AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-26, 20:46:

using it on win10 AND winxp, is better pci or pciexpress?

PCIe is better.

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-26, 14:53:

This is a very strange and very clever suggestion, I would never have thought of it and in fact no one seems to notice it. I did a little test and downloading a file from chrome the cpu is occupied more than 50%, do you think that's the reason? 50% on a cpu of more than 3Ghz?

Downloading from HTTPS causes high CPU usage because of TLS (encryption).

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-12-26, 17:29:

If you do have PCIe x1 slot, get this: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/314179564301?_skw=int … ABk9SR4S07r-AZQ […]
Show full quote

If you do have PCIe x1 slot, get this:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/314179564301?_skw=int … ABk9SR4S07r-AZQ

Or if you have a free PCI slot, get this:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/314179564301?_skw=int … ABk9SR4S07r-AZQ

Just to inform you, both links go to the same PCIe x1 card.

Your forgetting all about architecture and CPU generation. The Pentium 4 clocked very high but performed worse than Athlon XP at lower clocks.

All things being equal Win10 would benefit from more than 2 cores, but its possible that 6-core CPU at 2.8ghz has a better architecture anyway.

You really just need to look at direct CPU benchmark comparisons across a range of applications to know for sure.

kolderman wrote on 2024-12-28, 01:21:

Your forgetting all about architecture and CPU generation. The Pentium 4 clocked very high but performed worse than Athlon XP at lower clocks.

That's not the whole story, though.

The Pentium IV had a very high single core performance
and managed to perform certain instructions in so few cycles that it broke some applications.

"Update: Intel Pentium 4 (tested on Irwindale Xeon) appears to execute the LOOP instruction in two cycles, noticeably faster than older and newer Intel CPUs."

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/those-win9x-crash … -fast-machines/

No one else has noted this yet, but the Phenom II X6 chips had a turbo feature that would try to keep the clocks higher on lightly threaded applications and put the unloaded cores in lower power states. Granted it barely worked at all, but it's a little wrinkle here. I guess there's the binned down 4 core variants marked with a -t suffix but I don't remember them being very common. All that said, Phenoms are best suited for retro tasks, they were very long in the tooth even a decade ago and lack some significant instructions some modern apps don't even bother to check for support on.

Is this one ok?

https://www.ebay.it/itm/116403167700?mkcid=16 … emis&media=COPY

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-28, 07:32:

Is this one ok?

https://www.ebay.it/itm/116403167700?mkcid=16 … emis&media=COPY

Correct, that's PT network card for x1

Does your computer have a PCIe x1 slot?

The other one for PCI, if your computer only have PCI slot left.

https://www.ebay.it/itm/176723771374?_skw=100 … ABk9SR_aJpeKBZQ

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-12-28, 16:42:

Correct, that's PT network card for x1 […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-28, 07:32:

Is this one ok?

https://www.ebay.it/itm/116403167700?mkcid=16 … emis&media=COPY

Correct, that's PT network card for x1

Does your computer have a PCIe x1 slot?

The other one for PCI, if your computer only have PCI slot left.

https://www.ebay.it/itm/176723771374?_skw=100 … ABk9SR_aJpeKBZQ

Cheers,

i have both

2.8GHz vs 3.2GHz, aint exactly a huge gain in speed. However 6core VS 4core, definitely go with the 6 core! This is Windows 10 we're talking about - so modern OS and modern programs, not to mention plenty of background tasks and processes. Definitely throw the most cores you have it at to prevent hiccups. Also if you dont have the computer MAXED out on RAM yet, then might as well do it now. That old RAM still aint too expensive, and it gives a huge benefit to have as much possible for Win10.

Early on the windows 10 era right after microsoft started telling users to upgrade to 10, I was running windows 10 on Optiplex 780 then added Pro/1000 PT to it, that where I found out the speed up.

Cheers,

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-26, 20:46:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-12-26, 17:29:

That's correct, it is Athlon processors is much weaker than C2D and modern software that is much demanding and updates for windo […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-12-26, 14:53:

This is a very strange and very clever suggestion, I would never have thought of it and in fact no one seems to notice it. I did a little test and downloading a file from chrome the cpu is occupied more than 50%, do you think that's the reason? 50% on a cpu of more than 3Ghz?

That's correct, it is Athlon processors is much weaker than C2D and modern software that is much demanding and updates for windows 10 needed bit of more hardware resources. Around 1MHz per megabit TCP/IP processing CPU load. Back in the day when I had main computer was Optiplex 780, the intel pro/1000 PT in slot x1 PCIe noticeably sped up the C2D E8600 3.333 GHz windows 10 performance.

