How bad is XP with only 768MB or 850Mhz?

[Bookworm]

I may be able to get my 770Z up to 1.0 Ghz or faster, which is supposed to be the minimum for XP to perform well.

The trouble is, XP is also supposed to have 1.0 Gig of RAM, and I can only go up to 768Mb.

How poorly would XP perform with only 3/4 of the recommended amount of RAM?

What if I can't get a CPU faster than 850Mhz?

[Neil]

I run a very trimmed down XP (using nlite) on my 600E with only a 366MHz CPU and 288MB RAM. I don't do any CPU intensive tasks, just web browsing and word processing. It runs fine, and is in fact, fairly snappy, mainly due to the 30GB 5400rpm HDD.

The system requirements published by Microsoft are actually much lower than most people realize. Performance will be poor with minimum system specs, but it will work.

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Professional include:

* Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
* At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)

[rkawakami]

I've got a 500Mhz 600X fully loaded with 576MB that's running a normal install of XP, a little slowly, but that could be the old disk drive that's in there. I don't do much on it besides launch Firefox once in a while and run some DOS programs.

[Bookworm]

I've read on other sites that as long as the recommended system requirements are met, XP can actually outperform ME or 2k. But the recommended system requirements are 300Mhz and 128Mb!

Have either of you tried 2k or ME on your systems? How did it compare to XP now?

[Neil]

I'm using my 500MHz 600X right now with 256MB RAM running Win2k and there isn't much difference between it's performance and that of my 600E. Sometimes I do actually feel the XP install on the older machine is more responsive, but I don't have the feeling that either of them is "slow".

Now my wife is using a 500MHz 600X with 256MB RAM, but hers has the original 6GB, or is it 12GB, I can't remember, HDD running Win2k and it feels rather sluggish. I think the real difference in perceived speed is the result of the HDD, more than the CPU clock or RAM. Because a faster hard drive will load applications faster, and the virtual memory swap file will respond faster. And, with lower real RAM, the speed of virtual RAM is important.

Put a largish, modern hard drive in an old computer, and it can run XP quite well, IMHO.

[rkawakami]

On an identical system (a 650Mhz 600X, I believe it was), I found that 2K was much more responsive than XP. The only thing slower in 2K was playing DVDs. If MS (and others) still fully supported 2K, I'd rather use that than XP.

[Bookworm]

My hard drive is an 80 Gig, but I will be using the OS/2 boot manager with Warp 4.52, maybe 4 to 10 gig, and Red Hat/Fedora Linux, probably 6 to 10 gig, leaving a measly 60 to 70 gig for Windows. Do you think that will be enough? Will the partitioning cause any problems? How do I tell how fast the drive is if it's not marked?

[underclocker]

I used XP on an X22 (800MHz Pentium III-m w/512MB RAM ) for years. It was just fine for basic computing.

[pianowizard]

The system requirements published by Microsoft are actually much lower than most people realize. Performance will be poor with minimum system specs, but it will work.
The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Professional include:

* Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
* At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)

These are the requirements that Microsoft published back in 2001 for the original Windows XP without any service pack or updates. I remember that back in 2002, WinXP (with only a handful of updates and without any SP) was nearly as snappy on my Thinkpad 600E (366MHz PII, 128MB PC66 RAM and a 6.4GB 4200rpm HDD) as it was on my Dell Inspiron (1.6GHz P4, 256GB PC2100 RAM, 40GB 4200rpm HDD). Right now, I'm running WinXP with SP3 and all security updates on my 240Z, which has 500MHz PIII, 256MB PC100 RAM and a 100GB 7200rpm HDD, and I have tweaked XP to improve performance. It feels sluggish and I would never use such a machine as my main rig, although it's okay for use on the road.

Bookworm, my Dell Dimension T550 (800MHz PIII, 768MB PC100 RAM, 200GB 7200rpm HDD) has comparable specs to your 770Z, and WinXP is significantly faster on it than on my 240Z. I think as long as you put in a fast hard drive, i.e. a 7200rpm drive or a high capacity 5400rpm drive, this 770Z would run WinXP satisfactorily well.

[dsvochak]

“How bad” is relative. I agree with underclocker and pianowizard. As long as what you do isn’t memory or processor intensive, XP should be ok.

