PCem

Hi everyone. Just wanted to get a quick survey of the hardware people are running PCem on. Primarily I would like to know if anyone's running it on a CPU that doesn't support SSE2 (Athlon XP/Pentium III and earlier), however I think it would be useful to get an idea of what level of performance is available to most people.

My machines are :

Desktop:
Core i5-3550 (Ivy Bridge, 3.3-3.7 GHz)
4GB RAM
Windows 7

Laptop:
Core i3-3110M (Ivy Bridge, 2.3 GHz)
4GB RAM
Windows 8.1

Pentium Dual-core E5700 @ 3.0 GHz
4 GB RAM
Windows 7, but considering upgrade to Windows 10 1511 edition

Processor Information:
Intel Pentium E5300 @ 2.60GHz

Operating System Version:
Windows XP (32 bit)

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GT 240

Memory:
RAM: 3071 Mb

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3612QM
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro - (10.0.10240) 64Bit
8GB Of RAM

Desktop:
Intel Core i5-3570k @ 3.40GHz
16GB RAM
nVidia GeForce GTX650Ti
Windows XP (x64)

Laptop:
Intel Core i7-4700HQ @ 2.40GHz
8GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 840M
Windows 7 (x64)

Pentium G3258 (Haswell) @ 4.6Ghz
16GB RAM
Nvidia GT610
Windows 8.1 64 bit

This is my emulation machine. Most emulators run fantastic on this machine. (PCem, Mame, WinUAE, Dolphin)

Pentium Dual-Core E5700 (3 GHz)
4 GB RAM
Windows 10 version 1511 (64-bit)

AMD E-350 Fusion (1.6 GHz)
2 GB RAM
Windows 10 RTM (64-bit)

Celeron 420 (1.6 GHz)
1 GB RAM
Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)

Xeon E5-1620 (quad-core, 3.6GHz, Sandy Bridge-EP)
32GB RAM
Windows 10 x64

IMHO, there's no point keeping support for anything that doesn't have at least SSE2 - such computers are over 10 years old, and aren't even useable for web browsing (anything webkit/blink-based won't even run).

AMD FX-4300 Quad Core processor
8 GB DDR3 RAM (32 GB DDR3 maximum)
Windows Vista SP2 (64-bit)

This is the machine that I use to emulate other PCs. Right now, Windows Vista SP2 is the absolute minimum supported OS set by Microsoft. Windows Server 2003 went out of support earlier this year.

ender wrote:Xeon E5-1620 (quad-core, 3.6GHz, Sandy Bridge-EP)
32GB RAM
Windows 10 x64

IMHO, there's no point keeping support for anything that doesn't have at least SSE2 - such computers are over 10 years old, and aren't even useable for web browsing (anything webkit/blink-based won't even run).

Not quite 100% true. I used my old PC until the end of February 2014 and it did have a 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 processor with SSE2 support. The PC was upgraded way back in January 2003; memory was upgraded three times from 128 MB to 512 MB, 1.5 GB and then 2 GB respectively. In the end, the old PC was quite usable for web browsing until the very end.

ender wrote: and aren't even usable for web browsing (anything webkit/blink-based won't even run).

Not really true. I still go online now and then with my PII 400mhz Win98se machine, and hardly notice any problems, My friend still uses his a500 for casual web surfing.

ppgrainbow wrote:Not quite 100% true. I used my old PC until the end of February 2014 and it did have a 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 processor with SSE2 support.

He was referring to Athlons up to the Athlon64 (~2005) which can't handle Google Chrome and which are out of the range for PCem to emulate a fast machine in anyway. Pentium 4's always had SSE2 from their disasterous 2000 launch. Browsers are fine for these if you don't tab it up or flash it up and don't run into ajax-creep pages. Emulating PentiumMMX 166s with AWE32 and 3dfx cards are not.

Currently the only SSE code in PCem is in the sid player afaik, and I wouldn't mind it if it suddenly started requiring SSE2 for hand-tuned intrinsics and optimization reasons.

Not a lot of people appear to run on hyperthreading machines...

Here's my machine:

Desktop:
Intel Core i7-4790k (Haswell, 4 GHz)
16GB RAM
Windows 8 x64

Laptop:
Intel Centrino Duo (unknown model)
2GB RAM
Windows 7 x64

Desktop:
Intel Core i3 2100@3.1GHz
6GB Ram
1TB HDD
Radeon R7 240 4GB DDR3

Laptop(Under repair)
Intel Core i5 4200U@1.7-2.7GHz
8GB Ram
1TB HDD
Nvidia Geforce 840M

commander_keen wrote:Not a lot of people appear to run on hyperthreading machines...