If you do have PCIe x1 slot, get this:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/314179564301?_skw=int … ABk9SR4S07r-AZQ

Or if you have a free PCI slot, get this:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/314179564301?_skw=int … ABk9SR4S07r-AZQ

This will reduce the CPU loading via TCP/IP offloading to this NIC.

Cheers,

using it on win10 AND winxp, is better pci or pciexpress?

Get the PCIe network card if you have a spare slot.

Would definitely also go with at least 4 cores for w10, and as many suggests, loooooads of memory!

Windows 10 really likes 16GB at minimum. 8GB was long ago was ok due to lighter demands with eariler era of windows 10 and early versions of software were not as demanding.

Cheers,

I’d say that adding cores 2,3&4 are a priority . After that then single core performance is more important than adding additional cores for general UI responsiveness.

My mother-in-law was running windows 10 on a Pentium G3220 and she was noticing the impact of video ads on her windows solitaire. I spent $20 to switch to a 4790s and it made a noticeable difference for her. But that was more cores and faster cores. I should have upgraded her in more of a controlled manner.

douglar wrote on 2024-12-31, 00:32:

My mother-in-law was running windows 10 on a Pentium G3220 and she was noticing the impact of video ads on her windows solitaire. I spent $20 to switch to a 4790s and it made a noticeable difference for her. But that was more cores and faster cores. I should have upgraded her in more of a controlled manner.

Naw, i say you did it right. That upgrade will last her for a long time. Too bad it's the 'S' model and not the normal model, but oh well. I was thinking the same thing for my mother actually over this recent holiday when visiting! She is still using a Pentium G3258 and (and either 8 or 16GB RAM). I told her I was thinking about stuffing an i7 in there to give it a few more years, but she said dont bother - "i aint that fast anymore, so i dont even notice if the computer is getting slower". 😆

im not using the latest updated win10, my specs are a core2duo 2.6ghz, 4gb ddr2, GF 7950GT, SBlive, which i use for recent DX9 games, for internet browsing it works fine.

main thing is you want plenty of ram, 2GB is minimum requirement for a 64bit Os, or at least it used to be, imo you'll want 4GB ram at the very minimum for it to be decently usable, as its said a modern web browser can eat up to 4gb ram, tho i mainly use win7 for browsing with chrome and an older version of firefox due to newer versions not supporting certain add-ons, ive usually got 400+ tabs open in each at the same time, firefox doesnt respond sometimes either waiting or restarting firefox sorts it out, chrome seems to be ram hungry as after a while it eats into the paging file and i notice my hdd space decreasing until i reboot, also using an SSD is a good idea, using an old HDD is gonna slow things down especially if you are using older hardware like me.

i also tried win10 x64 some years ago on a single core 3.46ghz running on SSD, with 1GB ram, it was slow as shit and pretty much unusable, with 2GB ram its just about usable for browsing the internet, listening to music, watching videos and thats about it.

400 tabs? Did I read that right? Chrome grinds to a halt with 30 tabs and 16 GB RAM on my i7 6700K on a high end board (Maximus VIII Hero).

I have a fixed size paging file of 2GB on an nvme drive, which is good enough for everything else.

debs3759 wrote on 2025-02-02, 09:38:

400 tabs? Did I read that right? Chrome grinds to a halt with 30 tabs and 16 GB RAM on my i7 6700K on a high end board (Maximus VIII Hero).

I have a fixed size paging file of 2GB on an nvme drive, which is good enough for everything else.

ive actually got 2 windows in chrome 1 currently has 454 tabs open the other has 141.🤣 also 4gb ddr2 and 4gb paging file on ssd

debs3759 wrote on 2025-02-02, 09:38:

400 tabs? Did I read that right? Chrome grinds to a halt with 30 tabs and 16 GB RAM on my i7 6700K on a high end board (Maximus VIII Hero).

I have a fixed size paging file of 2GB on an nvme drive, which is good enough for everything else.

I have more than 100 open in Chrome, but less than 200. No issue with 32 GiB not had I any problems with 16. I do use the memory saving feature though.

I also use a fixed size passing file, which is an old habit from spinning rust getting fragmented on older OSs. Don't know if it's an issue now, but guess it can't harm. I do however allocate a lot more than you. IIRC on XP a good time og thumb was RAM x2. Now, I settle for 16gigs I think ..