Processor Throttling In Windows XP

TomSlick writes "Michael Chu, a former Intel employee, has written up a fairly interesting and readable summary of Windows XP power schemes as they relate to Intel processor throttling. An old topic, but one still relevant as many business notebooks still use XP."

Doncha hate "Misread" headlines?

[erroneus]

For a second there, I read "Professor Throttling in Windows XP"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

for a second there I thought you had something interesting to say

Re:Doncha hate "Misread" headlines?

[rock_climbing_guy]

Is Professor Throttling of any relation to General Failure or Colonel Panic?

Re:

[The One and Only]

I'm more worried about General Protection. Everything is his fault!

Nice

[teebob21]

Now I know why my laptop burns my legs whenever I use it...it literally IS always on...so that's what my power management was set to. I had no idea that affected the CPU frequency stepping. I guess i just had assumed that was something that scaled intelligently depending on load average or some other *CPU* metric, not a battery setting.

Of course, being WinXP, I should have realized that Foo is actually changed each time I use the GUI to modify the behavior of Bar 1 and Bar 2, which are completely separate system functions.

Re:

[xtracto]

Yeah, I have known about this stepping options back when I used WinXP in my laptop, the program CPUZ shows quite interesting information and the current running frequency is one of them. What I did not know is how to manually change this profiles... [un]fortunately I am now running Ubuntu and I guess there is no easy way (not requiring a kernel patch or some magical .conf file mangling) way to set my computer to a low speed as in Windows.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a program called cpufreq-selector that should come with the default installation. There is even a Gnome panel applet that interacts with it called CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor.

Re:Nice

[EvilIdler]

Sure you can:
cpudyn - CPU dynamic frequency control for processors with scaling
cpufreqd - fully configurable daemon for dynamic frequency and voltage scaling
cpufrequtils - utilities to deal with the cpufreq Linux kernel feature

All are found in your apt repository.

Re:

[pherthyl]

And you should add, any number of power management apps will handle all that for you automatically. For me, I use kpowersave, and it handles cpu frequency scaling and power profiles (performance/dynamic/energy saving) for me.

Re:

[Macthorpe]

ACPI is still not sabotaged, and it won't start being sabotaged just because you wish it was.

One day you'll realise that all you have as 'proof' is an email that is not only nearly nine years old but completely at odds to the fully working ACPI implementations on OS X, Windows and Linux [advogato.org]. ACPI is an open spec. To sabotage it would be to have every part of that sabotage documented for people to read.

I suggest you go read it and quote the specific parts of it that are Microsoft-only, then copy them up here for

Re:

[MikeBabcock]

You need to have a conversation with those who try to make ACPI work to spec in Linux then. Its an open spec, Linux is open source, now ask them why power management doesn't work as advertised. It was discussed heavily at the OLS two years [linuxsymposium.org] ago as I recall. There's PDFs on the site if you want to read the presentations.

Re:

[Macthorpe]

If you look at the link, it is by someone who has been making ACPI work in Linux. There's no mention of "Microsoft broke this and that", just "'it's long and therefore time-consuming". Also, from that page:

So why is this difficult? In a lot of cases, it's just down to bugs in the drivers.

and

The single biggest problem is video hardware. The spec doesn't require the BIOS to reprogram the video hardware at all, and so often it'll come back in an entirely unprogrammed state. This is an issue, since we (in general) have absolutely no idea how to bring a video card up from scratch.

This would occur to me to be symptomatic of closed-source drivers in general than anything 'Microsoft sabotaged'.

I tried to get PDFs from that site but ended up going around in circles, and it's not abundantly clear from the page you linked me to where to get them from, other than by "calling".

Re:

[MikeBabcock]

The GP claimed Microsoft had sabotaged ACPI -- I simply was pointing out that ACPI is in fact broken, and not functional as per the specification as it seemed you believed.

The presentation PDFs are available in big chunks (you'll have to search) from the proceedings page [linuxsymposium.org].

Re:

[deftcoder]

On Debian, all I had to do to get processor throttling working was apt-get install powersaved.

Now, my 2ghz Core 2 Duo has both cores running at 1ghz, except when the full 2ghz is required. This + i8kutils to force my left fan to run on low all the time = 26C when idle. Not bad for a dual core system. :)

Re:

[mattrwilliams]

Gnome power manager has looked after cpufreq scaling since at least Edgy. You can choose between three profiles - always high, always low, or on demand.

