My overkill XP machine isn't as beefy as yours, an X5690 w/ a 780ti. I've yet to anything I can't run maxed out from the era you would want to use XP for. Anything else is gravy.

Best compatible - X58 with 6-core CPU (Xeon or whatever). Can do Win9x stuff with some limitations, has floppy, native PCI, etc.

Best overall performance - X79 with i7 49xx. Basically Ivy Bridge platform on steroids. May have issue with energy saving features, although probably only on cheap chinese motherboards.

Most modern and best single core performance - Z87 with 4790k. Keep in mind that nowadays these CPUs are annoying to deal with, because Intel did not use solder under IHS and thermal paste has tendencies to degrade.

My plan was 3770k on Z77 chipset (I have this in an old box actually) but Haswell stuff do be super affordable.

If you already have 3770k with Z77, why spend more money? Haswell is not dramatically better. And has identically annoying limitations, when it comes to PCIe lane distribution.

Z97 with 4790K, 8 - 16gb of 3200 DDR3L and a Titan X, just needs the same driver tweaks as the 980Ti. Low power DDR3 should have room to OC it above 3200 to 3400 and tighten timings a bit.

A Z97 board will require its own Sound card compatible with XP IIRC the sound chip on most Z97 boards doesn't have XP compatibility, it'll also require a few 3rd party drivers for AHCI and Raid support. Might also require turning off UEFI in Bios and tweaking a few other options that XP doesn't support but overall Z97 should work perfectly fine with XP.

There are reports of Sata not working but again its simple to setup a Slipstream of XP32 with the required drivers.

You could also run XP64 with the slipstream AHCI drivers and you then don't have to tweak much at all as XP64 does support features XP32 doesn't.

Really I would dual boot this PC with Windows 7 and XP, its a waste to have that much ram with a 32bit OS and Windows 7 would let you run pretty much everything that doesn't require DX12.

crashprime wrote on 2022-11-04, 22:18:

I was thinking the architectural differences would be pretty low on XP and I had seen some things about Haswell not running some 16-bit stuff. I want to get a lot of mileage out of this PC so cutting off some 95/98 era stuff would be a bit of a bummer.

GPU will be a 980 ti (technically speaking 960 is endgame officially but the faster Maxwell cards just need a bit of help to allow the driver to work). I'm thinking the GPU is so starved of CPU performance at this point the Titan X would offer zero benefit and just use more power.

If you intend to play games from the 90's you should know nvidia cards post 7xxx-series don't support 16-bit dithering, so games that don't support 32-bit colour depth, which are many, look like crap.

The likelihood of running into issues with pre-directx 9 games also gets higher the the further you go, directx 6 games might not work at all or very badly due to drivers being far too new for them.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-05, 06:26:

crashprime wrote on 2022-11-04, 22:18:

I was thinking the architectural differences would be pretty low on XP and I had seen some things about Haswell not running some 16-bit stuff. I want to get a lot of mileage out of this PC so cutting off some 95/98 era stuff would be a bit of a bummer.

GPU will be a 980 ti (technically speaking 960 is endgame officially but the faster Maxwell cards just need a bit of help to allow the driver to work). I'm thinking the GPU is so starved of CPU performance at this point the Titan X would offer zero benefit and just use more power.

If you intend to play games from the 90's you should know nvidia cards post 7xxx-series don't support 16-bit dithering, so games that don't support 32-bit colour depth, which are many, look like crap.

The likelihood of running into issues with pre-directx 9 games also gets higher the the further you go, directx 6 games might not work at all or very badly due to drivers being far too new for them.

Thank you! This is the type of thing I totally didn't know. Crap. Now it seems like maybe splitting off a dedicated 98 build is more feasible. There is too large of a tradeoff in performance to get a card with 16bit dithering support.

I've got a new in box 6200 in my cross hairs for a little 98 build.

Not advisable to go over a 5900 Ultra for 98. Your going to lose graphical effects.

crashprime wrote on 2022-11-05, 17:32:

I've got a new in box 6200 in my cross hairs for a little 98 build.

If the goal is generally compatibility you're probably better off with a Ti 4200 / 4600 for a Win98 build.

It all depends on intended use / games.

I am currently runing my WinXP build based on Z68 chipset (asus Maximus IV gene-z), i7 2600k (sandybridge) and Geforce 680 GTX. Crysis is nicely playable on this build, and its probably most demanding game you can actually run on Windows XP. I also like to play Bioshock 1 and even 2 on this build. Also dont forget to buy Sound Blaster XFI for best sound ever for Windows XP.

crashprime wrote on 2022-11-05, 17:32:

Thank you! This is the type of thing I totally didn't know. Crap. Now it seems like maybe splitting off a dedicated 98 build is more feasible. There is too large of a tradeoff in performance to get a card with 16bit dithering support.

I've got a new in box 6200 in my cross hairs for a little 98 build.

You're welcome.

But like others have already said 6200 is not a good idea for Win98, you'd have to use late Win9x nvidia drivers and they are really bad, this forum is full of people who found that out the hard way. Crashing, visual bugs etc, you don't want to go 6x.xx and beyond with nvidia win9x drivers. 6-series also lost support for 8-bit paletted textures for those (presumably not too many) games that use them and don't look right without them. The sweet spot is probably GeForce4 Ti, the original AGP 4x versions so you can use 30.82 drivers that aren't the fastest drivers available but very compatible for more picky games when the forum favorite 45.23 drivers don't work well.

