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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."
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.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
For a second there, I read "Professor Throttling in Windows XP"
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.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
I don't run vista. Could someone try following the paper in vista and explain any differences?
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
... 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. Maybe it is because of all my hardware devices I have in this case (Audigy2 ZS, an old ASUS TV tuner, HDTV tuner card, five drives, etc.).
I have not tried to clean install OS (XP installation has been used since 2002 or so), or try Linux. I will try that later on when I have lots of free time. My older Athlon 64 3200+ (754 single core) has no problems in Debian/Linux with powernow-k7 (Kernel 2.6.22-K7), but it is a simple box (only one PCI card for ethernet card [Intel brand].
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What is so wrong with Vista on modern hardware?
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".
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 XP.
What, indeed.
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.
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?
I already have thelatest BIOS from http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_no=1&prod_no=249 ...
:(
I will try clean install when I have time. Reinstalling and reconfiguring hundred of software and games is a pain!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
After using WinXP, it's not the processor that wants to throttle the system - it's me. So I installed Linux instead.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Perhaps I am doing something wrong? ... Windows Ultimate <-- This.
My main windows box is
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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 performance?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
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.
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 automatically, a little longer if it needs to download the drivers. I even like the new interface.
Sounds like you've never even used Vista for yourself.
as a cpu throttler.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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 be doing instead.
Myself, working in video where color perception is critical, I just customized the default Vista appearance by turning the background color and window shading to R'G'B'=127. I get the performance (no trails!) of Aero Glass, the nice Segoe font, transparency, etcetera, but in a way that doesn't mess with my color perception.
Really, Vista is as themeable as XP was.
My video compression blog
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.
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 machine would allow it.
Both RAM prices and market reality have passed your purist position by.
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 will remember all of this Sturm und Drang. We had exactly the same things happen when XP replaced 2k.
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)
You forgot
3) Third party tools that can disable the most annoying features of Vista.
It is 3) that will eventually make Vista viable.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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 powering on).
That, and knowing that operations on large numbers of files/folders in Vista's File Explorer can sometimes be just as slow as a stalagmite trying to reach up to a stalactite. Workaround: use the command prompt instead of explorer if you want to delete or move a subtree with 10,000 files in it. It will save you hours, if not days.
Too bad you can't get rid of the bugs by adding more RAM. I mean bugs like that race condition that renames the wrong item if you start typing too fast after creating a new subdirectory in a directory that already contains a lot of items, and that logic error that can cost you some files if you don't carefully check if the correct files are selected by a 'shift-click' in list view (it tends to select more items than you wanted, if you shift-select when another application created new files or folders in the same directory after you selected the first one).
[BTW: one of these two bugs only happens with NTFS disks, I'm not fully sure anymore which of the two, but I believe it was the shift-select one.]
But for the rest, Vista seems to be just fine. Except for that new expensive DRM that is, and for media player making your network connection work slower, and for not being able to turn off that stupid "did you really start this" on a per-program basis, and maybe a few other minor issues I overlooked.
O yeah, probably due to a bad driver, but my sound acts weard too. Sometimes there's no sound in applications, but the "ping" still sounds when I change the volume through the speaker icon - takes a reboot to fix (or maybe not, if I only knew what driver or service to restart). Sometimes my sound volume is much lower after a standby/resume cycle, with the setting unchanged - also takes a reboot to fix. And it redetects my sound card as new hardware on every cold boot (i.e. not booting out of standby, but out of a full shutdown and power off). I wonder how long it's going to take before all those "hardware changes" are going to force reactivation.
I installed Vista at home, to get the feeling of it. Took me less than a week to decide that it's *not* ready for use at work yet.
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.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Apparently so.. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
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 too. I'm running at 21-25degrees C with the stock cooler while idling, and going up to about 35-40 under load. Could be the AM2 CPU or perhaps it is more compatible with the hardware in the Linux box.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
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, I am downloading 3 files, working via Remote Desktop, and reading about 10 webpages and my processor is averaging 3-4%. I am using 990 MB of memory, much of which is stolen by the video card.
YMMV
Fo Shizzle!
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.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
That 2GB of RAM cost 85.00 from newegg...
Ah, yes, my actual, first-hand experience is wrong. That's a new one.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I have also used Vista on such a system. No problems at all.