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

``[un]fortunately I am now running Ubuntu and I guess there is no easy way (not requiring a kernel patch or some magical .conf file mangling) way to set my computer to a low speed as in Windows.''

Why do you assume that something is difficult on Ubuntu? And what is difficult about editing configuration files?

Re:

[xtracto]

Why do you assume that something is difficult on Ubuntu? And what is difficult about editing configuration files?
Because Ubuntu is Linux after all, and for example, I have just tried to install truecrypt and, while in windows is just a matter of double click an exe ant then load a nice interface, there is no such thing as a nice interface and you need to do all kinds of su a+x truecrypt bash things (I know how to do it... after all I work with bash/awk/R/Java/C++/JNI/Latex every day).

But the main difference

Re:

[confused one]

Damn. It only took 4 mouse clicks to enable this on my Ubuntu on Compaq laptop. I didn't even have to edit the .conf files except I wanted it to always run in a low power mode while on battery (locked it to 1 Ghz).

What version of Ubuntu?

[SanityInAnarchy]

First of all, if you want interesting information:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

The speed listed there is, in fact, your currently running speed.

But more relevantly: I've installed Ubuntu Feisty on three machines now which had CPU scaling -- two separate AMD desktops (one dual-core, one single-core) and one Intel laptop (dual-core). On all of them, CPU scaling was automatically detected and enabled, in a reasonably intelligent manner -- most of the time they all run at 1 ghz, but they can and will crank up to 1.8, 2.0,

Vista?

[nathan.fulton]

I don't run vista. Could someone try following the paper in vista and explain any differences?

Very easy to know when it's off

[istartedi]

For a while, I thought my fan might have been broken because my laptop was getting very hot. Then I realized that, a few months ago I had messed with the power setting and turned off that technology to make sure I was getting maximum performance out of something. I forgot to turn it back on, and this resulted in the machine running flat-out all the time and getting very hot. Something jogged my memory, I went back to the power settings, and it works fine now. Even DVD playback doesn't force it to run flat-out, so if you have this technology you should definitely use it.

Of course it's only easy to feel the heat with a notebook. If you have a desktop you could be wasting power and not even know it unless you check the settings.

Re:

[zlogic]

If you have a relatively new system with automatic fan control (late Pentium 4, Pentium D or any Core), you'll definetly hear if it's wasting power :-)
And desktop Cores can actually lower their frequency when CPU load is low.

I couldn't get my desktop machine to be stable ...

[antdude]

... with AMD Cool'n'Quiet in Windows XP Pro. SP2 even with the latest drivers on my Athlon 64 4600+ (939 dual core) system. It seems like I would get rare random blue screens of deaths (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) when playing videos. One time, I had a corrupted SB Audigy 2 ZS driver and I had to reinstall it. I don't have this problem if I don't use the power management (Cool'n'Quiet).

No one was able to figure out why I get them according to this newsgroup thread [google.com]. Maybe it is because of all my hardware devices

Re:I couldn't get my desktop machine to be stable

[JohnBailey]

It seems there are some problems with cool'n' quiet and some hardware. My Nebula TV tuner card was getting random glitches when watching live TV or recording. I have a 939 Athlon single core and an Asus A8V board in my PVR, and it worked fine when I turned that feature off in the bios. Try removing the TV card and seeing if the problem persists.

On my Linux box, it seems to work fine. The boot up for Fedora 6 complained quite a bit when I didn't have it enabled, and it throttles the CPU speed quite nicely to

Re:

[antdude]

I already have thelatest BIOS from http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_no=1&prod_no=249 [msi.com.tw] ...

I will try clean install when I have time. Reinstalling and reconfiguring hundred of software and games is a pain! :(

Re:

[antdude]

Isn't 600 watts SeaSonic S12 PSU enough? I don't use cheap PSU brands either. Yeah, NVIDIA and Creative have crappy drivers. What can I do? NVIDIA = newer games require newer drivers. Creative hasn't updated its drivers. I refuse to use onboard sound and other sound cards because of lack of EAX support in games. :(

Re:

[Firehawke]

You might be happy to know that EAX is being phased out. Most all new games from the last four or so years support OpenAL audio which has a component called EFX that is replacing EAX for the most part-- and it works with ALL modern sound cards, not just those from Creative Labs.

