It really depends on the game. Around 2006 / 2007, many / most games had some sort of DX10 feature which required Vista.

So you don't need a card that powerful. Most XP games run well on a 8 or 9 series card.

philscomputerlab wrote:

It really depends on the game. Around 2006 / 2007, many / most games had some sort of DX10 feature which required Vista.

So you don't need a card that powerful. Most XP games run well on a 8 or 9 series card.

Oh yeah, indeed. This 560 Ti I've got actually has DX11 features that WinXP will never be able to take advantage of. I don't keep up with things very good, but I'm pretty sure most current games will still run under WinXP as well. While it's not really a "native" XP card, it is still compatible and super powerful. I think only the latest cards are actually dropping XP support and they probably have DX12 features.

So yeah, I agree that a true XP-era card would be of the 8 or 9 series, but I'm concerned about my "ultimate" XP-compatible video card, even though it is totally overkill. I'm pretty sure a 560 Ti is plenty powerful to run Bioshock Infinite, and that's the most recent game I'm interested in playing anyway. Knowing me, I'll get around to it in around 2020...

Well 660 still works in XP. You can check the drivers on the Nvidia site. They give you a good clue.

At this moment, I'm in the middle of the process of upgrading my XP box, as well. Originally, it was a socket 754 PC with an Athlon 64 3200+ (upgraded last year to a 3700+) on a Asus K8N-E Deluxe board, 3 Gigs of RAM, HD3450 1GB AGP display card, SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card and other trivial things including plenty of HDDs. When I just found a K8N4-E Deluxe mobo cheap in local ebay analogue, I decided to buy it and started looking for a PCIe display card, decided to have a GTS250. Just after setting that rig up, I again found another mobo, a socket 939 A8N-SLI Deluxe, presenting even more and better upgrade options (dual core Athlons, Nvidia SLI, 4GB of RAM). The bad thing is, mobo died on me after working perfectly about a week or so.

Now, I'm still waiting for another A8N-SLI (premium this time) to continue. Final setup will be something like this:

Asus A8N-SLI Premium (waiting for it to arrive)
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (will probably be upgraded into 4800+ if I ever find one with reasonable prices)
1GB x 4 Kingston DDR400 RAM
Palit 1GB GTS256 Green display card (maybe I will try SLI if I ever put my hands on a reasonably priced equivalent)
SB Audigy2 ZX Sound card
Aopen A600 full Al case
Thermaltake Litepower 600 PSU
All the other trivia (DVDRW x2, 1.44 FDD, 3.5" multi card reader, Adaptec SCSI card, PCMCIA reader, plenty of IDE and SATA HDDs, Microsoft Sidewinder USB joystick, external ZIP Drive, etc.)

My XP box has a pair of NetBurst Xeons and a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. I've yet to encounter a newer game that won't run in Windows 7x64, which my main PC runs. I've got a Socket 939 motherboard that I'll likely finish out with FX-55 and 6800 Ultra, but that machine is hardly necessary from what I've seen thus far (I have all the parts; I just haven't put it all together and cased it).

Doesn't Fallout 3 have big problems with Windows 7? Or did they finally fix those?

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't Fallout 3 have big problems with Windows 7? Or did they finally fix those?

As far as I'm aware there have not been any significant patches released for Fallout 3 in many years, since 1.7 came out (according to the Fallout Wikia, the last patch (1.7) was released July 27, 2009). So "they" (whoever "they" may be) ostensibly did not fix "those" (whatever "those big problems" may be) as Windows 7 was not available at retail until later in 2009.

