obobskivich wrote:

Oh there are certainly other workarounds, and your solution here isn't supported by all platforms. But all of those various hackjobs both take extra time and can be a pain to fool around with constantly switching back and forth yadda yadda - I'd rather save the time and have a machine that works like it's supposed to work. 😀

Well they are supported by Intel and AMD platforms. What else is there 😀

Time and pain to fool around? Awww come on. You set it once and then you got a system that performs like a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64.

We both know that a period correct machine is a black hole for time 🤣

philscomputerlab wrote:

Well they are supported by Intel and AMD platforms. What else is there 😀

Time and pain to fool around? Awww come on. You set it once and then you got a system that performs like a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64.

We both know that a period correct machine is a black hole for time 🤣

I don't have a modern AMD system, but none of my Intel systems allow you to "disable cores" in the BIOS. The feature you're getting is likely unique to a specific motherboard manufacturer or BIOS that you have, not to all Intel systems in the world. Just like how I have an S478 machine that I can switch L3/L2 cache on/off on the CPU, but not all S478 boards support that. 😊

And when I say time to fool around, I assumed you meant constantly making this switch with a modern system that dual-boots which would be such a hassle. But understanding what you meant now, yes it would be no better or worse than a Pentium 4 system and should "just work" with whatever. I'm fine with my P4s though. 😀

Ok fair point. It seems I have mostly Asrock and Asus boards. So these seem to be fine. Especially AMD was so into core unlocking and many boards had options for that.

I don't mind P4 but still haven't got a decent cooling solution. Newer Core processors are easy to cool in comparison.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Ok fair point. It seems I have mostly Asrock and Asus boards. So these seem to be fine. Especially AMD was so into core unlocking and many boards had options for that.

My newest i5 is an ASRock and I looked through the manual trying to find mention of this feature and it isn't there that I could see. 😊

I'm not at all surprised that my Intel and Dell boards don't offer the feature though. 🤣

And yes I do remember on an AMD-based BioStar some years ago having options to try unlocking cores and whatnot; it's nothing I bothered with, but it was there.

I don't mind P4 but still haven't got a decent cooling solution. Newer Core processors are easy to cool in comparison.

P4 isn't really any more or less heat than anything modern - my C2Q is rated at 95W TDP, my i5 and C2D are both 65W (and I explicitly chose an "S" variant for the 65W TDP; the "normal" and "K" variants are more like 85-95W). By comparison my NetBurst chips are 74W, 72W, and 92W. All of the various heatsinks that I have for them are relatively similar in terms of capabilities as a result, the mounting is the only thing that differs significantly. The myth of the Pentium 4/NetBurst as "China syndrome in a box" really needs to die imho. 😊 😵

Oh it's not the heat I've got an issue with, it's that I can't get my hands on a new P4 cooler 🤣

I had no issues getting a new copper cooler for S370 but S478 seems to be the odd one out it seems. So at the moment I just place the core of a P4 stock cooler (plastic things snapped off) with some thermal paste on it and place a 120 mm fan on top. Works well on my bench type setup but I'd prefer to have something more reliable.

Is there a point to slowing down a modern system anyway? I mean, yes, you may get somewhat of a very distant feel of what a single-core P4 would perform like (even at 1 GHz and 1 core, a Core i7 would still be much faster than any Pentium 3 ever made... Your memory is still much faster, you have a faster HDD, or even SSD, faster videocard, PCI-e bus etc). But other than that... isn't the era of software that crashes on fast machines long gone?
If I think of XP-era games, I think of games like Far Cry, Doom3, Half-Life 2 etc, and they will run just fine on the latest machines, OSes etc.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Oh it's not the heat I've got an issue with, it's that I can't get my hands on a new P4 cooler 🤣

I had no issues getting a new copper cooler for S370 but S478 seems to be the odd one out it seems. So at the moment I just place the core of a P4 stock cooler (plastic things snapped off) with some thermal paste on it and place a 120 mm fan on top. Works well on my bench type setup but I'd prefer to have something more reliable.

In the ebay auctions thread I linked to some cheap Swiftech 478 coolers I had found, here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/161546169877

This is what I have for my C2Q, and it supports 478 as well:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/191425445054

This should work very well too:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/390960723986

This should work very well too, if the graphics-card version is any indication:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/151517608393

My 3.2EE uses this heatsink, as part of a Shuttle:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/201255539573

My Willamette uses an AeroCool HT-101, which pop up from time to time, but I couldn't find one today. I did find another AeroCool tower, the DP-102, though: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321073146767

Basically the bigger take-away is either go with something from the 478 era that will likely be heatpipes + 80mm fan, or get a 775 cooler that has 478 compatibility and sports a 92mm or 120mm fan. The 80mm variant doesn't have to mean more noise, depending on the fan you pick.

