• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Is SSE2 really that important?

computerdude92

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 10, 2014
Messages
1,056
Location
Alaska
I don't like it that some software no longer supports pre-SSE2 cpus. (Athlon XP, Pentium III) Firefox no longer runs, later updates of Windows 7 do not work, no skype support, etc. What's the big deal? Is it a crime to want to update and use the same old computer forever?? Ten years ago these old computers worked well on the internet. I don't see why companies force us to upgrade, other than making a profit. At least modern Linux still appears to work on the old systems, unless there is some compatibility issue I'm not aware of. If I designed software, I would never stop supporting old parts, and I would make it as lightweight as possible.
 
SSE2 makes vectors and floating point a lot faster, very helpful for something like AutoCAD.

Firefox and later versions of Windows don't exactly need SSE2 but the NX bit came into vogue at the same time as SSE2. NX bit prevents software from loading as data and then being executed which makes it a good way to stop some malware.
 
There are some recent builds of the New Moon port of Pale Moon that will run on non SSE2 machines.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177125-my-build-of-new-moon-temp-name-aka-pale-moon-for-xp/

Anyway, that was a real dick thing of Microsoft to do by stopping updates for these machines. Annoyingly this is how it will be from here on out. One day you will be sitting at your computer and you will suddenly get a message "We have arbitrarily determined your computer is now obsolete. You must go buy a new computer right now. Our good friend Michael Dell needs another yacht!".
 
Fortunately computers have become increasingly affordable compared to a decade ago.

...unfortunately, that does nothing if you're running older peripherals that require things like ISA bus connections.

Increasingly, the answer seems to be "you can't get there from here". I wonder how many functioning Tesla Model X's we'll have 30 years from now.
 
Fortunately computers have become increasingly affordable compared to a decade ago.
That very much misses the point. It's a matter of knowing how long something is supported so one can plan for change. It used to be when one bought a software product you would have the requirements written right on the box, and that wasn't likely to change until the next major version.

I don't care if that new machine costs $0, I have to take time and effort to migrate stuff over, purchase other new software/hardware because the old stuff doesn't like the new machine, and like chuck pointed out sometimes one can't even DO what they NEED with a "new" machine.

From my perspective, nobody even makes "computers" any more. They make worthless locked down, DRMed, advertising laden, spying, cell phone wannabe, blue-LED infested, blobs of black Chinese sludge.

Even if it does meet one's needs, a low cost and high availability still does not make it less wasteful.
 
There are some recent builds of the New Moon port of Pale Moon that will run on non SSE2 machines.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177125-my-build-of-new-moon-temp-name-aka-pale-moon-for-xp/

Anyway, that was a real dick thing of Microsoft to do by stopping updates for these machines. Annoyingly this is how it will be from here on out. One day you will be sitting at your computer and you will suddenly get a message "We have arbitrarily determined your computer is now obsolete. You must go buy a new computer right now. Our good friend Michael Dell needs another yacht!".

I've heard of Palemoon SSE, it was really tough for me to get it working in Linux. I only got it working on one machine, but couldn't get it working on others. I forgot how to do it, and the instructions are tricky.

What I really don't like is there was no warning for Pentium III users. MS was careless with the implementation. Back in the XP days, you would at least get a message saying the software is incompatible and then it would refuse to install. Nowadays, MS wouldn't give two sheets if your system bricks. But I do give them credit that they at least supported PIII's on Win7 for many years. Now you can probably still use Win7 on a PIII, but you must turn off all updates. Palemoon SSE is your only browser, and then who knows what antivirus still runs on a PIII, I haven't found any. I no longer love Firefox after I heard it stopped supporting non-SSE2 cpus. I wish things were like how they used to be in the old days, where the only reason something won't run is because the hardware is too slow. I detest this modern world.
 
...unfortunately, that does nothing if you're running older peripherals that require things like ISA bus connections.

Increasingly, the answer seems to be "you can't get there from here". I wonder how many functioning Tesla Model X's we'll have 30 years from now.

I heard Win7 does not support ISA, so the best you can do is run Windows Vista or don't use ISA cards. Vista is supposedly as stable as Win7 once it has SP2 installed.
 
It's even worse than that--most of my special-purpose ISA cards exist only in ISA embodiment, and what's worse is that they use only real-mode DOS drivers.

Of course, someone is going to tell me that Win10 with Virtual PC or some such will do the job... :)
 
Chuck for your work I don't see the need for newer hardware just as long as the older machines you keep around have ethernet you are fine moving files along to a newer system. I have more machines with ISA slots now then I did back in the day when ISA was actually modern and useful.

I don't get why people need an old P3 to run Windows 7, the experience would be terrible. Do you bitch your new Tesla doesn't have a port for leaded gasoline?
 
