Interesting aspect is that the boards seem to be 'mirrored'. Assuming that the rest of the design is similar we should be able to compare notes. The motherboard is a HP Red-Truck PCB rev 0A - Intel 915GV Express chipset.
My setup here runs on a 3.2 Ghz cpu with 2GB RAM.

[edit] Oh, forgot, and on XP Pro SP2

PARKE wrote:

Interesting aspect is that the boards seem to be 'mirrored'. Assuming that the rest of the design is similar we should be able to compare notes. The motherboard is a HP Red-Truck PCB rev 0A - Intel 915GV Express chipset.
...
[edit] Oh, forgot, and on XP Pro SP2

Yep, same chipset, though mine is a 3.0Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM. There was a third stick of 256mb that appeared to be original to the computer, as it was branded HP, but I took that out in order to have two evenly-matched 512mb. It's been forever since I messed with / looked up anything to do with hyper-threading, but IIRC, it requires matching spec RAM in even-number pairs?

Also, just for kicks and giggles since the ethernet works, I tried YouTube and found it perfectly capable of playing 720p videos. One of my old Toshiba laptops from '06 with a Celeron and 2GB RAM can barely do 144p. 😜

Yep, same chipset, though mine is a 3.0Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM. There was a third stick of 256mb that appeared to be original to the computer, as it was branded HP, but I took that out in order to have two evenly-matched 512mb. It's been forever since I messed with / looked up anything to do with hyper-threading, but IIRC, it requires matching spec RAM in even-number pairs?
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No, I think you can put the 256Mb stick in an empty slot and it will work - but I doubt that you will notice any difference. And when the 256MB stick is of a slower Mhz rating than the other two the system will run via that slower rating.
**

Also, just for kicks and giggles since the ethernet works, I tried YouTube and found it perfectly capable of playing 720p videos. One of my old Toshiba laptops from '06 with a Celeron and 2GB RAM can barely do 144p. 😜
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More giggles here then, this HP is more or less my daily internet machine 😀

murrayman wrote:

Also, just for kicks and giggles since the ethernet works, I tried YouTube and found it perfectly capable of playing 720p videos. One of my old Toshiba laptops from '06 with a Celeron and 2GB RAM can barely do 144p. 😜

If it will let you enable the HTML5 player, you should be able to get even better performance.

https://www.youtube.com/html5

This laptop really struggles with video. I would assume it's because I have almost no video memory, but I could be wrong.

murrayman wrote:

I tried YouTube and found it perfectly capable of playing 720p videos.

The Prescott core is good for that, although many people don't like them for other reasons. It's better for video than the Northwood.

murrayman wrote:

Looks like this system has a PCIe x1 slot after all.

Oh good news because that makes life a lot more simple. See the best PCI video card of the XP era for your system is..
a PCI-Express x1 video card. 😎

Zotac GeForce® GT 710 1GB PCIE x 1 - ZT-71304-20L

It is widely available everywhere for around 40 dollars(even here in Muzulmania almost all shops have it), and while still not an up to date gaming card it will fare MUCH better then anything you could get for a classic PCI slot. The card should have a 3.0 PCI-E connector, so in a more modern motherboard it could be even less limited. Has a Kepler 3D core, with 8 ROP 16 TMU 192 shader config, with a VP5 PureVideo decoder(same as GT520/610).

Just about any PCIE card can be modified to fit into 1x slot. Either by opening the slot ( which might not be the doable here ) or by hacking off some of the edge connector of the card. Some DIY tutorials how to do it are on the net.

Theoretically, it should be possible to hack off Titan V to work on 1x, so for XP system it boils down to support for XP of a given GPU.

Now that I know this system has a PCIe 1x slot, things have changed of course, but I may still play around with a standard PCI slot card just for fun. That's up for debate now since stats and benchmarks already exist for such cards out there, and thus I may go for the GT710 as recommended by cskamacska (especially since it comes with a low-profile bracket). But at the very least, this thread has served as an excellent discussion on and collection of links about XP-era / XP-compatible graphics cards. I'll report back again once I make a final decision, and exercise the Intel chip to see how buggy it is with gaming!

Just make sure you get a card with 128-bit memory. A PCI Radeon 9250 with 128-bit VRAM runs circles around an AGP FX5200 with 64-bit VRAM.

PCI Radeon 9250 128-bit:

AGP 8x FX5200 64-bit:

Looking at the photo of the SFF interior earlier in the thread it seems that there is limited space for a videocard on the PCIe slot because of the position of the cpu cooling system ?

PARKE wrote:

Looking at the photo of the SFF interior earier in the thread it seems that there is limited space for a videocard on the PCIe slot because of the position of the cpu cooling system ?

That's a mighty good point. I'll check dimensions of any card I may plan to place in there, both in relation to the CPU cooler and, if I go with PCI, with that one mobo connector.

That Gt 710 is just 16 cm long, see:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1GB-HP-Compaq-dc5100 … d-/172242873741

But uhh.... for that kind of money you can get entire P4 systems that run circles around our 'poor office HP's 😉

PARKE wrote:

That Gt 710 is just 16 cm long, see:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1GB-HP-Compaq-dc5100 … d-/172242873741

But uhh.... for that kind of money you can get entire P4 systems that run circles around our 'poor office HP's 😉

WOW. That is nuts! Nah, I think I'd just go for this one. I mean, it's a whole centimeter shorter from the dimensions listed.

At least, I would... if it wasn't a 64-bit setup. 😅

murrayman wrote:

That's a mighty good point. I'll check dimensions of any card I may plan to place in there, both in relation to the CPU cooler and, if I go with PCI, with that one mobo connector.

From the picture provided it looks like the chipset cooler wont be a problem since its cut down in 1 slot width, and the CPU cooler is far away enough from the end of the ZT-71304-20L. It may actually be beneficial that it faces the cooler, since heat spreader is so minimal(its a 20W card) it can help with sucking the hot air off of it.. right onto the processor. 😁

The biggest challenge might be the 3 capacitors near the opening of the slot, those may prevent the DVI connector to slide in its place, and maybe the toroid choke further down.

murrayman wrote:

I mean, it's a whole centimeter shorter from the dimensions listed.

A Zotac GT 710 is 146.05mm long. Both cards are the same, but the 100 dollar version has scrubbed Zotac logo, so the poor victims think they are provided a custom solution and not just any old off the shelf video card.

murrayman wrote:

At least, I would... if it wasn't a 64-bit setup. 😅

Well you could always get a 128 bit Radeon 9200 card.. 🤣

But all the GT 430/520/610/710 and HD2400 Pro/3450/4350/5450/7350 PCI/PCI-E x1 cards are 64 bit so its not like we can choose like in the good ol days. 😀

So did it work out okay? 😀

Well if anyone was wondering the GT710 version is markedly smaller than the GT730. GT730 front side cooling fins phisically block a second card from fitting on the left(so its a 2 slot cooling solution), and the ones pouring over the card on the right make the sound card behind a tight fit. GT710 on the other hand has a miniscule heatsink, feels like it came from 18 years ago. I could fit it right behind a GTX1060 without a problem, and still have room for ventillation. The whole card feels much more compact than the GT730 even though they both have the same PCB size.

Tldr; if size is a concern forget the GT730, the heatsink makes it as large as a compact version of the GTX1060/1070.
The 710 on the other hand is really tiny, and can fit in almost anywhere. Obviously it wont be as fast as its a cut down version of the GT730, but the video decoder part VP5 is the same.