The problem is I don't think there is a documented list of games that don't work on XP. With how long XP has been out many games have been somehow gotten to work on it. It also depends on what GPU you are planning on using. Are there particular games you are looking for to work?

When it comes to gaming. Highest system requirements for a game that I did not work in windows XP has been Thief II which recommends a 400Mhz cpu and 64Mb ram. It still works on Pentium II, so I think P3 is more than enough for anything that needs win9x.

This is a good question and I'm asking this myself as well. I tend to test and benchmark the same games and when I used Windows XP recently, everything worked, it was only the 3DMark99 benchmark that wouldn't run.

Maybe it's the earlier Windows games that cause issues under XP, and those run fine on a Socket 7 machine, so they don't need much processing power.

So I think your statement is basically true, but there is always an exemption, the question is how much is affected?

I often see people focus on what doesn't work, but if we look at what does work, I think your Pentium III will cover a massive range of Windows 9x games.

XP was so long lived that there was a long time to get older things working that did not work at the time XP was released till when Vista was released and Vista had such a poor reception that they had even more time then expected. I do know there were a lot of games that didn't work initially. Unfortunately my memory is not that great so the only one I can remember specifically that didn't work at all was Shogo Mobile armored Division. That games original requirements was like a Pentium 166 or something. Recently it's been released on GOG and works with pretty much everything now. I would say the benefit to running Windows 98/ME is not having to jump through hoops to get your old games you already have on disk working.

The original Final Fantasy 7 and 8 did not run on XP. I think I had tried a few fan-made options/methods but they never really worked. Ultimately, I sold them for like $100 each. I have them on Steam so I'm good. I also have an original KQ8 copy which I don't know if it works on XP but I'm pretty sure it does not.

I would probably be using geforce 6800, an Audician 32 Plus and either a Vortex2 or SB Live!

DOS is of course part of the equation and I've been able to get quite a few to run without issues.

GiSWiG wrote:

The original Final Fantasy 7 and 8 did not run on XP. I think I had tried a few fan-made options/methods but they never really worked.

Yes, the original release of FF7 definitely required a patch, but that patch worked perfectly fine, and fixes have only grown more complete in recent years.

I also have an original KQ8 copy which I don't know if it works on XP but I'm pretty sure it does not.

KQ8 is being sold on GOG and there is almost certainly a way to get an original copy running.

I started using XP when it went RTM back in the early 2000s and have been playing my older games on it ever since, the only problem I've never been able to patch out is:

"The procedure entry point SUnMapLS_IP_EBP_12 could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"

This affects a few games, many with patches, in my case however it was Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion, with no patch

Anything else I've tried, with a little fussing with patches occasionally, works just fine

The correct answer is to dual boot. If you want to go nuts, do PC-DOS 2000 + NT 3.1 + NT 3.5 + NT4 + Win95 + Win98 + NT5/Win2k + WinME + WinXP

That will allow you to play any game that does't rely on a low clock speed to run from 1981 to ~2002/2004

It's also cool as shit.

I know Mechwarrior 3 is at best unreliable on anything not 9x based.

It'll work, but it often crashes to a grey screen or crashes outright.

Ampera wrote:

The correct answer is to dual boot. If you want to go nuts, do PC-DOS 2000 + NT 3.1 + NT 3.5 + NT4 + Win95 + Win98 + NT5/Win2k + WinME + WinXP

That will allow you to play any game that does't rely on a low clock speed to run from 1981 to ~2002/2004

It's also cool as shit.

I was trying to do that but on my hardware, it wasn't working out so well. It was Athlon 64 based and a VIA chipset. It was starting to become more trouble than it was worth.

I've got the PIII going with the 6800 GT, Audician 32 Plus, Dreamblaster, Vortex2 so I can do real DOS and Win98.

My WinXP box will probably be a Core2Duo E8400 4GB DDR3 RAM, a Geforce GTS 250, and a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit (not really a SB Live)

The biggest difference in compatibility from Win98/Me vs XP is support for DOS games.
The most CPU demanding DOS game I know of is NASCAR Racing running in SVGA mode. If you want to run that game in SVGA with a fast framerate, people have reported that it can benefit from something as fast as that P3-933MHz. I assume the same would apply to the corresponding IndyCar game.
But there's a lot more DOS games where that CPU would be too fast for them to run correctly.

GiSWiG wrote:

My WinXP box will probably be a Core2Duo E8400 4GB DDR3 RAM, a Geforce GTS 250, and a Sound Blaster Live!

Drop Live! 24-bit and install normal X-Fi card.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

GiSWiG wrote:

My WinXP box will probably be a Core2Duo E8400 4GB DDR3 RAM, a Geforce GTS 250, and a Sound Blaster Live!

Drop Live! 24-bit and install normal X-Fi card.

I was mistaken, it is actually a Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1. The two look very similar.

I might put in a Xonar DGX as I'll be primarily using headphones. I'll be using a PCI-E motherboard board and I have three to choose from.