Why in the world: a Core Duo | NOT A CORE 2

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I will soon have a couple macs, or will otherwise buy one. I have been curious as to what the hell can even be done with a dual core 32 bit CPU such as the core duo and its pentium counterparts so I will list what I know here for now until I have the hardware itself to fiddle with.

The Core Duo was Intel's response to AMD and their Turion and Turion 64 laptop parts. Though ultimately a failure outside of apple, the chip itself isn't all that bad. Compared to a Turion the thing is absolutely awful but it has its benefits. As it is 32 bit it can only address 4 GB of ram, max. At least potentially. I doubt that I will end up with 4 as 2 is a lot easier for me to get.

The chip itself is low power enough that the battery of any laptop holding it, if still new-ish, would last 2 hours nowadays, though when new a battery could last 4-6 depending on usage. In OSX you won't fing much love as the chip was canned almost immediately after adoption. 10.6.8 is the most recent OS on the mac side. For windows it will be fine and in linux it will probably be a great code machine.

Again, until I get my hands on the machines in question I don't have too much info. Though I will say that for around 60 bucks, a refurbed macbook with a core duo is still a nice machine.

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For a general purpose machine it's gonna suffice and I'm eager to read your future posts. Altho note that, at least on linux, you can't install any chromium derivative since 32-bit support was dropped eons ago, and if you're unlucky the hardware is outdated so much so you won't find any drivers.

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Oh shut up. I get chrome running on pentium 4's I doubt this will be difficult.

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Damn I guess my Sempron 2600+ workstation is an odd one out then

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No clue. Maybe I'm just using an older version too lol (38)

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32bit versions of the latest linux and windows OS still exist and have better hardware comparability then 64bit. not to mention 99% of software is still 32bit.

if the device has more then 4gb of ram. you can use ramdisk software to create a partition on the extra space. then use use it for a swap/paging file to get speeds way faster then any sata SSD can offer.

even the oldes weakest core duo supports Physical Address Extensions(PAE) according to cpu world which means ramdisk software will work.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_Duo/Intel-Core%20Duo%20T2050%20LF80539GE0252M%20%28BX80539T2050%29.html

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I didn't know I could even do swap in windows. I'm used to it being a native feature.

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the windows "page file" is a little nicer then linux swap since it's a file that can resize it self based on how much memory the software your using needs. more info here.

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only $60? Nice. I used a C2D in a 2009 MBP for a while to get me through school and, when using Linux at least, it ran very well and could even get 60fps on Minecraft if I turned down the settings. For $60, go for it!

I beg to differ (at the bottom)

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Well a user here has given me an offer that I can't refuse :P but for his sake I won't be naming him :3

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Not too shady I hope?

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If you look I bet you can figure out who it is but no :P I trust him.

Honestly if my Intel mac isn't a core 2 I don't think I'll mind too much :P a little hacking and 10.8 will be on there no probs. At that if I use a Core Duo it'll be the direct unit after my ibook O: drools

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They used Laptop CPUs at that time for heat reasons.

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Alas my memory failed me, it was a hardware issue, nothing to do with the architecture

IMG_20160520_062848.jpg2793x743 306 KB

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Seems that it is.

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I remembered earlier that I also use chrome on my 2005/6/7 ATOM N270 based netbook and its up to date.

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You can have a page file in Linux too, just FYI: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/swap#Swap_file

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I run surveillance software on mine and will sometimes do torrents on the machine.

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Sempron 26... Workstation? Semprons are AMD Celerons. They even have the same naming scheme!

Bleh whatever.

Hello weavels of the old hardware world, I have a Macbook now

And I was right with my old presumptions. Its basically a pentium laptop. However I will just be talking about basic usability today. I haven't gotten major things running yet. Dare I say I have only kept OSX on the thing I haven't gone to windows (mainly because I can't be asked to go out and look up GPT windows support).

So. 10.6.8. Specs. Bullshit akin.

Basic specs: Core Duo 32 Bit 1.83 GHZ
Intel GMA950
2 GB Ram 667 MHZ DDR2
Some sata 2 250 GB drive I had spare.

The machine is running 10.6.8. Its my first, technically, macbook ever. Sad thing is I love it because I can be in OSX and have not PPC and use chrome. If chrome was in PPC I wouldn't have this thing. Over all it runs smooth. I did have to replace the wifi card as it was stuck at 400 kbps downloads but now does 6 mbps with an imac wifi chip rather fine. I don't have a gpu measure other than Youtube and I am sad to say that because I can't get the newest browser in 10.6.8 anymore I can only do as well as my atom based netbook at 360p. Truthfully I don't mind. Its a work machine. It will render 720p but it will skip alot.

