Reply 20 of 68, by VivienM
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-23, 22:05:From a P4 1.4GHz at the one end to a dual Xeon E5-2690v2 at the other.
Not sure why you'd pick the 1.4GHz P4 as the starting point - you could certainly, back in the day, run XP on less. Had XP (and later server 2003 R2) on a PIII 700 with 768 megs of RAM and it was... fine for the time. I remember right when XP came out there was a big panic about how you would need 800+MHz and blah blah blah, but nah. What XP (and 2000, and Vista, and 7, and every NT-based OS I've ever used) really needs is RAM, not MHz.
Now, for retro use, would I recommend that? Of course not... but who would recommend a P4 1.4GHz either? And the PIII at least has some possibilities in terms of multi-booting, ISA, etc. outside the XP world.
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-23, 22:05:Snap up those XP PCs now because in 10-20 years time the future Vogons wont be talking about Windows 7 gaming systems, Vista to Windows 11 will go the way of Windows 3.11. Its there in the past but nobody really uses it and nobody considers it for gaming purposes at all.
Yup... there's not enough cool software left behind in the middle of the Vista->11 era, so why bother wanting a 7 or so vintage system? And this is the time when game distribution started to move to things like Steam, which provide better compatibility with modern systems...
That being said, not for gaming purposes but more generally, I still have a soft spot for Windows 7. Probably the best version of Windows ever from an interface design/consistency, etc perspective. 10/11 are... not bad... but they're still trying to undo the epic 8 disaster UI-wise.