ATI HD3850 AGP won't, so it seems that a ATI HD4650 AGP is a goot choice for such system since it supports flash acceleration on the GPU itself. The problem besides it's rarety would be AGP keying. I'm not sure if there were any ATI 4650 AGP for AGP 3.3v.

To be honest i've tried to run an Athlon XP 2700+ overclocked to 2.1Ghz with 2GB of ram, a SATA Samsung 840 60gb SSD and a Geforce 7800GS for such tasks and you could say it does okay, but you can clearly feel the sluggishness when compared to a dual core cpu (take for example a Athlon X2 4200+). Since you would be using a dual core system, even if each core is less than a Athlon XP 2700+, you could do just fine. I would only advise to get a cheap 60GB SSD or higher for the OS even if using a PCI - SATA1 controller, the dfference is still quite noticiable (even more when using Windows 7 which demands more from a harddrive).

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I
Aero actually increases performance on modern machines by making things look noticeably smoother and even lowering CPU usage in many cases. I'm not sure why it sucks the life out of older processors. Maybe it's the lack of WDDM 1.1 drivers for most AGP cards (I noticed both cards were running WDDM 1.0 drivers).

You nailed it - WDDM1.1 improves memory efficiency/performance substantially. Especially with multiple windows open. See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-grap … emory,7644.html

As far as the Dual Tualatin - the first thing I was going to suggest was a newer graphics card, depending on what they have installed. Technically GeForce 7 will provide partial HD decoding support, although GeForce 8 and higher are more complete in this regard. The HD 4670 would be a fine choice if it's compatible with your motherboard. Even if you aren't doing it to support GPU-acceleration, the upgrade may be required to support WDDM (a lot of older cards simply don't have compatible drivers). It doesn't have to be an exceptional card if you aren't gaming though - just supported.

Unfortunately I don't have any anecdotal experience with Windows 7, but I'd expect it would probably work fairly well - you certainly have enough memory and I'm assuming other resources (like disk space) to handle it. Something else you might consider, depending on your reasons for wanting Windows 7 (I'm assuming to get out from under XP's end of support) - what about Linux? It's less of a gamble as to what will and won't run (what I mean here is, a lot of older devices may not have WDDM drivers - so while in theory your Tualatin chips probably have enough processing power, is your motherboard going to be compatible with Windows 7? or your soundcard? or your NIC? etc), and it will handle all of the basic communication/organization tasks just fine, and it shouldn't require any hardware changes. 😀

GeForce 7 (and G80 for that matter) has VDP1. It really can only decode MPEG 1/2. It has limited AVC / VC-1 support. It can't accelerate Flash decode. Flash actually uses CUDA for some aspects on GeForce, I believe.

It is possible to get Flash video acceleration on HD 3000 cards by using Catalyst 9.11. It uses a combination of ATI Stream and the UVD engine, AFAIK. It is a little flaky in that it will drop back to software decode sometimes, but it works pretty well overall and definitely reduces CPU overhead even on a lowly HD 3450.

But note that I'm fairly sure you must have SSE2 for any GPU to accelerate HD video formats.

This has really got me curious as to how my Tualatin rigs will run with something other than XP. They both have Serverworks III chipsets, HE-SL I think, and 2GB ECC. The biggest problem I have with them is the SINGLE PCI-X slot which means I could add a video card, but that's about it cuz the onboard RAGE XL is unacceptable. Lol

obobskivich wrote:

You nailed it - WDDM1.1 improves memory efficiency/performance substantially. Especially with multiple windows open. See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-grap … emory,7644.html

I'm beginning to wish I had never sold my AGP 3850. I'm 97% certain that it would have supported WDDM 1.1. Not that I plan to use Win7 as the main OS on a P3. 😀

swaaye wrote:

But note that I'm fairly sure you must have SSE2 for any GPU to accelerate HD video formats.

gandhig mentioned somewhere in this very long thread that he was able to get smooth 1080p video playback on his P3-850 with a PCI GT520.
Again, really wishing I kept that 3850.

I'd stick to XP.

Although it will 'run' on amazingly little hardware ...

http://forum.thewindowsclub.com/windows-hardw … 7-dinosaur.html

... Se7en is just too bloated for useful work on anything older than a fast-paced P4.

Just my 2c.

There's no way 7 is usable at 266mhz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6KRqm9sM9c

20 minutes to boot up, several minutes to open a program. You'll burn out your hard drive from all the swapping.

Thanks for all the input. If there is Flash GPU acceleration, it will probably be worth the suspected 20% performance drop.

