Are Core 2 Duo laptops still relevant?

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no

If you don't mind watching YouTube videos in 480p, go ahead.

They're not gonna set the world on fire but they're very much usable for pleb tasks. Hell, I'm posting this from a Pentium M laptop. Aside from heavy sites like YouTube or CNN it can browse the internet just fine.

No.

please, for the love of Sup Forums, stop repeating this bullshit myth

full 1080p youtube is completely playable on a C2D.

This. C2D can handle every pleb task, with the obvious downside of having horrible energy efficiency/ battery life.

Can confirm. Even 60fps vids are playable

110%. There is no reason for C2D to ever be 'not enough' for browsing the web and playing HD video.

This is the laptop I've tested this on:
cnet.com/products/dell-vostro-a860-laptop-computer-intel-core-2-duo-t5870-160gb-2gb/specs/
It can play 720p HD videos, but the whole system gets laggy and the FPS isn't 60 at all, at least on this laptop.

Really doesn't feel that different from my shitlake ultrabook for almost everything I do

they heat fast and videos are a burden but it's usable

They work fine for most tasks. I usually shitpost from an old core duo. Not even core 2 duo and the only thing that sucks about it is youtube or porn sites that I have to open externally in mpc hc

Check to make sure you are not using hardware acceleration in your browser.

Yes. You have to be careful though, some of the old ones can be quite slow these days.

I run a P9500 most days and it never chugs.

what os? I generally use puppy for most older computers

Core 2 Quads are better.

Windows 7.

Only thing holding this laptop back is the GPU sometimes. The iGPU in it is pretty bad and the battery life with the dGPU active is also pretty bad.

My T60 got 6 hours of battery life.

Of course it was large, but that just also made it in charge.

Meant to quote

Windows 7 runs fine on a C2D if you give it at least 2GB of RAM. Puppy is only worthwhile for REALLY old stuff like Pentium 3's and even then it's starting to get too bloated.

Xubuntu 14.04 is just about perfect.

I think puppy with a save file is the best way to achieve a persistent liveusb

What about a quad processor pentium 3 workstation?

If a C2D can't power through a website then the flaw is not the hardware: it's the website.

Also, you're silly for using the web browser as a video player anyway.

What workstation is that? Quad socket workstations weren't really ever a thing.

Sadly, the hdds failed.
They were IBM deathstars, so to be expected.
Maybe someday I'll find a working boot image, or install sgi linux on it.

The PSU also crackles when I boot it up, which I don't think is good.

What speed P3's? If they're at least 1GHz, try and throw 7 on it for shits and giggles. Otherwise go with XP. Also, how much RAM is in that?
I've seen quad Pentium Pro's before.

If I remember right, each one was 1Ghz, and 512-1G ram.

Also, no windows support past 2000.
There's barebones linux support though, much more modern, although I haven't tried it.

Have you tried installing XP? Perhaps it will work, as 2k and XP share quite a bit of workings under the hood. But if you can't get it working just stick with 2000. Linux a shit.

No. Why would you use one anyway? You can pick up a Sandy Bridge i5 laptop for $150 on ebay.

Looks like only certain beta builds.

nekochan.net/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation#PSU

I'd much rather fuck with Linux than old windows. New windows also, but especially with old windows.

Although I suppose windows wins if we're going for pure nostalgia.
That compaq still has the original Win95 install it come with, complete with Norten antivirus asking to be renewed.

I should boot it up again and get more recent screen shots.....

Because some Core2 laptops have better build and aspects ratios and are cheaper. Core2 does the job most of the time.

This is pretty bullshit. It obviously depends on which model. I have a T60 with the fastest possible C2D for its motherboard and it chugs on 720p videos. Integrated graphics, but whatever, the bottom line is that some Core 2 Duos are pretty shit for watching video.

Other pleb tasks like browsing? Yeah, it's fine.

>fastest possible C2D
And which model would that be?

