Trev-MUN wrote on 2022-05-02, 15:56:

Regressed93 had mentioned wanting to build a High-End Windows XP gaming PC eventually

Like many users before me have mentioned: Athlon XP 2800+ (judging from the BIOS screen the CPU should be an 130 nm Barton "AXDA2800DKV4D" released in February 2003) is nowhere to be "a High-End Windows XP gaming PC." A system built around an Athlon 64 FX-57 (90 nm "San Diego" released in June 2005) would be something I'd call "a high-end Win98SE gaming PC."

Heck, any of the five spare computers I have (four desktop MB with CPU plus a laptop) can outperform it easily (the slowest one being an Athlon 64 X2 5000+), and if someone living within one hour driving distance willing to pay US$85 for any of them I'd be happy to deliver it personally. 😉 For the record, three of them were dumpster finds and the other two were hand-me-downs. I paid US$55 for a C2Q Q8300 and US$100 for an i5-4460, respectively, in two fully functional systems, and they are still working well on a daily basis.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-05-02, 17:04:

There are a few games made in 1999 and 2000 which use table fog and paletted textures though. Not many of course, so they are mo […]
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ptr1ck wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:52:

Windows 98 for Games up to around 98 using 99/00 hardware. Directx 7 system. Voodoo cards do best here.

There are a few games made in 1999 and 2000 which use table fog and paletted textures though. Not many of course, so they are more like an exception than the norm. Notable examples include Thief 2 and Final Fantasy 8.

My personal cutoff point for Win98 is 2001. Anything newer than that is better played on WinXP.

Windows XP for Games from 98 to about 03/04. Newest (compatible) hardware is around 2012ish. Directx 9 system.

You're missing out on the last couple of years of EAX support if you play anything from 2005 and onward on a modern system. That's why I like to stretch the WinXP era up to 2007.

I'm with you Joseph. My memory is old and throwing errors, but you catch my drift.

dormcat wrote on 2022-05-02, 18:38:

Like many users before me have mentioned: Athlon XP 2800+ (judging from the BIOS screen the CPU should be an 130 nm Barton "AXDA2800DKV4D" released in February 2003) is nowhere to be "a High-End Windows XP gaming PC."

Yes, but he made it clear that the PC he was looking at on eBay isn't the high-end gaming PC he's intending to build. He was thinking about getting this PC as something that's good enough for early 2000s gaming, if it had a GPU.

I imagine that when he does get around to building the high-end XP gaming PC, it's going to have much more recent parts, and higher-performing ones for their generation.

Trev-MUN wrote on 2022-05-02, 23:34:

Yes, but he made it clear that the PC he was looking at on eBay isn't the high-end gaming PC he's intending to build. He was thinking about getting this PC as something that's good enough for early 2000s gaming, if it had a GPU.

I imagine that when he does get around to building the high-end XP gaming PC, it's going to have much more recent parts, and higher-performing ones for their generation.

That's why I thought the eBay item OP pasted was overpriced. A true high-end XP gaming PC should cost about the same but with way better components.

Paid the following items for the total price of $100:
i5-4460
16GB DDR3 (8x2)
GeForce 650 Ti
128GB SSD
1TB HDD
DVD±RW
450W Bronze PSU + mATX case

i5-4460 Haswell can use WinXP but not officially supported; an Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, or even Core 2 Duo/Quad can handle WinXP with ease. 16GB and GF650Ti are overkill for WinXP. Therefore with an US$85 budget OP can have a much better computer than that Athlon XP 2800+.

For all it's worth, here's my 2 cents:

XP covers a huge span of games and systems, from late pentium 3 rigs to the first core i7 - and to make it worse, the performance gap between generations is significant, especially when it comes to graphics cards. Think 8800GTX vs 7900GTX. As such, I found it's best to either stick with higher end hardware from the middle of xp's lifespan or later hardware, from around when windows 7 and windows XP overlapped usage wise. I'm skipping windows vista here because it seems not many people used it and it didn't gain nearly as much adoption as windows XP or windows 7 did.

So my windows XP machines tend to either be high end stuff from 2006-2007 or mid to high end 2010-2012 hardware. These systems have great winXP support and can cover the whole range of games that came out in that time frame and support windows XP / direct X 9 and 10. One of my XP builds is a dedicated XP machine, built around an nforce 780i mainboard. It's running a core 2 quad x6800 cpu with 4gb of ddr2 and a GTX 280. The other dual boots XP and Win7, and is built around an intel X58 LGA 1366 board with an i7 950, 6Gb of ram and (usually) a GTX 580, although right now I have a Radeon HD 7950 3GB in there.

