Out of It's League: Vista on Legacy Hardware

Preface: I wrote this up after a friend of mine joked that I should install Vista on this old thing. Not sure if it's front page news material, but it's an interesting read for Windows fans and detractors alike, in my humble opinion. Also functions as sort of a makeshift Vista SP1 review. Attached is the full version, with formatting and tables and all that good stuff. You know, in case anyone wanted to post it somewhere more visible. *wink wink nudge nudge*

Out of It's League: Vista on Legacy Hardware

It's been said that Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, performs poorly compared to previous generations, including Windows XP and 2000. Certainly when Vista first came out, I joined many others in strongly advising it be avoided until at least the first service pack. Well now, nearing two years since Vista RTM, we have a finalized version of Service Pack 1 in our hands, in addition to a variety of other performance, security, and stability fixes. I now personally use Vista on both of my desktops (Phenom X4 9850 BE, 4GB RAM, 8800GTS and Athlon64 X2 4200+, 2GB RAM, 7600GT) and my ThinkPad (Core 2 Duo T7300, 4GB RAM, Quadro NVS 140M). But my aging Gateway 7422GX? Its true that machine exceeds the minimum requirements of Vista, but with only 1GB of RAM and a single-core processor, could hardware-hungry Vista's performance possibly be bearable on that rig?

Well, never one to let a question hover, I decided to find out.

Since it's been a long time since we've done any reviews of that machine around here, here are the specs for reference. I've upgraded only one component:

Processor: AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ (Single core, 2.2 GHz, 1MB L2)
RAM: 1 GB DDR-333
Hard Drive: 100 GB 5400 RPM PATA (upgraded from 80 GB 4200 RPM)
Video Card: 64 MB Mobility RADEON 9550
Chipset: VIA Mobile VT800
Wireless: Broadcom 4108 b/g
Wired: VIA Rhine II 10/100 Ethernet
Audio: VIA Vinyl AC'97
Power: 90W AC Adapter; 8-cell main battery
Purchased: $1249 at Best Buy; January 2005

Hardware has certainly come a long ways in the past few years. While this machine was far from “top of the line” at the time, it provided a great deal of power for an inexpensive desktop replacement with moderate portability. Now it seems positively ancient, with a single core processor, tiny hard drive, and next to no RAM. So how does it handle Vista? Let's find out.

Install:
There's a saying, that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. Since there's no point in doing a half baked job with this, I went for the big challenge and decided to install 64-bit Vista Ultimate (slipstreamed with SP1).

The install itself was exactly like any other Vista install: input key, hit enter, select partition, hit enter, wait. In about 45 minutes, it was all done and I was sitting at the login prompt. No hitches whatsoever (more than can be said for installing Vista 64 on my main desktop, which required me to remove a stick of my RAM until I got a hotfix installed or face a BSOD reboot loop (fortunately, a SP1 slipstream corrects this).

After completing the install, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a fully functional system. Every piece of hardware had a driver right off the bat. After a Windows Update and a manual upgrade to the latest 8.6 Catalysts, I set about actually using the system.

Performance Impressions:
Any performance review should start with the first thing you encounter: the boot time. It's definitely longer with Vista SP1 than it is with XP Pro SP3, though not by a large margin. XP Pro SP3 boots on this machine in about 35 seconds from power button to login screen. Vista SP1 boots in about 45 second from power button to login screen. Each takes about 15 seconds to get to the desktop from there. Not too bad all-in-all.

From there, it's on to general system usage. Somewhat shockingly, Vista seems to carry itself rather well in simple tasks. After installing all of the typical software – Firefox, Thunderbird, 7-zip, JDK6, Flash, OpenOffice, and Foxit – and trimming the background processes as I would on any other system, I rebooted and then set about doing some day-to-day activities to test out the general system performance. What I found shocked me to the core: the system seemed to perform no more haltingly than it did under XP. The limiting factor in daily operations was definitely the hard drive; launching OpenOffice for the first time, for example, took an eon as the hard drive ground away. But once apps were loaded into RAM, the 2 or 3 second launch times I've come to expect on XP were common place, with some programs seeming more fluid and responsive even than before. The Aero Glass effects work without hesitation, although while installing programs and running benchmarks, dragging windows and navigating menus can become sluggish – not particularly worse than in XP, but more noticeable because you expect everything about Vista to sort of...flow (one of the things I like about it compared to XP: it IS much prettier, and you can't argue with that). And the animations at times certainly feel more halting than I'm used to on my other Vista machines.

