Re: Does 5.0.7 run well on modern hardware?
- From: "Bob Bailin" <72027.3605@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:06:03 -0400
"Stephen M. Dunn" <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:K4sL3t.1F0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Before I ask more specific questions, let me put one thing in the
open: "upgrade to OSR6 - it handles this stuff nicely" is not a useful
answer unless you have a legal copy of OSR6 you are willing to
give me for free. (I'll provide more details as to why this is the
case at the bottom of this article.)
I'd be interested in general comments on this, as well as answers
to the following specific concerns. In cases where I mention specific
hardware, I'm suggesting what's likely; it's not carved in stone.
CPU: it's likely to be an Intel Q9450 (Yorkfield Core 2 Quad,
2.6 GHz). The release notes for 5.0.7MP5 don't list *any* Core 2
CPUs as being supported; the official list stops at Xeon (which isn't
actually a type of CPU; it's a marketing label applied to everything from
PII to Core 2) and P4. Now, I suspect a more modern CPU will work,
just as it was generally possible to run older versions on newer CPUs
than what the official support list says. Can anyone confirm whether
5.0.7 runs successfully on recent Core 2 CPUs, preferably Yorkfield
or Wolfdale?
PCI Express: All remotely recent motherboards with support for
remotely recent CPUs use PCIe. OSR6 explicitly supports PCIe; I have
been unable to find any statement, either way, about whether 5.0.7 does.
Wikipedia suggests that the difference is in hardware and an OS which
supports PCI should work with PCIe. Is this true in practice? With
the possible exception of video (see the next question), I am unlikely
to have any PCIe cards, or at least any that 5.0.7 needs to talk to,
but I *will* have at least one PCI card, and often the support for
"legacy" buses in chipsets is done by making them essentially subsidiaries
of the more modern bus - which could mean that if PCIe isn't supported,
the PCI cards won't work, either.
Video: 5.0.7's list of supported video cards is, at least for the
most part, stuck in the early 2000s, with a handful of AGP cards being
the most recent models. Of course, AGP is long since dead, so whether
I use built-in video on the motherboard or an add-in PCIe card, it
won't be supported. There's always the old VESA BIOS driver; how
well does this work with modern video (motherboard or PCIe)? If
it matters, the video is likely to be either a built-in Intel GMA3100
or similar, or a low-end ATI card such as a Radeon HD2600 Pro; I
don't do anything that requires a high-end video card, but I do need
X Windows to work properly.
(end of main questions)
OK, now, for those who wonder why OSR6 isn't an option: this is a
personal-use system which dual-boots XP and OSR5.0.7. All of the
critical stuff it does is done in XP; 5.0.7 is nice to have but not
necessary. So if I can continue to run 5.0.7 on the new hardware, I
will, but paying additional money to upgrade it to OSR6 is not in the
cards.
The main problem 5.0.7 has with modern motherboards is that it doesn't
support native SATA controllers (AHCI). It will work with SATA drives
if the BIOS is set to legacy mode, but that's not an option if you're dual
booting with XP, which works much more efficiently in native AHCI mode.
If you use an old PCI video card, it's sure to work, but again, XP will
run terribly on it, and you generally can't use both onboard and PCI
video simultaneously on most motherboards.
The simplest solution would be to get yourself a free copy of MS Virtual PC
or VMware and install 5.0.7 on a virtual machine. There have been numerous
posts in the ng on this topic.
Bob
.
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