Well yeah

Any game or app that takes advantage of multiple cores would benefit greatly from it. Not to mention the ability to allocate cores that aren't busy to doing other tasks while you game is a big plus too. Many forget that while a dual core might be able to play a specific game better than a quad core , the quad core can play that game AND do an additional task faster than the dual core could if also challenged with an additional task.

I don't think I would go with the "modded 771" cpu method though. There are plenty of 775 cpu counterparts that are perfectly fine and aren't going to challenge a boards compatibility at all.

And or... you can just use a server board and not need to modify the 771 cpu/cpu's at all

I just recently got 6 dual socket 771 1u servers for 10$ , for all 6 of them. So the real server hardware is dirt cheap especially right now.

It is just matter of price. QX9770 would cost over 200 euros but equal modded Intel Xeon X5482 would cost 20-40 euros.
If I would not get much advantage in winxp games compared to my current E8500, I would probably not risk trying modded cpu and continue with dual core, but over 200 euros is too much to spend.

TBH the added value of a quad core in 90% of games under WinXP is zero to negative. Almost no games are multithreaded, so the game just runs on one core. Having a second core for background tasks makes a lot of sense, so dual core is a must but beyond that you're going to have some very bored cores.

With new Core i5 / i7 CPUs in a situation like this the busy cores are clocked up faster, so you still win performance, but with So775/So771 they had no such finesse; the whole CPU runs at one speed and that's it. And for a given core design the dual cores were available at significantly higher clocks than the quad cores. If your game is only running on one core, the prime consideration is to get that single core running as fast as possible, so you're better of with a dual core in this case.

It wouldn't be lowering the clock speed. I would be matter of replacing 3.16Ghz E8500 that has 6Mb of cache and 1333Mhz FSB with 3.2Ghz Xeon that has 12Mb of cache and 1600Mhz FSB and paying 20-40 euros for doing it and what impact that would have in gaming performance in winXP. Of course it would also more than double the TDP and Xeons can't handle as high temperatures as core 2 duo can.

What about overclocking the E8500? If your board can handle 1600MT/s FSB easily, you could win more by cranking up what you already have.

If I remember correctly. Back in 2008 when I tried overclocking the cpu, it didn't overclock much. Perhaps I got unlucky in the silicon lottery when it comes to that cpu.

Supreme Commander was one of the early titles that could benefit from the third and fourth core. The tail end of the pre-Win7 era.

QX9770 would cost over 200 euros

QX9650 would cost "peanuts" from Aliexpress or some local store/seller. Modded 771 Xeons are still cheaper though.

I can definitely see some use cases for a top of the line CPU from 2007 like a Core 2 Quad QX9650 in Windows XP, and I have done the Xeon 771 mod myself many times and never had any problems at all. I don't see the point in playing later DirectX10 games in XP since you're missing out on graphical features, but if you really want an XP system to be as powerful as possible you might as well go a bit further with a Sandy Bridge based system. The single-threaded speed difference will be quite significant, efficiency will be much better and 2x2GB of DDR3 is very cheap.

When you can get refurbished Lenovo business systems with Sandy or Ivy Bridge i5 CPUs for $50-$120 these days, it makes it harder to justify spending much money on an older system to play newer games. For that matter, it makes it hard to justify buying anything else for modern computing unless you need a ton of horsepower. 🤣

... as to simply doing the 771 mod, as long as your motherboard supports it and you have a steady hand (and don't mind modifying the socket), its easy. Whether its actually worth it or not is debatable. It certainly was worth it 4-5 years ago when these CPUs were super cheap and still competitive, but these days people are practically throwing away CPUs that greatly outpace anything from the Core 2 era, so doing permanent mods to sockets on boards that will be considered "vintage" before too long isn't probably the way I'd go unless I had very specific needs that a slightly newer (and significantly more powerful) platform couldn't provide.

There are some PS3 ports that take advantage of multiple cores (PS3 had a weird architecture but was 7+1 cores, essentially.) I got a noticeable jump in performance in Prince of Persia 2008 when I swapped my Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz) for a "slower" (2.5GHz) Q9300.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I can definitely see some use cases for a top of the line CPU from 2007 like a Core 2 Quad QX9650 in Windows XP, and I have done the Xeon 771 mod myself many times and never had any problems at all. I don't see the point in playing later DirectX10 games in XP since you're missing out on graphical features, but if you really want an XP system to be as powerful as possible you might as well go a bit further with a Sandy Bridge based system. The single-threaded speed difference will be quite significant, efficiency will be much better and 2x2GB of DDR3 is very cheap.

When you can get refurbished Lenovo business systems with Sandy or Ivy Bridge i5 CPUs for $50-$120 these days, it makes it harder to justify spending much money on an older system to play newer games. For that matter, it makes it hard to justify buying anything else for modern computing unless you need a ton of horsepower. 🤣

... as to simply doing the 771 mod, as long as your motherboard supports it and you have a steady hand (and don't mind modifying the socket), its easy. Whether its actually worth it or not is debatable. It certainly was worth it 4-5 years ago when these CPUs were super cheap and still competitive, but these days people are practically throwing away CPUs that greatly outpace anything from the Core 2 era, so doing permanent mods to sockets on boards that will be considered "vintage" before too long isn't probably the way I'd go unless I had very specific needs that a slightly newer (and significantly more powerful) platform couldn't provide.

They are now selling on ebay versions that they say that can be just installed to LGA775 socket without any socket modding, so I assume they have modded the cpu itself to fit the socket.

I see Win XP gaming machines only on old systems like PGA 460 or socket 462, something more new is on the windows 7 league...