>chugs on 720p videos
I have a C2D machine that will do 1080p60. Running a T7300 and 8400M GS.

Ehh, you can always just run it with mpv.
I've got a t60 with a midrange c2d, and it could play high bitrate 1080p bluray rips just fine.
Have to put some effort to set it up though, I actually used the intel chips HW acceleration to make it work.

>I actually used the intel chips HW acceleration to make it work.
You absolutely should be using hardware accelerators. Are there people who don't?

Since their worst problem was drive performance, an SSD in C2D works wonders.

Get da most RAM you can of course, but that applies to every PC.

T7600

The integrated graphics may be killing me then. I don't care that much, it's an ancient laptop after all.

Well aside from 10 bit, on a desktop, why bother?
Even on a modern laptop, since most video I watch is h10p, I generally don't bother either.

The T9900 is way faster.

>why bother?
The hardware accelerator is faster and more power efficient.

R400 with a Core 2 Duo here.
That's a god damn lie my friend.

If I remember right, only 161 mobos could do that.

And again on a modern desktop, why bother?
Power and resource use from playing video is negligible.

someone please buy my t500

>why bother?
So your processor can do other things? I don't understand why you wouldn't use hardware that is there.

Don't need it to do other things, video playback doesn't use that much power.

It also opens up more filters and software enhancements.
And of course h10p.
Although these days I think players just switch automatically.

No shit. The T7600 is the fastest that was compatible with my T60's motherboard.

Integrated graphics? Wondering if that is the bottleneck when it comes to 720p for me.

As mentioned it's still perfect for web browsing, office tasks, and network admin. Video is doable on 480p but anything higher and you need to run it locally, or get a browser plugin that automatically does it for you. VLC and firefox support this beautifully. It also does depend on what's going on in the video.

big problem is you can't judge it with whatever shitty hard drive is still left in it, that's been beaten to death since 2006 or 2007. you need to invest in a cheap SSD.

I still use a T60 with an SSD for my car laptop to do network admin. Also used it to program a few web apps and in the case of asp.net it needed to be compiled and there was a noticeable wait difference from an i5, about 15 more seconds. But it still technically did the job.

Don't blame your computer for your own ineptitude. Integrated graphics should not matter, the CPU is good enough to play back the video on its own.

>You absolutely should be using hardware accelerators. Are there people who don't?
I think it would depend on the type of video being played back. Some hardware acceleration includes hardware decoding of certain codecs and that will be a big benefit.

>Video is doable on 480p but anything higher and you need to run it locally,

This. is. a. LIE. Jesus christ, people need to stop saying this shit.

Kaby Lake is the only relevant thing with HEVC Main10 hardware decoding & VP9 hardware decoding

The T2400 on my X60 does 720p just fine, and can decode 1080p hi10p at about 50 FPS
The old ass shit archaic late 90's tech GMA 950 iGPU does take a massive hit from anything higher than 720p
>Have to put some effort to set it up though, I actually used the intel chips HW acceleration to make it work.
GMA950's lack HW acceleration for anything newer than MPEG2, and they could barely do HD MPEG2 iirc
You're thinking of rendering, which it's slow as fuck on the old GMA's since they're as slow as TNT2's
>Don't blame your computer for your own ineptitude. Integrated graphics should not matter, the CPU is good enough to play back the video on its own.
There's literally no SW renderer being actively maintained in 2016, you can use old deprecated shit like VMR on Windows or Xv on *nix but they are being dropped fast from every recent video player
Or the original opengl renderer from mplayer which is mostly broken
There's no free as in freedom SB laptops
Neither of those will get much share after AOT1 launches

>Neither of those will get much share after AV1 launches
fix'd

This.
Also on my turionx2 laptop.

You don't need a fucking i7 for that shit, a $4 ARM processor won't even struggle to play 1080p60fps, or hell even 4k30fps.

Get raped and kill yourself, you retarded fucking faggot sack of shit with down syndrome.