Both of my CPUs are hyperthreaded

leilei wrote:

ppgrainbow wrote:Not quite 100% true. I used my old PC until the end of February 2014 and it did have a 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 processor with SSE2 support.

He was referring to Athlons up to the Athlon64 (~2005) which can't handle Google Chrome and which are out of the range for PCem to emulate a fast machine in anyway. Pentium 4's always had SSE2 from their disasterous 2000 launch. Browsers are fine for these if you don't tab it up or flash it up and don't run into ajax-creep pages. Emulating PentiumMMX 166s with AWE32 and 3dfx cards are not.

Currently the only SSE code in PCem is in the sid player afaik, and I wouldn't mind it if it suddenly started requiring SSE2 for hand-tuned intrinsics and optimization reasons.

Thank you for telling me. Why were Pentium 4 based-PCs a disaster in their late 2000 launch?

As for requiring SSE2 support, I wouldn't mind too. The AMD Athlon 64 has SSE2 instructions. AMD Athlon XP does not.

And now since vendors are slowly starting to require Windows 7 in their newer products, they're starting to require a dual-core processor with SSE3 support also.

Pentium 4 didn't have as good cycles-per-clock as Pentium III or the Athlon Thunderbird. There was a lot of reluctancy for the first Willamettes, and Intel wanted to have a GHz marketing race. There's also all those rambus issues.

I do have a P4 Willamette w/ RDRAM intentionally rebuilt as a period piece (Geforce2, WinME, PCI128, etc) that could work as the slowest SSE2 machine for this survey

My hosts:
Dell inspiron 5420, Intel i3-3110M 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM running Windows 7 an 10
ThinkPad T42, Pentium M 1.7GHz, 2G RAM, running Windows XP and OS X Leopard(Hackintosh).
Both support SSE 2.

My Machine:
Core i7 4790k
16gb Ram
Windows 10 x64

Core i3 3210 at 3.2 GHz
4 GBs of RAM
ATI Radeon R5 240
Dual-booting WIndows 10 x64 and latest Arch Linux.

My machine is:

AMD FX-8320 8-Core
8GB RAM
Windows 10 64-bit

Battler wrote:Windows 7, but considering upgrade to Windows 10 1511 edition

Do it man, you wont regret it. Plus the boot time will be considerably shorter.

3570K @ 4.0GHz
8GB RAM
Debian stable 64-bit (main/contrib only, no non-free)

Runs PCem 10.1 perfectly until I get into higher performance Pentiums (even with dynarec)

It makes no sense to run a PC emulator on such old machines(pre-Pentium 4). I have a Toshiba SS 2000 laptop which was powered by Tualatin Pentium III 750MHz. The CPU speed is 40% or so when emulating PC XT 4.77.

AMD Phenom II X4 965
8 Gb RAM
NVidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti
Asus Xonar DX
Windows 10 64 Bit / Debian testing 64 bit

Core i7 4770k @ 3.50 GHz
16GB RAM
AMD Radeon R9 270x Graphics Card
Windows 10 Home

AMD A10-5800K (Trinity, without turbo boost and cool n quiet, operates@3.8ghz)
16GB RAM
Integrated 7660D(Assigned memory : 2GB)
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Okay, so it looks like I can probably rely on SSE2 being available then...

These are the machines that I have configured PCem on.

main video editing computer - intel i7 2600, 16gb ram, nvidia gtx760, win10 64
home theater gaming pc - amd a10 5700, 8gb ram, r9 290, win10 64
main gaming rig - intel i7 4790k, 16gb ram, r9 290, win10 64
convertible tablet - intel i5 3317u, 4gb ram, intel intergrated, Win10 64

Intel core i5-6600k overclocked to 4.5 Ghz
8 GB of RAM
Windows 7

3.4Ghz Intel Core i7
16MB
1GB nVIDIA GeForce 675MX
OS X 10.10 (running PCem through Wine)

I don't plan to run this program on any computers I have that lack SSE3 even. Almost say in a couple more years you could start optimizing for SSE3. I do not have anything that is SSSE3 capable though. Well one i5 system that does not work but other than that lol.

My two main PCs right now are a Phenom II and a Athlon II based system nothing else as I said above do I plan to use this program on. In the next couple years time I plan to have a new Laptop and Desktop so at that point not likely to be using these other two systems for much of anything including this program.

Really looking forward to having a single system that can play everything PC. Thank you for your service and helping me towards a future in which I am not swapping out caps on my old motherboards to relive my childhood.