@Nihil: Yes we would have to do some testing with it , I merely talking for a personal viewpoint. Business is different :)
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@Nihil: Yes we would have to do some testing with it , I merely talking for a personal viewpoint. Business is different :)
Looks like MS have released a updated dev build of ie10 .
http://connect.microsoft.com/ie
off course you won't be able to install on XP :( although i did give it a good attempt :D
Yep, like I said, that's the one I used to start this thread :D
Incidentally, I did not see a download for IE10 on its own........ only as part of Win8 developer Preview???
Otherwise it is IE9, that works with Vista and Win7, but not XP. We had a thread about that a while back, but I am afraid that I have forgotten the technical details :(
This is the new crashtest dummy (#3)................
AMD Sempron 145 2.8GHz single core
Asus Radeon 5570 1GB DDR3 (PCI-E x16)
Kingston VM 4GB DDR2/800MHz Dual Channel
1TB 7,200rpm SATA2 HDD
I guess that will be a low end machine when Win8 hits the shelves?
I seems to work just fine, and is noticeably faster than the 10 year old 32 bit Athlon 3000+.
Windows Experience Index is 4.6/7.9 which is twice that of the 32 bit machine :D Raw scores are:
Processor: 4.6
Memory: 5.8
Graphics (Aero) 6.7
Graphics Gaming: 6.7
HDD: 5.9
The 32 bit machine scored:
Processor: 2.9
RAM: 4.0
Graphics (Aero): 2.3
Graphics Gaming: 3.0
HDD: 5.7
Already posted; but for completeness the H/W specs are:
AMD Athlon 3000+ 2.17GHz single core
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 512MB DDR2 (AGP slot)
512MB DDR1/400 + 1GB DDR1/333 (MoBo only supports 400 in slot 0)
7,200rpm EIDE(PATA) HDD
Right now it appears to me that Win8 is just an enhanced version of Win7 so I am thinking that the comparison would be Win98 to Win98SE, and don't see any particular reason to hold back?
I will get back to reporting on the main x64 test box once I have fitted a video card............... got to resite the HDD to fit it in!!! :mad: It's an Asus Radeon HD 6770 with heatpipe cooling..............good job it's a full ATX MoBo.
I should be getting my new PC's / laptops some time this week/next week. Already got everything ordered and now just waiting for the Insurance Company to release the money so i can pay the account and pickup all my new goodies. :D
Then i can re-download the .iso and give it a play.
Hi there HYBR|D, glad to hear someone else is going to join in.:D
My main interest so far has been the hardware requirements and compatibility, as I have some kit I built 1999~2002 that has reached the end of its useful life and needs upgrading.
I guess I have never been much of a one for upgrading operating systems other than the obvious Win95 - Win98 and ME - XP. All that was really needed there was to increase the RAM to 1GB for XP.
I would certainly upgrade Vista to Win 7 or 8 apart from the fact that I need one reference machine for support purposes. :(
At the moment, I don't see any real incentive to upgrade Win 7 as it is a pretty good OS. If your kit runs Vista OK then I would live with it and just get a new box when support ends in 2015.
I have now completed my main x64 test machine as follows:
AMD Phenom II x4 965BE @ 3.4GHz
Asus Radeon HD 6770 1GB DDR5
8GB Kingston Xtreme DDR3/1333MHz
2TB SATA3 HDD
The scores are:
Processor 7.4
Memory 7.5
Graphics (Aero) 7.2
Graphics (games) 7.2
HDD 5.9
I must say that I am a little suspicious of the HDD scores?
Nihil; Do you upgrade ALL of your hardware, or do you keep some of it to run legacy / fun stuff on?
I saw you saying you had kit from the end of 1999 to early 2000s that needed upgrading, and I was mainly wondering if you upgrade everything, or, if you keep some of it around the way it is.
I personally can't really afford to get any new toys right now, and the Computer my Mom bought me for Christmas two years ago is the newest / fastest thing I have. The rest, I've kept anyway.
My very first Computer that I ever bought is actually stick chugging long somehow. Oddly enough, I bought that Computer in 2000, and the ONLY thing I've done with the hardware, is back when I bought it, it came with 128 MBs of RAM, and I upgraded that to 384 MBs, and then, I bought a 120 GB HD about 7 or so years ago, and then, I grabbed the 43 GB HD it came with, made it secondary, and made the new one the master, and the / partition, and now use the old one as /storage. This way if it goes on me, it won't matter so much.