[mattbiernat]

i have XP trimmed down to 68mb one a 256mb T23. suprisingly it is more snappy and faster than most of the modern computers running Vista.

[robert213]

Several years ago, I purchased a pair of used T30's. Both are P4M 1.8GHz. I experimented with several configurations.

I reloaded Windows XP Pro from T30 Recovery Discs and installed SP2 on a used Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 100GB 5400rpm HD. I only had one 256MB DDR.

I was able to browse internet with MS IE 6.0 without problems.

[Bookworm]

A lot of you are talking about XP being "trimmed down". What do you have to "trim" from it? I don't care about networking other than one simple WiFi or DSL connection, but I like the "skins".

The most important thing is compatibility with some newer applications, mostly internet stuff. FireFox 3.5 is still 2000 compatible, and will be up to date for a long time, but sometimes I get errors about things like Flash, Quicktime, and other media players. (No, I'm not sure I have the latest 2k compatible version).

What other features does XP have that are not in 2000/ME?

[RealBlackStuff]

i have XP trimmed down to 68mb

I find that extremely hard to believe...

[mattbiernat]

I find that extremely hard to believe...

hmmm, i will be back in LA in december so I will take a picture of my T23. i have basically turned off all of the unnecessary services. i used the barebones configuration from http://www.blackviper.com/WinXPx64/servicecfg.htm i still managed to have my Wifi and firewall working I think.

[craigmontHunter]

I ran it for years on a p3 550 with 256mb, and it worked fine (with 192mb before that). It started to slow down on the toshiba - p2 366 and 192mb, and was painful on a old (1996) desktop with a p200 and 96 mb of ram. It is a matter of what you are doing with it - word processing it should be fine, but definately look at windows 2000/98 (preferably not ME) if you have the original hdd - most wifi cards still support windows 2000 and some windows 98.

768mb of ram and 850mhz - you will be fine for most things, though a upgrade to a bigger hdd is effective - 40gb 5400rpm to 80gb 5400rpm - huge diffrence (another desktop is 768mb of ram and a 1ghz processor and it is plenty fast - my "Gaming" rig (I only play my dad's old games )

[Bookworm]

Thanks for all the help so far. I posted the same question on another forum and all I got was a lecture on the hardware, an incredibly childish tantrum when I tried to correct their information, and more misinformation on the hardware.

Did you know the 770Z CPU and the RAM it comes with are soldered in, there are no BIOS upgrades, and none of these upgrades have ever been successfully installed? I think I'll hang around here where we're all sober and over 12 years old.

I would like some more details though. What do you "trim" off? What features do you take out to improve performance?

[pianowizard]

i have XP trimmed down to 68mb

I bet you were referring to the size of the ISO image. The final install would probably still take up half a gig.

I would like some more details though. What do you "trim" off? What features do you take out to improve performance?

Give this nLite configuration a try. I haven't tried it yet but am about to.

[mattbiernat]

I bet you were referring to the size of the ISO image. The final install would probably still take up half a gig.

im sorry for not explaining myself, I was referring to RAM usage.

[Bookworm]

I've been doing some research, and it looks like sp3 is an error from MS that causes it to require a gig of RAM and apparently doesn't add anything.

If I stick with sp2, how will it work?

[dsvochak]

it looks like sp3 is an error from MS that causes it to require a gig of RAM

SP3 on an X22 (640mb ram, 800Mhz processor) runs at least as well as SP2 on the same machine.

[craigmontHunter]

I have found that sp3 slows down some things but really improves application launch times (office = instantanious) It is an effective way to get all the updates at once, but I like my system and I need it for school, so I will not be upgrading again (I have bad luck with windows installs normally - <1week )

[Temetka]

I have a Micron Transport with a PII 366 and 256MB of RAM. While it is mostly used for Linux, I do have XP Pro on there just in case I need to something Windows specific with it. The XP Pro is a straight OEM install, un-messed around with and is completely up to date with SP3 and everything else. Minus the meager 4MB video chip (ATI), XP runs like a champ and loads Office 2003 in seconds. It's funny because SuSE 11 runs slower than XP does on the same machine.