I have never had problems with it in Windows 7 (even with v1.0 off of my release-day DVD), let alone "big problems," but I frequently read about how Fallout 3 cannot/will not/should not/etc work in Windows 7 on Vogons and how we must build some "ultimate XP" machine to satisfy it. I don't know why that is so; the game works swimmingly in 7x64 on modern hardware (and having had it since launch-day, I much prefer it on modern hardware - even on top-end hardware in 2008 it did not run as well as it does on modern hardware).

the Geforce 6xx cards may have XP support but don't bother with them, i remember the reviews at the time showing some strange preformance problems under XP, honestly for XP, your best bet would be the grab a DX10 class card and call it quits, everything in 2007 except crysis could run on an 8800GTX @ 2560x1600p @ 60FPS.\

My XP box runs an x800XT to run certain games that wont work on newer like Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood because of Starforce in the retail version.

I think anything up to GTX 5xx and Radeon HD 6800 have pretty good XP support, I know the 7000 series from AMD took a while to get XP drivers and I suspect support is less than ideal?

in any case, games from 2011 like Skyrim and Witcher 2 actually work on XP with all features, and those can benefit from something faster than a 560 ti (specially witcher2) but you should play those games on 7+, Skyrim was a lot slower on XP; so I think a good target for XP are games from up to 2008 and for that a 560 Ti is more than enough.

but... Vista and DX10 were launched in 2006, and I think some games from 2007 benefit from DX10 and Vista.

Yes, and many games received DX10 patches, adding little things. I remember Bioshock being one of the early games with some DX10 feature.

Yeah though the early DX10 "feature effects" was mostly some edge occlusion query keeping sprites and smoke from clipping very badly visually. This eventually was doable in DX9 later on and it already could be done in OpenGL. Apart from that, the reduction of depth precision, the dropped 16-bit dithering, and a whole new backend that's mostly underthehood refactoring towards a shader exclusive pipeline, there wasn't much to notice.

Thank you all for your comments!

From what I'm reading, it sounds like I'm going way overkill compared to most other folks here at VOGONS.

What are you all doing to keep your XP video cards running for the long haul? Are you doing anything at all? Are modern cards more disposable than the way I think of Win9x-era cards?

I rather like this 560 Ti, but if it's really disposable then I would prefer not to attach a $50 aftermarket HSF to it. I've also got a GTS 250 that I could run until it fails completely.

I was hoping that TinCup would chime in here. I seem to recall that he was building a totally overkill legacy XP system too.

obobskivich wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't Fallout 3 have big problems with Windows 7? Or did they finally fix those?

As far as I'm aware there have not been any significant patches released for Fallout 3 in many years, since 1.7 came out (according to the Fallout Wikia, the last patch (1.7) was released July 27, 2009). So "they" (whoever "they" may be) ostensibly did not fix "those" (whatever "those big problems" may be) as Windows 7 was not available at retail until later in 2009.

I have never had problems with it in Windows 7 (even with v1.0 off of my release-day DVD), let alone "big problems," but I frequently read about how Fallout 3 cannot/will not/should not/etc work in Windows 7 on Vogons and how we must build some "ultimate XP" machine to satisfy it. I don't know why that is so; the game works swimmingly in 7x64 on modern hardware (and having had it since launch-day, I much prefer it on modern hardware - even on top-end hardware in 2008 it did not run as well as it does on modern hardware).

I also never had problems with Fallout 3 on Windows 7. Windows 8 or higher, on the other hand, well, let's just say I haven't played Fallout 3 since I upgraded.

honestly the 560 Ti is fine for XP, but the biggest draw for XP gaming for me at least is games that use EAX, have software like starforce that wont work on Vista+, or don't run right on multi core. That means games 2007 (EAX) and older, and most of them 2004 and older.

candle_86 wrote:

the Geforce 6xx cards may have XP support but don't bother with them, i remember the reviews at the time showing some strange preformance problems under XP, honestly for XP, your best bet would be the grab a DX10 class card and call it quits, everything in 2007 except crysis could run on an 8800GTX @ 2560x1600p @ 60FPS.\

My XP box runs an x800XT to run certain games that wont work on newer like Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood because of Starforce in the retail version.

