pentiumspeed wrote:

I have searched here and internet with little success. Is there is a website devoted to this information?

For example have a HD 3870 (directx 10.1) will it work with 9.0c and older for older games? For the games that cannot do anything with video card directx 10.1, How about the high end x1950 XT or XTX performance rates with older games that cannot be used on HD 3870?

pentiumspeed

Generally speaking, newer generations of hardware support older functionality. There are some exceptions. Splinter Cell, for example, ran optimally with hardware from the Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 generations, but the extensions they used for shadow buffer mode were seemingly dropped after the FX cards. So, you might find problems of that sort.

pentiumspeed wrote:

For example have a HD 3870 (directx 10.1) will it work with 9.0c and older for older games? For the games that cannot do anything with video card directx 10.1, How about the high end x1950 XT or XTX performance rates with older games that cannot be used on HD 3870?pentiumspeed

^Hope this answers the first part of your question 😀

As for the other part : Compatibility lies in drivers, and not hardware itself.
Some games/programs can't work on new drivers, and that's with the same GPU used for both.

Very nice, what's OS? This is a board with VIA chipset (socket 775?), I had rather bad experience with this chipset on socket 462. Did VIA made other chipsets that good for different CPUs other than AMD?

I was thinking about XP or using windows 7 32bit.

Cheers, pentiumspeed

Windows XP SP3 (fully Updated).
It uses VIA PT-880 Ultra chipset (yes, a LGA 775 board), and I like it.
It has few quirks, but in test system it worked fine (+ having AGP/PCI-e/PCI & DDR1/DDR2 & IDE/SATA - is really convenient 😁).
In general, VIA chipsets are low budget stuff, so not performance monsters, and not best compatibility. BUT they can do what others can't 😀

pentiumspeed wrote:

I had rather bad experience with this chipset on socket 462. Did VIA made other chipsets that good for different CPUs other than AMD?

Not really. I actually just received such a board (the 4CoreDual-SATA2) and have been putting it through its paces. It's measurably slower than Intel chipsets, especially with nVidia video cards (2D speed in XP is very slow with NV AGP and PCIe cards. However, using Win7 seems to solve this).

It's also not very stable at 1066MHz FSB. Despite proudly advertising FSB1066 support on the PCB itself, it automatically downclocks FSB1066 CPUs to 1024MHz. My E6600 only runs at 2.3GHz, unless I go into the BIOS and force it to run at 1066/2.4GHz. But at that speed, I get all sorts of fun errors, especially in Windows 7.

Really, the only VIA chipset that's given me great performance across the board is actually a P3 chipset, the Apollo Pro 266T DDR chipset. Somewhat miraculously, it's the only VIA chipset I've used that lets me use an NV GPU without killing 2D speed.