Well, I pulled the plug on my old XP system, and plunked down an overburdened credit card (thanks ACA first payment and estimated Taxes! A 1-2punch!) on a cheapy Dell Inspiron. With the upcoming fixes, I figured I'd just sail right on into Windows 8.1. I made sure I at least got a halfway decent cheapy system, with a Pentium G3220, with it's stripped down and genericized Iris graphics core. The newest drivers from Intel gave these haswell core processors some nice little bonuses in OpenGL performance and Quicksync enabled. I figure if I could game on an AthlonXP with AGP DDR2 7600GS card, then even this could keep up. So far, it's been mostly smooth sailing. On the hardware front, only my Canoscan LiDE 70 gave me problems. It has no Windows 8 drivers, but I found out that the Windows 7 drivers work just fine for it, with the caveat that this scanner was picky about which USB port it used. USB3 and USB hubs are a no-go for it. I'm really hurting by the lack of PATA in new systems along with the lack of SATA in my old one. I wish I had a hub, so I could just transfer the files directly. My main problem is the Shaklee Business Software, which is steadfastly resisting all efforts to run correctly on Win 8.1 pre and post update. The online portion refuses to work at all, and now I'm just waiting on tech support to get back to me. Ha. Windows 8.1 was much easier to get used to than I thought it would be, and post update, it's even easier for us mouse-n-board types. It takes a while to find stuff, but it's easy as pie after you know where this stuff is hidden away. Anyhow, it looks like I'll be updating my signature soon. My hdmi to dvi adaptor should be ready for pickup at Walmart in a couple of days, so I can ditch the VGA cable. I've got an old boat-anchor of a CRT monitor somewhere. I figure I'll hook it up to the old computer, so I can have both systems running, and I can just shuffle my jump drive back and forth between them. Wish me luck! Edit: My mind is bending. I've been moving old classic games from my old 'puter to the new. Dungeon Keeper worked fine right out of the... er... folder, but Tiberian Sun would freeze upon using the menu. EA has a fix for it, and now I have the weird experience of running C&C using WINE. In Windows.
Me?! Mobo!? Shirley you jest!! Well, I've since puzzled out my problems with several programs like 7zip. It all has to do with Window 8.x's squirrely paranoid security. I finally got the SBOSS running by scrubbing the registry of all dross from previous attempts, then carting the whole SBOSS folder over from the old computer, then going through the folder and changing the properties of every exe file to "run as admin", then did the same with the sbossblahblahupd.exe update, and let it run. When I started SBOSS this time, everything worked the way it was supposed to work, thank goodness! I think all my previous grief was due to the lack of certain dll files like the zlib.dll, which mysteriously didn't get installed previously. I'm surprised by the fact that I actually like this chiclet key keyboard, after I found a way to give it the proper height and tilt. I actually make less mistakes while typing on this thing. Go figure... As for gaming, well, it's a mixed bag. OpenGL is not Intel's long suite, by any means. Still things are about on par with what they were previously. I STILL can't run Sacred II (#$%*%#$^ you, PhysX!!!), but I've not been gaming much lately anyway. So overall, I'm a happy clam.
One thing is absolutely certain - you got your money's worth on that ancient Athlon. Stonehenge and the Antikythera mechanism are only slightly older... Welcome to the new millennia!
It's a good thing I don't play games anymore. This thing mostly sux at it. I knew it would be bad, but I'd hoped advances would have powered the "really bad" ahead of my systems "acceptably low-end in it's time." Mind you, it's bad in a weird way. FPS is up, but the motion is "grindy." I figure it's due to the single stick of 4 gig DRAM in it, so I'm suffering from lack of video memory and lack of dual channels to keep the graphics powered. Everything else seems more peppy than before though. So I'll live with the desire for an acceptably low-end video card. One thing I really noticed is how quiet things are now. You really don't hear any fan noise at all coming from this thing.
I got the wife a pre-made cyberpower machine. It too, is really quiet. Mine.......you can hear it clear back in the bedroom.
In an interesting after-note. I thought I'd managed the Windows 8.1 Update without problems, but it seems the freeze-up and repeat password prompt problems I had with Thunderbird were a result of that update, when I applied the update to update the update to fix software incompatibility problems, my Thunderbird problem went away.
Headache. Rising. Why, oh WHY is booting a CD-ROM with Memtest86 on a Dell UEFI bios machine with Windows 8.1 such a FREAKING OBSCURE PAIN IN THE!!!!!!!! After a full day of booting to Windows again and again and again and again, I finally know now, almost by accident, that I have to F12 to the boot menu, change the boot mode, THEN change the boot order in the BIOS (which is ignored until I change modes), so I can boot from the Optical Drive, even though Memtest is supposedly using Microsoft signed binaries to allow booting with UEFI safe boot enabled... Windows 8.1 hiding all the boot stuff about three or four layers deep in "change pc settings" doesn't help my blood pressure either. Long story short, I bought a 4 gig memory stick that should match the timings of the one that came with the machine, so I can have dual channel 8 gig memory, if it works, but I want to boot to a memory test before booting to corruptable Windows. On the plus side, I found out that I had to press F12 BEFORE I see that stupid Dell logo, or it won't work, and Dell's diagnostic seems to have a fairly capable memory test utility, so I'll try using that. I'm beat. I have eyestrain and stiff shoulders. My butt hurts. Good night.
I just used the Dell Diagnostic for now. It takes a half hour to run through all the tests, so I feel confident enough for now. For a real stress test, I think I'll have to find out if they still have Prime95 for that. On the plus side, I finally get to play Black Mesa! Yay! And Holy Hulaballoo, but that game looks freakin' awesome! Game-wise, this system and my old one were surprisingly similar, fps-wise, but this system has much better rendering than my old one ever did, and my low fps is a rock-solid low fps, where the old system would dip into ultra-low when the action got rough. Older games like Sacred, however, seem to have problems with Intel Graphics.
