Extreme to Extreme Test

    Introduction


    Hello!

    Recently, I wrote here http://habrahabr.ru/post/183794/ about the tests that I’m going to run on computer hardware of different degrees of old age.
    So, today's test was made at the request of the Disasm user on the topic of launching programs such as modern browsers, QT Creator, Skype and Dropbox on not the most powerful machines with not the largest amount of memory. I combined this with the review I was going to do on my own, and this is what came of it. The sequence of actions may be violated, but the essence remains the same.

    Part 1: Celeron 300A and 640 MB, which is enough for everyone


    The beginning was laid to him in early May, when I rolled into the store for two cases for computers, it is worthless to lay their intestines out. Today, hands finally reached, and a month has passed since writing the previous one, so it's time.



    Of course, in the minimum system requirements for vinHR P-II is indicated at 266 MHz, but in fact the Celeron 300A mentioned in the topic is VERY lacking, just monstrous how. To work on it even in the old opera 9.23 is disastrously difficult, the pages are scrolled only in jerks.



    But, quite naturally, only the 9th opera was more or less tolerable. It took less than 20 seconds to load, and it opened tabs better. Then I put on 12.15 opera, and the computer liked it a lot less. A modern browser requires more resources, of course.



    When scrolling through the page, the load on the processor increases thoroughly. Now you usually don’t notice this, but 300 MHz are not very good at it. In the background, QT Creator loads, via opera.



    If you close everything superfluous and restart the browser, then the memory jog will decrease significantly, you can work with it more or less, but anyway, I want to sit on some D celeron again.



    Then QT Creator was installed:



    And after launch it immediately crashed:



    I had to download Skype too, because I didn’t have the latest installer. It started up and didn’t even dull much, but he suddenly didn’t like my sound card.



    Yes, it turns out the Yamaha card is not a sound card. I had to put the good old Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP and try to connect to the voice test. The computer, of course, leaves much to be desired, even according to Skype.



    Yes, and the test call failed.



    In order to test chrome, I need to download it. I tried to do it through the 9th opera.



    A funny picture, to be honest, because obviously it will not be faster. But, on the other hand, chrome worked well, on a par with opera 12.15 and gobbled up about the same amount of memory.



    There is almost no fundamental difference between them on the 300A celeron, at least I haven’t tested it far. It is equally difficult to listen to music from Vkontakte, I didn’t even try to watch the video.
    Heavy Firefox ran the longest and gobbled up a record amount of RAM.



    And he worked as if he had to manually crank the starter in the cargo "lawn" himself. The red fox laid the relatives of the second pentium on the shoulder blades.
    Dropbox downloaded, installed and started normally. Basically, I did not expect anything else that the processor would not like again. Indexing is in full swing.



    Downloading files requires less memory.



    In the end, everything worked fine, and the dropbox ate about 25 megabytes of RAM. I did not particularly affect the work and sat quietly in the corner.



    It’s the turn to test minecraft, the kubach will not test himself.
    And he got it!



    It only took about three minutes, and then another two minutes, I tried to take a step forward. This is not a game, of course, I could not even start the task manager, the processor was completely consumed.
    Then, after all the operations, I decided to turn on the music. The media player chopped off half of the processor to itself.



    But the music worked fine, only the player itself slowed down.

    On this, the first part of the tests is completed.

    Part 2: Celeron 1100 and RAM


    I initially took the most powerful of what I had to see how it would affect. Of course, at 640 mb it ran and worked pretty tolerably, and it was uninteresting. I armed myself with a 16 mb memory stick and tried to start the car. Failed, the computer cursed for memory and said that it did not want to, had to put 32 mb pc66 memory. VinHR booted up and cut in for about 15-17 minutes, by eye. I was tired of waiting for everything else to load, and I slammed the dropbox, Java and so on.





    And it looks unappetizing. With 32 MB of memory it is impossible to work in principle! It tosses and turns so slowly that it took me almost titanic patience to at least knock out the computer and still not go into the kitchen for a beer. He was cut down for another five minutes.

    The next memory step is 64 mb. Download without all the extra.




    And then with everything turned on.



    Here, if you look, the performance was similar to the 300th celeron, only the system booted more slowly, and it worked faster. About 5 minutes of loading everything together, including dropbox, Java and Google update. Browsers load as slowly as on the 300th, but they work faster. The loading time of opera and chrome with a page from the Habr is about 1 minute in full. Mozilla again gobbled up a lot of memory and booted up in three minutes.
    Skype has earned. He liked the computer with the lower memory capacity and more nimble proces.



    And he even let me have a test call. It worked much better and faster than 300A, and we have long understood this.

    The next step is 128 mb.

    The system booted up from half a minute, apparently 128 MB of RAM - this is a necessary minimum for working on XP. Browsers start 20-30 seconds before the end, Mozilla launched in one minute. QT Creator still crashes and seems to crash. Work in browsers is normal, even the pages scroll smoothly, you can listen to music, surf the Internet, running against the background of dropbox. Not that it is very comfortable, but quite tolerant.
    Kubach tried to start, but could not.



    Little memory. Such are gluttonous cubes.
    Even Half-life 2 was launched and on foot went on this config. Sometimes it was loaded, but otherwise it worked fine. The GeForce 2 graphics card allows you to run halva on low and play.

    The next step - 256 mb

    The system boot time is about 10-15 seconds, i.e. with doubled memory, the system booted twice as fast, logically. True, we only have dropbox, Java and Google update, nothing criminal. Browsers all, as one, load quickly (as much as possible on the 1100th seleron), and I did not even notice much difference in speed, except that an opera with chrome can argue. Mozilla started as always slower, but not as noticeably as before.
    The outgoing QT Creator crashes. Apparently, the point is something else.



    Skype still says that the computer is slow, but it starts up noticeably fast too. If the system is not dirty, then 256 MB of RAM and vinHR can even work more or less tolerably. Music and a browser with a bunch of tabs no longer really slow down, although this does not mean that it works perfectly. After two cores, two gigs, a gaming video card seems unforgivably slow. And what can I say, 256 MB of memory is still actively found at work. Feels like Celeron 1700 works much worse than the 1100th, it’s not a matter of GHz anymore, you see.
    Skype works well, the voice test turned on very quickly and spoke up sprightly.



    Minecraft is still not playable.



    He has little memory, you must have at least 512 MB, and still it will be impossible to play.

    Something like a conclusion


    Actually, 256 MB of RAM can be considered the amount of memory with which some kind of comfort begins when working, you do not have to wait long for downloads and endure constant freezes. Of course, this is not enough for serious work, especially nowadays, when programs eat their gigabytes. And for the office and the Internet with music, this will be enough.

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