PcBytes wrote on 2023-09-20, 16:58:
I still fail to see how people come up with these numbers.
I've ran XP SP2 and SP3 on as old as Deschutes 350MHz and 256MB of RAM with no issues.
In my case it was simple. Our family PC was a Pentium III 733 Mhz with 128 or 256 MB RAM.
It shipped with Windows 98SE.
When we got XP, it was dog slow.
So we installed some more RAM by installing RAM in all the SDRAM (?) slots.
And since capacity at the time was rather limited per module, we naturally ended up with 768MB.
The configuration was something like 128+128+256+256, so dual channel was working, I suppose.
Anyway, this was about 20 years ago. I don't exactly remember things anymore. 🤷♂️
PcBytes wrote on 2023-09-20, 16:58:
The key here is how speedy your hard drive is. Trust me, it sounds weird, but it plays an important role.
Yes, but that improves performance of the swap file/virtual memory, as well.
Under certain circumstances, application code can be directly executed from VCache.
That feature was introduced in ca. Windows 98SE, I believe.
When we had installed 2GB in an Athlon 64 X2 PC, we noticed another performance boost (XP SP2).
When Windows 7 came out, we had something like 8 or 12 GB in that same PC.
XP was still installed on another partition. It was blazingly fast and could see a bit over 3GB.
An SSD was later installed, as well, on which both Windows XP/7 were installed (with alignment corrected for XP partition).
The dual-boot was handy to boot into XP and run Acronis True Image 9, for example .
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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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