Oh and I ripped out the ****ing POS "Sound Card Modem" the damn thing came with. I couldn't Believe someone had an idea to make a Modem with the Sound Card built into it..... So I bought a Sound Blaster Live! Card and popped that in. Other than that, it's all original, and all still up and running.
Those HDD scores are BS though??? I have 2 x IDE , 2 X Sata on my windows 7 box and I get 5.9 with IDE, so how are u not getting 6 + atleast??Quote:
Originally Posted by nihil
Unless they are wanted SSD's to break 6.5 + ?
Depends on what RPM the drives are pulling. low rpm drives get a lower score, were as though top end very expensive drives that have huge transfer speeds will get a high score.
@Cider:
Well, I did build me a Windows 7 x64 Ultimate box a little while back...............
AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE @ 3.2~3.6GHz
8GB Kingston DDR3/1333MHz
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB DDR5
Onboard Radeon 4250 512MB DDR3
2x WD 1TB 7200rpm SATA2 HDDS
Scores are:
Processor 7.5
Memory 7.5
Graphics (Aero) 7.4
Graphics (Games) 7.4
HDD 5.9
Yet the 10 year old 7200rpm EIDE drive scores 5.7 on Win 8 against 5.9 for a 7200rpm SATA2????????????? or SATA3............... I don't believe that or their management software must be total crap?
//me I don't think that it can count more than 5.9? :D
@gore
Mostly I keep them. These are ones that have issues.........mostly the MoBo capacitors. That is a pretty common problem with MoBos of that era. I have shuffled around the HDDs and video cards so the surviving "old" machines have the best stuff and the rest is available for spares.Quote:
Nihil; Do you upgrade ALL of your hardware, or do you keep some of it to run legacy / fun stuff on?
I have a fair collection of parts to keep my stuff working, but not MoBos.
It can count a bit higher. My Vertex 3 drive scores a respectable 7.0 when connected to a sata 2 controller. I wonder what it will do on a sata 3 controller.
:D
Blue Screen? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by ua549
And Nihil:
That's neat. I had some Hardware I'd keep around as well so that if something happened I'd have more hardware ready to roll, but then, I started using it up, and now I need to track down some Power Supplies for OLD ass computers and I don't really want to pay for them right now, so I'm waiting on that.
Hmmmm,
Not sure if I am familiar with that one? I do have "voice, data, FAX" modems of that era, but you weren't supposed to use them as a system sound card, they were for phone calls.Quote:
Oh and I ripped out the ****ing POS "Sound Card Modem" the damn thing came with.
Around 1996/7 Packard Bell were marketing "home entertainment systems" over here and in some other European countries. They had a weird combination sound and modem card that handled music, games, sound effects, and communications.
After a while they "discovered" each other and then none of them would come out to play :D
The solution was to replace it with independent sound and modem cards.
Regarding the Windows Experience Index: what surprises me is that SATA2 and 3 only marginally outperform a similar speed EIDE drive.
That shouldn't be so, and you shouldn't have to install an SSD or SCSI drive either, as this is a desktop operating system and most desktops don't have that technology.
Most machines don't have i7 Extremes in them either, but the much more realistic processors I use, all score quite highly (>7). If you used i7 Extremes as the standard, those scores would have to be much lower.
I haven't exactly gone for rocket science video cards either, but they also score pretty much as I would expect, assuming that this index is supposed to represent average computing experience with commonly available specification kit? I think that MS are being flattering................ there is a lot of cheaper kit that ships with onboard video these days......?:cool:
Nihil; The card I'm talking about, is REALLY weird! The Computer it was in, was the very first Computer I ever bought; An HP Pavilion I bought in early 2000, and it came with the 128 MBs of RAM that I upgraded to 384 MBs of RAM as I said, and the 43 GB HD that I made a secondary as I said, and installed a 120 GB HD as the master and / partition, and then the video card is a 16 MB Nvidia Card, and it's got an internal CD-Writer and internal DVD-ROM drive, and a Pentium 3 @ 733 MHz.
When I first replaced the Sound Card, the person who did it for me, had left the Modem / Sound Card in there. Remember this is back when I first got a Computer, so I didn't install the Sound Blaster Live! Card myself, as I was just starting to learn about Computers in general, and, when it was finished, SUSE Linux 8.1 Professional picked up the sound card right away.