Re:

[antdude]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. That's good news for me!

Um, is there an OpenAL hardware sound card? Do all newer motherboard's onboard have this hardware based now with no CPU usage?

Quick summary for the RTFA impaired...

[pla]

If you run XP, set the power scheme to "Minimal Power Management".

Unless, as a twitch-gamer, you (think you) can't afford to lose even a single CPU cycle, then by all means continue trying to heat your house in "Always On" mode (or the default of "Home/Office Desk", which means the same thing to AC-powered non-laptops).

As an interesting aside, TFA's author recommends "Portable/Laptop" mode; However, he writes that coming from the Intel world. Users of AMD chips (myself included) have noticed problems with CnQ (AMD's version of SpeedStep) not working correctly unless you set it to "Minimal Power Management", which according to the charts in the linked article, should work the same as "Portable/Laptop".

Re:Quick summary for the RTFA impaired...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless, as a twitch-gamer, you (think you) can't afford to lose even a single CPU cycle, then by all means continue trying to heat your house in "Always On" mode (or the default of "Home/Office Desk", which means the same thing to AC-powered non-laptops).

As a renter, my electric bill is paid for by my landlord. My oil heating bill is not. Always On mode greatly reduces my spending in the winters.

Re:Quick summary for the RTFA impaired...

[LLuthor]

So buy an electric radiator or two. They are cheap. No need to reduce the lifespan of your CPU and/or mobo just for heat.

Throttling

[Wowsers]

After using WinXP, it's not the processor that wants to throttle the system - it's me. So I installed Linux instead.

I use Outlook

[bl8n8r]

as a cpu throttler.

not just businesses

[Devistater]

Its not just business laptops that are using XP. The vast majority of people still use XP. Heck, even amongst average gamers (where you'd expect ppl to upgrade to vista for DX10 games), less than 2.5% have vista and a dx10 capable card.

Poorly written article

[Wesley Felter]

"CPU(s) begin in lowest performance state and then get slower and slower"

This is remarkably sloppy writing for a supposedly technical article. Is there a performance state even lower than the lowest? Is he talking about clock modulation? Does it get "slower and slower" but never faster and faster?

Re:Poorly written article

[confused one]

No, he's talking about Windows setting the processor to the lowest speed and then intentionally limiting CPU usage to less than 100%. That way it should use less power.

XP vs. Vista

[ConceptJunkie]

XP can throttle your CPU, but Vista downright chokes it.

Now Intel just need to improve Speedstep

[AmiMoJo]

I was quite dissapointed with SpeedStep, especially on dual/quad core processors. The lowest possible multiplier is 6x, which works out at about 1.6GHz, still very high for idling on four or even two cores. I don't see any reason why it couldn't drop a lot lower, if not by default then at least as an option.

Oblig ...

[Bob-taro]

In soviet Russia, the Processor throttles YOU!

Throttling is a hack

[jafac]

Actually, Intel's power-saving by throttling the CPU load back is an ugly hack. I don't think that it's completely worthless, but it's still an ugly hack. Motorola's Power PC chips originally pursued a design of low power usage, but as the PPC business alliance disintegrated, and IBM kept pushing the performance envelope for server applications, the PPC architecture just got more and more power hungry. The final Mac generation, the G5, made an awesome workstation platform, but Apple could not shoehorn it in

Re:

[webmaster404]

How about almost all notebooks, business or otherwise still use XP, I can only hope that the author was thinking that the rest were Macs or have switched to Linux or BSD, because no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.

Re:Many?

[Dolda2000]

[...]no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.

Yeah, personally I dislike the Vista's showing even more than Vista itself.

Re:

[Planesdragon]

because no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.

(raise hand)

I had the beta, I liked what I saw. When I get my next PC or laptop, I'll put Vista on it as a preference to XP.

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

Seconded. Vista is a solid OS, it just isn't enough of an upgrade from XP to justify the cost. I encourage anyone building a new machine to put Vista on it, however, it really is better than it's cracked up to be.

