it reaches a point that breakthrough tech, i.e. NVME are not supported. Also, windows started playing games with the kernel and they do not support older cpu. You realize how low the performance of a 4 year old computer when you compare with the "feeling" of a new one. That is what really irks me of old boxes. Taking 30 minutes vs 42 minutes for a simulation is not a big deal, but the responsiveness is really different. As an example, the read speed od a standard hard drive is below 100MB/s with most close to the 60 MB/s range, while NVME can sustain 1000MB/s, it make the feeling of using the machine and it responsiveness great. Also, Intel tries to get not less than 10-15 , up tp 40 per cent performance increase (at the same price/range envelope) per generation, so after 4 years and 3-4 generations, the performance gains add up to make a difference.
My 10 year old machine is just as responsive as the newest. slower, for sure, on certain intensive tasks. Loss of responsiveness is probably mostly due to registry bloat. Take an old pc, swap the hdd for one with a fresh win install and it's much snappier.
Not really. It depends a lot on the task that needs to be done and how forth sighted you were when buying the pc to begin with. Most machines simply beg for an SSD and a bit of ram. If you bought something that only just were able to play a game, then yes, you might need to upgrade here and there. I needed only to upgrade because I wanted to have some specifics, like G-sync, OC-potential and a few other perks... The pc ran fine... My demands just grew...And... I'm a big tech-geek-boy who thinks it's fun😁😁🤓 I dont NEED to upgrade 😉
Frabor, gpauk, I agree with both of these points. I also have a 10 year old computer which is very similar to my current one with boring, everyday tasks. So I have fallen out of the old board/processor upgrade cycle of the past. I used to appreciate the responsiveness.
The best thing I did for the 10 year old computer was put a SSD in it.
The best thing I did for the 10 year old computer was put a SSD in it.
Upgrading an older computer to an SSD drive is a monumental improvement. You dont need to upgrade every few years if you are smart about it, my home computer i built in 2012, still more power than i need for work and gaming. Granted it was top tier stuff when it was built (LGA2011 platform i7 with six cores).
On the work side (IT Manager by day), i did a big upgrade in 2015 replacing older Windows 7 machines and standardised on Intel i5 machines, all of which have been upgaded since then from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and will be perfectly good for another 3 years until Windows 10 goes end of life in 2025. Infact there will be life beyond that as many will be upgradable to Windows 11, but with no more security updates being pushed for 10, the non upgradable machines will have to be pushed out the door. That will be 10 years to the date since those machines were installed, so a pretty good return on investment.
The most important thing is dont stand still, keep the software upto date as you go and do a gradual transition. Dont be the guy looking at a network full of obsolete hardware and operating systems where you have no choice but to start from scratch and replace everything because you are too far behind the curve.
I know some of you will say, i have a Windows XP machine and its perfectly fine for what i do. Great, good for you. But those machines have no place in a business environment.
On the work side (IT Manager by day), i did a big upgrade in 2015 replacing older Windows 7 machines and standardised on Intel i5 machines, all of which have been upgaded since then from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and will be perfectly good for another 3 years until Windows 10 goes end of life in 2025. Infact there will be life beyond that as many will be upgradable to Windows 11, but with no more security updates being pushed for 10, the non upgradable machines will have to be pushed out the door. That will be 10 years to the date since those machines were installed, so a pretty good return on investment.
The most important thing is dont stand still, keep the software upto date as you go and do a gradual transition. Dont be the guy looking at a network full of obsolete hardware and operating systems where you have no choice but to start from scratch and replace everything because you are too far behind the curve.
I know some of you will say, i have a Windows XP machine and its perfectly fine for what i do. Great, good for you. But those machines have no place in a business environment.
Although not for all situations there are systems that will become more secure over time, the goal being not needing security updates. The first thing is to stop 'upgrading' the feature set.
All of my PC's use an SSD for boot and program storage. This is an NVME card whenever the motherboard supports it. Windows gets more and more greedy with RAM with every update. 8 GB is the minimum I would consider today for anything more complex than web browsing. I have found little advantage to going beyond 16 GB today unless you deal with large video or audio projects. I can't speak for gaming though since I'm not a gamer. The old XP machine I recently upgraded to W7 had an SSD in it. Never attempt to defrag an SSD with XP or early W7 defrag tools. The older SSD's don't like it. Use the tools provided by the SSD vendor at the time you got the drive.
Never do a Windows "upgrade." Always do a clean install especially when moving from W7 or W8.1 to W10. Windows just keeps growing over time. It sometimes juts gets bogged down in its own weight, and cluttered up with all sorts of junk that you downloaded, sometimes without you knowing about it. I have seen serious performance advantages by pulling out the boot and program drive, installing new SSD with a fresh copy of Windows with a fresh ISO download from Microsoft, then installing just the software that you actually use. I kept a log of what I used for several weeks before doing my last "clean sweep" on the i7-4790K PC. This resulted in a much smaller list of programs and a faster machine. It would probably beat the i7-7700 PC that I'm typing this on in a test of compilation or simulation speed. This computer is also hindered by the lack of any video card. I'm using the CPU powered HDMI and DVI jacks on the motherboard to feed a 4K TV set and a 1080 monitor. Oddly it will play a 4K @ 60 Hz video from Youtube just fine if I'm using Firefox, but stutters on any 60 Hz video (720, 1080, or 4K) if using Edge. The 4790K PC uses an old GT430 for 1080 video on a single monitor.