See, the Modem Sound Card I had, wasn't working under Linux at all, so I got the better card and used that.
When I finally pulled the damn thing out, which was because I got tired of having to reach back there to hook up some speakers, and sticking it in the wrong damn card, I finally got tired of it, popped it open, and then pulled the card out.
When I first pulled out the card, I looked at it for a few minutes wondering WTF it was. I mean I hadn't ever seen something like it before, and when I showed my best friend, he was amazed because he'd never actually seen a Sound Card and a Modem built into one card before.
I even showed it to other people around here, and everyone who saw it had basically the same reaction; "Dude WTF is that????" lol.
Interesting................
I have had a look at my kit of that era (most of it, as it goes :D) and I would say that onboard audio was a common shipment back in the days of PIIs, let alone PIIIs.
I have modems that do voice and FAX that have MIC in and speaker out 3.5mm jackplug sockets as well as the phone and line RJ11 sockets. Simpler ones just have the two RJ11s.
Sound cards of the day typically had a 15 pin gameport: this would be colour coded orange. Did your card have one of those?
As for Linux, it never did play well with Winmodems.............. I recall having to buy an external US Robotics unit back then............I actually have the disks to hand :D: S.u.S.E. Linux 6.2, Red Hat Linux 5.2, 6.1 and Linux Pro r.5.4 I would guess they would be around 1999/2000?
IIRC the "Winmodem" isn't a true modem; it is a part hardware part software device intended to work with Windows OSes.
Back to Windows 8:
So, I dug out this Genius "EasyPen" tablet (ua549 gave me the idea in his earlier post). Sure it recognised that it was a tablet and went to look for drivers...............no luck :(
I then attached an Aiptek Hyper Pen 12000U USB device which is the size of a 15" monitor. It recognised that, and now pops up a black and white onscreen keyboard. The pen seems to work as well but I must find and load the management software.
As for the Genius.............well, I did have to install an independent serial port and connect it to the MoBo :D and it wouldn't work with XP Pro either............ I guess it is a bit too old? after all the box does have a sticker saying "Windows 2000 ready" and there is a 3.5" floppy with the Win 2000 drivers in it...............obviously added as an afterthought :D
More on legacy devices later...........................
Final (amusing) result:
"The operating system is not adequate for running LightScribe Applications"
:lildevil:
I have a really nice Sound Blaster Audigy II sitting on a shelf doing nothing, it's got optical in and out, little gold finished connectors, Infra-Red Controller, volume controls... Thing is the last few times I plugged it into a Box then installed Linux the damn thing wont work! Hence it's now sitting on a shelf rotting and I am making do with a card I ripped out of a Dell dimension.
Professional Video Editing Card = Working
RAID Controller = Working
Duel Screen Display = Working
US Robotics PCI with Alpha Networks Mini PCI Wireless = Working (soldered it myself!)
Audigy II Professional Sound Blaster with ALSA = Errrr... <-- I think this is going to end up in a windows box with the TV card.
Things are great on Linux when they work, when they don't and they want to be a pain, they can be a very real pain. No I wont use the Ndiswrapper and taint my box with Windows Drivers, the very idea of it makes me shudder. I'll stick it on a second hand box (Ah-ha I have a Dell Dimension for this very purpose!) then sell it for £10 bucks at the nearest garage sale. Complete with 4GB of disk space (hey, you get what you pay for!).
Will Windows 8 work on my PS2 like Black Rhino Linux? Or having given us all an after-taste of the KDE project do Microsoft now intend to leave the world with the after-taste of gnome shell 3!?
If you want to build your own super computer cluster you should keep an eye out for the Fat PS2 now that everyone in the gaming community has gone PS3 mad, those second hand PS2's all have an expansion bay and if you've got the network adapter that goes on that expansion bay you've got a MIP's CPU that runs Linux. Complete with USB slots for a Keyboard & Mouse! Monitor, well how big is your Flat Screen TV!?
Windows 8 Bleh! I'm far too busy modifying my own installs of my custom built OS that still works on aging technology like the Mac PowerPC and the Sun Ultra Sparc IV to be concerned with touch screen technology although if I do get a touch pad it'll be running the cyanogen mod and a modified version of android long before I find myself tempted with version 8 of windows.