Scali wrote:

Is there a point to slowing down a modern system anyway? I mean, yes, you may get somewhat of a very distant feel of what a single-core P4 would perform like (even at 1 GHz and 1 core, a Core i7 would still be much faster than any Pentium 3 ever made... Your memory is still much faster, you have a faster HDD, or even SSD, faster videocard, PCI-e bus etc). But other than that... isn't the era of software that crashes on fast machines long gone?
If I think of XP-era games, I think of games like Far Cry, Doom3, Half-Life 2 etc, and they will run just fine on the latest machines, OSes etc.

There are older games (some as recently as 2005) that will not function (either correctly or at all) on multi-core processors. It isn't a matter of the processor being clocked "too fast" as it is the game can't properly time itself or otherwise initialize on multi-core. AMD Socket 939 dual-cores seem to be the worst of the lot in terms of compatibility, but should by no means be considered the only source of problems. Also, FarCry has been documented/reported as having problems with Vista+. Half-Life 2 is a somewhat unfair example because Valve still maintains it.

Finally, "XP-era" doesn't just mean DirectX 9 shooters from 2004 onwards. The games I'm generally having issues with here are DX7/8 titles from a few years earlier. And they're all generally "XP compatible" on their boxes, and will work in XP with hardware from the same era.

P4 isn't really any more or less heat than anything modern - my C2Q is rated at 95W TDP, my i5 and C2D are both 65W (and I explicitly chose an "S" variant for the 65W TDP; the "normal" and "K" variants are more like 85-95W). By comparison my NetBurst chips are 74W, 72W, and 92W.

TDP doesn't tell all. This machine used to have a Celeron D 360 (P4 with insufficient cache)
I replaced it with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 with the same OEM heatsink and it runs cooler

The thing is, software that might used 50% of a P4 core might use 25% of one of four Core2 cores. In other words,
the same amount of work will use a much smaller fraction of the TDP

. It isn't a matter of the processor being clocked "too fast" as it is the game can't properly time itself or otherwise initialize on multi-core. A

Can't say I have ever seen one.
Of course that doesn't mean they don't exist.

obobskivich wrote:

There are older games (some as recently as 2005) that will not function (either correctly or at all) on multi-core processors. It isn't a matter of the processor being clocked "too fast" as it is the game can't properly time itself or otherwise initialize on multi-core. AMD Socket 939 dual-cores seem to be the worst of the lot in terms of compatibility, but should by no means be considered the only source of problems.

No, that *is* the source of problems.
There is a bug in AMD CPUs where each core has its own timestamp counter. The values between cores can drift. When a thread is scheduled on another core, this can effectively make RDTSC-based code jump back and forth in time.
All timestamp counters are *supposed* to be synchronized, so this problem should never happen, and never did on any Intel systems, be they multi-CPU or multi-core.
AMD has offered a workaround where the timestamp counters are periodically re-synchronized in software: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/utilities
Gotta love how they call a bugfix an 'optimizer'. And funny that they claim it's for XP only. Perhaps Vista and newer have this fix integrated in the OS already?

Mind you, you wouldn't need to disable the cores in your system. Just setting the process affinity to a single core should be enough to run the software without problems.

Also, FarCry has been documented/reported as having problems with Vista+.

Never heard of those though... I've not had issues running Far Cry on Vista or newer.
You sure it's not PEBKAC?

Finally, "XP-era" doesn't just mean DirectX 9 shooters from 2004 onwards. The games I'm generally having issues with here are DX7/8 titles from a few years earlier. And they're all generally "XP compatible" on their boxes, and will work in XP with hardware from the same era.

Being "XP compatible" doesn't mean that it's NOT compatible with any other OSes.
Even Windows 8.1 still supports DirectX all the way back to the first version. My early DirectX code, written on Windows 9x, still works. All versions of 3DMark, including Final Reality, still work. Ironically enough, some of the code actually does NOT work on XP anymore. Or not correctly anyway. There's a bug in the nVidia drivers for XP, not handling Direct3D1's topology correctly. In Vista/7/8/8.1 it works though.
I have yet to find a game that is from the XP era, that doesn't work. Win9x era is a diferent story, but these games won't run on WinNT/2000/XP either.