My three year old laptop keeps begging me to Upgrade to Windows 11. It's one of two machines that I have that are "Windows 11 capable." I'm not taking that invitation to be an unwilling beta tester until all the usual first year issues are worked out. Then maybe I'll think about it.
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I upgraded my 10 year old laptop to W11, also my desktop. Both work fine. W11 seems stable but then again I rarely actually use it. The laptop runs the scope, and the desktop spends 99% of it's time in Manjaro.
The laptop is limited to 4GB of soldered memory. The desktop has 32GB in it but I'm considering upgrading to 64GB while they still make the ram modules I used. I mean my PHONE has 12GB, right? LOL
I tend to buy a damned fast computer and run it until it's useless, or incremental upgrade like Nigel did. I once ran an AMD Barton chip at 2500MHz using TEC. It was an 1866MHz CPU LOL I eventually lowered it to 2400MHz to save 200W of cooling power vs 100MHz speed increase.
When I retired that machine, it was so slow that when Ubuntu booted up the startup sound would studder.
As others have said, SDD from HDD is a GIANT improvement. Rotating media is only used for data storage here now.
If you can play it fine in FF but now in Edge, you might have HWaccel turned off, George.
Check this: https://websiteforstudents.com/how-to-enable-hardware-acceleration-in-microsoft-edge/
The laptop is limited to 4GB of soldered memory. The desktop has 32GB in it but I'm considering upgrading to 64GB while they still make the ram modules I used. I mean my PHONE has 12GB, right? LOL
I tend to buy a damned fast computer and run it until it's useless, or incremental upgrade like Nigel did. I once ran an AMD Barton chip at 2500MHz using TEC. It was an 1866MHz CPU LOL I eventually lowered it to 2400MHz to save 200W of cooling power vs 100MHz speed increase.
When I retired that machine, it was so slow that when Ubuntu booted up the startup sound would studder.
As others have said, SDD from HDD is a GIANT improvement. Rotating media is only used for data storage here now.
If you can play it fine in FF but now in Edge, you might have HWaccel turned off, George.
Check this: https://websiteforstudents.com/how-to-enable-hardware-acceleration-in-microsoft-edge/
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At this point I see no reason to try W11 as it offers me no apparent benefit. The risk is not worth the reward.
I don't know how hardware acceleration will work if there is no hardware to accelerate. The instructions you link state:
"In some instances, Hardware acceleration may render your computer to perform slowly if your computer isn’t equipped with high performance graphics card. This is case, you should disable hardware acceleration."
I think I tried this experiment several years ago, but I may try it again when I get a chance though.
This PC has no graphics card at all, just the on CPU graphics. Intel often quotes decent performance for on CPU video, but these numbers involve only graphics related benchmarks. The bottle necks occur when both the GPU and CPU argue over the same shared RAM memory. Adding more RAM doesn't help since it's the path to the memory that gets crowded. This is why some math intensive programs like the VCV rack virtual music synthesizer require a video card. Any video card even the old GT430 in my 4790K machine will do since it removes the need for the CPU to buffer video frames in the main RAM memory.
I don't know how hardware acceleration will work if there is no hardware to accelerate. The instructions you link state:
"In some instances, Hardware acceleration may render your computer to perform slowly if your computer isn’t equipped with high performance graphics card. This is case, you should disable hardware acceleration."
I think I tried this experiment several years ago, but I may try it again when I get a chance though.
This PC has no graphics card at all, just the on CPU graphics. Intel often quotes decent performance for on CPU video, but these numbers involve only graphics related benchmarks. The bottle necks occur when both the GPU and CPU argue over the same shared RAM memory. Adding more RAM doesn't help since it's the path to the memory that gets crowded. This is why some math intensive programs like the VCV rack virtual music synthesizer require a video card. Any video card even the old GT430 in my 4790K machine will do since it removes the need for the CPU to buffer video frames in the main RAM memory.
Another question: Did you try it in Chrome? I've read some people saying it's fine in Chrome but choppy in Edge. FWIW I wouldn't use Edge at all due to my hatred of IE but that's not really based on anything but personal opinion.
These days, I use Brave mostly, but I have Chrome, Chrome-dev, Firefox, Opera, and Web (formerly Epiphany) installed. Once in a while things work in one but not the other. Kind of annoying to have to have them all installed but whatever.
Brave anonymizes location so search results for "store near me" aren't near me, for instance so I'll use Chrome for that.
These days, I use Brave mostly, but I have Chrome, Chrome-dev, Firefox, Opera, and Web (formerly Epiphany) installed. Once in a while things work in one but not the other. Kind of annoying to have to have them all installed but whatever.
