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Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?

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752 points dceddia | 4 comments | 23 Jun 23 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.707s | source
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Aloha ◴[23 Jun 23 14:43 UTC] No.36447476[source]▶
Well of course it does.

WinNT 3.51 was released in 1995 - the fastest PC in 1995 was either a Pentium or Pentium Pro at ~100 MHz - in 2000 a 600 MHz machine is likely a Coppermine PIII.

A fairly common amount of RAM in 1995 to Run WinNT would have been around 32 megs of ram, 64 megs would be especially generous. 128 megs is a high end workstation amount of memory.

The ATA interface also doubled in performance between 1995 and 2000.

There were significant security and stability improvements between NT 3.51 and Windows 2000 - particularly with changes to the driver model that increased stability. (even more so between 2000 and Windows 10/11)

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madars ◴[23 Jun 23 14:46 UTC] No.36447527[source]▶
That's right, Windows 95 on a 600 MHz machine would be even snappier. However, later down the thread the author demonstrates Windows 2000:

>For those thinking that the comparison was unfair, here is Windows 2000 on the same 600MHz machine. Both are from the same year, 1999. Note how the immediacy is still exactly the same and hadn’t been ruined yet.

https://twitter.com/jmmv/status/1672073678102872065

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1. grork ◴[23 Jun 23 14:58 UTC] No.36447717[source]▶
As someone who was hardcore into Windows around that time, all my memory has is waiting desperately for windows to open & apps to load. I remember watching the left-side of explorer paint before the icons came in, and how the icons would paint in order; some days you’d see black squares paint, then the icon. This was running on some dual-socket, 192mb, 7200rpm spinning disk - it wasn’t a slouch.

I also struggle with the comparison between high-end hardware of yesteryear, and low end hardware of today and comparing.

Try running win2k in 16mb, 300mhz P2, and a 4800rpm drive.

The only times I remember experiencing things this fast in my computing career were (a) with a fair wind, and a fully warmed cache that didn’t hit the disk & was a trivial app (b) the first time I used my Apple M1 Max MBP.

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2. codeflo ◴[23 Jun 23 16:01 UTC] No.36448723[source]▶
Then don’t dodge the question and tell me the specs of the high-end computer that makes modern Windows that snappy. Because I have a fairly ridiculous machine as my main workstation, and I still wait way longer for stuff to load than I used to.
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3. Aloha ◴[23 Jun 23 17:42 UTC] No.36450001[source]▶
Core i5 or i7, 16-32gb of RAM, a NVME SSD
4. ajolly ◴[24 Jun 23 16:20 UTC] No.36460005[source]▶
Single thread performance. My 13900k opens most things instantly, and it's a noticeable difference compared to even a 12900KS