Celeron 1.2GHZ & WinXP SP-2

[retroborg]

Hello.
I’m thinking about installing WinXP SP-2, Office 2003, with all the latest updates on my mates PC.
It’s the following system:

Celeron 1.2GHZ
256MB RAM
GF2 MX 64MB
20GB HD
Internal 56K Modem

Will it be able to cope with WinXp & Office 2003 adequately?
How well will it work, or should I install Win2000 & Office 2000 instead?

The system will be primarily used for word processing, Web surfing, watching DVDs, playing some minor 3D games, 2D games & emulation.

Thanks in advance.

[the_hofers]

No problem. My old laptop was a P III 700 MHz and perfectly coped with WinXP SP 1 & Office XP. Film DVD's were no problem either. Relevance of CPU frequency is generally overestimated.

[Sirber]

IIRC the minimum for XP is a 166Mhz CPU with 32MB RAM.

[spuddog]

Used XP Pro Sp 2 on a P3 450Mz 256 Ram no problems.

[the_hofers]

Hi, While I know nothing about games - your "minor" ones should not pose a problem though - DVD playback is largely a software issue. With my old P III I used to use the resource-saving old WinDVD 4 with perfect results. So long.

[Joe Fenton]

What will wind up being the resource hog is Office. While everything else can run okay on a 32M system, Office will be a pain with anything less than 1G... unless you're only writing single page memos, in which case you shouldn't be using Office anyway. :D

[retroborg]

Well, I did install WinXP PRO SP-2, Office 2003, all updates, Mcafee Antivirus Enterprise 7.1 & Ad-Aware Pro, on another PIII 1GHZ, 256MB RAM & TNT2 Model 64 32MB PC & it’s working perfectly. It boots up very fast & all applications work like a charm.

But I’m quite skeptical about my mates PC, because the Celeron 1.2GHZ CPU, is not quite as powerful since it only has 128K Cache, as opposed to the PIII’s 256K Cache.
So I don’t know how it’ll work.

I think the equivalent in “raw” processing power to the Celeron @ 1.2GHZ, is a PIII @ 850MHZ…

[spuddog]

One way to find out, go for it.