First post, by FFXIhealer
Ok, so new project time.
While I was working a few years back for an IT company (me and a boss...not exactly a company, really more of a tag-team), he was gonna throw out a couple of old Pentium 4 Windows XP machines that really didn't work worth a shit anymore. Well, the insides were gutted, but I kept the mid-tower Micro-ATX cases, one power supply, the optical drives, fans, etc. Later on, we had to replace someone's motherboard/CPU from a Dell Vostro 220 and I kept the MB and the RAM, as the CPU itself was the problem. He also had an old Pentium Dual-Core E2220 (2.4GHz Core-2 class Pentium processor) for socket 775, so I dropped it in and the system woke to life.
So this case has been sitting on my floor for a few years now and it has a valid Windows XP license key sticker on the side and I'm thinking hey...maybe this could be used for a cool XP retro gaming system if I ever manage to get a graphics card for it. The MB has a built-in graphics chip so I can set it up and everything. So I did. I pulled a used 80GB SATA hard drive and used the DVD-RW drive from one of the cases, hooked everything up and got it running. I did this only a few days ago.
CASE: Compaq Presario SR1222NX
Motherboard: Intel G45M03 (pulled from a Dell Vostro 220)
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2220 (2.4GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, LGA 775)
RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-667
Integrated Graphics: Intel GMA X4500
HD: ST380013AS (Seagate BarraCuda 80GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache)
I used Legacy IDE to install XP, then installed the AHCI compliant SATA driver and reconfigured. The HDD is running in AHCI mode now.
To make this a really good retro gaming system, I'll need something to occupy that PCI-Express 16x slot. Keep in mind this is not PCI-E 2.0; this is the FIRST iteration. Also, XP only really supported DirectX 9.0c, so that's what I have currently installed.
So I've been looking around for something on the cheap but will nevertheless be powerful for its time. Maybe a GeForce 8800GTX? 9800GTX? GTX 280? What about Radeon? Didn't they have similar offerings at the time? HD3450? What would be good for this time period (~2005/6)? Any recommendations? And I only have on-hand a PSU that can supply a 6-pin PCI-E power hookup. Most of the big gaming cards require 8+6 that I know of. I'm not looking to spend any more than $40, honestly. The system isn't really worth more than that.
The only thing I know about this time period is that my Dell gaming laptop had a Pentium M 2.1GHz single-core and a 7800GTX 256MB PCI-E graphics card and it was beast-mode. This will be a desktop rig about the same way, but it has a 2.4GHz dual-core Pentium from the Core architecture. The only difference I can see between a Core 2 Duo and the Pentium is it only has 1MB L2 cache instead of 2MB on the Core 2 Duo. I'm aware it'll probably CPU bottleneck in certain games. Just wondering what you guys would put in it if it was your project.