Minimum system specs and maxi

[Sparky]

I don't mean the wiki version, but the realistic versions found by members using MX. What was your oldest PC that ran MX well?
On the other hand, what is the hardware that beyond a certain point, upgrading components resulted in a linear or near linear performance rate?

[GuiGuy]

Asus eeepc 901 with 1g Ram runs MX15/16 (32bit) OK although it's rather slow as you might expect.

Editing my post with it now .

[Jan K.]

My most demanding piece of software is Silent Hunter IV...

Went through many, many upgrades on the journey from the mid 90s SH, but also *had* to hw upgrade because of job related use of AutoCad.

Software must to be responsive and snappy and it's been perfectly achieved with the current i7-930 and ATI 5970+5870 tri-fire. Gorgeously watercooled too!

It runs SH IV in full mode and with all mods without breaking a sweat.

In my experience a performance jump must be minimum 300% to have any real value. So see no reason not to stick with what I have.

And can't imagine just how snappy MX will be... Certainly looking forward to the experience!

[chrispop99]

Everyone has a different interpretation of 'well', so not an easy question to answer.

As long as you are not wanting to do video rendering or similar, the one thing that taxes older machines now is web browsing. MX will install and run on a single-core Pentium M, with 2GB RAM. Office apps, music, even 720p video, all work acceptably, but web browsing is fairly slow.

For most users, something with a dual-core CPU, and 4GB RAM, will be pretty fast for most purposes. If you can swap out the HDD for an SSD, it will be markedly better.

Something with a Core i5, and 8GB RAM, will be super-quick. Back-to-back 'seat of the pants' tests on otherwise identical machines, one with a Core i5/8GB RAM, the other with a Core i7/16GB RAM show no discernible difference. For my somewhat modest uses, the Core i5/8GB RAM would be all that I needed; anything else is mostly wasted.

Chris

[Sparky]

Everyone has a different interpretation of 'well', so not an easy question to answer.

As long as you are not wanting to do video rendering or similar, the one thing that taxes older machines now is web browsing. MX will install and run on a single-core Pentium M, with 2GB RAM. Office apps, music, even 720p video, all work acceptably, but web browsing is fairly slow.

For most users, something with a dual-core CPU, and 4GB RAM, will be pretty fast for most purposes. If you can swap out the HDD for an SSD, it will be markedly better.

Something with a Core i5, and 8GB RAM, will be super-quick. Back-to-back 'seat of the pants' tests on otherwise identical machines, one with a Core i5/8GB RAM, the other with a Core i7/16GB RAM show no discernible difference. For my somewhat modest uses, the Core i5/8GB RAM would be all that I needed; anything else is mostly wasted.

Chris

no, not on the duo core (the ones with 2 threads, 1 core), the ones that was 2 hyper threads, but not 2 core. MX is unworkable for me.
However once I reach an i5 Quad core, I see not difference on an i7.
Just wondering what other members think.

[Stevo]

For my use case, which has a lot of compiling of kernels and other "heavy" packages, the more cores and RAM you can throw at it, the better. There's no upper limit. That will also help for video and photo work, of course.

[azrielle]

My lowest-spec systems--two Acer-built netbooks with 1st gen Atom n270 cpu's (which are themselves based on Pentium M architecture as I understand it), 2GB DDR2 RAM, and aftermarket SSD's (120GB, 32GB, respectively), both MX17.1 and AntiX 17 run quite well. MX's Whisker menu lag is about 1/2 to 1 second, depending on what is selected, whereas with better cpu's, there is no lag at all.
I have an older (circa 2003) homebuilt desktop that is the approximate functional equivalent of n270 based netbooks, that was resurrected a while back with 32bit MX15.01. Haven't fired it up for about 2-1/2 years though--too damn noisy! Specs: nVidia based MoBo, Athlon XP1700+ cpu, nVidia Quadro 500FX video card, 1.75GB RAM, IDE based multiple HDDs.

[Fibogacci]

I don't mean the wiki version, but the realistic versions found by members using MX. What was your oldest PC that ran MX well?

At the moment the oldest computer I did manage to install MX (MX 18 32bit) on is:
Dell OptiPlex GX240 Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1,8 GHz Memory: 1GB RAM SD-RAM 133 MHz Hard Drive: 80 GB Western Digital GPU: AMD ATI Radeon 9200 PRO Swap: 3 GB

After removing 75% of RAM and leaving only 256 MB it is still usable, as you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beowxg_gJaM

It is ok for listening to music, writing, browsing Internet (with Uzbl), watching video from YouTube in 480p (with mpv) and other things (there is no need to mention that it is perferctly ok to work in terminal with CLI applications). I mean, it can be done, but sometimes you need patience.

Of course 256 MB is just for testing and experimentation.

But with 1 GB RAM it is realy nice and works fine (enough).

[KBD]

Lowest specs is Acer C720 Chromebook with dual core but only 2gb ram. Ran quite fast.

[Sparky]

So to conclude, I can run an Athlon 64 processor based laptop without too much lag, and after an > i5 quadcore I really wont see any difference, all other parameters being equal?