Is this CDE? I wanted to install this for the longest time now. Do the instructions on their page work fine?

A single core 700 MHz ARM can play 1080p. Why? Because it isn't your CPU's job.

About as much as Turion 64 X2 laptops... They do the business, just not spectacularly. I'm thinking this has to do with the diminishing returns in CPU power we've been getting with each die shrink over the past decade. If you were to compare a ~2008 Core2 laptop with a ~2000 Pentium III one, there would be a much bigger difference.

I use my Core 2 Duo for everything, even 3D modeling and architectural designing.

It does 98% of what I need, and that remaining 2% has more to do with some new program not supporting the hardware and/or demanding more RAM in which case I use my work computer.

It is funny it takes me longer to get stuff done on the "faster" work computers because once you get to a Pentium 3 or 4 that extra power is just wasted by bad setups and poor programs.

So it is still very good and totally relevant, with a very small list of special case exceptions you won't likely ever deal with until industry drops public support for Windows 7.

AV1 requires new hardware and AV1 hardware decoding probably won't be available until 2018

Yes, have a Thinkpad x200 with SSD
OS/BIOS:Trisquel/libreboot
as a backup laptop, runs firefox/kodi just fine.

Bought this Dell Vostro 1500 from Ebay for £55 a few days ago. It's coming tomorrow, it looks decent. Has a T9300 in it. I think I got a good deal desu.

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5Ghz
Nvidia Geforce 8600M
4GB RAM
250GB HDD

I'll probs buy an SSD for it if the HDD is dying which I suspect.

It's old but it werks.
if you leave out the fact that it requires DDR2 then it's actually better than most first gen i series CPU-s
you can easily get a powerful C2D for a really cheap price.
You could also get a Core 2 Quad for your laptop, however the BIOS might not like it.

I have a T400 with a P8400 at 2.26GHz in it with 8GB of RAM and a 256MB HD 3470 and it's more than enough for 1080p video or general web browsing, even in Windows. Get an SSD and it will be indistinguishable from a modern i7 for 99.9% of general PC tasks.

You guys with your shitty budget Dell Inspirons running Windows XP and bloated to hell and back with spyware that you stole from your grandma aren't a very good represenatation of how well a certain class of CPU performs.

my C2D mac can play youtube @ 720p60 easily

2018 it's really close senpai, also you can be sure they will implement hybrid/shader based hardware acceleration
>Vostro
Absolutely disgusting
Odds the HDD will be fine but you can be sure it will be slow as fuck, the specs are nice though
I was upgrading my pops 2006 HP prebuilt for a last stretch until I replace it with something Zen based next year, decided to max it out
The E6700 is at the same price as the E4300 it has, about 5 dollars with free shipping, I also decided to upgrade my chinkpads and found T7200's for 1.5 USD

>Absolutely disgusting

Yeah it's not the best looker I'll admit, it'll do the job though. HDD performance decay really sucks.

>HDD performance decay really sucks
It probably hasn't decayed much if at all, old HDD's were slow as fuck

If it has GM45 or GS45 chipset, it can play 1080p H264 with special linux driver.
Also, consider buying Broadcom Crystal HD card from chinks, it would be even better.

>Hybrid decoding

KYS

I have an e4500 from my old computer. Should I throw it or make something out of it?

I still use my Dell Latitude E6400 notebook on a daily basis. Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, 2 Gigs of RAM, an old Intel SSD an it is running Manjaro Xfce like the wind! Great for HD video and shitposting.

If you've got other parts laying around, make a working machine out of it, throw it on craigslist as "refurbished" for $50. Should sell.

Nope..

I'm using a "Pentium dual core" right now, good enough for 1080p youtube and 8bit h264 (24 FPS), lightweight coding also doable.

Still using my Acer 5739g with C2D T6600 and GForce 130m here, playing all videos smoothly, designing stuff on Autodesk autocad and inventor and running stress analysis. Overclocking it to 2.9GHz often, when I need the extra juice.