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Post by mikkh on Feb 3, 2010 21:52:04 GMT
Did a bit of experimenting earlier on. One of my PC's is a strange hybrid of borrowed parts and chewing gum, it's usually got 2 GB of RAM, but I 'borrowed' one stick to get another one going.
It's a P4 3.4 Ghz pretend dual core (hyperthreading) with a budget 1 GB graphics card and a hard drive I found among the carnage that masquerades as my living room.
It runs Windows 7 pretty sweetly as it happens and even with Avast 5 running, it's only using just over 400 MB of RAM.
Very impressed actually and it will be interesting to note any improvements when it gets it's other 1 GB of RAM back
Not proof that every machine with only 1 GB of RAM will run this well, because this a new board with DDR2 RAM and a much bigger than average graphics card - but an interesting experiment for me.
(yes I am sad like that - beats watching TV anyway)
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Post by Lynnrose on Feb 3, 2010 22:05:53 GMT
It's not sad, just interesting to us lot. Keep the experiments going.
I have just finished with this bubble gum...any use to you before I throw it away?
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Post by ken on Feb 3, 2010 23:07:05 GMT
Graphics has been the hangup since it was released in BETA, although RC was worse. You dont need an expensive graphics card as long as its not very old. Any PCI-E is OK, but PCI is dodgy. I think you can get by with one gig RAM, for Home Premium, as long as you have got a dedicated graphics card. I think thats why they are putting more RAM in laptops now, they have to compensate for the onboard graphics. This laptop is dual core, but its only 1.6 GHz and it flys with Home Premium x 64. Its got 4 gig RAM though, backing up 384 Mb onboard grapics.
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Post by elvisuk on Feb 4, 2010 1:22:40 GMT
My Workhorse is a P4/3.6gig with 1gig ddr i think it is ddr, 250 graphics card running better than XP did
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Post by merchant42 on Feb 4, 2010 6:04:07 GMT
I have 1gb ddr2 250mg graphics card running win 7 not had a problem
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Post by nike on Feb 4, 2010 6:20:21 GMT
I have run a P4 2.6ghz system with 1gig of DDR and onboard graphics on an Intel desktop board, and all was fine, but for Aero. Windows Aero needs a good late model graphics card to run right. Otherwise, everything ran beautifully.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2010 7:15:16 GMT
I've had W7 since beta on one PC that is a tester machine which is 1.7 ghz, has 1 gb ram, and has 256 mb graphics. My PC has had W7 since RC...it's 3 ghz with 2 gb ram, and 256 mb video. Neither have anything fancy for video cards but the cards are compatible cards for W7. W7 runs fairly well on the 1.7 ghz and it runs pretty good on my PC.
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Post by mikkh on Feb 4, 2010 11:23:31 GMT
Yes it seems Microsoft have recovered quite well from the Vista disaster. '7' is definitely superior. I wasted an hour trying to put my own startup sound in - that was frustrating and none of the fixes I googled worked.
Anyone else gone down that road and succeeded?
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Post by watchmen2013 on Feb 4, 2010 14:29:17 GMT
mikkhDid you go through BIOS?
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Post by mikkh on Feb 4, 2010 16:07:24 GMT
No, I never saw the BIOS mentioned in any fix Apparently you have to change the imageres.dll file - or at least modify the contents. I did manage to insert my own WAV file, but didn't have permission to save the altered file.
I've switched it off for now (the startup sound) It's no biggie, but I don't like things beating me - especially when several people say it's possible
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Post by mikkh on Feb 4, 2010 16:19:25 GMT
I've put the original drive back in now anyway, so I'm back to using Linux on that machine. I'll swap it back to '7' when my daughter comes this weekend, because she invariably takes this kitchen PC over, even though I've put one in her bedroom
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Post by exxy on Feb 5, 2010 20:53:41 GMT
On a related note, does anyone here use 'Readyboost' in Vista or Win7? For anyone who doesn't know, it facilitates the use of a USB stick to reduce hard drive access. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I gather it improves performance on machines with low memory by using the much quicker USB memory to reduce swap file read/writes to the hard drive.
I've tried it out today (on a Win 7 machine with 1GB) and it does seem to make for smoother operation.
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Post by mikkh on Feb 5, 2010 23:23:56 GMT
What USB stick did you use?
Every time I tried it, it refused to co-operate and they were all good brands not cheap rubbish
USB drives are generally slower than real hard drives btw and both are slugs compared to real memory, but if it worked for you, then that's good.
I'd be interested to know what size and what brand of stick you used
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Post by ken on Feb 5, 2010 23:34:08 GMT
I used to use a 16 gig flash drive as Readyboost, it made a slight difference. I cant use it now as I have a 120 gig SSD for my C: drive and I run my paging file on a 60 gig SSD. Windows wont let you use Readyboost with solid state drives, it says they dont need it.
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Post by exxy on Feb 6, 2010 8:20:59 GMT
My stick is a 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro.
Never thought about using Readyboost before, although I had heard of it. But yesterday I bought a new USB stick, and after popping it in the machine, Win7 asked me whether to use it as a Readyboost device. Thought I'd ty it out just to see, but then got a message saying it didn't have the necessary performance characteristics (think that was the phrase).
So I tried the Sandisk stick out of curiosity. It must be three years old at least but Win 7 was happy to use it. Not sure how to go about benchmarking, but it seems to be an improvement, as before, the old machine would often pause with the HD LED blinking frantically. Now it doesn't.
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Post by mikkh on Feb 6, 2010 10:17:48 GMT
I was researching this earlier and I came across a few sites that also claim (without proving) that USB flash drives are quicker than internal ones - so I can see where you might have got misinformed Exxy
I took it a step further, but to keep this thread on topic, I'm starting a new one
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Post by exxy on Feb 6, 2010 11:10:26 GMT
<shrug> I'm not misinformed as such. I'd read why it was supposed to be an improvement, but didn't necessarily believe it.
My partner commented today that the PC seemed to be running more smoothly, and I hadn't even mentioned trying the Readyboost thing.
But yes, I've taken the thread off-topic. Sorry.
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Post by mikkh on Feb 6, 2010 11:47:35 GMT
Don't worry about it, nearly every thread on here mutates into something else eventually. I just wanted a new thread devoted to HD speeds
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