Question AMD Turion X2 64

[samuel1]

I have refurbished an HP TX2500. Upgraded it to an SSD and managed to get Windows10 installed and all drivers working. In monitoring the hardware activity closely, I can see that the main bottleneck is the CPU (and also very likely the GPU).

Typically with these older system, it is the HDD. So, I was sure to replace that. Even though the bus doesn't fully support the maximum transfer rates of the SSD. Benchmarks show it can only do about 135MB/s. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to be much of a bottleneck at all.

I find this quite surprising as the AMD Turion X64 has well about 250 million transistors and it's dual-core. How can it be that such an advanced processor can exhibit slowness? All the simple stuff, such as not having enough RAM has already been accounted for. In general, I am asking out of a general curiosity given how remarkably advanced the processor is -- what exactly can be causing such slowness? What is it that the OS could be doing that results in delays that are not seen in faster systems?

Moreover, isn't the RAM, even though DDR2, also very fast? Transcend-Info reports it's between 4 and 6 GB/s. That should surely be fast enough for any standard Windows behavior such as opening and closing Explorer windows, and/or opening Google Chrome.

The system is mostly usable for "simple" tasks, such as writing this forum post -- but when loading large web pages it lags quite a bit and I find that surprising, given the above.

What are your thoughts?

 

[jpiniero]

What year is it?

 

[Markfw]

You have not been reading much in the last 11 years since you joined. The slowest desktop CPU has 6 cores/12 threads, and runs at about 5.1 ghz max. It has 6.57 BILLION transistors. (AMD 7600, there could be other slower ones)

That Turion is just too old.

 

[burninatortech4]

I have refurbished an HP TX2500. Upgraded it to an SSD and managed to get Windows10 installed and all drivers working. In monitoring the hardware activity closely, I can see that the main bottleneck is the CPU (and also very likely the GPU).

Typically with these older system, it is the HDD. So, I was sure to replace that. Even though the bus doesn't fully support the maximum transfer rates of the SSD. Benchmarks show it can only do about 135MB/s. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to be much of a bottleneck at all.

I find this quite surprising as the AMD Turion X64 has well about 250 million transistors and it's dual-core. How can it be that such an advanced processor can exhibit slowness? All the simple stuff, such as not having enough RAM has already been accounted for. In general, I am asking out of a general curiosity given how remarkably advanced the processor is -- what exactly can be causing such slowness? What is it that the OS could be doing that results in delays that are not seen in faster systems?

Moreover, isn't the RAM, even though DDR2, also very fast? Transcend-Info reports it's between 4 and 6 GB/s. That should surely be fast enough for any standard Windows behavior such as opening and closing Explorer windows, and/or opening Google Chrome.

The system is mostly usable for "simple" tasks, such as writing this forum post -- but when loading large web pages it lags quite a bit and I find that surprising, given the above.

What are your thoughts?

Hardware and software is a moving target. The Turion is far too slow for almost any modern software. Just because you can launch something doesn't mean it's usable in 2023.

 

[gdansk]

Out of curiosity here's the tx2500's ZM-80 compared to a recent laptop that was going for under $300 around Black Friday:

Acer Aspire A315-24P vs Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion tx2500 Notebook PC - Geekbench

If you really want to use it then it's probably best to put some lightweight Linux distribution on it and see if that helps at all. But it won't suddenly make the modern web usable.

 

[Abwx]

Out of curiosity here's the tx2500's ZM-80 compared to a recent laptop that was going for under $300 around Black Friday:

Acer Aspire A315-24P vs Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion tx2500 Notebook PC - Geekbench

If you really want to use it then it's probably best to put some lightweight Linux distribution on it and see if that helps at all. But it won't suddenly make the modern web usable.

The AES test heavily bias the comparison...
Those CPUs were running under Windows 7 IIRC, with this OS they should still work more or less for basic usage, GPU drivers should be updated to the last version for acceleration in common videos.

 

[qmech]

Moreover, isn't the RAM, even though DDR2, also very fast? Transcend-Info reports it's between 4 and 6 GB/s. That should surely be fast enough for any standard Windows behavior such as opening and closing Explorer windows, and/or opening Google Chrome.

The system is mostly usable for "simple" tasks, such as writing this forum post -- but when loading large web pages it lags quite a bit and I find that surprising, given the above.

What are your thoughts?

I use a variety of old laptops from time to time and until recently one of those was a Core2 Duo (basically the Intel equivalent of your CPU). Windows is a pain on that (as it was when it was new, to be honest), but even though Linux runs much smother, web browsing is still not an enjoyable experience.

