Windows 8 on old PCs?

[lifeblood]

While Its no secret I hate Windows 8 on the desktop, I'm wondering if this cloud has a silver lining. I have a number of older PCs that are still in excellent working order. They are Athlon 64 X2, Pentium D, etc. While they would probably need a larger harddrive, I assume everything else including the DX9 (or higher) video cards would be good enough to run Win 8. I make this assumption as they are gutting windows so it runs well on low end tablet CPUs. Anybody have any experience with this? How are the apps going to run? Would Office 2013 run well on an old PC? IE?

Unfortunitly I know a bunch of people who are becoming or are recently divorced and need a PC for school/work, or worse yet, to look for work. This could be beneficial to them.

 

[JackMDS]

I have an Athlon x64 3200 + 4GB RAM on a 939 platform (an old trusted ABIT K8N).

It works very well on it.

 

[darkewaffle]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/RAMorexic-Windows-8-Runs-on-64MB-of-Memory-226418.shtml

Old story and using an old build of Win8, but still it booted on VMs run with as little as 64MB and 128MB of RAM. I think you should be fine, I don't know about what kind of HD space it needs off hand though.

 

[pauldun170]

Windows 8 has some proc requirements. Proc can't be too old
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57446558-75/what-to-do-if-windows-8-release-preview-wont-install/

 

[lxskllr]

GNU/Linux would work perfectly, and depending on distro, you could have a decent experience on a P3.

 

[Dominato3r]

I'd definitely put it on some Vista machines, it runs really light.

 

[Kristijonas]

Windows 8 has some proc requirements. Proc can't be too old
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57446558-75/what-to-do-if-windows-8-release-preview-wont-install/

Tried installing 32bit version of win8 RP on pentium 4 machine and it said windows 8 doesn't support this cpu ?

 

[lxskllr]

Tried installing 32bit version of win8 RP on pentium 4 machine and it said windows 8 doesn't support this cpu ?

You sure it was 32bit media, and not 64? I'd be very surprised if it didn't work on a P4.

 

[Kristijonas]

Win 8 was 32bit, yup.

 

[MrMuppet]

They are Athlon 64 X2

Why don't you just run Windows 7 on your old X2? Imo it runs no worse than XP on mine.

 

[mentalcase222]

can i isntall it on DELL corei3 ?

 

[shadow_k]

You sure it was 32bit media, and not 64? I'd be very surprised if it didn't work on a P4.

just installed it on my old p4 3ghz HT it works. i remember old AMD cpu that could not install vista or any newer OS maybe you have 2ghz lower

 

[lifeblood]

Why don't you just run Windows 7 on your old X2? Imo it runs no worse than XP on mine.

I think I raided that one for most of its RAM and left it with only 1Gb. Win7 would run on it but it probably wouldn't be happy.

 

[lifeblood]

GNU/Linux would work perfectly, and depending on distro, you could have a decent experience on a P3.

While I use and love Linux the people I'm thinking of giving these things to would probably melt at the mere mention of Linux. They would also probably want to run Windows only apps on them (games, etc).

 

[pauldun170]

just installed it on my old p4 3ghz HT it works. i remember old AMD cpu that could not install vista or any newer OS maybe you have 2ghz lower

What exact core is it?
Northwood - Last time I checked, Northwood isn't compatible with Win8.
Prescott - Should run Windows8 fine.

 

[lxskllr]

While I use and love Linux the people I'm thinking of giving these things to would probably melt at the mere mention of Linux. They would also probably want to run Windows only apps on them (games, etc).

You're the ultimate judge based on the people/equipment available, but a lot of it comes down to 'beggars can't be choosers'. Any computer is better than no computer. I'd rather have a machine that ran Win98 than no machine at all.

 

[Cerb]

GNU/Linux would work perfectly, and depending on distro, you could have a decent experience on a P3.

...as long as you could find RAM, and avoid flash. I finally got to the point of ditching my P3 1.13 a few months ago, when its fan failed, because it's just too obsolete, today. An Atom, with a modern GPU and cheap RAM, is far superior, even as a light use machine, with a light desktop and light apps. All the cool new stuff comes with a price.

Now, a faster Athlon XP or P4 can still be OK, for a light use PC with patient users, even with flash and such, and many of them will run many a Linux flavor, or Windows 7 (not sure about 8) just fine, with 1-2GB RAM.

 

[jjsbasmt]

For testing purposes, I'm running Win 8 X86 on a P4 3GHz Socket 478 w/1 Mb L2 and 4 GB RAM with no issues.

 

[piasabird]

I had an intel mb with an E7200 and integrated video and windows 8 ran fast but the flash video does not work right. Win 8 also has some mim resolution issues. I would recommend Video card with 1080p. I went back to Vista for now.

 

[CKTurbo128]

Basically, with the processor requirements that Microsoft is imposing with Windows 8 (Physical Address Extension (PAE), NX Bit, and SSE2), that essentially means that the minimum requirements from both vendors are:

AMD : AMD Athlon 64 (Starting from Q4 2003)
Intel: Pentium 4 Prescott (Starting from Q1 2004)

So Athlon T-Bird/XP (no NX, SSE2), Pentium III (no NX, SSE2), and Pentium 4 Willamette/Northwood (no NX) are out, in terms of upgrading to Windows 8. Windows 7 and Linux distros are still an option for systems with these older processors.

 

[lamedude]

The WDDM driver requirement also means PCs using GMA900 or older won't run it so a few Prescott and Dothan PCs are out.

 

[gmaster456]

The WDDM driver requirement also means PCs using GMA900 or older won't run it so a few Prescott and Dothan PCs are out.

Wouldn't a cheap video card fix that?

 

[lxskllr]

Wouldn't a cheap video card fix that?

Not on laptops.

 

[danzigrules]

GNU/Linux would work perfectly, and depending on distro, you could have a decent experience on a P3.

I have yet to find a distro that would work well on a p4 with 512meg of ram

 

[Cerb]

I have yet to find a distro that would work well on a p4 with 512meg of ram

Tried any that use LXDE? KDE 4 and Gnome 3 are RAM pigs just like Windows and OS X, but LXDE is nice and light, and gives about the same functionality as a classic (95 to 2000) Windows taskbar. I've found LXDE, and/or XFCE, using any of Xfwm, Metacity, Kwin, or Openbox; or E17, or Compiz (w/ no DE), on a much lesser computer (Pentium 3 1.13GHz, Supersavage w/ 8MB, 384MB RAM).

Browsing blogs, any major company's website, or Youtube, however, will eat up the RAM like nobody's business, even if you skimp on what the base GUI uses, regardless of browser.

I would start by trying Lubuntu.