Scali wrote:

Never heard of those though... I've not had issues running Far Cry on Vista or newer.
You sure it's not PEBKAC?

Check this out: http://youtu.be/Szf65BX2XB4?t=5m37s

It's easily overlooked / unnoticed. I also didn't know until I read about it on the GOG.com forum and then verified it myself.

Another game that has issues under newer OS is F.E.A.R. which will start to stutter / drop performance after a while. The workaround is to disable input devices in device manager.

But yes, a lot of games work just fine and I don't think anyone is denying this. But many have little issues and if someone is in the position and has the time and skill to build a dedicated XP machine, I say go for it! I'm having lots of fun with mine and it's nice to have everything "just work" without ALchemy and other fixes.

smeezekitty wrote:

TDP doesn't tell all. This machine used to have a Celeron D 360 (P4 with insufficient cache) I replaced it with a Core 2 Quad Q9 […]
Show full quote

TDP doesn't tell all. This machine used to have a Celeron D 360 (P4 with insufficient cache)
I replaced it with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 with the same OEM heatsink and it runs cooler

The thing is, software that might used 50% of a P4 core might use 25% of one of four Core2 cores. In other words,
the same amount of work will use a much smaller fraction of the TDP

Not an unreasonable line of reasoning. And the Core chips also have better power management to boot. But I can also tell you that my NetBurst chips don't run significantly hotter than the Core chips from their reported temperatures, especially loading temperatures. In other words, TDP is still telling you what's the max dissipation, and that doesn't change meaning just because the processor is able to do a lot more with the same power budget. Idle temperatures may be lower, but that's largely insignificant unless you're right up against the limits of cooling. 😵

Can't say I have ever seen one.
Of course that doesn't mean they don't exist.

GTA San Andreas and Empire Earth are good examples.

Scali wrote:

No, that *is* the source of problems. There is a bug in AMD CPUs where each core has its own timestamp counter. The values betwe […]
Show full quote

No, that *is* the source of problems.
There is a bug in AMD CPUs where each core has its own timestamp counter. The values between cores can drift. When a thread is scheduled on another core, this can effectively make RDTSC-based code jump back and forth in time.
All timestamp counters are *supposed* to be synchronized, so this problem should never happen, and never did on any Intel systems, be they multi-CPU or multi-core.
AMD has offered a workaround where the timestamp counters are periodically re-synchronized in software: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/utilities
Gotta love how they call a bugfix an 'optimizer'. And funny that they claim it's for XP only. Perhaps Vista and newer have this fix integrated in the OS already?

AMD's optimizer doesn't fix the issue for all games, and I've experienced similar problems (albeit to a much lesser extent) with Core 2 chips, so no it isn't entirely unique to AMD chips.

Mind you, you wouldn't need to disable the cores in your system. Just setting the process affinity to a single core should be enough to run the software without problems.

Should be. Isn't always.

Never heard of those though... I've not had issues running Far Cry on Vista or newer.
You sure it's not PEBKAC?

See Phil's response.

Being "XP compatible" doesn't mean that it's NOT compatible with any other OSes.

When or where did I imply or say anything to the contrary? I said that many of these games list XP on their packaging as a compatible option - they're "XP era" despite not being AAA DX9 shooters from 2004+, which seems to be what "XP games" get keyholed as these days.

I have yet to find a game that is from the XP era, that doesn't work.

ORB, Empire Earth, Morrowind, Dark Forces II, Diggles, unpatched/unmodified Tiberian Sun all come to mind. 😊

philscomputerlab wrote:

But yes, a lot of games work just fine and I don't think anyone is denying this. But many have little issues and if someone is in the position and has the time and skill to build a dedicated XP machine, I say go for it! I'm having lots of fun with mine and it's nice to have everything "just work" without ALchemy and other fixes.

+1. This is basically what I'm arguing as well. The games I've listed above either refuse to install, run, or run stable under Win7, but there are other games from "way back" that run with quirks. Personally I'd rather have everything work 100/100 without screwing around with compatibility options, finding community patches, etc. And a P4 running XP allows that, and works just like it did in 2003. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

Should be. Isn't always.

Well, technically speaking there should be no reason why disabling cores in the BIOS would be different from limiting software to running on 1 core with process affinity at application level.
Only really funky bugs would trigger on something like that. Not saying they don't exist, but they could probably be patched/worked around. It would not be an OS-related issue.

obobskivich wrote:

See Phil's response.