Would you believe you can still get an up-to-date copy of an OS for the Amiga!? Do you remember those, people throw them out by the dozen who wants those old things.. Well I do.. Especially when I know I can stick AROS on-to them and still use that aging piece of equipment they so hastily threw in the trash! Have to get those licensed copys of XP from somewhere and whilst those idiots in corporate suits are busy throwing it in the trash there's really no harm in bin-diving, one mans rubbish is another mans gold.
There's really no rhyme or reason to it, I've seen huge chunks of NETGEAR IDS/Firewall equipment being tossed in the trash because it's old, no other reason except someone somewhere is convinced it's out-lived it's usefulness and they've bought something bigger and better. They don't bother checking to see if there's a firmware upgrade since they bought the damn thing.
If I had to bench mark the performance of Linux on a Box that used to run Windows 98 or XP but someone has thrown it away because it wouldn't run Vista. I would say it out performs anything Microsoft was throwing at it any day of the week.
I'll let others play with old technology. I'll stick with the latest and greatest (or nearly so).
I purchase equipment based on functional need. My last really big purge was a pair of clustered servers (Win2k3). I couldn't even give them away - 2 dual Xeon boxes with 4 GB memory each and 2 U160 arrays with 14 73GB Cheetah drives each. I ended up taking them to the hazardous materials depot run by the county government.
They were replaced by a single 8 core Xeon server w/32 GB memory and a 4 TB SATA II array. It should last until I no longer have a need for a home server and network.
I would have had them... Lol would have paid the shipping charge too, You could have stuck DragonFLY BSD on them and they would have seen a whole new lease of life.
I am one of those rare few who quickly breaks out a screw-driver and open's that kind of stuff up to take a long hard look at the insides.
Opteron AMD "Sledgehammer" CRAY quad core 64bit @ 3000+ Mhz serves all my needs as far as fast goes, I have no desire to go faster, although I am spoilt for choice when it comes to which CPU in which box. PPC, MIPS, RISC, etc
I am always stunned by how much Apple charge for their Mac Pro with Lion Server. £4,083.00
Goto CarillonAC1 and the same motherboard with 12 Cores suddenly drops in price to: £ 1,770.00
Their not really a true 12 Core you have to read between the lines and look at the specs and then you see the words, 2 x 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors @ 12 Threads.
I just had a friend call me up about his Laptop he bought from HP and the screen has unexpectedly died, he paid almost £ 1,700.00 for it new and its one year past it's warranty, I then researched that same laptop and found the following on the HP forums, Black Screen, Black Screen, Black Screen...
He's just rushed out and purchased a brand new one.. Can you guess what my advise is going to be? TAKE IT BACK! I'll tell him for £175.00 he can buy a netbook from the local supermarket. I don't mind paying over the odd's for a decent piece of kit but when they have a history of failure and are made for the price of a pair of trainers. You really don't always get what you pay for.
The only decent thing I've seen of late thats pop'ed out of HP was there Tablet Range which has dropped in Price from $399 to approx $80 because they've announced their pulling out of the tablet market.
I'll happily spend $80.00 on a tablet that runs Cyanogen mod Gingerbread. For that price I'll happily RISC (pun intended) bricking it. Windows 8 nah I'll pass!
Your post about Xeon processors gave me pause for thought, I have no idea which AMD Opteron I am running @ 3000+ Mhz on my Cray Inc Box that I picked up FREE.. Some dude shoved it into my hands and said "I was trying to build a super computer..." I have always just called it sledge-hammer but in truth it could be any one of a number of CPU's all I know is its quad-core and was an experimental left over from an AMD employee... Loved the words trying to build a super-computer, what stopped him from succeeding was he'd borrowed the power supply from the wrong Unit, once it was replaced it was the best FREEBIE I have ever been given. :D
Feel free to hate me when I say it now boasts five fan's, five HDD 2 x SATA & 3 x PATA + 6GB of RAM with Duel Screen Display.
Over-heating not @ all totally the opposite in fact, but it had one of those stupid pointless plastic funnels, you know the kind I mean, the ones that direct the air-flow at some random part of the board no-where near the heat sink. That got stripped out, had a much bigger fan put in its place, put one in front of the HDD nest and one up the back to pull the heat away from the main board. :drink:
I cant help but get the feeling someone, somewhere, in some RnD department is missing their experimental CPU. Maybe it's all just highly circumstantial that AMD announced they where working on a processor called 'Hood' back in 2006 shortly before they then announced they where recalling 3'000 opterons due to invalid floating point operation.. (get the feeling they misplaced something?) what better way to dispose of the evidence that you've accidentally blown something up, give it away for free to some computer enthusiast, little realizing that the power supply was the problem.