Brave anonymizes location so search results for "store near me" aren't near me, for instance so I'll use Chrome for that.
I've made a career out of supporting Windows OS. Still do. Now working toward Linux certification.
Very recently moved to Linux Ubuntu from Windows 10. Some adjustment needed, but have been able to to everything I need and more.
Mainly moved to Linux because Win 11 will not support my current hardware on two computers due to " security concerns".
Hardware Compatibility List would be the thing to check before making any hardware upgrade.
Very recently moved to Linux Ubuntu from Windows 10. Some adjustment needed, but have been able to to everything I need and more.
Mainly moved to Linux because Win 11 will not support my current hardware on two computers due to " security concerns".
Hardware Compatibility List would be the thing to check before making any hardware upgrade.
BTW- one of the cool thing about Linux is that you can run a "Live" image of Linux over your hardware and see how things will run without installing Linux to a hard drive. This way, you can try different versions of Linux to see which one you like. Linux distributions are different, having special uses like enterprise use, security, development, etc., but they all have virtually the same Linux Kernel at the core. Installed software and desktop environment is what really makes the distros different.
I thought about this issue some more while I was loading about 1200 pounds of concrete paver stones into my van. I had been using this PC with a GTX1050 video card in it for some time. There was no stuttering. I recently ripped the card out and reverted back to the on CPU graphics so I could put the 1050 into the 4790K machine, which I did. While later ripping apart an old core i5-2400K machine for repurposing, I found the GT430, so I tried it in the 4790K machine and it worked fine for the use case on that machine, freeing up the GTX1050 which I was going to put back in this machine. Now I have a spare GTX 1050.
This prompted me to dig into it a little deeper when I got home. I looked into the Edge settings and sure enough the hardware acceleration was turned ON, but there was no hardware present to accelerate. Turning it OFF fixed the stuttering. I can now play a 4K @ 60 Hz video on the TV without issue while using the monitor at 1920 @ 60 Hz with no video card in the machine. I do not use this PC for things that require lots of CPU power.
It's time to go unload 1200 pounds of concrete.
??? Why would I defrag a SSD? A seek is a logic pointer, not a physical motion.
I was never over-impressed by the results of a defrag even back to stepper-motor drives. (Yes, I remember trialing the interleave on MFM drives too slow to read sequential sectors without a breath.)
You can fairly easily run Windows on a Linux machine in VirtualBox or other virtualization software. You do (probably) have to install the Windows, which can be hours. No, you won't get the best video speed, and everything has a mild drag, but "to see which one you like" is no big deal. In fact a decade ago I was running both XP raw and a Linux in a V-Box on a wee little EeePC netbook with an Atom and not much RAM (perhaps 2GB?). It was ideal for IT-geek meetings where either O/S might be discussed.
Exactly. I never saw any improvement from a defrag. Disk fragmentation is almost never the weak link.
SSD upgrade is definitely worth it now they are cheap - I also only use HDD for big data stores where speed isn't relevant.
Check the size of your bloated registry from time to time - that's one of the main things that you benefit from a fresh windows iso...
10 years old and fulfil the requirements for win 11?? Did you have minimum 8 gen intel CPU in a 10 year old laptop? Or is it an AMD.. or does that even help... cause I believe AMD needs to be younger than 2018 or something, for win 11 to be happy.
No, one day the update just happened with the other updates - they relaxed the requirements. It's an Ivy Bridge (Gen 3) i3.
In SSD the defrag makes no sense as it will wear out the cells with almost no gain. SSD with conjunction with the operating system uses TRIM, that is similar in concept to defrag, but in this case liberates unused portions of cells. Also, SSD keep a count if cell writes and provision writes in a way that avoid over utilization of cells (erasable non volatile memory cell have a maximum write count before failure). For more, and more precise info, https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/definition/TRIM#:~:text=SSD%20TRIM%20is%20an%20Advanced,contribute%20to%20longer%20SSD%20life.
I must be doing something wrong. I had to replace a display and a PC for the lab.
Got an HP Elite 232 for € 105, a Lenovo i5 for € 260 with W10 Pro, 500G SSD. Both refurbished.
Install keyboard, mouse, spend 20mins to go through the W10 setup, done.
Download LTspice, my CadCam, log in to MS Office, another 10 minutes.
Just in time for coffee. The time consumer was afterwards syncing OneDrive but that's behind the scenes.
Maybe its because I am more an audio guy than an IT junky 😎
Jan
Got an HP Elite 232 for € 105, a Lenovo i5 for € 260 with W10 Pro, 500G SSD. Both refurbished.
Install keyboard, mouse, spend 20mins to go through the W10 setup, done.
Download LTspice, my CadCam, log in to MS Office, another 10 minutes.
Just in time for coffee. The time consumer was afterwards syncing OneDrive but that's behind the scenes.
Maybe its because I am more an audio guy than an IT junky 😎
Jan