Chuck for your work I don't see the need for newer hardware just as long as the older machines you keep around have ethernet you are fine moving files along to a newer system. I have more machines with ISA slots now then I did back in the day when ISA was actually modern and useful.

I don't get why people need an old P3 to run Windows 7, the experience would be terrible. Do you bitch your new Tesla doesn't have a port for leaded gasoline?

I've run Win7 on an Atom N270, which is about as fast as a Pentium IV 1.8GHz and yes I agree it will be sluggish, but it may be cause it has only 1.5GB. (maxed out) If you had a server grade PIII with 2GB or more ram you may be OK. It's scary to think that even an Athlon 1400C or matching Tualatin runs faster than this early Atom CPU... What were chip makers thinking?...
 
Hmmm, I've never tried it but I've got a 2GB dual P3 (1GHz) system here with a hosed XP system partition--up until now, I've just ignored it and booted Linux for networking stuff.

I wonder if Win7 will run on it? I should give it a try--or re-install XP.
 
Win 7 32 bit minimum is a 1ghz CPU and 1GB of RAM so a dual 1ghz with 2GB of RAM will run it just don't expect to browse the web with many tabs open or multitask large programs.

MS tends to be very optimistic of system requirements. For example Minimum for Windows 2000 is a P133 and 64MB of RAM does that sound like fun?
 
The whole premise of this thread seems silly to me. I get the impression you would be happy if everyone was still using 8088 machines with modems and irc. (for sake of argument) The notion YOU don't want to upgrade, so nobody else gets to is moronic. These companies who make windows and firefox (your examples) exist to make a product that makes money. If they don't make money, they don't get to exist. They look at what systems are running what software and cut expenses where they can. Why should they continue to expend time,effort,money,etc on a fraction of a percentage of people that refuse to upgrade? The average pleb wants more and more out of the internet, these companies are going to provide it and make money in the process. They have no incentive to continue to support things 10+ years out of date.

You want to continue to use your old system? fantastic! I love playing with all this old hardware. But to expecting to take your model T on a highway and have it be a good experience is lunacy. the internet 10 years ago is NOTHING like it is today. It requires a cpu that can handle high quality video and encryption standards.
 
It's scary to think that even an Athlon 1400C or matching Tualatin runs faster than this early Atom CPU...

In terms of raw performance, the Atom is going to be faster than either the PIII or Athlon clock for clock. What skews the results is that modern software isn't designed to run on such slow CPUs with limited RAM.

The reason the Atom exists is supposed to be low power, but this wasn't the case at launch. The only chipset to initially support the Atom processor was the i965, which drew something like twice the power of the Atom IIRC.

What were chip makers thinking?...

The same thing Transmeta was thinking in the mid 2000s, that people are willing to pay for extremely low power x86 CPUs. We can see how well that worked out for them.

Hmmm, I've never tried it but I've got a 2GB dual P3 (1GHz) system here with a hosed XP system partition--up until now, I've just ignored it and booted Linux for networking stuff.

I wonder if Win7 will run on it? I should give it a try--or re-install XP.

I have a dual PIII-S 1.4 with 2 GB of RAM. XP doesn't run that well on it, Windows 2000 is the best OS for it, or older Linux distros. I tried 7 on it once, it was painfully slow.
 
Well, I hardly run Windows NT (of any stripe). Most of my work is done on Linux and, when the hardware demands it, MS-DOS. Eventually, my goal is to get rid of the DOS aspect, shuffling the load to a few purpose-built MCU setups. Heck, I still have stuff that uses DTL for logic...

Ubuntu 14.04 on the P3 setup seems to work fine. Older Debian distros are also okay.
 
I always found it interesting how people hated on the atom. I thought they were phenomenal processors for their intended workload. I had an original atom netbook. Wonderful machine. I would still be using one if it had a 4:3 screen. never could get one.
 
I always found it interesting how people hated on the atom. I thought they were phenomenal processors for their intended workload. I had an original atom netbook. Wonderful machine. I would still be using one if it had a 4:3 screen. never could get one.

Could you enlighten me. I have at least three Netbooks and none are IMHO usable for any workload, including reading e-mail on-line. The dear old lady who is my only paying customer gave me a little Compaq with touch screen because she said it was useless, I have one in the holiday home for dire emergencies and I am sure there are at least two discarded ones lurking around somewhere. The only recent experience I have had that was worse was trying to run Netscape or Mosaic on a P90 with OS/2 and only 32MB of memory....
 
Upgrade the ram and hard drive. The cheap ones shipped with 2gb and slow 5400rpm sata drives. Mine had 4gb and a hand-me-down 60gb ssd. i had it for 2 years before i broke it. (flight of stairs) Still have it. my only gripe was the 1024x600 screen.
 
Back
Top