Radical Vision wrote:

I see Win XP gaming machines only on old systems like PGA 460 or socket 462, something more new is on the windows 7 league...

It is my old system from 2008. It probably didn't run XP back then, but after seeing Phil's video about making dedicated winxp pc for playing games like crysis, far cry and f.e.a.r, I thought I could use it for that. Then I saw those LGA771 Xeons on ebay and started wondering if upgrading to 4 cores might be worth it if it is cheap. I wasn't planning on spending alot of money on it, but getting 4 cores for 20-40 euros... I thought it might be worth it if there are any games that take advantage of it.

Well you have different point of view, still i don`t see any new dual core processors, or DDR2 based systems to be XP ones, as they are all Vista/ win 7 more like..

Pretty much all Core2 systems were running XP back in 2006-2008. So it very well can be called XP retro PC now.

Also for the ultimate XP gaming the choice is simple - fast Ivy Bridge CPU + Kepler based GPU. 😀

Running DX9 games on anything slower than C2D is a painful experience. I remember playing NFS Underground 2 on Athlon 64 - completely CPU limited at around 50 fps, 😵 while moving to Core 2 system (with the same GPU) increased it to something like 80 fps and with even faster CPU stable 120 fps (which is the maximum this game can run).

That C2D will be very very late Win XP, as the Vista was launched in the end of 2006, and most C2D processors was launched in 2007 not 2006...
Don`t know what Athlon64 did you have and GPU so even the Underground 2 was pain in the A$$ for you, but my 462 AthlonXP based system is running NFS Most Wanted on very max setting without any problem or lagging, as the AA is the only thing i fix so it ca run well and look great, so iu guess something in your system was bad, bcuz if i make single core Athlon64 it will rekt the games... NFS Carbon is running also on high settings, but that game performance is broken, i did try it even on my previous FX8350 system and was having the same lagg and FPS drop, so is just bad game, and still runs great on my AthlonXP with mostly higher settings... damn i even install NFS Pro street but was too much, and still was running ok on low settings...
As for NFS Underground 2 im sure my 462 will eat it......

So in the end is about how well optimized and build one system is, not how much powerful the hardware it is, a great powerful systems can run games like crap if there are some bottlenecks, viruses, instability, improper software or other. Same goes for old systems that can run games or other software like champs if they are well made, and the software is running properly. You can see that in junk gaming ports, bad optimizations or graphics APIs, look for example DooM with Vulkan how it runs like charm, while other games like ARMA 3 run like crap.........

🤣 Ivy bridge for Win XP system and GTX 7xx series the ***king hell are you serious or is that a joke ?!?!?!.........
You can put AMD Thread Ripper 16 cores and 64GB or even 128GB of RAM and x2 GTX 1080TI or even x2 GTX Titan Volta there, so you can be sure your game will run in best way, while i run it on my AthlonXP system ROLF..........
For Great XP system i can run my 939 Opteron 165 and some GPU like Radeon HD4870 and all XP era games will be rekted... Hell i even did play on my 939 Ultra-D system WoW Legion 7.1.5 on high setting i think can`t remember, on HD4670 so for what LGA 1155 are we talking here.......

Edit damn im sure even the Win 98, and DOS games will need the Tread Ripper, 128GB ram and dual SLI GTX 1080TI........

Well, if AXP is fast enough for you, then obviously you don't need high fps for enjoyable gameplay. Good for you, makes things easier... but some people (like me) need as much fps as possible.

As for the NFS U2 - Re: NFS underground 2 - CPU benchmark So AXP 3000+ can do 40 fps... which in my terms is slideshow. 🤣

When high fps is a priority (120+), high resolution > FHD, and the best possible AA/AF, then you will find out Ivy Bridge and GTX7xx is not overkill at all.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

QX9770 would cost over 200 euros

QX9650 would cost "peanuts" from Aliexpress or some local store/seller. Modded 771 Xeons are still cheaper though.

Oh man I bought a QX9650 when they were brand new. Talk about an eye-watering price, but certainly the king of Windows XP processors. My current Skylake desktop PC cost only a little bit more than just this CPU when I got it.

It is your thing if you will scale the thing up with 1080P and other useless crap, that are not ment to be used...
Your testing on XP did show 40 FPS on the Athlon XP 3000+ that is 2GHz processor, while i have 3800+ AthlonXP 2.6GHz and Radeon HD3850 that boost my FPS much, as the 7800 is weaker card, and your CPU as well, also i have modded BIOS that the RAM is on 1T that is about 230 FSB no matter is 200....

Also you miss the whole point, everyone can make new hardware to run old software, but not everyone can make old hardware to run newer things to run better....
AA and AF are useless, only more load on the system, i fix this crap as removing the filters on the game, and adding on the Catalyst so it can have good look and not much performance impact...
40 FPS slideshow really 🤣, slideshow is on 10 and 20 fps... And was on your system, as on mine NFS U2 will run like 60 fps or maybe more don`t have the game, as i like more Most Wanted...
Also above 60 FPS is whatever is about the same, i enjoy milion times more to run GTA SA, NFS MW, NFS Carbon and even Crysis 1 if you want on AthlonXP or similar Pentium IV.... While i can run the damn games on my Ryzen with RX580 on whatever settings i want, and where is the fun in that............................
Seems some people have twisted and wrong ideas about how the things need to be......
Next bus stop 4K and 8K on dos games on IBM servers...

Also from your twisted sick point of view, people better to trash dump all the 3Dfx cards and old hardware that are under Ivy Bridge and GEforce 7xx bcuz they will not be able to run DOS games, 98 games, and XP games any good......... 😵 😵 😵 😵 😕