Interesting that the chip bears the inscription Opteron 64 and flashes up both the Opteron 64 Logo and the Athlon 64 Logo on boot.
Nihil; Yea; WinModems are basically half hardware, half software, because they require special software to run them, and dump their work on the Processor, where as a real modem does it's own work.
Well, I downloaded the latest and greatest from LightScribe that is supposed to support Windows 7 and earlier (it does........I have run it on 7 and Vista)
I still get the:
"The operating system is not adequate for running LightScribe Applications"
message :eek: do you think Windows 8 will ship with a pack of CD/DVD marker pens? :lildevil:
The more I look at it, the more I wonder how they can avoid calling it anything but "Windows 8" as it (at this stage) only appears to be Windows 7 with some enhancements. I don't see it as being much more than the difference between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, and that was going to be called "NT 5.0" ;)
As for the hardware; I have a SATA III SSD on the way, so we shall see what it makes of that :cool:
All in all it doesn't seem to be that demanding from a hardware viewpoint, as it runs very nicely on a Sempron 145 (2.8GHz single core) with DDR2/800MHz RAM.
I suspect we will be hearing of a TPC version just like Windows 7?
More as the case develops.................... and I find more pre-Windows XP hardware to torture it with :D
OK folks, "another day, another dollar" or whatever.........
At this early (pre-beta) stage I am really only looking to see what the general hardware requirements for the OS are and how well hardware and software that has been around for a while are supported.
This is the AMD Sempron 145 (2.8GHz single core) machine running the 64Bit version.
The MoBo is a cheap but versatile ASRock. As is the norm for current MoBos there is no 15pin Gameport as OS support for this ended with Windows XP. It does have a serial port but no parallel port. The other test machine only has a serial port, because I installed a bracket with one on it.
One thing I notice is that you do not get the old "windows has detected new hardware" message..........just an audible notification if you do it on the fly. I can't remember what Windows 7 does as my wife has taken that machine over :(
The first thing I get is the message:
"VIA HD Audio Deck does not support this OS version. Please update the audio driver". The sound works perfectly however, presumably using what is in Windows 8. If I were getting an AC97 warning, then I would worry! :D
A serial mouse works just fine but doesn't show in the control Panel hardware section.
I connected a weird 7-button laser mouse that is recognised and works. There was no "new hardware" message, which is what I was trying to provoke, but it did create an icon for a device called "MAKS" which is described as a "keyboard, mouse"............it is a USB interface BTW.
So, what to try next?.......................a Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital 3D joystick................ it has a 15 pin Gameport connector, but comes with a USB adapter............ that'll get it :lildevil:
Arrrrrrrgh!!! no such luck............it recognised it for what it is and even created a swanky icon for it in the devices section of control panel. Hah! gotcha! the icon is quite clearly the control console for an XBox360, and not a joystick. :D
This calls for desperate measures methinks? how about a 1995 Microsoft SideWinder 3D Pro engineering sample? it's a 15pin Gameport device so I attach the USB adapter from the Wingman Extreme.
"The last USB device you connected is not recognised......."
Muhahahahahahahahahahaha!
Looking at it, the SideWinder male connector only has 10 pins whereas the Wingman has 15. I guess it goes back in the corner with my Windows 2000 legacy support machine. However, a Maxtrol JSK 13A with 15 pins got the same message?
I must reboot now.................
If you really want to screw with it; Get DooM working on it! Not DooM 3, but the originals. They don't play nice with 7 so I'm assuming 8 will probably be about the same.
From what I understand about the Windows Kernel, the "hybrid" is basically something they came up with when they hired the guy who worked on VMS to get Windows NT going WAY back in the day. I don't read to much into it, as verifying this stuff would be next to impossible, but apparently the guy from VMS was actually complaining about the "working conditions" he was given...
I find this to be funny. The guy worked on VMS and complained about how Microsoft wanted him to do Windows NT. VMS is one of the shittiest OSs ever done so the fact that he complained about NT I thought was just funny lol.
I mean seriously; Who the **** wants VMS?
