NT 4.0 was released in 1996 so on a P-133 with more then 32MB it will run fine.

I used to run small web server on P-133 with 32MB and NT4 workstation back then and it was OK - more RAM would be better of course.

computergeek92 wrote:

I've heard NT ran slow on computers in the 90's. But how well does Windows NT 4.0 SP6 run on a Pentium 133MHz with 144MB ram and 2GB hard drive? The PC is a Tecra 720CDT laptop. Same one in my avatar! 😀

Windows NT 4.0 came out in July 1996. Pentium 133 is a 1995 processor, and considering Pentium Pro 200 (1995) and Pentium 150/166/200 (1996) were already available by that time, P133 was not the top of the line processor in July 1996.

I'm sure it will work acceptably OK, but NT is also a high end OS, most probably designed with top of the line hardware in mind, not the mediocre stuff. To expect better than average performance from that OS, I believe at least having top of the line era hardware might be a better choice. As far as I know, Pentium Pro (32bit optimization and all) is the best match for any given NT OS from the same era. My NT4 3D modeling (I-DEAS) workstation at work in 1997 was a Pentium Pro 200 machine with 256MB RAM, for example (upgraded to PII in 1998).

At the end it all depends what you want to do with it, and what kind of performance are you expecting while doing it. And experimenting is always the best way to decide. 😈

P133 was not the top of the line processor in July 1996.

It doesn't need one either. It will work quite well. In fact, 4.0 is passable on a high end 486 with a lot of RAM.

I've seen Windows 2000 Pro running on a similar machine - it takes a while to boot-up, and certain tasks can be a crawl, but otherwise it isn't as bad as you might expect. NT 4.0, from memory, is much lighter; with 144MB of RAM I'd expect it should work okay.

Ive ran NT4 on a P133+ 64MB SDRAM and it ran very well , in fact I would say it was more responsive than Windows 95 in many ways, certainly more stable.

of course a PPro or PII are better choices, but the P133 works quite well

I believe the main issue was lack of ram. So 32mb+ should be fine. My 486 with 40MB ram works on NT4 pretty nicely.

My preference for NT 4.0 is at least 64 MB of RAM. 128 MB+ for single tab web browsing. I find that NT4 runs almost as fast as Win95 provided that you double the amount of system memory (compared to your W95 standard). P133 on NT4 is good enough. Even a P90 is an acceptable lower limit in my opinion. My Cyrix 5x86-133 is considerably more stable and runs nearly as fast on NT4 as it does in W95. If you plan on running some 3D accelerated benchmark tests, NT4 will often be faster compared to Win95.

Like with all notebooks, they are a bit less powerfull when compared to the "same" desktop version. So your P-133 laptop might perform like P-90/100 desktop. It is still fast enough to run NT4, especially with that amount of installed memory. Main problem with NT4 are drivers - Toshiba is the best at providing old drivers on their support page - also for NT4. I'd replace installed HDD with some fast 4/8GB CompactFlash card.

Agree with the majority here, after we got a new PC in 98 our 486/66 64MB Ram swapped from running Win95c to NT4 and performance was better then Win95.
BUT it also stopped being a games PC, was only used for Office and web browsing. So while the laptop/OS may perform better it may not be that useful anymore, Depends what you want to use the laptop for.

NT4 can run games fine but it depends on the games that can run on NT4.

There's nothing preventing dual-booting with 9x.

Agree with what has been said. I suppose the bottleneck will be the 2GB notebook drive. A newer, bigger and faster hard disk would probably the best upgrade for that machine. (Maybe this is not so bad since you have enough RAM.)

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kixs wrote:

Like with all notebooks, they are a bit less powerfull when compared to the "same" desktop version. So your P-133 laptop might perform like P-90/100 desktop. It is still fast enough to run NT4, especially with that amount of installed memory. Main problem with NT4 are drivers - Toshiba is the best at providing old drivers on their support page - also for NT4. I'd replace installed HDD with some fast 4/8GB CompactFlash card.

Is that directly related to the fact that laptop cpus are using less voltage than desktop ones?

Yes. But not just the CPU, everything in a laptop is low power. That was true 20 years ago and it's true today as laptops use around 10-20W, while there is like "no limit" on a desktop.