These two systems can run anything from Doom 3 up to Fallout: New Vegas - more precisely anything made between 2001 and 2010. The i7 dual boots Windows 7, so you can extend that to 2015 in that particular machine's case - witch is why I temporarily swapped out the GTX 580 for the 7950.

Sure, you can get away with older or lower end builds, like a basic core 2 duo and a gt 650 or 8800gt, but it depends on how many games you want the XP build to cover and what kind of performance / detail / resolutions you want to game at. I'm saying this because I have friends that enjoy playing GTA 3 on an 1.8GHz pentium 4 with a geforce 4 MX at low resolutions and mediocre framerates, and consider that as part of the experience (weird kind of masochistic nostalgia if you ask me), while I like to max out the resolution / detail levels and have a smooth 60 + fps.

And while you're able to run XP just fine on an athlon XP (I did back in the day, but I dual booted XP and 98), having loads of systems around the house is impractical (I would know), so I went with configurations that can run games in a 9 year time span.

All of the above only takes into account usability. If you enjoy building machines for the sake of it, the PC you found on ebay can be used for XP, although it makes a fore fitting late win98 build in my opinion, as I found XP service pack 3 is a bit on the sluggish side on anything but the latest socket A / 478 hardware, and by latest I mean nforce 2 + Barton core 2500+ to 3200+ or i865 + Prescott 2.8 to 3.2GHz.

tl;dr - XP gaming covers a very big span of games with greatly different requirements. To cover everything, get a later core 2 duo or early i5/i7 PC. If budget is a concern, then a pre-built core i3 540 or 3240 with a GT 650ti or radepm 7770 should cover your needs nicely. If you want to be a bit more period correct, a late core 2 duo/quad e6xxx/e8xxx or athlon II / Phenom II / Phenom X4 with a GTX 260 216c or GTX 280 / Radeon 4870 / 5870 will run any game you want and blow most things out of the water.

Windows XP for Games from 98 to about 03/04. Newest (compatible) hardware is around 2012ish. Directx 9 system.

I don't know about that. Anything that runs on vista will run on XP as well, and it will run better - so I'd push that 04 up to and including windows 7's launch year + 1. Games like fallout new vegas and Warhammer 40k Dawn of War can have issues with modern OS's like win 10 due to the Games for Windows LIVE thing, or various DRMs that are incompatible with win 10 (in some cases win7). Sure, there are patches for them, but I don't like spending hours looking for a patch then testing a game's stability instead of enjoying myself in the little time I have. New Vegas for example is a game released in 2010. That's Win 7 age - yet on my i7 950 rig, it crashes to desktop every 30 minutes in win 7, while being perfectly playable for hours on end in windows XP 32 bit on the same machine.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 12:40:

tl;dr - XP gaming covers a very big span of games with greatly different requirements. To cover everything, get a later core 2 duo or early i5/i7 PC. If budget is a concern, then a pre-built core i3 540 or 3240 with a GT 650ti or radepm 7770 should cover your needs nicely. If you want to be a bit more period correct, a late core 2 duo/quad e6xxx/e8xxx or athlon II / Phenom II / Phenom X4 with a GTX 260 216c or GTX 280 / Radeon 4870 / 5870 will run any game you want and blow most things out of the water.

I completely agree... I would personally design a system more around the GPU and slot standard. XP just covers too much time to slide into any one ideal build. I personally went with high end hardware from 2003 (Athlon 64 nForce) since that covers all of the games I care about. I did a build with 2000 era hardware (PII + geforce2) and it was just too slow for all of the games my son wanted to play. That said, I would definitely build a system around a 3dfx card if I was ever able to snag one, despite the narrow window of usefulness.

Ehhh, none of the games for XP are going to be speed sensitive so the faster the better.

Same for the video card though you will probably want the ability to have hardware PhysX so you either want a good Nvidia card or two or a hybrid ATI/AMD with Nvidia for PhysX. Might even want an original PCI or PCIe dedicated PhysX card for those games that will only work properly on the original.

And the sound card would of course need to be either and Audigy2 ZS, Audigy4 Pro, or a PCI X-Fi card.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 12:40:

Think 8800GTX vs 7900GTX.

Em, were you sure comparing those two? They were only eight MONTHS apart (7900 GTX: Mar 9th, 2006; 8800 GTX: Nov 8th, 2006) and were both high-end cards with GTX suffix.

For the record, GTX 780 and GTX 960 were among the last, best Nvidia cards supporting WinXP.

bstar wrote on 2022-05-03, 13:20:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 12:40:

tl;dr - XP gaming covers a very big span of games with greatly different requirements. To cover everything, get a later core 2 duo or early i5/i7 PC. If budget is a concern, then a pre-built core i3 540 or 3240 with a GT 650ti or radepm 7770 should cover your needs nicely. If you want to be a bit more period correct, a late core 2 duo/quad e6xxx/e8xxx or athlon II / Phenom II / Phenom X4 with a GTX 260 216c or GTX 280 / Radeon 4870 / 5870 will run any game you want and blow most things out of the water.

