lammert-nijhof
January 7th, 2018, 05:15 PM
If you are young, you are proud on your newest state-of-the-art desktop or laptop. I am from 1945 and proud on my old HP Compaq dc5850 from October 2008, we hope to celebrate his 10th birthday this year. It is still my main PC used daily for many hours.
When I bought it early 2014 here in Santiago (DR), it had an AMD Phenom 8600B 3-core processor at 2.3 GHz, 3GB of 667MHz memory and 80GB HDD; SATA-2 and USB 2.0. As you can see in this copy of the signature, I nicely upgraded this HP dc5850:
- AMD Phenom II X4 B97 3.2GHz 4C/4T,
- 8GB at 800MHz,
- HDD 3.5" 500GB partitions for Ubuntu 16.04 and Data running at 135-90 MiB/s,
- RAID-0 2.5" 2x320GB used for all VMs; Linux and Windows from MS-DOS 1988 till Ubuntu 18.04 running at 150-90 MiB/s,
- USB 3.0 PCIe card,
- GeForce 8400GS 1GB (GT218),
- Fujitsu/Siemens 22" vga display 1680x1050.
The HP dc5850 can still keep up easily with the modest requirements of this old IT specialist. In 1969 I worked with antique main frames like the IBM 360 and later with PDP11 minis. I got used to ASR-33 110bps and later VT100 at 9600bps. I'm amazed with the performance I now have on my desk. Beside all the upgrades I'm planning to replace the RAID-0 by a 256GB SSD supported by a SATA 3.0 PCIe card. My first SSD did break down and I'm waiting for the warranty replacement to arrive, when a visitor from Belgium arrives in January.
I use this antiquity to try out and test new Linux distros in virtual machines. I also have my critical stuff like banking done by an Ubuntu virtual machine, so I keep it separate from the normal web browsing and I also can keep the firewall blocked for inbound traffic. On the host I have to open it for the file server function to serve e.g. the laptop. Of course I'm happy now to have an AMD processor, so I'm less vulnerable for the detected huge Intel processor bugs related to this type of Virtual Machine use ;). Don't buy new computers, they will sell you faulty 8th gen computers without any shame. SAD! Another reason why I love AMD is the upgradability, it allows to run a 2nd generation Phenom AM3 processor in an AM2+ motherboard and that more then doubled my CPU power. It now runs at approx. 60% of the power of a Ryzen 3 1200.
For the rest I use the computer for the normal web browsing, photo editing and some simple family video editing and to keep in contact with the family in the Netherlands and Belgium. I also play all my old LPs and CDs, recorded in wma long ago with Windows XP, while still living in Antwerp. I see a lot of YouTube videos, the computer handles 1080p, 720p and 480p. Mostly in the day I use 480p, since the bottleneck is the Mexican Internet provider, who for hours only provides 1/3 of the speed I pay for. My average CPU load with 480p in Chromium is below 20%, while the GeForce load is around 40%.
For details see the screenshot.
278091
When I bought it early 2014 here in Santiago (DR), it had an AMD Phenom 8600B 3-core processor at 2.3 GHz, 3GB of 667MHz memory and 80GB HDD; SATA-2 and USB 2.0. As you can see in this copy of the signature, I nicely upgraded this HP dc5850:
- AMD Phenom II X4 B97 3.2GHz 4C/4T,
- 8GB at 800MHz,
- HDD 3.5" 500GB partitions for Ubuntu 16.04 and Data running at 135-90 MiB/s,
- RAID-0 2.5" 2x320GB used for all VMs; Linux and Windows from MS-DOS 1988 till Ubuntu 18.04 running at 150-90 MiB/s,
- USB 3.0 PCIe card,
- GeForce 8400GS 1GB (GT218),
- Fujitsu/Siemens 22" vga display 1680x1050.
The HP dc5850 can still keep up easily with the modest requirements of this old IT specialist. In 1969 I worked with antique main frames like the IBM 360 and later with PDP11 minis. I got used to ASR-33 110bps and later VT100 at 9600bps. I'm amazed with the performance I now have on my desk. Beside all the upgrades I'm planning to replace the RAID-0 by a 256GB SSD supported by a SATA 3.0 PCIe card. My first SSD did break down and I'm waiting for the warranty replacement to arrive, when a visitor from Belgium arrives in January.
I use this antiquity to try out and test new Linux distros in virtual machines. I also have my critical stuff like banking done by an Ubuntu virtual machine, so I keep it separate from the normal web browsing and I also can keep the firewall blocked for inbound traffic. On the host I have to open it for the file server function to serve e.g. the laptop. Of course I'm happy now to have an AMD processor, so I'm less vulnerable for the detected huge Intel processor bugs related to this type of Virtual Machine use ;). Don't buy new computers, they will sell you faulty 8th gen computers without any shame. SAD! Another reason why I love AMD is the upgradability, it allows to run a 2nd generation Phenom AM3 processor in an AM2+ motherboard and that more then doubled my CPU power. It now runs at approx. 60% of the power of a Ryzen 3 1200.
For the rest I use the computer for the normal web browsing, photo editing and some simple family video editing and to keep in contact with the family in the Netherlands and Belgium. I also play all my old LPs and CDs, recorded in wma long ago with Windows XP, while still living in Antwerp. I see a lot of YouTube videos, the computer handles 1080p, 720p and 480p. Mostly in the day I use 480p, since the bottleneck is the Mexican Internet provider, who for hours only provides 1/3 of the speed I pay for. My average CPU load with 480p in Chromium is below 20%, while the GeForce load is around 40%.
For details see the screenshot.
278091