@gore,
Good Thinking!!!Quote:
If you really want to screw with it; Get DooM working on it! Not DooM 3, but the originals. They don't play nice with 7 so I'm assuming 8 will probably be about the same.
That is where I was going with trying to install the game controller hardware.
Now, I don't know if any of you know of this stuff as it is pretty much last milennium, but there is this series of games called "StarWraith". I tend to use them for testing audi/video installations. They are free and are only around 10MB so really suit that usage.
I actually like the intro ("cutscene"???) and music, which are all I really need for testing purposes.
http://www.starwraith.com/main/others.htm
Now, if you are having old games problems with Vista and later I recommend that you Google for d3drm.dll and install it into the Windows root folder ;) there may well be others, but I am not a serious gamer so I wouldn't know :(
Windows 8 seems to have a program compatibility system that I haven't seen before............... I shall have to wait for wife to go to bed to try it on Windows 7, as she uses that one to watch videos. It isn't in Vista I am pretty sure? Windows 8 also asks you if a program has installed properly, and when you run it, if it has worked properly. ;)
I have just installed "Serious Sam" and it seems to work OK ................. hell, I haven't played that for years................... it has "Gigabyte" on the box, so it must have come with my Radeon 9700Pro............. which kinda dates it?
"Warheads" is totally fascist as usual and demands Windows 95...........
VMS? take it from me that VMS has bugger all to do with Windows from Windows 2000 onwards at least. I also don't think that one scroat would have had that much influence on Microsoft, even back then.
I have personally seen hundreds of VMS deployments that worked perfectly.....you have not, as you weren't even born then :p
I would actually question whether it is an "operating system" though........ In the way that you and I would understand the term these days?
All the installations I ever saw were on process control type equipment, so I kinda looked on it as some sort of fancy "firmware" rather than a proper OS?
It was very popular and succesful in its day as it ran DEC/VAX boxes.
//Me?............... I will quote my SE of the day : "Johnno, VMS is MVS that has been installed incorrectly"................ yeah, I worked in IBM shops back then :D
Now somewhere I have "Soldier of Fortune" and "Duke Nukem", I wonder.............. then there's "Freespace" and "Star Wars X-Wing"
...................................:eek:
Nihil; I think you may have taken what I said wrong; Microsoft told the guy basically what they wanted, and the guy from VMS complained a LOT about how they wanted it. They basically told him like most companies would, exactly what they wanted him to do. And he did do it, but he's said to have complained a lot about the conditions. He didn't want to do some of it because of what exactly they wanted.
I don't think Microsoft would publish exactly what happened because he was trying to make them look bad in the process, but again, since neither party has verified any of it, it's hard to really take it at face value.
VMS I do know a fair amount about, since I'm one of those Unix people who rubs in their faces that "we won" lol. I know the guy who founded Digital was once quoted with saying "Unix is Snake Oil" however, the problem with that quote, is that it was taken TOTALLY out of context; I can't remember the whole thing, but he was saying quite a bit, and someone decided to pull THAT one piece out, and the anti-Unix people ran with it, not really knowing that he didn't mean it the way they used it.
Digital / DEC for the acronym lovers, made a LOT of stuff. And it wouldn't be possible without IBM either way. The founder of DEC said he could beat them at their own game, and set out to do so.
If you ever run across "A Quarter Century of Unix" BUY IT! I've known you for like a decade, and I know you'll love it. It's a great book, and even this story is in there. It also talks about a Certain inventor of Calculus ;) It also has a bit about the invention of OSs in general which is well done albeit quick. Not that I expected a book about Unix to be a book about the History of the OS, it shouldn't be long and tedious. I think they spent the appropriate amount of time on it.
Either way, I suggest buying it online if you can't find it where you live. It's well worth the hassle. I collect books about OSs which I doubt you'd find shocking since you know me pretty well.
I once had a chance at a book that was .... Mmm, it was great; It was one of the original Unix books from AT&T, and I didn't have enough money to buy it. MAN I wanted that book. It was pretty old, obviously, but WOW.
Makes me wonder why Berkeley didn't Publish more and earlier; I'd LOVE to have been able to track down some old BSD books from the 70s.
Aother thing to remember about "back in the day" was that most sites didn't reall care what OS the computer ran.
You bought a computer and support contract and every now and then an SE would come and update it. All you needed to know were some of the utilities like command language and query.
Anyways, back to Windows 8. I now have an answer for ua549 and a SATA III SSD.