I completely agree... I would personally design a system more around the GPU and slot standard. XP just covers too much time to slide into any one ideal build. I personally went with high end hardware from 2003 (Athlon 64 nForce) since that covers all of the games I care about. I did a build with 2000 era hardware (PII + geforce2) and it was just too slow for all of the games my son wanted to play. That said, I would definitely build a system around a 3dfx card if I was ever able to snag one, despite the narrow window of usefulness.

I on the other hand find the i7 950 build more practical. Don't get me wrong, I love my Core 2 Quad Extreme build to bits - It's what I would have picked back in the day if money was no issue. Thermaltake Armor LCS case, EVGA nforce 780i, GTX 280, not to mention the QX6800. Got some modern bits in there as well - the CPU is cooled by a Thermalright El Grande Macho and the PSU is a modern 750W sirtec - but I digress.

Since the i7 950 build runs win 7 alongside XP and is a leap faster, It's more practical. I have steam running on windows 7, it's got an SSD, and this weekend I'll install a couple of 2.5" 1TB notebook drives in it to have as a backup for my vintage games and apps collection. I also use it for dosbox under win7 as well as source ports of dos games like GZDoom (with brutal doom mod), eDuke, Dune Dynasty, Zed remake and so on. I expected issues under XP 32 but over the last couple of months I've encountered none. I even got Wireless AC going on it under winXP via a TP-Link Archer AC600 USB wifi card witch apparently has XP drivers...

dormcat wrote on 2022-05-03, 15:59:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 12:40:

Think 8800GTX vs 7900GTX.

Em, were you sure comparing those two? They were only eight MONTHS apart (7900 GTX: Mar 9th, 2006; 8800 GTX: Nov 8th, 2006) and were both high-end cards with GTX suffix.

For the record, GTX 780 and GTX 960 were among the last, best Nvidia cards supporting WinXP.

To prove a point, yes.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 12:40:

the performance gap between generations is significant, especially when it comes to graphics cards. Think 8800GTX vs 7900GTX.

The 8800GTX is 2-2.5 times as fast as the 7900 GTX despite launching like you said months apart. That's a huge leap in performance in a very short time witch we rarely see in this day and age.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/8800-gtx-vs … gtx-fps.214403/ and not very usefull but still - https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia- … X/m9271vsm10625

I remember it like it was yesterday. The 8800GTX was my first truly high end card. If I'm not mistaking the Ulta had not launched yet and the GTX was the fastest video card you could buy at that time. When it arrived and I put it in my PC (a Core 2 Duo E6600 on a MSi P35-Neo2 if memory serves) I was blown away by the difference in performance between it and the X1950XT I had in the PC before. I've only experienced this kind of performance leap once before, when I upgraded from a K6-2 with on board Trident Blade 3D + Voodoo 2 SLi to a 900Mhz Duron with a dedicated Radeon 7200. It blew me away.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:06:

The 8800GTX is 2-2.5 times as fast as the 7900 GTX despite launching like you said months apart. That's a huge leap in performance in a very short time witch we rarely see in this day and age.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/8800-gtx-vs … gtx-fps.214403/ and not very usefull but still - https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia- … X/m9271vsm10625

This.

The GeForce 8800 GTX was the first one with unified shaders and that made a difference. It is also capable of supporting PhysX without requiring a dedicated PPU, but compatibility may vary with early games.

dormcat wrote on 2022-05-03, 15:59:

For the record, GTX 780 and GTX 960 were among the last, best Nvidia cards supporting WinXP.

Technically the GTX 970, 980, 980 Ti and Titan X cards are also supported under Windows XP.

AFAIK, the GTX Titan X is the highest end GPU one could use under Windows XP.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:06:

I even got Wireless AC going on it under winXP via a TP-Link Archer AC600 USB wifi card witch apparently has XP drivers...

AFAIK TP-Link is the most XP-friendly major manufacturer of wireless network devices. Very nice of them.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:06:

The 8800GTX is 2-2.5 times as fast as the 7900 GTX despite launching like you said months apart. That's a huge leap in performance in a very short time witch we rarely see in this day and age.

Thanks for the info. Back then I only have a 2003-vintage laptop (Athlon XP-M 1800+ and 256MB RAM) with me and had no time or device for serious gaming.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:06:

IWhen it arrived and I put it in my PC (a Core 2 Duo E6600 on a MSi P35-Neo2 if memory serves) I was blown away by the difference in performance between it and the X1950XT I had in the PC before.

