0
I just got 5 old Pentium 4 3ghz pcs, and one of them I would like to use as a normal desktop to see what games I can run on it (League of Legends, GTA SA online). Will Win 10 do better in the terms of performance on legacy hardware as compared to XP? XP is out dated and some games have issues with it now. But would it still use less ram than an optimized windows 10? Is Windows 10 a better OS for legacy devices now?
Mennims
Posted 2015-09-01T22:52:44.383
Reputation: 11
1
Honestly, you shouldn't even be considering XP for any machine you will connect to the Internet. XP is no longer supported by Microsoft, and there are critical in-the-wild exploits for it that you cannot get patches for. XP is also a bad choice from a security standpoint for other reasons - its last notable update in terms of security features was almost precisely 11 years ago, so it's missing all the modern security features - but it was at least a justifiable choice while Microsoft was still patching it.
Just how much RAM do these machines have? While Win10 can technically run on under a gig, I wouldn't recommend it (certainly not for gaming). For 1-2 GB, Win10 (or Win8.1) does very well in general, though it's still underpowered for a gaming box. For more than 2GB, you'd be a fool to put XP on there anyway; XP's memory manager was designed for a time when 256MB was a lot, and it does not make efficient use of large amounts of RAM (remember, unused RAM is wasted RAM. Newer Windows versions use free RAM to do things like pre-cache files they expect to use soon).
Of course, using anything with less than 2GB of RAM to run modern games is a terrible idea anyhow. LoL might run in 1GB if you turn the settings down enough, but it won't run well on so little RAM, regardless of the OS.
CBHacking
Posted 2015-09-01T22:52:44.383
Reputation: 5 045
So you're telling me that if I take my OptiPlex GX620 from 2011 with its 4GB of RAM, and install an operating system designed for modern hardware on it… it's going to run faster? – JamesTheAwesomeDude – 2016-03-27T23:16:40.017
1@JamesTheAwesomeDude: Well, depends what it's running now. If it's running Vista, yes, absolutely. If Win7, probably, especially if you go from 32-bit to 64-bit; Win8,x and Win10 are a bit faster than Win7 on the same hardware. If running XP 32-bit, it will probably get faster if you go something modern 64-bit (you'll get to use all of your RAM, and XP doesn't know how to use 2011-era hardware well anyhow) and you will definitely have a safer computer. – CBHacking – 2016-03-28T07:08:32.333
The GX620 wasn't made with XP in mind anyway. It was made to run 7/Vista. That means 8 and 10, both built more similarly to 7, will run pretty well on it. I know the GX620 had XP drivers available, but it also had a processor that XP couldn't take full advantage of. – Joshua Nurczyk – 2016-06-02T06:17:05.103
2If the machine can run Windows 8.1, then overall, your performance will be better on Windows 10. It isn't a question of anything else other then, can you machine even run it, a Pentium 4 is SEVERAL years older then 5 years by the way ( more like a decade ). – Ramhound – 2015-09-02T00:26:13.717
1I get that. I was given these pcs. I have got Ubuntu running as a server running perfectly on one of them. I don't understand the hate. I understand it's older than 5 years old. In fact the processor I have is roughly 11 years old. Doesn't mean it's out of use. – Mennims – 2015-09-07T09:52:18.910