GeForce FX series is faster but you lose out on compatibility somewhat. GeForce2 has great compatibility with wide range of drivers available but they wouldn't allow you to go crazy with AA and AF if that is important and picture quality can be kinda crap on some cards. GeForce3 seems like pretty pointless half way stop for Win98 to me but should work fine too.

45.23 is the last Nvidia driver you can use in Windows 98 without major issues (games crashing, not looking correctly) which implies GeForce FX 5900 as the most powerful graphics card. In most cases it is however an overkill and a FX5500-FX5600 should be sufficient. GeForce FX do cause some small compatibility issues like scrambled fonts in some games.

GeForce 4 is even more compatible and a good model to start with is 440 (128bit, non SE version).

For a high performance Windows XP build I would probably get a PCIe 2x system (e.g socket AM2+). I got a socket 754 + AGP because I wanted one of the last AGP boards and a CPU I never had.

complain77 wrote on 2022-11-05, 18:36:

I am currently runing my WinXP build based on Z68 chipset (asus Maximus IV gene-z), i7 2600k (sandybridge) and Geforce 680 GTX. Crysis is nicely playable on this build, and its probably most demanding game you can actually run on Windows XP.

I have an XP build based on an E8600 / 980 Ti setup and based on my own benchmarking F..E.A.R. has lower performance than Crysis.

In the Crysis GPU benchmark I get average FPS in the low 60s, whereas F.E.A.R.'s performance test averages 40 FPS. This is running @ 1920x1200 resolution with everything maxed out.

I'm going to try upgrading to an i7 3770k and see how much of a difference that makes.

Also dont forget to buy Sound Blaster XFI for best sound ever for Windows XP.

Ditto this recommendation. An X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion card is ideal for XP with full EAX 5.0 support.

My XP Retro Rocket has the following parts:

- Asrock H97 Fatal1ty Performance
- Intel i7-4790k (running at stock with a tower cooler)
- 16 GB DDR3 1600
- GeForce GTX 960
- Creative X-Fi Titanium
- Realtek 8111E Gigabit Network Card
- 256GB SATA 3.0 SSD
- LG BD-RE Drive
- LG DVD-RW Drive

It runs XP extremely well, and I triple boot it with Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit. This system could also run as a Hackintosh when I feel the mood for it. As I mentioned on another XP thread, the only drawback is the lack of XP support for the on-board USB 3.0 and Intel network adapter. Neither is a showstopper for me.

I also have a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but I haven't tried it with Windows XP yet. I'm letting my son use it in his computer until I replace it with something newer next year.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2022-11-08, 03:36:

My XP Retro Rocket has the following parts: […]
Show full quote

My XP Retro Rocket has the following parts:

- Asrock H97 Fatal1ty Performance
- Intel i7-4790k (running at stock with a tower cooler)
- 16 GB DDR3 1600
- GeForce GTX 960
- Creative X-Fi Titanium
- Realtek 8111E Gigabit Network Card
- 256GB SATA 3.0 SSD
- LG BD-RE Drive
- LG DVD-RW Drive

It runs XP extremely well, and I triple boot it with Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit. This system could also run as a Hackintosh when I feel the mood for it. As I mentioned on another XP thread, the only drawback is the lack of XP support for the on-board USB 3.0 and Intel network adapter. Neither is a showstopper for me.

I also have a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but I haven't tried it with Windows XP yet. I'm letting my son use it in his computer until I replace it with something newer next year.

Both the 980ti and Titan X work ok under XP but they do need slight modifications to the driver inf files to get drivers to install.

Is there a list of games that need 16-bit dithering support? I certainly understand the why, but are there a lot of games (worth playing) that do this?

crashprime wrote on 2022-11-09, 04:19:

Is there a list of games that need 16-bit dithering support? I certainly understand the why, but are there a lot of games (worth playing) that do this?

Not really, no comprehensive list at any rate. Some games only have 16-bit colors, some support 32-bit out of the box, with some games there's some way to enable 32-bit like with Half-Life through command line.

Nearly all games post 2000 support 32-bit colors, but during the 90's it was somewhere in the ballpark of 50/50 I guess. For a Win98 build you still have the issue of drivers so you absolutely should go max GeForce FX or banding colors with 3D games will be the least of your issues.

If you don't know will you be playing that many games that are 16-bit only or if the color banding even bothers you all that much I'd suggest building the WinXP rig first and see do you even need a dedicated Win98/early WinXP build and go from there. There are also all kinds of patches and wrappers for old DirectX and Glide games that translate them to DirectX9 and beyond that give them 32-bit colors and high resolutions if authenticity isn't terribly important for you.

Edit: Oh right you were building a GTX 980 Ti WinXP build, so you really do need another build for Win9x era compatibility. It's not just color banding due to lack of 16-bit dithering with that, also lack of table fog and 8-bit paletted textures if the game even works to begin with which is a big if with <DirectX 7 games.