I'll have to look at that later, at work now.
Unless you can explain what the video is about in words.

obobskivich wrote:

When or where did I imply or say anything to the contrary? I said that many of these games list XP on their packaging as a compatible option - they're "XP era" despite not being AAA DX9 shooters from 2004+, which seems to be what "XP games" get keyholed as these days.

Not by me. "XP era" to me, in this context, is any software that runs under XP, whether it was originally designed for it or not.

obobskivich wrote:

ORB, Empire Earth, Morrowind, Dark Forces II, Diggles, unpatched/unmodified Tiberian Sun all come to mind. 😊

Never played any of these games. No idea what their issues are. Therefore I cannot judge whether or not there is a decent workaround to get them working on newer versions of Windows.
More often than not, there is though.

obobskivich wrote:

And a P4 running XP allows that, and works just like it did in 2003. 😀

Only if you also use drivers from 2003, and don't install any post-2003 updates.
Because quite a few games no longer work in XP either. As I already said, I have found some bugs that were introduced in XP drivers at some point, which are NOT in drivers for newer OSes, the irony.

On Phil's video - it appears that certain reflections and such don't work properly past XP. He may have a bigger/better explanation than that.

On using drivers/etc from an older era - that's not at all an uncommon thing for a "retro box." My "'03 machine" uses relatively older drivers - most things were installed from their original CDs that are from 2003-2004, but the graphics drivers are a bit newer (April 2005) because they properly control the GPU fan and haven't exhibited any compatibility problems thus far. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

On Phil's video - it appears that certain reflections and such don't work properly past XP. He may have a bigger/better explanation than that.

That's most probably a driver issue, and probably only occurs on a specific combination of videocards/drivers.
There is no logical reason why reflections should work in one OS but not in the other, since Direct3D is the same API on all these systems, and 'reflections' is not just some feature that you enable or disable. It is a complex system of render-to-texture and using various shaders.
Direct3D is not broken at such a level. Drivers could be, games could be, but not the API and not the OS.

obobskivich wrote:

On using drivers/etc from an older era - that's not at all an uncommon thing for a "retro box."

Not saying it is, I'm just saying that you need to specify the parameters more clearly than just "XP era".

Scali wrote:

That's most probably a driver issue, and probably only occurs on a specific combination of videocards/drivers.
There is no logical reason why reflections should work in one OS but not in the other, since Direct3D is the same API on all these systems, and 'reflections' is not just some feature that you enable or disable. It is a complex system of render-to-texture and using various shaders.
Direct3D is not broken at such a level. Drivers could be, games could be, but not the API and not the OS.

Confirmed by many gamers on GOG.com and Steam forums and I've also tested it.

The game is cheap so you can test it and see if you can fix it. Many have tried... Pandora Tomorrow is another game. Please get it to work in Vista+ and you might get GOG.com and Steam to actually start selling it 😀 In F.E.A.R. I had to disable input devices, so the volume shortcuts or calculator button don't work anymore. So each game has it's little oddities. Fascinating for some, hell for others.

But the point is that there simply are lots of games with little issues here and there. Nobody is saying that nothing works. A LOT of games work very well. But some of us prefer an easy life with everything working as intended and not having to patch, fix, use old drivers, a wrapper, an emulator.

Does this make sense?

philscomputerlab wrote:

Confirmed by many gamers on GOG.com and Steam forums and I've also tested it.

As I say, it's most probably a driver-related issue, so I would like to see which hardware/drivers were used when the issue appeared.
Unless the same issue appears on nVidia, AMD and Intel hardware, it's not even worth looking into. Just file a bug report with whichever vendor has the bug.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Does this make sense?

I'm saying you're fooling yourself. There are lots of XP updates and drivers that trigger bugs in old games. It's never a case of 'it just works if you use XP'.
Does that make sense?

Scali wrote:

As I say, it's most probably a driver-related issue, so I would like to see which hardware/drivers were used when the issue appeared.
Unless the same issue appears on nVidia, AMD and Intel hardware, it's not even worth looking into. Just file a bug report with whichever vendor has the bug.

This is sounds a lot like typical response you get form a tech support guy. Lots of assumptions, guessing, nothing based on actual experience and no solutions. Just shrug of the customer and hope he doesn't come back. As if Ubisoft or Nvidia are going to look at resolving an issue with a 10 year old game.

