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By hellowalkman · Posted
Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware by Sayan Sen When Windows 11 was first released, one of the most complained-about issues with the new desktop Microsoft OS was its higher system requirements, which pushed many relatively modern and powerful processors and devices onto the officially unsupported list. Thankfully, they have not been updated again for the base OS, though systems require four times the memory and storage if they want to run AI-powered apps and features. As such, Windows 11 technically runs on 4GB of memory, and there is no imposed restriction on the generation of memory it supports. Speaking of memory, prices are extremely high nowadays for hardware, especially DDR5 and DDR4 kits due to the current silicon shortage, and there are also reports of it affecting DDR2 as well, and it might only be a matter of time before even DDR1 gets affected. Before that could happen, an enthusiast took an ancient DDR1-based system and decided to try out Windows 11 on it to see how well the modern OS would fare on such hardware. The system runs an outdated graphics card interface standard based on AGP, or Advanced Graphics Port, called AGP 3.0 or AGP8x. AGP was essentially succeeded by the modern PCI Express (PCIe) bus standard. The user behind the experiment is retro hardware enthusiast Omores, who built the system around an ASRock ConRoe865PE motherboard based on Intel's i865PE chipset from way back in 2003, around the time when AGP was still in fashion. What made this board special back in the day was its unusual support for newer Core 2 Duo and even Core 2 Quad processors while still retaining older DDR1 memory support and an AGP8X graphics slot, making it an ideal bridge or link between two vastly different generations. Powering the machine was Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 alongside 3GB of DDR1 RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card, one of the final and most capable GPUs released for the aging AGP interface. While installing Windows 11 itself was relatively easy by bypassing Microsoft's hardware checks, getting the graphics card fully functional proved to be some challenge. Microsoft had quietly dropped native AGP support after the earliest releases of Windows 10, meaning newer versions of Windows no longer include the necessary Graphics Address Remapping Table (GART) drivers required for proper AGP acceleration. Without them, AGP graphics cards typically boot up, though with limited functionality, and can often throw a Code 43 error in Device Manager. To work around the limitation, Omores extracted Intel's legacy AGP440 SYS driver from an early Windows 10 release and paired it with a modified INF file so Windows 11 would correctly recognize the chipset. Following this and combined with AMD's final 64-bit Catalyst AGP drivers from 2012, the Radeon HD 4650 was able to operate with full AGP 8X acceleration intact. The result was said to be surprisingly usable for hardware that is over two decades old. Hardware-accelerated H.264 video playback worked correctly and benefited apps like Firefox, while legacy applications and games ran without major graphical issues. The system also successfully completed the 3DMark 2001 benchmark, although performance naturally lagged behind what the same hardware achieves under Windows 7, which is significantly lighter than Windows 11. There was, however, one unavoidable limitation as Microsoft's Windows 11 version 24H2 introduces a mandatory SSE4.2 CPU instruction requirement that cannot be bypassed through installer modifications or registry tweaks. Since no AGP-era processor supports SSE4.2, Windows 11 version 23H2 effectively becomes the final release capable of running on such systems. Regardless, it is still a very cool feat and quite fascinating to see just how stable Windows 11 turned out to be on such unfamiliar hardware. Source: Omores (Patreon) via O_MORES (Reddit) -
By +Good Bot, Bad Bot · Posted
That will only really help other players that are also responsible for creating the problem. -
By Nick H. · Posted
Well, it's good to know that they have found a workaround to a problem that they helped create, I guess... -
By Ivan Jenic · Posted
Meta is reusing old DDR4 RAM in its servers instead of buying new hardware by Ivan Jenic Image: Meta The global hardware shortage isn’t exactly news, as the entire world has been struggling with rising component prices for quite some time now. And while big companies certainly aren’t as affected as the average consumer, even they aren’t opposed to the idea of saving a few (million) bucks. Meta appears to have found a way to spend less on new hardware while also putting its outdated infrastructure to use, essentially killing two birds with one stone. The company has built a custom chip that lets it reuse memory from retired servers rather than buying new hardware. The chip is called Vistara and allows for connecting old DDR4 RAM from obsolete servers into new servers that rely on DDR5. The problem Vistara solves goes back to a basic mismatch in how long hardware lasts. Meta replaces its servers every three to five years, but the memory modules inside them are good for seven to ten. When a server gets decommissioned, perfectly usable DDR4 RAM goes with it. Meta is presenting the new method at today’s ISCA symposium, but The Register has got hold of a paper that explains how Vistara works. It's a custom ASIC that bridges DDR4 memory to newer processors via aCXL 2.0/1.1 interface over PCIe Gen5 x16. Meta pulls DDR4 sticks from old machines and installs them in dedicated units it calls MemServers, each of which pairs 768GB of DDR5 with 256GB of recovered DDR4. The operating system sees the DDR4 as an additional memory node and draws from it when the primary DDR5 is running low. Off-the-shelf CXL hardware couldn't do this, so Meta built its own. Existing interfaces bundle their own memory with the controller, which makes reusing old RAM sticks impossible. But Vistara separates the controller from the memory entirely, so Meta can plug in whatever DDR4 sticks it has on hand. Meta plans to deploy the new architecture in hyperscale infrastructure with millions of servers, which should mean that Meta’s AI datacenters will now be more efficient. The company is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, especially with its new AI model, Muse Spark, now widely available. All of this doesn't mean that Meta will exclusively rely on "recycled" RAM, but the company is still looking at considerable savings at scale. -
By News Staff · Posted
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