SSE2 poll - need to find out who has a really old CPU

[Rachael]

My theory is there really is no pre-SSE2 CPU that can run GZDoom at acceptable speeds, these days, at least not on a modern operating system.

Maybe if you're really scrapping you might find a 233 MHz with Windows XP that'll run it... but will it even run at more than 15 FPS?

[wildweasel]

My theory is there really is no pre-SSE2 CPU that can run GZDoom at acceptable speeds, these days, at least not on a modern operating system.

Maybe if you're really scrapping you might find a 233 MHz with Windows XP that'll run it... but will it even run at more than 15 FPS?

Back in the days of, if I remember right, ZDoom 2.3.1, my only portable system was a 600 Mhz Pentium 3 running Windows XP. It was sluggish at best, but I was somehow able to run ZDoom at 400x300 (512x384 if I was lucky) with old, in-progress builds of wwhc-diaz, averaging between 15 and 25 FPS on most maps. Nashgore utterly murderized the frame rate at that point, but hey, Doom (with my own mod) on the go. I eventually moved up to a netbook, a 1.6 GHz Atom single-core, which I'm reasonably sure at least supports SSE2. The old laptop now serves Windows 98 compatibility duty, so it doesn't even have an internet connection, let alone am I going to try to run Doom on it.

[Enjay]

My theory is there really is no pre-SSE2 CPU that can run GZDoom at acceptable speeds, these days, at least not on a modern operating system.

I think you're probably right. I'd be surprised if a machine of the kind of age we are talking about could run a present-day build of *ZDoom at an acceptable rate, certainly not with anything but the simplest of mods loaded, and that's even before you take the OS into consideration.

OS-wise, other than for the oddity of trying out of curiosity, there can't be many (any?) people regularly using a machine of that kind of age using Win 8 onwards (perhaps even Win 7 onwards). I've seen a few videos of people getting win 10 to run on very old machines but even there the oldest machines tend to be from about 2005 and would have been the ones that were pretty quick at that time.

[Graf Zahl]

My theory is there really is no pre-SSE2 CPU that can run GZDoom at acceptable speeds, these days, at least not on a modern operating system.

Maybe if you're really scrapping you might find a 233 MHz with Windows XP that'll run it... but will it even run at more than 15 FPS?

Again, you are soiely thinking about the Intel side of things. I fully agree, there is no point to consider these CPUs worthy of continued support.
But the Athlon XP was anything but a sluggish dinosaur, it got to clock frequencies of 1.5 GHz and more - and did not have SSE2!

On the other hand, seeing the mess dpJudas created for trying to make it compatible I'd rather call it a day and leave it as it is, I don't want to see the code polluted by too much garbage that's only needed for obsolete hardware.

I always said I have no problems cutting the slack if it causes too many issues. This seems to be the case here. Time to move forward.

[Graf Zahl]

OS-wise, other than for the oddity of trying out of curiosity, there can't be many (any?) people regularly using a machine of that kind of age using Win 8 onwards (perhaps even Win 7 onwards). I've seen a few videos of people getting win 10 to run on very old machines but even there the oldest machines tend to be from about 2005 and would have been the ones that were pretty quick at that time.

Windows 8 and up do not work on non-SSE2 systems. Windows 7 is old enough to still do.

[Rachael]

But the Athlon XP was anything but a sluggish dinosaur, it got to clock frequencies of 1.5 GHz and more - and did not have SSE2!

Huh. I did not know that.

On the other hand, seeing the mess dpJudas created for trying to make it compatible I'd rather call it a day and leave it as it is, I don't want to see the code polluted by too much garbage that's only needed for obsolete hardware.

I don't like being the mean person here but that seems to be the case with any developer, even you sometimes. I understand how frustrating it can be to have untested code in the master branch but it happens all the time. Calling it "garbage" is really bad for dev-to-dev relations here, and can only end badly. You don't want dpJudas to up and disappear like MaxED did, do you? Saying things like this is a surefire way to make that happen. I get your penchant for being blunt, but sometimes the words you choose cut to the quip. I really implore you to be a little more careful about that in the future.

[wildweasel]

[...] the mess dpJudas created [...] I don't want to see the code polluted by too much garbage [...]

However strong your convictions might be, I really feel like this isn't the way to phrase them. I don't want to go "moral crusader" on you (again), but for as much as you've done for the project, I feel like there's a lot still to be done in the realms of respect and politeness.

[Graf Zahl]

I meant 'mess' more in the sense of adding redundant checks, and complicating the whole thing in a way that only leads to more errors in the future. And that's not worth it for some 13+ year old hardware. Fixing that would only have made the code even uglier than it was after adding the checks.

[wildweasel]

Well, again, however true that might be from your viewpoint, it'd be wise to consider the words you're using and the way you're phrasing things. It'd be better to teach the "new generation" (so to speak) how things ought to be done, as calmly and politely as possible, than it'd be to call their work "garbage" and claim it's "polluting" the project.

[ibm5155]

I have some really old, but I don't run G/Q/Zdoom on it.
But since even a Celeron 1,6GHz from 2006 cannot even play most zandronum mods being played with good fps, so why not.
And if G/Q/Zdoom doesn't support Windows xp, so there's no need for supporting that kind of old cpus.

[Rachael]

Windows XP support hasn't been pulled yet. It may or may not happen with the removal of DirectDraw, but since XP can still support D3D9 that's not an issue. What may be the final nail in XP's coffin is when Graf decides that the extra packages required to build with v140_xp are no longer worth it and removes that support.

If you are using XP or Vista today, you are treading very dangerous territory anyway. Those OS's are no longer supported and if for any reason your machine does not support 7 or later, or you simply do not want to buy an upgrade for Windows, you should at the very least look into alternatives (Ubuntu 16.04 is very easy to use and very light on resources, and will still run a decent portion of games that were possible on XP)

[Graf Zahl]

I think the time for dumping XP will come when the lastest Visual Studio drops the XP toolset, because that will be the official confirmation that the market no longer requires it.
Another scenario may be that some external dependency no longer works on XP, but that seems a bit unlikely with what GZDoom requires right now.

Nevertheless, it's somewhat baffling how many of these old machines are still around and their users actually expecting that new software still works. On the other hand, Microsoft brought this mess upon themselves by requiring users to pay for an upgrade. I'd guess that it would have been cheaper in the long term to allow cost-free updates for everyone and then quickly dropping support for the old OS. Sure, they may have lost some income, but the maintenance of these old OSs also costs a lot of money.
And even with Windows 10 they still did a half-assed job. I am using Windows 8.1 Professional, which was never offered a free Win 10 upgrade.

[Rachael]

You aren't missing much with Windows 10. In fact, the only reason I still use it today is because getting Linux to work with UEFI and Safe Boot is a royal pain in the ass - and also because the majority of my games and apps still require it. I think sometime within the last month or two - without those barriers to changing the OS - I would have done so. I've grown sick and tired of Microsoft's fuckery and am ready to call it quits on that.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

and also because the majority of my games and apps still require it

I assume you've looked into WINE compatibility for the programs in question? It's pretty good these days in my experience.

[wildweasel]

and also because the majority of my games and apps still require it

I assume you've looked into WINE compatibility for the programs in question? It's pretty good these days in my experience.

I've had quite the opposite experience. PopCap games and anything Blizzard tend to work okay just because those are the things most focused on, but there are quite a lot of games I've played that had unexpected behavior, graphical glitches, or sometimes even locked up the machine. About the only thing I've ever had work absolutely perfect was Soldier of Fortune, and that even required some tweaks.