The main issue is that hardware decoding of video streams often isn't supported and when half the ads out there are video-based (often even if they don't look like it), the resultant load on the CPU trying to decode multiple streams just makes for a horrible experience.

What graphics hardware does it have and is it running properly? Can it do the decoding and is it?

Even when video streams are not an issue, other bottlenecks related to the CPU can arise. Poorly optimized XML parsing is one that I noticed quite a bit.

 

[Hans Gruber]

The OP is a sleeper account. This post was the first for the account since 2013.

 

[mikeymikec]

I find this quite surprising as the AMD Turion X64 has well about 250 million transistors

It's not the number of transistors but what you do with them.

 

[Charlie22911]

The OP is a sleeper account. This post was the first for the account since 2013.

Someone say sleeper account?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

The OP is a sleeper account. This post was the first for the account since 2013.

-Are you suggesting we are going to hear some radical political ideas from OP on ATPN before too long?

 

[gdansk]

The AES test heavily bias the comparison...
Those CPUs were running under Windows 7 IIRC, with this OS they should still work more or less for basic usage, GPU drivers should be updated to the last version for acceleration in common videos.

Normally, it is useless comparison: AES beyond a certain level doesn't deliver a better user experience. But this CPU is so slow it actually matters. When all modern HTTPS traffic uses TLS then merely decrypting 100mbps traffic will use about 10% of both cores...

Plus GB5 uses weighted geomean so that these results AES results aren't too impactful.

 

[Abwx]

Normally, it is useless comparison: AES beyond a certain level doesn't deliver a better user experience. But this CPU is so slow it actually matters. When all modern HTTPS traffic uses TLS then merely decrypting 100mbps traffic will use about 10% of both cores...

Plus GB5 uses weighted geomean so that these results AES results aren't too impactful.

Traffic speed is hardly 100Mbps, look at smarthones networks like speeds, we re talking of a handfull Mbps, and once a page is loaded there wont be much more coming comparatively to the first burst, a 2GHz 2C/2T is still enough for basic usage, what is important is to have the GPU drivers updated.

I once had a 2GHz C2D laptop and it worked well till 2018 when it litterally bursted in smoke due to VRMs and nearby circuitries failing.

 

[gdansk]

It's adding latency to every request that when the machine was built was not really there. Proliferation of TLS is good but it has a cost when the machine only handles it at 60MB/s.

Web adds more JavaScript every year. Now TLS is ubiquitous. An old system can be tolerable for some now and even have been good when it launched. But the OP's text suggest he's a bit disappointed with its performance so once again I find the GB score reflects reality here. Despite AES being removed in GB6, it is relevant for old machines.

 

[igor_kavinski]

When I built my 12700K, naturally it was more out of wanting to experiment with different stuff than actually needing it for everyday use. One of the things I tested was how powerful the core itself is. That is, the Alder Lake core. Guess what happened when I tried to run Windows 11 with only one P-core?

It didn't finish getting to the desktop after 10 minutes!

Adding one extra core helped but getting to the desktop was still painfully slow.

It's not the core that's the problem. Modern Windows is just too bloated.

You are gonna have better performance running the following:

Windows 7
Windows 8.1
Windows XP (if you really want to run something that old)
Windows 2000 (don't tell me that's acceptable to you!)

Any light Linux distro

You could also try your luck with this: http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/anyone-tried-out-a-tiny11-build.2611035/

 

[Brainonska511]

A 15 year old laptop running AMD's first generation mobile dual core processor? I think you could be expecting too much.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have refurbished an HP TX2500. Upgraded it to an SSD and managed to get Windows10 installed and all drivers working. In monitoring the hardware activity closely, I can see that the main bottleneck is the CPU (and also very likely the GPU).

Windows 10? Well, there is your problem. Windows Update absolutely kills older CPUs. You could try a lightweight Linux distribution, but I wouldn't expect too much. Which leads to;

I find this quite surprising as the AMD Turion X64 has well about 250 million transistors and it's dual-core. How can it be that such an advanced processor can exhibit slowness? All the simple stuff, such as not having enough RAM has already been accounted for. In general, I am asking out of a general curiosity given how remarkably advanced the processor is -- what exactly can be causing such slowness? What is it that the OS could be doing that results in delays that are not seen in faster systems?

As others have pointed out, a Turion X64 isn't exactly state of the art. It's based on AMDs K8 core, which was the first gen x64 CPU around. It's basically a 20 year old design at this point. Literally, K8 launched in 2003.

I remember working (not my own) on a Athlon Neo L325 (which is very similar to a Turion X64, with a better IGP) back in the day. Wasn't exactly fast back then either (2009'ish).