I tried my GTX 660 in XP once - I gave up. It just wants a non-stop stream of updates, patches, extra software, etc etc etc. You install one thing and then it cries about another and so forth. It also seems that nVidia's driver numbering doesn't align between XP and 7 - when I first got the 660 it ran 307.xx (whatever the latest was for GeForce 7) in 7, but when I installed 307.xx for XP it refused to recognize the 660. Versus GeForce 7/8 you can just drop them in and go. 😀 I would probably pass on the 8800GTX/Ultra mostly because I remember them being fairly loud and power hungry (same actually goes for Radeon HD 2900) - GeForce 9/200 or Radeon HD 3000/4000 series would be my personal pick; sure some of them won't be much faster (if at all) vs the 8800/2900, but they should run cooler and be quieter. 😎

KT7AGuy wrote:

What are you all doing to keep your XP video cards running for the long haul? Are you doing anything at all? Are modern cards more disposable than the way I think of Win9x-era cards?
.

Just my 2c:

I replaced the heatsink on my 5800 (there's a thread about it somewhere here), which reduced temperatures and may help it live longer, but otherwise I don't worry about it too much. Replacing the 5800 itself would probably not be easy, but replacing it with a card that offers similar functionality is not a problem (ignoring that I could just "go to the storage bin" there seems to be no shortage of various GeForce FX/6/7 and Radeon 9/X/X1k boards - I think in some cases we're probably talking Pentium 4 levels of saturation (e.g. I remember reading that FX 5200/5500 was in continuous production until sometime in like 2008; I bought one NIB a few months ago that had 2006/2007 dates on its included marketing materials and drivers, and the box and manual spoke almost exclusively of PCI Express and GeForce 7 and 8800 🤣 🤣 )).

I know that for GeForce FX and 6 (and iirc 4), the GPUs themselves can take pretty ridiculous temperatures (usually like ~120* C is their throttle temp), and I've had good luck over the years with those boards not dying (I still have my original 5900XT from '03, and it still works with no problem). Radeon unfortunately doesn't seem to have fared as well - I see a lot of 8500s on ebay so I assume the R200 is fine, but I've personally junked probably half a dozen R3xx cards that've died anywhere between 8 months and 3 years from being brand new. This came up as a discussion a while ago (not in its own thread and I doubt I could find it again) and others reported similar experiences with R3xxs either cooking themselves to death or otherwise inexplicably dying. OTOH I still see Radeon X800 cards sold as brand new (I've actually bought two - they arrived and looked brand new to me), and it seems that ATi fixed whatever the problem was when they moved to R4xx.

GeForce 7 is also frequently cited as a potential timebomb - up until a few weeks ago I had actually never had one die (and my 7900GS that I bought brand new when they came out still worked flawlessly when I tested it a few weeks ago), but then I had not one but THREE G71 chips all exhibit the "bad solder joints" issues within a 48hr period (a 7950GX2 and another 7900GS - no more SLI for me 🤣 ). However, GeForce 7 cards are pretty common and pretty cheap, and I'm not sure if the issue is isolated to G71 or all G7x chips.

I think newer cards you can potentially have more issues because they tended to run at much higher temperatures while in operation. At least, the higher-end models did. Mid-range and entry-level cards from newer generations tend to be very efficient and run fairly cool IME, and may be a better choice than an older high-end card if your system has PCIe available.

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't Fallout 3 have big problems with Windows 7? Or did they finally fix those?

Oddly enough I have had mixed results there. It seems that Fallout 3 freezes randomly when I play the GOTY edition on Steam in offline mode yet if I am connected to the internet I can play for 6 hours straight no problem.

Sometimes I wish I had bought a high performing 500 series card to future proof myself for gaming in WinXP, but I didn't want to spend the money, and still don't. I'm afraid eventually I'll be stuck buying somebody's 2nd hand card on eBay and crossing my fingers that it's not already beaten to hell. Buying a used high end gaming card is like buying a 20 year old Trans Am.

