Well, it's not 9x.. I've thought about trying to create a 9x VM in DOSBOX-X with DGvoodoo or Nglide providing accelerated 3D.
Also, Vista? the unloved nightmare child of XP and inferior precursor of 7... Are you a glutton for punishment?
TBH, I'm a little tempted to go XP/Vista dual on an upcoming build that may be a bit overkill for XP, possibly underwhelming on Vista. Only problem, getting a usable XP is trivial, getting Vista up and activated is not as trivial, I guess I could stretch it's legs with 7, as I can just go to my favourite key shop for that
Is it SSD (aligned using 7).
The 3470S may be a little underwhelming on 7 with probably less all core boost... though an i7 would probably be a bad idea for XP as XP doesn't understand cores vs threads

an i5 runing windows XP you say ? with 8GB ram you say ?

I don't like builds this much overpowered. That is, I wouldn't consider building one like this for myself. But if it works for you, than that's all you need to know about it.

I have a somewhat? similar build mostly for Win7
2x Xeon E5504, 2.0GHZ, 72GB Ram, GTX 780, SB X-fi

But as the hardware has native XP support I installed that as well.
While I almost never boot into XP truth is it makes my actual XP build redundant, so if your limited on space it makes alot of sense.

(well not vista, but I'm sure you know that already and is due to some contract you made with the devil)

I don't think I ever built an XP machine without a dual core CPU in mind.

I'd say it's a fine build, and it should do quite well for all the operating systems. You could go a bit more overkill with an Ivy Bridge Xeon for a reasonable price (such as a 3.6 GHz Xeon 1280v2), but you might not notice that much difference unless you plan to play AAA games from late in the last decade. The rest of the components seem just fine for what you want.

It's a very good build for XP; and a balanced build for 7 - the ram seems to me as insufficient for modern web, my main machine has 8gb and is frequently running out of ram, so often in fact that I started consider upgrading.

Neat build, even though I'm not a fan of such fast hardware for XP. It makes for an excellent mid 2000s - mid 2010s gaming machine (at max settings) and can definitely handle games up until a few years ago just fine. For more recent stuff, a better CPU would be warranted, but that's best suited to another build.

brian105 wrote on 2025-08-13, 07:07:

Neat build, even though I'm not a fan of such fast hardware for XP. It makes for an excellent mid 2000s - mid 2010s gaming machine (at max settings) and can definitely handle games up until a few years ago just fine. For more recent stuff, a better CPU would be warranted, but that's best suited to another build.

yeah, i thought that too - that spec is what i'd have a W7 gaming machine on! but if it works with xp, ok i guess

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-08-13, 00:48:

I don't think I ever built an XP machine without a dual core CPU in mind.

i don't think i ever built an xp machine with a dual core cpu in mind 😀 but then i might try with some early dual core some time, thus far i never found a need for xp over a single core 32bit processor that isn't already met by a dual (or more) core windows 7 machine, so it would be only be a dual boot use case for me i think

I didn't have a dual CPU/core machine with Windows XP until I built a Core 2 Duo in late 2008 to dual boot with Windows 7. I didn't know what I was missing until then, but a second core made a big difference in performance.

My current XP retro rocket has a Core i7-9700k (8 cores with a 4.6GHz turbo) . I'd say that, at some point, you wouldn't notice the performance increase from adding more cores/threads. CPU frequency, on the other hand, still makes a difference.

Windows Vista is useless if you have Windows 7. GTX 980 Ti could benefit from Core i7 3770K.

CRT monitor is a terrible choice for Windows 7. I used it while testing AM2+ platform and wouldn't recommend it. Refresh rates are broken, max 85Hz can be selected and monitor driver from Windows 9x/XP I have doesn't work in Windows 7. I even adapted generic CRT monitor driver for my CRT model to get better refresh rate selection but it didn't help. It would take a very high quality CRT to get 1600x1200@85Hz to make it worth in Windows 7. Windows 7 games deserve 1600x1200 or 1920x1080.

Samsung SyncMaster MB1763 max resolution is 1280x1024, but refresh rate will be low, about 70Hz. The highest practical resolution is 1024x768@85Hz. It's a decent choice for Windows 98.

Better CRTs can do 1280x960@85Hz and those are great for Windows XP. 1024x768 is too low for XP era games. An LCD is preferred, then you can play games in 1920x1080.

Many thanks for your amazing insights! Really appreciate it them all. Just for fun, I tried installing Windows 2000 on this machine, but could not get the USB to work (seems like Intel H77 chipset does not have support for Win2K after all).
I guess I have to find another, much older motherboard and system all together.

C0deHunter wrote on 2025-08-15, 10:32:

Many thanks for your amazing insights! Really appreciate it them all. Just for fun, I tried installing Windows 2000 on this machine, but could not get the USB to work (seems like Intel H77 chipset does not have support for Win2K after all).
I guess I have to find another, much older motherboard and system all together.

Windows 2000 only has drivers for UHCI (USB 1.1) devices during text mode setup, but the 70-series chipset doesn't have hardware UHCI circuits (only EHCI for USB 2.0). If your motherboard has a PS/2 port, you can use a PS/2 keyboard until you get to the GUI and can set up USB 2.0 in the device manager.