Re:

[esecasco]

It wasn't that bad...but it got on my f'n nerves. I couldn't use a bluetooth headset with it, and it refused to automatically install SD card drivers or joystick drivers. So I got XP OEM, and it detected my joystick in 2 seconds and was up and running, next on my list is the bluetooth(when I have time). Vista will go back on my laptop when it hits SP2 and I see that the difference in 3Dmark is less than 100 points(not to mention 20FPS difference in CS:Source)

Re:

[DAldredge]

What is so wrong with Vista on modern hardware?

Re:

[pla]

What is so wrong with Vista on modern hardware?

Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.

Now, if you have a nostalgic desire for a machine that "feels" just like XP on a PII-300 with 256MB, by all means run Vista. If, however, you consider the OS "just a way to get to the real programs", you may want to consider upgrading from Vista to

Re:Many?

[yvajj]

From you post, I gather that you have not run Vista. I am running it comfortably on my laptop (~1GB ram with AMD cpu) and my desktop (AMD X2 3800) with nary a problem.

The only stuff I turned off is the animated windows and window transparency (which I hate in general). Desktop composition and other "eye-candy" is still on (I actually find desktop composition to be useful, since I can mouse over stuff on my taskbar thats hidden by other windows and view whats going on in a realtime thumbnail window).

This is undoubtedly blasphemy on this Linux-centric site, but I actually like Vista, and find the little nuances a welcome change from XP.

Re:

[iocat]

I use XP on my work machine (ThinkPad T60). I've been able to configure it so it looks quite a bit like Windows 95 or 98 -- grey start menu bar and task bar, no font smoothing, disabling all those stupid fades and animations. Can I do that in Vista, or is it like my home Mac, where there's no way to actually disable the stupid window closing and minimalization animations? (Yes, you can make them less effete and flashy, but that's not exactly the same thing)? And also, how much does this affect the perceived

Re:

[sqrt(2)]

If your machine is relatively new, it may even run faster than XP would because Vista is better at using your RAM to cache programs. Every animation and effect can be disabled until you're back to what looks like XP. Most of the new stuff they added to the GUI is pleasing and useful though, the only thing I turn off is the transparency.

Vista "Windows Classic" Theme

[benwaggoner]

Sure, just pick the "Windows Classic" Theme. It'll be much like you remember graphically. Start button reading "Start" and everything, all in gray.

That said, I don't know WHY you'd want to - I've never really understood the appeal of atavistic GUI except for those with really old GPUs. But it's in there.

Perceptually, I'd say using "Windows Classic" seems more clunky and perceptually slower, part of that because it looks slow, and probably in part because it means my CPU is busy doing work that my GPU should

Re:

[leenks]

That said, I don't know WHY you'd want to - I've never really understood the appeal of atavistic GUI except for those with really old GPUs. But it's in there.

Hmmm... I've not played with Vista that much, other than to repair trojan infested machines for friends, but with XP I use the classic theme because it uses far less screen real estate. The widgets are smaller and more balanced with the text sizes etc, for my taste at least and on smaller monitors (1280x800 and 1280x1024 for example, although I still v

Re:

[thealsir]

On a 20.1"/1680x1050 monitor, I've found I have to increase the DPI/text size to avoid eye strain. Most of the people around me (with rather good eyesight, in their early 20s) cannot read the default 96dpi size at a reasonable distance from the monitor. I honestly don't understand the micro-widgets philosophy - it makes me cringe - even at 120dpi, there is way more than adequate real estate to get stuff done. When programming for hours it's especially important to have reduced eye strain.

To me, unless you'r

Re:

[leenks]

The widget size is balanced with the text size on the classic theme, yet with the
I'm 28 and don't have a problem with the default DPI settings, using a 18" 1280x1024 panel primarily until the new machines arrive. I also use a 1920x1200 15" laptop and have no problems with that either (admittedly it is easier on my own 1920x1200 17" laptop).

The cleartype thing is fair enough - Cleartype assumes a certain pixel colour order and exploits it to provide hints, but unfortunately Microsoft do not provide (by defa

Re:

[Dogers]

I also use a 1920x1200 15" laptop

Jeebus, what's the make and model? We're always on the lookout for laptops that can support 1920, but few seem to.