I'm still using a GTX260. I bought the last one NewEgg had when it was on clearance. At the time I thought it made more sense than getting a Fermi card, since I was playing older games and the 260 is a musclebound version of older tech that was well tested and "just works" in everything.
It continues to handle everything I've tried to run on it, but I don't keep up with the latest. My newest game is Skyrim. Actually Morrowind might still be more demanding with a ton of graphical mods installed, but it handles that okay also.

I know this is a subject of disagreement, but for the sake of longevity I'm a little paranoid about keeping the 260's temperature down. I use Speedfan to override the fan profile so it accelerates sooner than it did out of the box. But even with the fan at 100% it still gets hotter than I'd like, especially in the current summer weather. I have an alarm set at 75C at which point I will pause and let it cool.
I've rigged up an obnoxious fan that is plugged into an external power brick, so I can switch it on only when I need it. I intend to blow it across the back of the card where it can conduct more heat from the GPU. However, I haven't figured out a good way to mount it in the correct position. It's heavy and I think it produces too much vibration to be healthy for the hard drives.
As long as it stays working, I think the GTX260 is all I need for WinXP.

As far as Fallout 3 - I ran the Fallout 3 GOTY disc version (no Steam) on WinXP. I had constant crashing in that game when the expansions were enabled. As long as I just ran the vanilla game, it was great though. If I had bought the expansions separately, I'd feel ripped off by their inability to work.

KT7AGuy wrote:

....From what I'm reading, it sounds like I'm going way overkill compared to most other folks here at VOGONS.

....I rather like this 560 Ti, ...

560 Ti is the card of my main rig!..🤣

shamino wrote:

Sometimes I wish I had bought a high performing 500 series card to future proof myself for gaming in WinXP, but I didn't want to […]
Show full quote

Sometimes I wish I had bought a high performing 500 series card to future proof myself for gaming in WinXP, but I didn't want to spend the money, and still don't. I'm afraid eventually I'll be stuck buying somebody's 2nd hand card on eBay and crossing my fingers that it's not already beaten to hell. Buying a used high end gaming card is like buying a 20 year old Trans Am.

I'm still using a GTX260. I bought the last one NewEgg had when it was on clearance. At the time I thought it made more sense than getting a Fermi card, since I was playing older games and the 260 is a musclebound version of older tech that was well tested and "just works" in everything.
It continues to handle everything I've tried to run on it, but I don't keep up with the latest. My newest game is Skyrim. Actually Morrowind might still be more demanding with a ton of graphical mods installed, but it handles that okay also.

I know this is a subject of disagreement, but for the sake of longevity I'm a little paranoid about keeping the 260's temperature down. I use Speedfan to override the fan profile so it accelerates sooner than it did out of the box. But even with the fan at 100% it still gets hotter than I'd like, especially in the current summer weather. I have an alarm set at 75C at which point I will pause and let it cool.
I've rigged up an obnoxious fan that is plugged into an external power brick, so I can switch it on only when I need it. I intend to blow it across the back of the card where it can conduct more heat from the GPU. However, I haven't figured out a good way to mount it in the correct position. It's heavy and I think it produces too much vibration to be healthy for the hard drives.
As long as it stays working, I think the GTX260 is all I need for WinXP.

As far as Fallout 3 - I ran the Fallout 3 GOTY disc version (no Steam) on WinXP. I had constant crashing in that game when the expansions were enabled. As long as I just ran the vanilla game, it was great though. If I had bought the expansions separately, I'd feel ripped off by their inability to work.

I think Arctic made some GTX 200-series specific coolers that you could look into; GTX 260 (especially if its a later revision) is like the coolest running/lowest power of the GT200 series GPUs afaik, so it shouldn't be too hard to get it running in the 40-60* C range with a good aftermarket cooler. 75* C is, imho, on the warm side as well - as a peak temperature that's no problem imo, but if it's wanting to run 75-80* C 24x7 all day that's probably not great (my 4870X2 ran like that for 5 years and then died).