bZbZbZ wrote on 2023-06-15, 07:47:

Specs: […]
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• a functional floppy drive!!

Specs:

• Asrock Fatal1ty P67 Professional ATX motherboard
• Intel Core i7 3770 with "limited overlock" to 3.7, 4.0, 4.2, 4.2 GHz turbo boost

That must be some of the newest motherboard, I'd ever seen with floppy connector! Is that native to the chipset or does the board have a floppy controller chip?

I believe this motherboard has an I/O controller "nuvoton NCT6776F" which handles the floppy controller as well as other things such as PS/2, fan control, etc.

Perhaps other motherboards also have similar I/O chips but merely didn't wire the floppy pins to a floppy port. I'm aware of a few other Asrock motherboards that still included floppy ports, the last of which were Intel Z77 and AMD FX...

I have a similar over spec XP build and it's pretty awesome! If you feel like going further, there are ways to slipstream AHCI drivers into XP extending support to at least coffee lake intel CPUs. This extra performance doesn't do much for retro games but it can be nice for emulation.

Since you are driving a CRT and you said you use PCem, you might be interested to know that there is a way to get pixel perfect DOS/win9x emulation on this setup (no software scaling and no need for aspect correction, ect).

The Quest for Pixel Perfect DOS Emulation

Thank-you so much for the link, and for your painstaking work (and detailed documentation)! I have been using DOSBox on a CRT (using the Core i3 system) for awhile now and never considered many of the intricacies you identify - mostly I think I end up at 640x480 @ 60Hz...

For this particular build, I was limited performance-wise by my desire to have a working floppy drive. Initially I was planning to make a Ryzen 5 3600 sleeper... but I decided that a missing (or dummy) floppy drive wouldn't float my boat. So I spent a long time searching Vogons (and elsewhere) regarding how to get a working internal floppy drive... and all the PCI / USB options seemed janky. As far as I can tell, Ivy Bridge seems to be the highest performance option for the motherboards with onboard floppy ports. I need to do some more evaluation of what kind of performance this CPU offers in PCEm... but I might be okay because my main use case for PCEm would be for the slightly narrow swath of Win9x games that absolutely refuse to run in WinXP (and many of those games don't need a high clock Pentium II).

Very cool build, especially with the legacy support all the way back to win9x. Also love that sliding motherboard tray!

The i7 3770 was such a pinnacle of gaming performance in its day, especially the 3770k. I recall looking for a used one to upgrade my i5 2500k system but they retained their value for years and years. After a while I went with Ryzen 2600 instead.

Hezus wrote on 2023-06-16, 07:40:

Very cool build, especially with the legacy support all the way back to win9x. Also love that sliding motherboard tray!

The i7 3770 was such a pinnacle of gaming performance in its day, especially the 3770k. I recall looking for a used one to upgrade my i5 2500k system but they retained their value for years and years. After a while I went with Ryzen 2600 instead.

Doing same with your Ryzen 2600 for 32 bit XP? The real reason for this ivy bridge is the last for fully supported 32bit XP via drivers exception for supporting USB 2.0 ports only even there is usb 3.0 ports.

Cheers,

bZbZbZ wrote on 2023-06-16, 05:10:

Thank-you so much for the link, and for your painstaking work (and detailed documentation)! I have been using DOSBox on a CRT (using the Core i3 system) for awhile now and never considered many of the intricacies you identify - mostly I think I end up at 640x480 @ 60Hz...

For this particular build, I was limited performance-wise by my desire to have a working floppy drive. Initially I was planning to make a Ryzen 5 3600 sleeper... but I decided that a missing (or dummy) floppy drive wouldn't float my boat. So I spent a long time searching Vogons (and elsewhere) regarding how to get a working internal floppy drive... and all the PCI / USB options seemed janky. As far as I can tell, Ivy Bridge seems to be the highest performance option for the motherboards with onboard floppy ports. I need to do some more evaluation of what kind of performance this CPU offers in PCEm... but I might be okay because my main use case for PCEm would be for the slightly narrow swath of Win9x games that absolutely refuse to run in WinXP (and many of those games don't need a high clock Pentium II).

Thanks, and I'm glad you got something out of it!

My haswell 4.0ghz CPU can emulate up to about a pentium MMX @ 120mhz or so. Some windows games will be in reach but performance is going to be pretty limited.

You can do really well with wrappers like dgvoodoo2, but to get the most out of it you'll need to boot into modern windows for dx12/vulkan support.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-06-16, 23:35:

Hezus wrote on 2023-06-16, 07:40:

Very cool build, especially with the legacy support all the way back to win9x. Also love that sliding motherboard tray!

The i7 3770 was such a pinnacle of gaming performance in its day, especially the 3770k. I recall looking for a used one to upgrade my i5 2500k system but they retained their value for years and years. After a while I went with Ryzen 2600 instead.

Doing same with your Ryzen 2600 for 32 bit XP? The real reason for this ivy bridge is the last for fully supported 32bit XP via drivers exception for supporting USB 2.0 ports only even there is usb 3.0 ports.