Re:

[leenks]

It's 2-3 years old now - a Dell D800, with the top screen. Think its a 2.0GHz Pentium-M, 1GB RAM etc

Re:

[benwaggoner]

Ah, machines that shipped with 256 MB RAM certainly can certainly have performance issues with XP - I can't imagine the GPU is that powerful either, meaning the CPU has to do a bunch of processing for effects and such. But I think the bigger difference even in XP is about the effects in use, not the theme.

Vista is different, in the advanced graphical modes will offload to the GPU, actually using less CPU. But there needs to be DX9 hardware there.

Between Classic and Aero, I don't see it taking up different

Re:Many?

[PopeRatzo]

I have now made TWO attempts to try Vista Premium on top of the line hardware (one desktop and one laptop). It is much slower than XP (I don't mean benchmarks, I mean the experience of actually trying to get work done). After I removed Vista and went back to OEM XP Pro, the performance boost was amazing. I do media production and there's no way I could have worked for any length of time with Vista and not thrown the computer through the window in frustration.

Plus, it's full of all sorts of DRM crap. That alone is a stopper for me. I will not willingly run an operating system that is designed to get in my way. And I seriously doubt if any Vista SP1 is going to get rid of the DRM. I'm afraid Windows XP is going to be my last Microsoft operating system unless they take a significantly different direction.

I'm trying to think of something positive about the experience of having used Vista for the approximately 20 hours that I had it on my machines (combined) before I formatted the hard disks and installed Windows XP. I honestly have nothing.

It's not like I hate Microsoft or anything. If they have a product that helps me get work done, I'll use it and pay for it. I don't consider them all that much more "evil" than any other huge American corporation, including Apple. But Vista is simply garbage, in my opinion. I have also suggested to all of my "strategic partners" in the work I do (bandmates, graphic artists, video producers, etc) that they stay well clear of Microsoft Vista. All but one took my advice. The one who decided he just had to have Vista lasted about a month before switching back to XP (because he's a gamer). Many of us have installed Ubuntu Studio on our secondary systems.

Re:Many?

[oakgrove]

I couldn't agree more with what you have typed. I gave Vista a very fair shot. I ran it for a week on a core duo laptop with 2 gigs of ram and a 7600Go video card. Not shabby hardware by any means. And it quite honestly could only be described as a complete dog. Not only slow but buggy as hell. I'd close the lid and when I opened it, the screen would flicker and when I finally got my desktop back after a few seconds, the icons would be out of place like I changed the resolution and changed it back or something. I mean, wtf? I get the whole thing about immature video drivers and all that but, really, this wasn't marketed as beta software. The CPU cores would both idle and I mean idle, on about 35 percent usage. Huh? In XP is was about 2-3 percent. And that matters because I take my laptop everywhere I go and use the battery. The taskbar would flicker inexplicably. I could go on and on. I dumped that sucker and moved back to something that actually works and stays out of my way.

Maybe I'll give it another shot when the service pack comes out.

Re:

[cnettel]

I guess it's a stupid question, but you did have Speedstep enabled on the XP machine, right? The idle CPU usage will increase, with more aggressive frequency scaling (as you measure % of the current maximum). The Vista defaults are far more aggressive than XP defaults (i.e. turned on at all...).

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Many?

[DAldredge]

My main windows box is a dual core Pentium @ 1.6 Mhz running on an Intel DG33TL motherboard, 2 GB Crucial ram, 300 GB SATA drive and Windows Ultimate. It isn't sluggish, in fact it runs rather quickly, nothing like a PII-300. Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

Re:

[Glonoinha]

Perhaps I am doing something wrong?
My main windows box is ... Windows Ultimate <-- This.

Re:

[DAldredge]

Explain.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

Yep. Having 2 fucking gigabytes of ram and bragging about vista performance is wrong. It's a machine ideal for hosting a 50 GB Oracle database, not a home PC. If you think Vista will run quickly on a home pc (as in "a computer suitable for any other desktop OS"), try it on a single-core computer with 512 MB of RAM.

Re:

[dal20402]

In this age of cheap RAM, why wouldn't 2 GB be appropriate for a home PC?

Other desktop OSes aren't happy in 512MB either. I used to have an XP machine with 512MB. It didn't perform well. If I had had any interest in keeping it around, I would have upgraded. The box didn't run Ubuntu well either, once I added enough visual goodies to make Ubuntu look sorta-kinda-mostly as good as OS X. My current primary machine is a MacBook Pro with 2GB. With any less, it would be a drag. I would upgrade to 4GB if the mac

Re:

[Nikker]

I don't think parent was saying you should not purchase multiple gigs of ram if you chose to. What I think he/she was referring to is that you shouldn't brag that that you have a 5.0L V8 and you think it's pretty spiffy that it can reach highway speeds.