So any ATI HD 3000's series card will provide Flash acceleration in Win7? There is GUI Flash acceleration for XP?
What series of ATI HD card is needed for WDDM 1.1? WDDM provides improvement on top of Flash acceleration?

feipoa wrote:

Thanks for all the input. If there is Flash GPU acceleration, it will probably be worth the suspected 20% performance drop.

So any ATI HD 3000's series card will provide Flash acceleration in Win7? There is GUI Flash acceleration for XP?
What series of ATI HD card is needed for WDDM 1.1? WDDM provides improvement on top of Flash acceleration?

I'm not sure about the flash accel thing and "any" HD 3000 series card, or what other prerequisites it imposes on the system (e.g. CPU support, drivers, OS, etc). IME it is not just a "graphics card" thing - your applications, drivers, etc have to be aware and compatible in order to levy GPU accelerated anything. With a modern CPU it really shouldn't be a concern though.

As far as WDDM1.1, yes it should improve performance if you have hardware that has WDDM1.1 drivers; I'm not sure if the 3850 does (and I highly doubt the rest of your equipment does).

Any reason you can't run Linux or get a new machine with a modern APU that'll knock everything out by itself? 😕

feipoa wrote:

So any ATI HD 3000's series card will provide Flash acceleration in Win7?

I have one of those ASRock Dual VSTA's sk939 boards with both AGP and PCI-E, and a Athlon X2 4200+ with a ATI 3850 AGP youtube would ran a bit sluggish at 720p and even worse at 1080p. Swapped it for a Geforce 8800GTS 512M and youtube ran flawlessly at both 720p and 1080p.
I remember reading at the time that the ATI 3850 despite being a powerhorse didn't support flash acceleration, but the following generation of ATI video cards did (the HD4000). I'm not sure if that changed now with other drivers and flash updates but really don't think so.

I have a laptop with Athlon 64 X2, Radeon HD 3200 and Vista. Flash GPU acceleration works fine. 😀

Standard Def Steve wrote:

gandhig mentioned somewhere in this very long thread that he was able to get smooth 1080p video playback on his P3-850 with a PCI GT520.
Again, really wishing I kept that 3850.

Yeah, It definitely did. IIRC, the video I tested was a 1080p trailer of 'Tangled' in QuickTime format played in MPC with DXVA enabled. However I don't exactly remember the CPU load, might have been close to 70-80%.
Flash videos in browser was too much for it(as expected), though I guess GT520 supports Flash acceleration. Even 480p was heavily stuttering. Though I didn't fiddle much with any settings or checked GPU acceleration was enabled.

feipoa wrote:

Thanks for all the input. If there is Flash GPU acceleration, it will probably be worth the suspected 20% performance drop.

So any ATI HD 3000's series card will provide Flash acceleration in Win7? There is GUI Flash acceleration for XP?
What series of ATI HD card is needed for WDDM 1.1? WDDM provides improvement on top of Flash acceleration?

I'm almost 100% sure that the HD 3000 series cards support WDDM 1.1. After all, the original G80-based GeForce 8800 does, and that card is what, a year older?

Just because a card supports WDDM1.1 does not mean that it will support video decoding in Flash. It needs to have a video decode block built into the GPU to be able to improve DirectShow and Flash video performance. WDDM1.1 will, however, improve Win7 GUI performance.

I'm not sure which ATI card was the first to support full Flash acceleration, but I do know that NVIDIA cards as early as G84 (GeForce 8600) and G92 (2nd gen 8800 GTS) support hardware decoding and rendering of Flash video.

gandhig wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

gandhig mentioned somewhere in this very long thread that he was able to get smooth 1080p video playback on his P3-850 with a PCI GT520.
Again, really wishing I kept that 3850.

Yeah, It definitely did. IIRC, the video I tested was a 1080p trailer of 'Tangled' in QuickTime format played in MPC with DXVA enabled. However I don't exactly remember the CPU load, might have been close to 70-80%.
Flash videos in browser was too much for it(as expected), though I guess GT520 supports Flash acceleration. Even 480p was heavily stuttering. Though I didn't fiddle much with any settings or checked GPU acceleration was enabled.

I've noticed that browser choice affects which rendering and decoding modes YouTube's Flash player uses. You can find this info by right-clicking on the video and choosing Stats For Nerds.

Chrome will use hardware rendering, but only software decoding, even with my GTX-780.

Firefox, IE, and Opera 12 use hardware rendering and decoding, but only in full screen mode. In windowed mode, they drop back to software rendering (but still use hardware decoding). I haven't tried the new webkit-based versions of Opera.

If you haven't already, you may want to try watching YouTube with Firefox or IE in full screen mode. It may boost performance to the point of being watchable.