I have yet to try other OS's out. OSX is rather cumbersome and I am tempted to throw windows on it and make it play TF2 but thats a bit harsh I think :P

Boot, running, app loading on OSX, ETC

Boot time is awful on these the same as it was awful on the ibook's and powerbook's. The EFI chips run a full system scan to see that everything is there and then it pings the OSX Kernel and if everything is OK it moves on to the next thing. Running, the machine is great. Working on files is a great thing but the web browser thing is annoying. If anything the only thing that annoys me is that a pentium M laptop can traverse a google page 2000 times better than this can. Its iBook levels of abysmal. Loading an app is OK. Haven't had any crashes like I have seen reports of. The only thing that doesn't run is steam and thats a whatever thing. Not like I care that much about steam in OSX :P (its buggy and horrible anyways). Only thing I have left is to make benchmarks then do my next posts.

If you guys have benchmark suggestions let me know!

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Benchmarks, the Bog Standard, Basic Recommendations, And GAMING PERFORMANCE?!?!?!??!!!!!?!111!?@#!|!1!

OH GOD WHY IS IT GETTING BUMPED

So I have done my basic testing on this macbook now. For my own reasons I keep away from synthetic benchmarks like geekbench. I don't care about floating point or anf of that shit a number doesn't mean a load of fuck worth to me. SO, here's my basic low level benchmarks.

YOUTUBE:
360p - Check
480p - Check
720p - Check*
1080p - Not possible
4k - You wot m8

  • 720p is possible thanks to Roccat browesr ( runecats.com/roccat-browser-for-mac/ ) In OSX. In the last few weeks when I had time I have tested windows and linux on this and the following benchmarks and ONLY OSX has had the 720p benchmark hit the spot and ONLY thanks to Roccat. Roccat downloads the video and renders it locally. It also limits your video presets to your screen size, though if it would give me the 1080p option I am sure it would render it fine.

Perian Stream and ReImaging (used with the livestreamer command line tool and a twitch stream):
Medium - 30FPS - Check
Medium Inverted 30 FPS - Check
High - 30 FPS - Check
High Inverted - 30 FPS - Check
60 FPS streams were incompatible

Transmission - Ubuntu ISO:
Since my last post I swapped wifi chips back as it wasn't giving me better performance in the long run.
@460 Peers, 1.53 GB @ 2.26 mbps took 15-25 minutes.

LibreOffice force run test (open, when I am able I hold A and see at what points it lags and I check ram and CPU use/speed):
No Load - 600 MB / 2 GB Ram - No slowdown
55% Load - 1 GB Ram - Opening DMG's - No Bumps
90% Load - 1.8 GB Ram - Audio + Video - No Bumps
100% Load - 1.8 GB Ram - mcraft and music - No bumps
This impressed me. What this tests allows to show is what text looks like on render to screen, how the system will run if I am doing other things, if the app will crash, and how smooth it would be for me to be writing a paper or something or open a big doc if it causes errors or not. There were no crashes and no blurry text.

USB Transfer:
1.53 GB (ubuntu ISO) - 4 minutes
4 GB (OSX ISO) - 10 Minutes
24 7 MB TIFF Images - 34 Seconds
48 7 MB TIFF Images - 39 Seconds

ISO to DMG (OSX specific test)
3.48 GB Windows ISO - 14 Minutes Compile - 3 minute Verify

DMG to HDD Partition Restore ( OSX specific test )
3.48 GB (windows ISO) - 20 Minutes
1.53 GB (UBuntu ISO) - 8-9 Minutes
6.7 GB (OSX Lion Beta HDD Image) - 37 Minutes

Java: MOONCROOFT
12 FPS - 23 FPS (though I find 10 FPS to be fine in minecraft SP)
No crashes. FTB and Tekkit will not run though as there are too many mods.

CSS:
12 FPS AVG - 60 Skybox - 23 highest
No Wine - Windows Native (8)

TF2:
7 FPS AVG - 34 Skybox - 17 Highest
No Wine - Windows Native (8)

Deus Ex (1) Wine
13 FPS AVG - 140 Skybox - 20 AVG (unplayable)

Deus Ex (1) Native Windows
45-60 FPS AVG (depending on cpu load) - 140 Skybox - 100 Highest

(I should mention this I think)
Deun Ex(1) Wine (OSX)
60FPS all around - 140 skybox - 100 Highest
The problem here was the brightness of the game was turned down significantly and the entire color palette of the game was based in bronze so everything had a brown or a red to it. The game ran great but you can't see anything. I don't know what this is condusive to and I can only assume that Wine doesn't have access to the same OGL packages that are in linux to do d3d draw calls. Dunno how to fix this either...

BOOT:
OSX - 34 Seconds
Windows - 55 Seconds
Linux - 48 Seconds
The reason for the long boot times is that I use rEFIt as my OSX boot manager (can't have grub) and rEFIt has to talk to the EFI chip, the BOOTCAMP manager (to spoof it into thinking its doing what it is supposed to do) thats in OSX, and find the boot path for the OS. I don't know what an SSD would do for this as I don't have a spare handy.
These boot tests are on a 5400 RPM HDD, though in OS performance is not hindered by RPM.

I want it kept in mind these are my MINIMUM spec laptop benchmarks. I have a lot of them to determine specific uses and toolings for units. Very time consuming, not for everyone.

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