Re:

[dal20402]

And my point would be that, given the complexity of any modern OS (not just Vista), 2GB RAM is not comparable to a 5.0L V8. More like your basic pushrod V6: moves an average car just fine, but not with a lot of power (space) to spare.

Want a machine that performs like a modern V8 car? Get 4 (or 8) GB.

Re:

[thealsir]

Yeah, I've found that on older (P2 and below) machines, Windows 2000 actually runs a lot faster than XP. Something to do with SSE enhancements and the general background load of the OS, I presume. Win XP was incredibly slow on a P200, even in classic mode, while 2K was rather spiffy. On the other hand, a K6-2 machine that I upgraded from 98 to XP was faster in XP than 2K. So YMMV I guess.

I do agree that Ubbys/etc linuces tend to run faster than XP/Veesta. But at what cost? They're not running the millions o

Re:

[dal20402]

People have very different standards...

A friend of mine just replaced an old 512MB Dell with a super-encrufted XP installation with a 2GB MacBook. He was amazed: "When I click on something it happens!" He's used to waiting seconds for absolutely everything. Any responsive computer is magic to him.

Whereas if my own MBP so much as hesitates for a split-second, I go crazy and dig around trying to find what's wrong. (And I get frustrated by the lack of RAM from time to time; more specifically, whenever even

Re:

[thealsir]

Not the ones making baseless accusations on slashdot. :P

Re:

[dal20402]

I am the desktop user who needs more than 2GB of RAM, and I don't game. I'm using OS X, but I think similar applications would have a similar effect if I were running XP (or Linux, in the paradise where similar apps actually exist).

I compose music and occasionally do design work. Either a single complex project in Logic Pro or the combination of Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat (even working on my very simple attempts at design) will push my 2GB to its limits.

And that doesn't even take virtualization in

Re:

[DAldredge]

That 2GB of RAM cost 85.00 from newegg...

Re:

[Almahtar]

MmHmm, and how much for the motherboard that supports that dual core CPU? How about a case and power supply for the whole thing, since your average computer user doesn't know (or doesn't think they know) how to swap mother boards and their current one is single-core only? Do you honestly expect the average computer user to feel comfortable installing an HDD and an optical drive themselves?

Add the whole package up, and don't forget to include a copy of Vista (since most users don't know they can buy a c

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

Except, as I already pointed out, saying you need a dual-core processor is complete BS. Otherwise you're correct, however, I would argue that if one buys a computer with Vista on it, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to make sure their damn machine can run the OS they install sufficiently well. If you build your own, then it's your responsibility to know what you're getting into (although the people you describe in your post wouldn't dream of building their own). If you're upgrading from XP to Vista, y

Re:

[Almahtar]

I agree with you about the idea of Vista requiring a dual core system to run well is B.S. - I didn't intentionally mean to reinforce that point by including mention of buying the processor for $60 - I was just echoing the parent post's list of prices and mentioning there's more to it than that. You're right - there's no need for a dual core system to run vista passably.

I would argue that if one buys a computer with Vista on it, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to make sure their damn machine can run the OS they install sufficiently well.

But that's the problem - they don't. Head into a best buy or head over to HP.com or the like and you'll see a lot of laptops with 512 MB

Re:

[Tim C]

there really isn't such a thing as a demo of Windows you can install to see how your hardware runs it

Yes there is, sort of. You can currently order (on CD) or download a trial edition of Windows XP Professional 64bit from http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.aspx?view=22&pcid=2abf99cd-a5e4-469c-802e-55ca8ec542d5&type=trl&crumb=catpage&catid=ea710cad-37b0-4975-bcd6-abfee19961df#ProductDetails [microsoft.com].

As for Vista, there doesn't appear to be a "full" version available at the moment, but ther

Re:

[Almahtar]

My point was that even low end PCs you find at stores have ... 1+GB of RAM

Not really. Notebooks especially. You can find plenty of those in Best Buy, on HP.com, etc that ship with 512 and good old Vista Home Basic OEM.