Had to stick with a GF4 Ti 4200 for my desktop until 2008: Radeon HD 3650 was the last batch of AGP cards available on the market. Then a long gap of a full decade passed before I finally got a new desktop with a GTX 1060. 😅

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:34:

Technically the GTX 970, 980, 980 Ti and GTX Titan X cards are also supported under Windows XP.

AFAIK, the Titan X is the highest end GPU one could use under Windows XP.

True, but it requires modifying the INF file for the driver to work.

Sidenote: Don't confuse GTX Titan X (Maxwell) with Titan X (Pascal) which aren't the same exactly.

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no. XP can address 3.5GB of RAM only. At games that require any of those, probably that amount of RAM will bottleneck the system anyway. For XP era games with a few extreme exception (like Crysis) you can play everything in 1600×1200 or 1920×1080 with a GTX560 Ti or GTX750TI and any i3 starting from Sandy Bridge. Going any higher is only justified if you dual boot W7.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:45:

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no.

IMHO, being reasonable is entirely besides the point for an 'Ultimate' build. 😉

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-05-03, 17:03:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:45:

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no.

IMHO, being reasonable is entirely besides the point for an 'Ultimate' build. 😉

IMHO an 'ultimate' build is period correct 😁
So for XP at most a GTX295 SLI with an i7-975, all released just months before XP mainstream support ended and it's already unreasonable 😀

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:45:

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no. XP can address 3.5GB of RAM only. At games that require any of those, probably that amount of RAM will bottleneck the system anyway. For XP era games with a few extreme exception (like Crysis) you can play everything in 1600×1200 or 1920×1080 with a GTX560 Ti or GTX750TI and any i3 starting from Sandy Bridge. Going any higher is only justified if you dual boot W7.

The Random Stranger strikes again! You are perfectly correct sir! Xp 64 can address more ram, but you loose compatibility with lots of 2000-2005 games. Like you said, games from this time period don't need that much ram. Hell, I remember back in the Vista days 2GB was more then enough, 4Gb for windows 7. I personally ran with 4Gb up until 2013 or 2014 and had no discomfort whatsoever.

Like I said before, my current main XP PC also dual boots win7, and it has 6GB of ram. It can get a bit slow when opening loads of tabs in Edge, but it's nothing major.

About the video cards... the 560ti will run anything at 1080p, but not maxed out, and for me the point of retro-gaming is being able to enjoy old games in all their glory. To that extent, I've swapped the Zotac GTX 580 with a 7950 in said XP/Win7 PC so I can crank up AA, AF and lighting effects. There is an advantage to running mid end and entry level hardware like you suggest- take the 750ti for example - it uses very little power and is very quiet. I suppose if you want to max out later games like crysis @ 1080p a GTX 960 would be similar. Lower power consumption, less heat and less noise then say a 7950 or 670, and as far as I know the 960 has XP drivers.

dormcat wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:42:

Had to stick with a GF4 Ti 4200 for my desktop until 2008: Radeon HD 3650 was the last batch of AGP cards available on the market. Then a long gap of a full decade passed before I finally got a new desktop with a GTX 1060. 😅

I head a stretch like that myself. I used a k6-2 with on board graphics and no AGP slot up until 2002 or 2003.

Socket3 wrote:

The 8800GTX is 2-2.5 times as fast as the 7900 GTX despite launching like you said months apart.

8800GTX is actually up to 4x times faster, because GeForce 6-7 series ultimately were very weak for heavy shader work with Shader Model 3.0 (GeForce FX irony strikes back) and weren't as gargantuan in size as Tesla flagship chips (G80, GT200).

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:45:

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no. XP can address 3.5GB of RAM only.

XP64 can natively handle up to 128 GB of memory, but XP32 can also handle anywhere from 64 GB to 128 GB depending on the computer's processor if you activate Physical Address Extension.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:43:

Technically the GTX 970, 980, 980 Ti and GTX Titan X cards are also supported under Windows XP.
AFAIK, the Titan X is the highest end GPU one could use under Windows XP.

Funny thing is that my XP64 rig has that very card: TITAN X Maxwell. It's worked out pretty well for the stuff I do.

Trev-MUN wrote on 2022-05-03, 20:08:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-03, 16:45:

Supported, maybe. Reasonable? IMHO no. XP can address 3.5GB of RAM only.

XP64 can natively handle up to 128 GB of memory, but XP32 can also handle anywhere from 64 GB to 128 GB depending on the computer's processor if you activate Physical Address Extension.

XP64 is not "real" XP. It's a repurposed Windows Server 2003 and has its own set of issues.
I don't know how well XP32 does with PAE. I'm aware that there are ways to enable, but I heard mixed-to-bad experiences.