Of course it is, it provides evidence that a much-vaunted disadvantage of Vista (that it requires a half-way modern machine) is incorrect...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Seriously, where have you been the past year? A dual-core CPU can cost $60 or less, and 2GB of ram is around $75, depending on how picky you are. There's no reason not to use that kind of quality now. 512MB PCs have been outdated for ages.
All your base are belong to Wii.
That should have been Ghz. Oops.
"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?
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.
I think the government should regulate CPU cycles, thus having more overall effect on power-grid usage :-P
XP can throttle your CPU, but Vista downright chokes it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I have an old Gateway P2-450 with it's max of 384 MB of RAM and a Radeon 7500 graphics card. XP was sluggish to the point of being unpleasant to use. Ubuntu 7.04 runs great with their desktop effects enabled! Sure, compiling big software packages takes a while, but for simple web browsing and whatnot, it's a joy to use. Enough so that my youngest brother (who's not technically inclined at all) has taken a liking to Linux because of how nicely it runs.
Explain.
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 of cryptographic/etc services in the background. There is a price to pay for that, especially in the corporate world.
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but a bogged down Linux in my experience tends to consume more RAM, resources, and run slower than a comparably "bogged down" NT 5.1+ system.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
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. 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 everyone else to look at.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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 computer without it) and you're at an EASY$500.
Then take into account laptops. My only computer is a laptop I bought 2 years ago. I can't afford a new one yet. Changing the RAM in this bad boy is not only pretty expensive (upgrading to 2GB would be at least $120), but would require taking the entire thing apart. The 2nd ram module is UNDER THE KEYBOARD. Think Mom and Pop can do that?
It's not as easy as dropping $60 on a CPU and $75 on ram, and even if it was: $135 + cost of OS license is just a bit much to just enjoy a smoothly operating OS.
Maybe I'll give it another shot when the service pack comes out.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
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 a single pageout happens for any reason.)
Based on my experiences with a 512MB box running Ubuntu 6.04, I'd be very, very surprised if I found any Ubuntu build remotely usable in 384MB. But your brother is probably used to slow computers and finds it an improvement.
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 ago as I recall. There's PDFs on the site if you want to read the presentations.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
In the end, though, if your computer won't run Vista adequately, it's either your fault, the manufacturer's fault, or you're kinda stupid for blowing money on a not-all-that-useful OS upgrade. I find it hard to fault Microsoft no matter what (although I do wish, now that I've thought about it, that Microsoft would offer demo versions of Windows).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'm going to assume something major changed between 6.04 and 7.04 because it's totally usable on my machine. Part of it is my brother being used to his perpetually bogged-down XP box (3GHz P4, 1.5GB RAM, R9700), bogged down of his own doing, I might add. But it does run faster. I'm going to assume some of that stems from offloading rendering to the (admittedly obsolete) dedicated card, but it's still nice to use. Not as snappy as my P4 dell lappy that has 7.10 on it, but that graphics card isn't supported as well, so it's actually much less reliable. And before anyone makes a joke about Linux having poor driver support...I can't even play any 3d games with my brand-new nVidia 8600GTS because some stupid driver bug keeps getting stuck in some infinite loop after between 30 seconds and 30 minutes of play. XFX seems to suspect insufficient power on my 12V rail...but I've seen people run 8800's on the same PS, so somehow I doubt that's it.
I was one of the beta testers for Vista and tried to like it,but when your 3Ghz 2Gb of RAM gamer rig runs like a sloth and can't even play Far Cry with an acceptable frame rate,no thanks. Vista actually stayed on my machine for less time than WinME did back in the day. At least with WinME you could drop into DOS and Frankenstein WinME with Win98SE into a Win98SE with better USB support,something I still do when I come across someone who has a machine too old to run Win2K acceptably,or who have a legacy app that still requires Win9X.Here is the link for those with an old box lying around-http://www.mdgx.com/ Listed under Win98 tricks/Win98SE2ME.
Maybe in time they'll fix the bugs,but with all the DRM and bloat it'll be at least SP2 before I'd be willing to give it another try.Until then a dual boot WinXP/Xandros on the laptop and XP on the gamer rig does everything that Vista does,at least as far as eye candy. And with XP my games actually get a decent framerate without throwing out my single core rig.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
You don't know what you don't know.
