GTS 450, GTX 650(Ti), GTX 750/660 (Ti).
Radeon 5770/6770.
Unless you want a more legacy, or "period correct", solution (DirectX 10/9c class) ?
Think about adding 2x1GB (or switching to 2x2GB), to get ~3GB in total.

I never had an issue with my GTX 750 TI in XP. It played every game fine and never wasn't fast enough for the most demanding XP games.

clueless1 wrote:

I never had an issue with my GTX 750 TI in XP. It played every game fine and never wasn't fast enough for the most demanding XP games.

What kind of CPU do you have it paired with? I do remember back in 2006 that there were XP games that would run better on single-core chips because they were not optimized for multi-core .... but at that time those dual-core chips were slower than the single-core if they were using only one chip. I'm not sure this would be the case for very long, though? For instance if you were only using one core of an early Core 2 Duo would it still be faster than an FX-57?

I'm surprised that the drivers from the 750 TI don't have any issues with early XP games!

infiniteclouds wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

I never had an issue with my GTX 750 TI in XP. It played every game fine and never wasn't fast enough for the most demanding XP games.

What kind of CPU do you have it paired with? I do remember back in 2006 that there were XP games that would run better on single-core chips because they were not optimized for multi-core .... but at that time those dual-core chips were slower than the single-core if they were using only one chip. I'm not sure this would be the case for very long, though? For instance if you were only using one core of an early Core 2 Duo would it still be faster than an FX-57?

I'm surprised that the drivers from the 750 TI don't have any issues with early XP games!

I had it paired first with a C2D then with a C2Q. I mostly played games from GOG, so early XP games may have had compatibility patches.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I'm surprised that the drivers from the 750 TI don't have any issues with early XP games!

Does the GTX 700 series work with Far Cry 1? I know that the 300 series driver in combination with 6600GT and 6800GT is a no-go.
If not, what is the newest card which has working drivers?

watson wrote:

infiniteclouds wrote:

I'm surprised that the drivers from the 750 TI don't have any issues with early XP games!

Does the GTX 700 series work with Far Cry 1? I know that the 300 series driver in combination with 6600GT and 6800GT is a no-go.
If not, what is the newest card which has working drivers?

I played the GOG.com version of Far Cry 1 on my 750Ti without any problems in XP.

clueless1 wrote:

I played the GOG.com version of Far Cry 1 on my 750Ti without any problems in XP.

Excellent, I'll keep an eye out for this card in the future then, even though I mostly play around with AGP.
It must be some kind of driver bug with the GeForce 6000 series. Phil's latest 6800GT video clearly illustrates this issue and I've had the same problem with a 6600GT.

The GTX 550ti can be picked up for around $20 and is pretty overkill for XP.

I've used a 768MB Quadro FX1800 on my PCIe XP rig in the past (I still have two of the cards). Worked quite well and a surprising number of games were very playable. It's closest Geforce cousin would be the 9600GT.