I remember the largest performance hit I felt on XP was going from SP2 to SP3. Plain (no-SP) XP should be the fastest but the least secure & useful for the current times. It's much closer to 2000 with its lack of HW/SW support and vulnerabilities than to 'modern' XP.

Now that you mention it, I'm tempted to do some experimenting on some old laptops I've got lying around that are too new for 9x but choke on XP SP3.

SP1, but install with no ACPI for increased framerates and all around snappiness--none of the virtual IRQ bs.

CPU is the bottleneck here, not OS.
You need SSE2-equipped CPU for decent web browsing... so at least Athlon64 or 2.6 (+) GHz P4.

Agreed with havli on this specific machine - the hardware you're running is just far too slow for what you want. An SSE2 CPU and a GPU with Flash/multimedia acceleration is, unfortunately, a requirement for solid web browsing - sure you can get by on less, but if you don't want things to grind to to a halt at any point, it's really the best option.

On SP1 vs SP2 etc, I know there is a benchmark out there that has all three lined up, but these are the best I could find:
http://icrontic.com/article/does_service_pack … 2_slow_you_down

The caveat to this, is that IME if you're on an older machine (like a P3), updates can have a more significant toll on performance than on a newer system (like the A64 in the above test). 😊

yea im forced to agree, my XP 2800 runs like a dog attempting to browser with firefox, chrome wont install and opera just crashes, my P4 however runs fine. Get SSE2

I'm sure both were stock ACPI installs, in SP2+ they removed the ability to install with no ACPI. Now, I want to run some benchmarks.

Logistics wrote:

I'm sure both were stock ACPI installs, in SP2+ they removed the ability to install with no ACPI. Now, I want to run some benchmarks.

I unintentionally did a fresh install of SP2 without ACPI recently, so it must be possible. However, this was on a PII machine. It just didn't load the ACPI drivers on its own.

obobskivich wrote:

On SP1 vs SP2 etc, I know there is a benchmark out there that has all three lined up, but these are the best I could find:
http://icrontic.com/article/does_service_pack … 2_slow_you_down

There's also http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/xp-sp3-per … home-about/1747 , as previously posted at Re: Is Windows 2000 good for anything? .

The very fastest would probably be Windows for Legacy PCs (WinFLP), but I would be wary of poking at that; the more you delve into the obscure, the more likely you are to encounter weird compatibility problems. Also it is of course illegal.

A somewhat serious answer: Windows 7. But you really need to get off Coppermine as a daily driver. I like playing with P3 and they're good at running modern software despite expectations, but Core 2 level shit rains from the sky and will happily run Windows 7/8/10/omgwtfbbq. Windows XP is just plain terrible, and it gets worse with less service packs. Back then with SP0/SP1, you'd be pwned just for connecting to the internet. I know because I dealt with XP. Vista was a relief.

obobskivich wrote:

Agreed with havli on this specific machine - the hardware you're running is just far too slow for what you want. An SSE2 CPU and a GPU with Flash/multimedia acceleration is, unfortunately, a requirement for solid web browsing - sure you can get by on less, but if you don't want things to grind to to a halt at any point, it's really the best option.

You made a point, I never thought of SSE2. I've mod a Tualatin 1.4@1.67ghz with no gains at all (in web browsing), tried out several web browsers, it's really frustrating, no matter how much tunning i do (cas, ras, xp tunning, ata100), it's always slow.

I use a Tualatin 1.4GHz with Win2k SP4 and it's still slow on most web sites. It runs Firefox 5 with noScript, but as soon as some scripts have to be enabled, it gets slow. It's limited to 512MB RAM but I don't think that's the most pressing problem. The onboard graphics are basic Intel junk. Flash acceleration would probably help a lot, but I don't think even an upgraded card will allow Flash acceleration without SSE2.

Come to think of it, I wonder whether it's feasible to bypass the SSE2 requirement with any open source video drivers on Linux or BSD.

I do use that Win2k Tualatin machine daily but only for a few specific sites. It's just a matter of convenience with where that machine is located, and it's compact size. If I have a little extra time, I'll sometimes get on VOGONS with it so I'm grateful this forum works well with older machines.

It's amazing how much SSE2 has become a curse for older CPUs. When it was introduced, I just figured it was another minor tweak to SIMD instructions which had already been around for a while. I never would have expected it to become such a significant break point in terms of compatibility and performance.

since Skype 6.2, SSE2 is a must, so there goes another software...

Flash is a dog on recent hardware. Thankfully, you can safely get away with disabling it now.

SSE2 is basically expected at this point, and is arguably the point where SSE got useful. Developers aren't going to bend over backwards for an extremely small minority of P3 users.

shamino wrote:

I use a Tualatin 1.4GHz with Win2k SP4 and it's still slow on most web sites. It runs Firefox 5 with noScript, but as soon as s […]
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I use a Tualatin 1.4GHz with Win2k SP4 and it's still slow on most web sites. It runs Firefox 5 with noScript, but as soon as some scripts have to be enabled, it gets slow. It's limited to 512MB RAM but I don't think that's the most pressing problem. The onboard graphics are basic Intel junk. Flash acceleration would probably help a lot, but I don't think even an upgraded card will allow Flash acceleration without SSE2.

Come to think of it, I wonder whether it's feasible to bypass the SSE2 requirement with any open source video drivers on Linux or BSD.

I do use that Win2k Tualatin machine daily but only for a few specific sites. It's just a matter of convenience with where that machine is located, and it's compact size. If I have a little extra time, I'll sometimes get on VOGONS with it so I'm grateful this forum works well with older machines.

It's amazing how much SSE2 has become a curse for older CPUs. When it was introduced, I just figured it was another minor tweak to SIMD instructions which had already been around for a while. I never would have expected it to become such a significant break point in terms of compatibility and performance.

Yes, I've tried Tualeron 1.4@1.65Ghz in modded P3V4X with massive 2GB 124mhz @cas2 , sata pci, and it internet surf was a pain... . But the massive RAM did help a lot browsing 10+ "simple" sites at the same time and loading .NET desktop software , even an arkanoid in .net is sadly slow!!

I remember that for quite a long time, floating point instructions could easily be made optional with a simple setting in a C compiler. The compiled code would detect if an FPU existed, and if it didn't, an integer based codepath was used. The programmer didn't have to write it, it was done by the compiler.
It's too bad that this doesn't seem to be the common way of handling SSE2. Instead, once a programmer decides to turn on that flag, the program just breaks on anything that doesn't support those instructions.

With the availability of p4/athlon64/core2 stuff now days there is no point in trying to nurse along an old p3 or Athlon for web browsing/daily usage.

I think you need at least SP2 because of it would solve that 137GB barrier thing.

Robin4 wrote:

I think you need at least SP2 because of it would solve that 137GB barrier thing.

so will any drver for an ATA100/133 controller 🤣

joe6pack wrote:

Logistics wrote:

I'm sure both were stock ACPI installs, in SP2+ they removed the ability to install with no ACPI. Now, I want to run some benchmarks.

I unintentionally did a fresh install of SP2 without ACPI recently, so it must be possible. However, this was on a PII machine. It just didn't load the ACPI drivers on its own.

Perhaps it is SP3+, then. I was telling my computer engineer cousin about how my SP3 install disc wouldn't allow me to install without ACPI, and he said they removed the ability since SP2. Perhaps, he was wrong or maybe there is simply something wrong with my SP3 disc. Hopefully, I can find my old SP1 disc.