This is now running on a Corsair Force Series 3 solid state SATA III drive, and scores 7.5/7.9. This is 27% better than SATA II at 5.9 whilst in theory it should be 100% and even comparing SATA II and III transfer rates it is claimed to be 92%.
Although the Windows Experience Index says data transfer rates, it seems as if there are other factors built into the equation?
I have another one to install into a Windows 7 box so it will be interesting to see if the results are the same?
Well, I have been using a standard 17" LCD monitor so far, so I connected a Philips 22" Hd widescreen.
Windows 8 correctly identified the make and model and loaded "drivers" for it. It defaulted to the 16:9 aspect ratio at the native resolution of 1920x1080.
The only problem I can see is that the "StarWraith" games now take around 2 minutes to load. However I guess it has to close down Aero and adjust the screen settings?
Even more surprising is that it loaded Freespace 2, which won't even load on Windows 2000 or XP!
Hmmmmmm ............... G-Skill RipjawsX DDR3 1600MHz .............. I wonder what it will make of that? :lildevil:
Well, increasing the RAM speed from 1333 to 1600 didn't seem to make much difference. :(
You might recall some discussion on the forum about Windows 7 and its 100MB "System Reserved" partition that seems to appear automagically when you install it?
Well, Windows Explorer doesn't show that in Windows 8 but I have noticed a 350MB "reserved" area with no assigned partition or drive letter that is described as "bootable". I have only seen it using HD Tune 2.55 as Explorer just shows a regular C:\ drive. It is also reported as being empty unlike the one in Windows 7 :confused:
Some sort of security measure perhaps?
EDIT:
Looks like the public beta will be available end of February.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._February_2012
Microsoft report 3,000,000 downloads of the preview.
ive ran the original doom using vm ware with win xp pro on 7 64 bit also dos box will allow you to run most dos games without having to use vmwareQuote:
Originally Posted by gore
Nihil, anymore insight?
I am ashmed to say I havent gotten around to testing.
Hi there Cider, happy New Year mate! :drink:
As you know, I only started into this with the intention of testing hardware requirements and possible issues with legacy hardware and applications. I will certainly go for the public beta at the end of February, as that should give a better idea of user "feel".
My general vioew of the pre-beta is that it is Windows 7 with go faster stripes :D
There is an obvious emphasis on sub-pc devices with touch screens, which I personally interpret as Microsoft wanting to make the experience of users of sub-PCs and desktops similar and familiar.
Me?..............I'd need a long finger on a stick :D ...... or a new pair of eyeballs?
Anyways, I have been testing it on 3 machines:
A] 4 core (Phenom II BE) @ 3.4GHz with 8GB DDR3/1600MHz {64bit}
B] Single Core (Sempron) @ 2.8GHz with 4GB DDR2/1066MHz {64bit}
C] Legacy Single Core (Athlon 3000+) @ 2.17GHz with 1.5GB DDR1/ mixed 400/333MHz {32bit}
I have been using the two 64bit machines on a daily basis almost since the preview release came out, and have not managed to crash either of them so far.
Performance is excellent, although the Sempron is noticeably slower than the Phenom II and works harder, as I had expected. It is appreciably faster than XP Pro on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of DDR1/400MHz.
Having said that, the Phenom II box boots from a SATA III SSD, and the Sempron's HDD runs @ 118.6% faster than the Pentium 4's
The 32bit legacy machine did have problems, but I think that most of those stemmed from the fact that it has a crap video card and doesn't like 22" HD screens at 1920x1080.
I am using it right now, having attached a 19" CRT monitor, and it seems just fine. It certainly plays my legacy games a lot better; presumably because they are designed for 4:3 aspect ratio?
I guess that if I were serious about these sort of games, I would create a profile with Aero turned off for a start; and a decent, modern, video card.
My conclusions so far:
1. It is just a re-badged Windows 7, so there is no real incentive to upgrade unless you have the money and are into fondle pads.
2. It works with legacy peripheral hardware that works with Windows XP. Anything older than that and you should treat yourself to a new one, unless you are a collector, or can run a legacy machine. OK, "VM" I can hear you saying..........sure, but where are the 25pin parallel and 15 pin game ports, not to mention stuff for which there are no drivers after Windows 2000 Pro?
3. I would upgrade from Vista ............. except that I would have already gone to Windows 7 :D
4. For an average user new build, I would go:
(i) Quad core processor.
