do FFox without SSE2 ?

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
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Random1
Posts: 33
Joined: December 30th, 2009, 3:06 am

do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by Random1 »

Hi ! Please help with a dual question here,

1. Is Firefox - official build - installable and usable
on a AMD 32-bit X86 processor that doesn't have SSE2,
viz. Athlon XP ?

2. If, unfortunately, the answer to above be negative,
are there 3rd-party/unofficial builds that do support my machine,
and where can I find them ?


TIA
4td8s
Posts: 784
Joined: June 24th, 2009, 1:07 pm

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by 4td8s »

answer for question 1: official firefox releases still work on CPUs w/out SSE2 - just tried out Firefox 40 stable release and then Firefox 41 beta 3 a few weeks ago on an old Compaq computer with AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2Ghz CPU and those Firefox versions still run okay. that may change with the firefox releases sometime next year where they may not run correctly on CPUs w/out SSE2

answer for question 2: answer is NO. you will not find any 3rd party unofficial firefox builds w/out SSE2 support. you will have to upgrade your computer (aka. replace the motherboard that can accept newer & faster CPUs that include SSE2 support such as Intel Pentium 4 hyperthread, AMD Athlon 64 / Sempron 64 or faster
DAC324
Posts: 183
Joined: October 19th, 2007, 1:54 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by DAC324 »

4td8s wrote:answer for question 1: official firefox releases still work on CPUs w/out SSE2 - just tried out Firefox 40 stable release and then Firefox 41 beta 3 a few weeks ago on an old Compaq computer with AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2Ghz CPU and those Firefox versions still run okay. that may change with the firefox releases sometime next year where they may not run correctly on CPUs w/out SSE2

That is not entirely correct. I tried Firefox 40 on an Athlon XP 3200+ based computer running Windows 7, and it was unusable. Even with an empty profile and displaying a blank page, Firefox periodically used 100% CPU and became unresponsive.
There was a hint that it could have something to do with Sync. But that should not apply to an empty profile with no Sync set up at all.
4td8s wrote:answer for question 2: answer is NO. you will not find any 3rd party unofficial firefox builds w/out SSE2 support. you will have to upgrade your computer (aka. replace the motherboard that can accept newer & faster CPUs that include SSE2 support such as Intel Pentium 4 hyperthread, AMD Athlon 64 / Sempron 64 or faster

And that's not correct as well. You can find a Pale Moon third-party build for computers without SSE2 on http://www.romanstefko.com/pale-moon-sse/

I have run this version on the Athlon XP 3200+ based computer mentioned above and it worked fine. There are only a few drawbacks related to the fact that it is Pale Moon. Its author decided not to keep up with the Firefox development so he uses a rather old code base. Even if he is informed about annoying bugs, updates to Pale Moon can take quite some time.

Example: Current versions of Pale Moon crash on http://web.whatsapp.com/ . The reason was already identified a month ago but still no update.

Another nuisance is the Sync feature. Pale Moon uses an older version of Sync with its own central server. This server is repeatedly offline, and it can take up to several weeks until the problems are fixed.

But apart from that, you will get a fast browser for your old machine if you use Pale Moon there. Another alternative (even faster) is K-meleon: http://kmeleonbrowser.org/
Drawback there: It is complicated to install add-ons, and most Firefox add-ons do not work at all with K-Meleon.

Kind regards,
DAC324
xunxun1982
Posts: 311
Joined: June 20th, 2011, 10:37 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by xunxun1982 »

You can use official edition directly, which is more faster and stable than any other 3rd-party build without SSE2 build.
DAC324
Posts: 183
Joined: October 19th, 2007, 1:54 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by DAC324 »

Firefox official edition does not run any more on an Athlon XP 3200+.

Since version 38, Firefox periodically uses 100% CPU and becomes unresponsive. This happens even with an empty profile and no page loaded. I guess that there is some program module which cannot run on processors without SSE2. Thanks to Intel, today all compilers are configured by default to build programs which require SSE2. You will have to manually switch that option off in the makefiles. As there is no programmer in the world using non-SSE2 computers any more, they will not actively do that.

Kind regards,

DAC324

P.S.:
xunxun1982 wrote:http://pcxfirefox.wordpress.com

Just curious: Will there be a possibility to add a German locale to PCXfirefox? That would be great indeed.

Thank you ;)
xunxun1982
Posts: 311
Joined: June 20th, 2011, 10:37 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by xunxun1982 »

DAC324 wrote:Firefox official edition does not run any more on an Athlon XP 3200+.

Since version 38, Firefox periodically uses 100% CPU and becomes unresponsive. This happens even with an empty profile and no page loaded. I guess that there is some program module which cannot run on processors without SSE2. Thanks to Intel, today all compilers are configured by default to build programs which require SSE2. You will have to manually switch that option off in the makefiles. As there is no programmer in the world using non-SSE2 computers any more, they will not actively do that.

Kind regards,

DAC324

P.S.:
xunxun1982 wrote:http://pcxfirefox.wordpress.com

Just curious: Will there be a possibility to add a German locale to PCXfirefox? That would be great indeed.

Thank you ;)


pcxFirefox is compatible with official edition, so you can use the official language locale pack directly.
4td8s
Posts: 784
Joined: June 24th, 2009, 1:07 pm

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by 4td8s »

doing Firefox w/out SSE2 is no longer possible starting with Firefox 49 as that version was created using Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 2, which requires SSE2 support and kills support for "legacy" CPUs like Intel Pentium 3s & earlier and AMD K7 based CPUs (AthlonXP/Sempron K7) & older.

But Firefox 48.0.x are the last ones to seemingly support CPUs below Intel Pentium 4 & AMD K8 (Athlon 64/Sempron 64).
4td8s
Posts: 784
Joined: June 24th, 2009, 1:07 pm

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by 4td8s »

Indeed - Firefox 49 officially kills support for CPUs w/out SSE2 as noted in the release notes:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/49.0/releasenotes/
-Ended Firefox for Windows support for SSE processors
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James
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Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by James »

You missed the Firefox 45 ESR option as it is currently supported with updates and does still run on CPU's that does not support SSE2.

Anyways this thread is over a year old and the OP never did post again.
DAC324
Posts: 183
Joined: October 19th, 2007, 1:54 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by DAC324 »

James wrote:You missed the Firefox 45 ESR option as it is currently supported with updates and does still run on CPU's that does not support SSE2.

Anyways this thread is over a year old and the OP never did post again.
Seems that he has either passed away or got a brand new computer with SSE2 support now and does not care any more 8-)

As there is no support for non-SSE2 CPUs by Windows any more (beginning with 8.1, Windows requires a newer processor) it also becomes more and more impossible to still run those machines these days.

Kind regards,
DAC324
rakuman
Posts: 1
Joined: March 3rd, 2017, 8:33 am

Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by rakuman »

"more and more impossible" is illogical. "More difficult" is not. My system has a Pentium II running at 266Mhz with Windows XP. Very useful and reliable. (I am composing this reply on it) Yes, I have other, faster machines.
Thanks for the links to the 'FireFox' variants. I shall try them.
(When this machine dies it will probably get replaced with a Raspberry Pi) :D
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LIMPET235
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Re: do FFox without SSE2 ?

Post by LIMPET235 »

Thanks but locking this due to old age.
[Ancient Amateur Astronomer.]
Win-10-H/64 bit/500G SSD/16 Gig Ram/450Watt PSU/350WattUPS/Firefox-115.0.2/T-bird-115.3.2./SnagIt-v10.0.1/MWP-7.12.125.

(Always choose the "Custom" Install.)
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