Heavier multitasking begins to slow the system down pretty severely. Certainly the single-core processor is a major hindrance here, as is the lean amount of RAM. Listening to music while playing solitaire or browsing the web works fine, of course, but add many more applications and you start to get to know that little spinning circle pretty well. As an example, I tried to listen to music, browse the web, check my e-mail, edit an OOo document, and run Windows Update all at the same time. While that speaks highly of my multitasking ability, the poor beleaguered Mobile A64 just couldn't keep up. If the music wasn't skipping, the other applications were reduced to a pretty spinning circle. Once Windows Update finished its thing, things sped up, but the music still got a tad too skippy for my tastes when opening and closing browser tabs or e-mail windows.

Up next on the docket: Gaming. “Gaming?!” you ask. “He's GOT to be joking.” But I do not jest! And I'm not talking about solitaire or the windows chess game here, either (don't turn on the anti-aliasing and maximize said chess game, by the way). I'm talking about leaning back and kicking it up with some Counter-Strike Source or UT2004, maybe even some Command and Conquer 3 if you're so inclined.

First up, I ran CS:S with its all-high default settings at native resolution - a paltry (by today's standards) 1280x800 – in DX9 mode. This was an unmitigated disaster, but it was on XP too so I didn't expect much different here. I quit CS:S, added the -dxlevel 81 command line switch, then turned the shaders, shadows, and water down to low, leaving textures and models at high – the settings I played at on XP. The performance was in general much better this time, but walking into an open area resulted in framerates taking a divebomb as the paltry 1 GB of system RAM and measly 64MB of dedicated VRAM choked and the hard drive began swapping textures in and out of memory. Not a pretty sight, seeing 50 fps suddenly become nine and seeing the hard drive LED light up like hellfire. Take three, I disconnected and set textures and models to medium. This did the trick – 45-60 FPS steady at almost all times on cs_office, and cs_militia runs at a fairly consistent 25+. No more nightmarish frame drops as Vista's memory management drops the ball.

UT2004 was the same story all over again. You had your choice of consistent blazing framerates on medium texture details, or a stuttery nightmare on high. The average framerate stayed perky, but periodic (and sadly frequent) drops to 8 and 9 FPS are just unacceptable. Vista has come a long way in its performance since those beta days when my Inspiron 9300 choked on Internet Explorer, but even the best memory management scheme in the world can't save a system with 1GB of RAM when the OS needs 600+ MB for itself. I pity anyone with an integrated GPU trying to play even the simplest games on Vista with less than 2GB of RAM.

Command and Conquer 3 runs without incident at native resolution and minimum settings. The aging MR 9550's inability to push the necessary pixels barricades higher settings before the system RAM limitations. Performance is unchanged from XP essentially – you'd do well to keep anyone from building too many units either way given the single-core processor.

Purely for giggles, I tried Unreal Tournament 3 as well. After dismissing the message informing me I didn't meet the minimum system requirements and that my gameplay experience would be “sub-optimal,” I set the resolution to 1280x800 and all details to minimum, and started up a game. 10 seconds and 2 frames later I dropped the resolution all the way to 640x400 and gave it another go. This time things went choppily but maintained an impressive average ~45 FPS. Unfortunately, everything was so blurry I couldn't realistically read the text and targeting enemies instead of rocks became a chore. While UT3 scales well, I would advise selling your kidney before trying to play it on a RADEON 9600. (Editor's note: Please don't sell your kidney for a graphics card. Or if you do, please don't sue us for giving you the idea).

As for performance on battery? The BIOS in this computer locks the CPU at 800 MHz at all times on battery. If you want to use Vista on an 800 MHz processor, you go right ahead. But since it isn't particularly pleasant in XP, I shudder to think of it in Vista. If you put Vista on legacy hardware like this, you'd better be planning to use it as a desktop with built-in UPS, and nothing more.