(ii) 4GB DDR3/1333
(iii) 60GB SSD
(iv) Conventional SATA HDD to suit budget and usage.
(v) Budget video card with GDDR5 memory.
Obviously, it all depends on what you are going to use the machine for, but this does seem to be a multicore OS.
It doesn't seem to be that fussy about RAM, as going from DDR2 800 to 1066 and DDR3 1333 to 1600 didn't seem to have any effect and didn't change the WEI score. However, there is a significant improvement in going from DDR2 to DDR3, almost 30% on the WEI.
Hmmmm, I haven't tried it with a dual core, and I think I have one somewhere.................................. :D
Happy new year to you as well ;) Hope it was great.
Thanks for the input.
I am now sceptical as you say there is no use upgrading from Windows 7. The guys in my marketing department love this sort of eye candy and there have some tech knowledge which is very dangerous, they are going to harass me for a license at work ...
I will most likely have to move up given the nature of my job but at home I will probally stay on W7. I too will be playing with the public beta.
Thanks again!
Hi Cider,
This is the 32bit machine, and it is running just fine as I mentioned before. I would say that it is equal in performance to the same rig with XP Pro, and infinitely superior to Vista, which didn't like this outfit at all for some reason. :confused:
I do have those widgets or gadgets enabled............. the two tachometer type dials to show me CPU and RAM usage.
I am very impressed in the way that Windows 8 handles memory management. This machine has 1.5GB of RAM and is using 36% at the moment, and that's with running the Microsoft security, Teatimer, Avira, and WinPatrol.
Best part is, that it releases the memory after .......... Hell! it does the best job of keeping the FireFox memory sow under control that I have seen so far!!!
Now, a slight caveat here as this is 32bit. All I have for comparison is Vista and XP. It certainly outperforms those in this area. The Vista box has 4GB of RAM, of which I think that it "sees" 3.5. It let the memory sow take it up to 52% RAM usage without much else happening :(
As for your work, maybe there is a case for a licence, as it does seem to be aimed at the PC ~ sub-PC (touchscreen device) interface? I wouldn't give it to regular static office workers though, as I believe that there will be a pretty seamless interface with Windows 7, given that they seem to be so similar.
I guess we will have a lot of our questions answered with the public beta.
Cheers :)
Can you elaborate with this? This has always been an issue for me, oh yes and skype! First off I have an issue with the seperate processes running and the high volume! Chrome example but you can see what I mean :). Skype is just a pure memory leak IMO.Quote:
! it does the best job of keeping the FireFox memory sow under control that I have seen so far!!!
chrome.exe 5060 3.89 73,340 K 95,064 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5140 1.17 85,428 K 98,612 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5180 0.51 30,104 K 41,768 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5188 55,852 K 68,948 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 4128 10,328 K 20,332 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5168 19,572 K 30,208 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5348 10,940 K 21,172 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
chrome.exe 5572 1.50 18,560 K 22,148 K Google Chrome Google Inc.
O.K. some of it will have to wait until tomorrow when I get the 32 bit Windows 8 box back online.
Right now I have just loaded Chrome onto the #1 64 bit box (3.4GHz quad core with 8GB DDR3/1600MHz). I have opened 4 windows in both Chrome and FF. These are the results:
Chrome - 150.3MB
FF - 176.9MB
Total RAM usage = 18% (1475MB)
TBH I don't expect to see anything significant on this box, given that it has 8GB of RAM. If the memory manager was cutting in now, I would say that it was micromanaging, which would be a bad thing, as I bought the memory to use, not to look at. :D
The interesting thing will be the legacy 32 bit machine, as it only has 1536MB of RAM. It seemed to be holding that at around the 40% usage mark with FF getting about 65MB. That's basically idle with various apps open.
In that situation, FF does still seem to leak over time. I have just rechecked and FF had increased by 3.7MB as opposed to Chrome's 1MB.
I have an XP Pro and XP Home box going at the moment.
XP Home (1024MB RAM) FF is using 130.9MB
XP Pro (2560MB RAM) FF is using 129.1MB
Interesting that there is no difference despite the large disparity in available RAM. Also that FF is using around twice as much RAM as the 32bit Windows 8 box allowed it.
It seems as if Windows 8 is trying to fit itself into its environment? I don't know if Windows 7 does this? and I know that Vista certainly does not!
I shall have to investigate further........................