What is me providing you with hardware/drivers used? Do you have a database that you are going to use to look up existing issues? Please...

I'm saying you're fooling yourself. There are lots of XP updates and drivers that trigger bugs in old games. It's never a case of 'it just works if you use XP'.
Does that make sense?

No it doesn't. So someone on a GeForce 770, how can you fix a driver issue from, let's say, 7 years ago? Well that card didn't exist back then, so you're stuck.

Got to disagree with you. Using period correct hardware and software makes things "just work". That's the whole point you see. Going back to a period when hardware and software was fully compatible, supported, tested and worked.

Edit: A programmer right?

philscomputerlab wrote:

This is sounds a lot like typical response you get form a tech support guy. Lots of assumptions, guessing, nothing based on actual experience and no solutions. Just shrug of the customer and hope he doesn't come back. As if Ubisoft or Nvidia are going to look at resolving an issue with a 10 year old game.

No, but if you want an issue resolved, you need to properly specify the issue, and provide steps to reproduce it.
nVidia *will* actually fix bugs if you give them a decent description of what happens and where to look. I've had them fix a few bugs that I personally ran into, which didn't even occur in any commercially available software as far as I know. Just my personal OpenGL testbed.

philscomputerlab wrote:

What is me providing you with hardware/drivers used? Do you have a database that you are going to use to look up existing issues? Please...

If the issue is in a driver, I'm not going to fix it. Firstly because modern drivers are signed/encrypted etc, so making modifications is far from trivial. Secondly, because you get new drivers every month, so I'd have to re-patch the drivers all the time. Much better to just submit a bug report and let the vendor fix it.

philscomputerlab wrote:

No it doesn't. So someone on a GeForce 770, how can you fix a driver issue from, let's say, 7 years ago? Well that card didn't exist back then, so you're stuck.

Uhhh... if a GeForce 770 wasn't around 7 years ago, then drivers for it were not around 7 years ago either. Does not compute...

philscomputerlab wrote:

Got to disagree with you. Using period correct hardware and software makes things "just work".

On a per-game basis yes. You can't get a single configuration to work in all cases. But I already explained that a few times.

Scali wrote:

No, but if you want an issue resolved, you need to properly specify the issue, and provide steps to reproduce it.
nVidia *will* actually fix bugs if you give them a decent description of what happens and where to look. I've had them fix a few bugs that I personally ran into, which didn't even occur in any commercially available software as far as I know. Just my personal OpenGL testbed.

What game was it and what was the issue?

If the issue is in a driver, I'm not going to fix it. Firstly because modern drivers are signed/encrypted etc, so making modifications is far from trivial. Secondly, because you get new drivers every month, so I'd have to re-patch the drivers all the time. Much better to just submit a bug report and let the vendor fix it.

Well you can't fix it. People have tried to fix many games and there simply are no solutions.

Uhhh... if a GeForce 770 wasn't around 7 years ago, then drivers for it were not around 7 years ago either. Does not compute...

Exactly my point. You see the problem? There are only drivers so old that you can roll back to. On modern hardware your options are rather limited. What are you going to do when hardware changes breaks compatibility like the GeForce 4 Ti being the last card to support Shadow Buffers or Nvidia and AMD changing things up with their shaders when the went from GeForce 7 to 8 and X1900 series to HD200 series? E.g. Pandora Tomorrow the same drivers work on a GeForce 7 but break on a GeForce 8. Put the GeForce 7 in a Windows 8.1 PC and try getting a GeForce driver older than ForceWare 177. And I've only played around with a handful of games! And most of them needed some tweaking or couldn't get completely fixed.

And what about in 10 years time? So many things could change.

On a per-game basis yes. You can't get a single configuration to work in all cases. But I already explained that a few times.

Nobody said anything about single configuration. Totally unrealistic. Period correct IS on per-game basis. Think about what it means. Running the game on hardware and software that is from that period of when the game was released. XP covers many many years with all sorts of technologies.

Im using Windows XP SP3 with all updates on some of my XP systems, I have very few issues in games from this period (2001 - 2006).
In XP I use driver 92.91 with every Nividia card up until 7900 GTX then 186.18 with newer cards. I have had very few issues with those two drivers.

With Windows Vista/7/8 many games work fine if downloaded from Steam/GOG or the Friendly Bay but try using your original install discs from 2002 and you quite often get stuck, most irritating are copy protections that just refuse to work with anything newer then XP. Yes there are patches but I want to be able to just install the game and play so I use Windows XP.