Cheers,

The 2500k was my daily driver for almost 10 years, so that was mainly Windows 7, 8 and 10. Never used XP on it. I switched to Ryzen 2600x in 2019 or something.

My last XP machine was laptop with a Core 2 Duo, a T7800 if I recall correctly. I upgraded it at some point. Back when this was still possible with laptops 😉

Hezus wrote on 2023-06-17, 09:31:

The 2500k was my daily driver for almost 10 years, so that was mainly Windows 7, 8 and 10. Never used XP on it. I switched to Ryzen 2600x in 2019 or something.

My last XP machine was laptop with a Core 2 Duo, a T7800 if I recall correctly. I upgraded it at some point. Back when this was still possible with laptops 😉

Nice! That 2500k turned out to be a great choice! It would've lasted you the entirety of the "4 cores of i5 is enough for gaming" era. And IMO the Ryzen 2600x was another great choice - decent enough at the time, and still has lots of excellent in-socket upgrade options (5600, 5700x, 5800x3d, maybe 5600x3d coming too).

bZbZbZ wrote on 2023-06-18, 01:24:

Hezus wrote on 2023-06-17, 09:31:

The 2500k was my daily driver for almost 10 years, so that was mainly Windows 7, 8 and 10. Never used XP on it. I switched to Ryzen 2600x in 2019 or something.

My last XP machine was laptop with a Core 2 Duo, a T7800 if I recall correctly. I upgraded it at some point. Back when this was still possible with laptops 😉

Nice! That 2500k turned out to be a great choice! It would've lasted you the entirety of the "4 cores of i5 is enough for gaming" era. And IMO the Ryzen 2600x was another great choice - decent enough at the time, and still has lots of excellent in-socket upgrade options (5600, 5700x, 5800x3d, maybe 5600x3d coming too).

The 2500k sure was a nice cpu at the time and you could probably still use it today if you're not using newer demanding software or games. I wonder if people still do. Maybe a Steam survey could give more insights.

I actually upgraded that 2600x to a 5700x a month or two ago. I could have used the 2600x for a lot longer but I got a very good deal on the 5700x, so it was a no-brainer. A few years from now, I could max out the AM4 platform with a 5800x3d and 32 gb RAM (got 16 now). Or make the jump to a new platform if some good value CPUs and motherboards show up.

Looking at your system I'd also like to put together a 3770k, just because it was such a dream machine for me back then. Not sure what I would use it for, though 🤣

Oh nice! I also recently upgraded to the Ryzen 7 5700X! I upgraded from a 3600... which was a decent CPU, but like yourself I got a very good deal on the 5700X that I couldn't pass up.

If you still want to upgrade your 2500k, I think this platform is still decent as a secondary PC (eg home theatre PC). This is apart from it also being a silly-fast XP gaming platform. With a decent video card it could play many PS4 era PC ports on a 4K television (maybe with some DLSS/FSR/etc).

I know what you mean that the 3770k has held its value... I found a cheap used prebuilt with a 3770 non-k for $60 CAD. I learned recently that the non-k actually can be "limited overclocked" with the right motherboard... specifically the turbo boost can be manipulated to +400MHz over stock boost. This results in 4.3GHz for 2 and 1 core loads (and 4.1GHz all-core boost). I dunno how hard you want to push a decade old platform, but this is enough for me... 😀

So over the past few months I've ended up using Windows 10 almost exclusively on this machine. XP is still there on the 2nd SSD, I just almost never boot into XP because:

• Most XP era games (especially if there's a GOG version) work fine in Windows 10
• Early XP or late 9x games that work in XP and don't work in Windows 10 run fine on my Core i3, where I have them installed already
• WinXP doesn't support RTSS Scanline Sync, while RTSS in Win10 lets me sync games to my 85 Hz fixed refresh CRT with Vsync=OFF
• WinXP doesn't support my wireless headset or my Xbox Series controller via bluetooth (more on that later)
• WinXP doesn't support Fan Control, which is a very handy tool

I got sick of using the ball mouse.... I love how 'legit retro' it is, but the latency and accuracy is just so so terrible compared to a modern mouse. In first person shooters it's very noticeable.
I bought a white Logitech G305, which is shaped vaguely similarly to my logitech ball mouse... it came in a kit with a white G435 wireless headset, which is handy since this computer is in a shared space. The G305 works in WinXP but the G435 headset doesn't.
I also got a Bluetooth adapter to use a white Xbox Series controller... the adapter I bought does have an XP driver but for some reason in XP it cannot find the Xbox controller. Odd.

Anyways, this machine is still a huge source of enjoyment for me... I'm primarily playing "remakes" or modern mods of old games. Like Black Mesa, Quake II Enhanced, or heavily modded NFS Underground 2 / Most Wanted. They generally will work maxed out at 85fps (Scanline Sync'd) on the 19" CRT. These psuedo-old games look amazing on a CRT... it's like an amped up version of my childhood. I even brought the computer to a LAN party and played CS:GO (Steam) on it...