Benchmarks:
But enough of my rambling; benchmarks are probably what you really want, so here you go:
wPrime 1.55 32m – 1 Thread Per Core, in seconds:
Dell Inspiron 9300 – Pentium M 750, Go6800, XP
92.351
Desktop – Phenom 9850, 8800GTS, Vista
15.434
ThinkPad T61 – C2D T7300, NVS 140M, Vista
40.965
Gateway 7422 GX – MA64 3400+, MR9550, XP
94.125
Gateway 7422GX – Vista
79.499
The massive improvement in wPrime score from XP to Vista is inexplicable but repeatable. wPrime reports no errors in either test run. Still, take this with a large grain of salt.

3DMark05 – Standard settings, in 3DMarks:
Dell Inspiron 9300 – Pentium M 750, Go6800, XP
3965
Desktop – Phenom 9850, 8800GTS, Vista
15024
ThinkPad T61 – C2D T7300, NVS 140M, Vista
3676
Gateway 7422 GX – MA64 3400+, MR9550, XP
1154
Gateway 7422GX – Vista
966
Not much to see here, folks. Seems Vista had a minor impact on 3DMark05 scores; that's a 16.3% drop in performance from XP to Vista in case you were wondering.

CS:S Stress Test – Using the settings outlined above for ideal performance on the 7422GX, in FPS:
Dell Inspiron 9300 – Pentium M 750, Go6800, XP
182.68
Desktop – Phenom 9850, 8800GTS, Vista
359.59
ThinkPad T61 – C2D T7300, NVS 140M, Vista
178.63
Gateway 7422 GX – MA64 3400+, MR9550, XP
69.67
Gateway 7422GX – Vista
74.65
Vista actually adds 5 frames per second here. In game, performance seems roughly the same, with Vista lagging slightly behind when bots are tossed into the equation, though not by much.

WEI:

Yes that's right, worse graphics performance than a GMA X3100. At least according to WEI. Still runs Aero and CS:S, though, so I'm not complaining. Also note how my CPU score is about on par with a 1.66 GHz Core Duo. What exactly is Vista doing to measure CPU speed, anyways? It seems I could best describe it as“kind of” multithreaded.

All of the above scores were obtained at all stock settings with the latest drivers at the time of writing. The notable exception is that my desktop's 640MB 8800GTS has a factory overclock to 580/1350/900 from the stock of 500/1150/800 – I didn't bother clocking it down since it's included only for reference and fully intended to blow everything else out of the water anyways.

Conclusion:
So here's the final word. Is Vista staying? Or will I go scurrying back to XP as so many – myself included – have done in the past? Much to my own surprise, I think barring some major catastrophe, Vista stays. I don't use this machine for hardcore gaming anymore anyways, and I have my ThinkPad to take on the road with me. So as long as it runs well enough to do day-to-day things, that's what really matters. And Vista's improved networking, usability, and security features seal the deal. Perhaps it's too early to star praising Microsoft for “fixing” Vista entirely, but it seems like they've come a long, long way in the past couple of years. Congratulations Camp Redmond.

 

Nice review! I find it great that more people are realizing that the fear of change and uneasiness in the unknown (including the rumors) is really nothing to fear at all!

+Rep for sure.

 

You are one patient man, I`ll give you that

 

Finally, a clear insight of Vista. Its not perfect but its not as bad as people claim it to be.

Vista basic is better suited on a under spec'd system.

 

Well, strip down all the eye candy, and you got a win95 with vista power

 

I fullheartedly agree. I tried it on my old Desktop (P4 3.06Ghz, 1GB ram, 9800 Pro, 160GB 7200 - it's dead now though), and it ran decently-ish (needed more ram). I even used it for Beta and RC testing vista, with decent results.

If you have a gpu for aero and 2GB ram, the CPU is not quite as important.

 

A very, very nice review. My 7422GX has gone through Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, (all of them had issues with the Broadcom WiFi), OS X and the beta of Vista. Then I had some very strange issues with the graphics card which spontaneously resolved. Haven't fired up a single game since then and it's now my Media Center (XP/ Mediaportal with an external 500gb HD).

The only thing keeping me from using Vista for the media center solution was my Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA card, which started failing last month and I'm sure it's a hardware problem. Perhaps I'll give it a try now as I've already lost the 5.1 performance I had under XP.