Re:

[Dog-Cow]

I just bought an Acer laptop from Newegg that has a dual core cpu and 1GB RAM. Vista Home Premium came installed. Best Buy was selling the exact same laptop for less ($500 at BB), but I didn't get a chance to order before they ran out of stock. I got the laptop to learn Vista, and it's fine for that purpose. Personally, I'd put 2GB in any machine I really meant to use (all my others have that much), but the 1GB is fine for learning the OS.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough RAM (I wouldn't recommend running Vista in less than 2GB) and a fast harddisk are all you need.

And if possible, use standby instead of a full shutdown and reboot: it keeps the disk cache intact, saving you from the sluggishness you otherwise experience in the first five minutes after boot. But don't try to combine standby with readyboost: they don't mix well, at least on my machine (frequently causes file system corruption on the USB stick, and sometimes inexplicable service crashes shortly after po

Try ordering the basic box...

[SanityInAnarchy]

I saw a box sold with Home Basic which had something like an 80 gig drive, 512 megs of RAM, and a 1.7 ghz processor.

It was absolutely unusable.

The processor was not a bottleneck, I'll give you that much. And I didn't stay on it long enough to test if the network was the bottleneck -- that whole sound-drops-you-to-10% bug (a fucking BUG, not a feature) -- but I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't, for this simple reason:

The RAM killed it. Even if it weren't for the network bug, it'd still browse slower than dialup, because it was CONSTANTLY swapping out.

No, not "Often", or even "Most of the time". Not only when I, as a geek, was trying to coerce it to do more than it was designed to, like, say, download some updates, or install Firefox.

It was swapping ALL the fucking time. I popped in a 512 meg USB stick and used it for ReadyBoost, which improved things marginally -- it was then capable of doing some things in maybe 20-30 seconds, instead of 2-3 minutes. And by "some things", I mean opening another tab in a browser -- Firefox or IE7, didn't matter. (And like 5 minutes or so to switch between them...)

I may be getting the times wrong, but let me put it this way: I've used an NT4 machine with some 128 megs of RAM. I've used a Win98 machine with 32 megs of RAM -- also a Linux handheld with 32 megs of RAM, and that had to use a CompactFlash card for swap.

That 512 meg Vista machine was the absolute WORST computing experience I've ever had. Ever, in fifteen years. The only thing that comes close was a videogame on Win3.1, running off a 4x CD-ROM drive, but at least it was fast once it loaded the damned level.

So yes, I realize Vista can be fast. But considering that it sucks so badly, even compared to older versions of Windows, on 512 megs of RAM, you have to ask yourself, are you actually getting to use the rest of your RAM? Say you need to run a memory hog app like Eclipse -- Vista could be the difference between needing 2 gigs of RAM for Eclipse and nothing else, or needing 1 gig of RAM and being able to play music and still have a fast network.

Didn't even touch on disk usage, but there's really no excuse there. After installing Kubuntu, plus a bunch of codecs, plus a bunch of apps not in the main install, including a couple of versions of Wine and some Windows apps, it was maybe 5 or 6 gigs. The above Vista install was 15 gigs, before you go download drivers, VLC, install Office, etc. Consider that there was also a restore partition, not even a hidden one (it was mounted), which used maybe 20-30 gigs (and wasn't even entirely full), and it's an 80 gig hard drive, total. Which means you're giving about half your hard drive up to the fucking OS, before you even install software. Sure, it's inconsequential for your 300 gig drive, but it is a waste, don't you think?

The question is not whether there's hardware that can run Vista well. That's a given. The question is whether you'd be better off with XP, and more and more, the answer is a resounding yes!

Re:

[DAldredge]

That should have been Ghz. Oops.

Re:

[Phil John]

Yes there are, Intel have rebranded the super low-end CD (Yonah) and C2D (Allendale - special low cache variant (not cache disabled - not actually on the silicon)) as "Pentium Dual Core"

Re:

[DAldredge]

http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/pentium_dual-core.htm [intel.com] E2140 65 nm 1MB L2 1.60 GHz 800 MHz FSB Dual core, enhanced speed step, 64bit, Execute disable support. In short it is a Core 2 Duo with only 1MB cache and not virtualization support in hardware.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Acer Aspire 5100 (AMD Turion 2.0Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 200M Integrated Graphics) that was 400$ runs Vista Ultimate just as well as XP. Some things are even faster. Firefox, Thunderbird, WMP11, VLC, Skype, and Pidgin (the programs I use most often) all load faster (near instantly) than they did in XP. The search indexing works great, although that's available for XP for free from MS. The driver hell people always drag out is completely non-existent for me. I plug in a device and it works in a few seconds a

Re:Many?