Speedswitch allows you to switch between battery optimized, max performance, max battery, and dynamic much like the Intel applet. Speedswitch is also able to configure a bunch of other power features.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
My point was that even low end PCs you find at stores have dual cores and 1+GB of RAM. Partly thanks to Vista's requirements, no doubt, but also the price war between AMD and Intel and dropping tech prices in general.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Yes, but I've seen some pretty low end PCs in fliers that had 2GB of RAM. I'd like to point out that if your "computer savvy" parents can't upgrade their own RAM, they probably wouldn't be the type to put Vista on their machine now would they?
All your base are belong to Wii.
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.
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 of ram shipping with Vista on them. Customers trust that since it's being sold in that configuration it should be good enough - besides, a few years ago 512 MB of ram was a lot (they may reason).
Anyway I don't find it too hard to fault Microsoft - they didn't have to take away the option of computers coming with XP installed. Just making Vista the default and making customers actually have to ask to get XP would have been reasonable enough. But that's off topic, sorry.
True, I forgot that notebooks cost around $100-200 more than equivalent desktops. I guess you win on that regard. But I still think that if you search around enough for deals, you can get a pretty cheap laptop with 1GB.
All your base are belong to Wii.
First of all, if you want interesting information:
/proc/cpuinfo
cat
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, or 2.4 (depending on the machine) when needed.
I would say that there's really not much reason for manually changing the profiles, either, unless you need to force them to be slower. I think it can be done, I've just never cared to try -- if I don't want it to heat my lap, I don't run CPU-intensive stuff.
One thing Windows likely can't do: Laptop Mode. You may need to Google for help here, and you'll probably want to manually force your hard drive to be able to spin down, but what this means is, you can essentially force your computer to keep the hard drive off as much as possible, delaying reads as long as everything's cached, and delaying writes until the buffer is full. Then, when forced to spin up, it flushes all the writes to ensure that by the time it spins down again, it will last just as long.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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".
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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.
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!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not the ones making baseless accusations on slashdot. :P
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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...).
RMclock (a small free utility) allows you to
1) Specify more accurate power schemes
2) Reprogram the voltage and throttling in most Centrino platforms
3) Unlock power-related settings in your platform to achieve even higher power savings
All these result in better silence and longer battery life.
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.
As for Vista, there doesn't appear to be a "full" version available at the moment, but there's a virtual install available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c2c27337-d4d1-4b9b-926d-86493c7da1aa&displaylang=en&tm
I dare say that there will be a real, installable version available in the fullness of time; I had one a few years back for XP Pro (32bit).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
In soviet Russia, the Processor throttles YOU!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Want a machine that performs like a modern V8 car? Get 4 (or 8) GB.
Not all that bad of an analogy. Having recently gone from a pushrod V6 to a V8 vehicle (pickup) it is noticeable. Pushrod V6 vehicles can be pretty good though, how many other V6 vehicles get ~30mpg highway steady? (GM 3800 in particular.)
But I don't see yet how anyone as a desktop user needs more than 2GB of RAM. Maybe right about now is the time as we have been seeing some pretty massive and awesome games coming out. Even the recent World in Conflict requires 1GB for Vista, which as a minimum would indicate that perhaps over 2GB is ok now. However there is usually a gap for a while until desktops catch up with gaming rigs. Maybe someone who does video encoding or something could chime in with how powerful a dual core is with over 2GB RAM.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
If you got the basic hardware in your machine correct I might be more inclined to take your word at face value (there are no duel core pentiums @1.6GHz - you might have a core duo or a core 2 duo)
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 into account. If I'm running Vista Business and OS X at the same time, even for very simple purposes, 2GB is not enough. Unfortunately, my current machine won't accept more than 2GB, and a new machine will have to wait about a year.
I'm more sophisticated than your average home user, but in no way am I not a "desktop" user. 4GB would be adequate for me. I could occasionally use more.
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.
He missed your funny.
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"
I am NaN
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/pentium_dual-core.htm 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.
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 into a portable.
The correct approach to power-utilization problems is to push for chip efficiency. Running full-on top-speed at all times is pretty dumb - but intel isn't pushing efficiency either - they're throttling back to save energy. Now; if I have to do X amount of work, and I have Y time to do that work, and if I'm on battery, you slow my CPU down, I'm not going to get that work done any faster. . . either the battery is going to do the job for me or not. Slowing my machine down does not solve this problem. Giving me a CPU that does more with less power (Transmeta!) solves my problem.
Given that Motorola and Transmeta tried to solve this problem (and gave up) - I can't really credit them much more than Intel. I hate their approach, but at least they did *something*.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
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