[bigstrat2003]

instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably

That is absolute bullshit. I can't speak for RAM, since I have 2 GB for gaming purposes, but I was running Vista on a single-core Athlon 3200 with NO problems whatsoever. Everything performed like a charm. A dual-core CPU isn't anything close to required.

Re:

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Well, after looking at Vista running on a demo computer, and hearing some very vivid and informative hearsay from Slashdotters, whom I trust have tried it themselves, I've come to the conclusion that you're wrong.

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

Ah, yes, my actual, first-hand experience is wrong. That's a new one.

Re:

[Tim C]

Of course it is, it provides evidence that a much-vaunted disadvantage of Vista (that it requires a half-way modern machine) is incorrect...

Re:

[DAldredge]

I have also used Vista on such a system. No problems at all.

Re:

[confused one]

It's the memory. You've got enough processor (particularly if you've got a DirectX9 or 10 GPU in the box). Vista is, by all reports, a memory hog. You wouldn't notice having 2GB already (fwiw, I have 3GB). I've seen it on 512MB; and, it's totally IN-tolerable. It took >5 minutes for that machine to boot because of all the disk swapping it had to do.

Re:Many?

[suv4x4]

Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.

Are you some sort of Microsoft fanboy there?

Over here Vista requires 256 cores and 1 petabyte of RAM to run tolerably. And then I run Calculator.exe and it stalled. I'm checking every day how the Calculator launch is going and it's painfully slow. It's been over 9 months now and it's done rendering the buttons from 1 to 6, it still has 7 to 9 AND all operators to finish with.

I'm seriously pissed off, if it's not done by 2008 I'll be upgrading to XP.

Re:

[wanna_be_a_developer]

I have an AMD 5000+ with 2 GB and my Vista enabled PC runs very nicely.

I do a lot of work with the Quartus II software (FPGA Development) and compilation time is very impressive. Visual Studio 2005 runs smoothly despite having a minium of 3 projects open at one time. IIS and Sql Server 2005 (Express) both are running. Despite having a combination of all the above running, I "sense" that my PC does not have any trouble.

I know my description is subjective, but so is the above statement.

Currently,

Re:

[weicco]

OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.

Eye candy is run on GPU. DRM is only run when you are wathing DRM'd content (which I very much doubt that you have such).

But then again this is Slashdot and as some president said, facts are stupid things, so go ahead with your ignorant FUD slinging.

Re:

[iCEBaLM]

What, indeed. [slashdot.org]

Re:

[dal20402]

Even if it pushes back the dates, MS WILL eventually stop supporting XP, as they have all previous Windows variants. Businesses will have no choice but to upgrade at that point, as they already have from 98SE, NT4, and (mostly) 2k.

Vista really won't be that painful an upgrade once 1) much more is understood about application compatibility and 2) even bargain-basement office-bot PCs ship with 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor. (No need for fancy graphics if you turn off Aero.) Two years from now, no one

Re:

[flyingfsck]

You forgot
3) Third party tools that can disable the most annoying features of Vista.

It is 3) that will eventually make Vista viable.

Re:

[JohnBailey]

Apparently so.. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ [pendrivelinux.com]

Re:

[MrBandersnatch]

RMClock is great!

Due to a bug in the Asus G1S BIOS (http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070901092546687&board_id=3&model=G1S&page=1&SLanguage=en-us) which ASUS refuse to acknowledge let alone fix; the speedstep throttling is totally borked resulting in the processor running at roughly 25% performance while recharging the battery. RMClock allows us to disable the thermal protection and get back near 100% performance. Great stuff.

Sadly I read the FA in the hope of some light on the other

Re:

[loraksus]

Just curious, how long did it take you to do the downgrade? When Vista came out, it used to take hours and our company just refused to do any more downgrades, so I'm wondering if Microsoft finally has a way to do this in a timely manner.