Define XP games? It would do well with FEAR and Doom 3 for example but Crysis would crush it.

With XP Games I mean games that do run on XP or earlier, but don't run on Windows 7 (x64) or later.

Ask old hardware and OS related questions in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems. Marvin, the Paranoid Android

it's hard to know, most if not all work right out of the box, with some requiring patches and workarounds (like securom and other drm software). one that comes to mind is GTA IV and expansions, but they only fail to install on Windows 10, in XP through 8.1 the installation is fine or fixable

other games could be the ones with a 16 bit installer that doesn't run on 64 bit os

weldum wrote:

other games could be the ones with a 16 bit installer that doesn't run on 64 bit os

I think there are no such games thanks to this patch
Re: NTVDM on windows 10 x64

collector wrote:

This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

No it isn't.

No one knows. No one has tested every game ever on Windows 7 64-bit and made a list of the most hardware demanding ones that fail to run.

Wait until you actually have a problem before you try to solve it.

genau_der wrote:

Hi! Can you tell me which are the most demanding (in terms of hardware) games that run on Windows XP as latest OS? My fastest XP […]
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Hi!
Can you tell me which are the most demanding (in terms of hardware) games that run on Windows XP as latest OS?
My fastest XP machine I have at the moment is a AMD Socket 939 build with an Opteron 185 CPU and a Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT GPU (AGP).
Would this be fast enough to run the latest XP only games? Or would it be better to build a machine with more recent hardware (like i.e. Core i3 3240 with Geforce GTX 750 Ti)?

Thanks for your help!

genau_der

It depends on how far you want to go. There's a certain time zone - from 2005 to 2009 - where most games work fine in both but sometimes work just better in XP. Personally, I'd go with a slightly newer card - preferably a lower end one so it doesn't have load fans and uses little power.

With CPUs that have multiple cores, I've noticed quite a few games have laggy mouse input unless you disable the cores. Other than that, on my rig (see i5-2500 set up below) I get EASILY a 99% success rate of any game that has Windows XP support.

ZellSF wrote:

No one knows. No one has tested every game ever on Windows 7 64-bit and made a list of the most hardware demanding ones that fail to run.

Wait until you actually have a problem before you try to solve it.

I didn't expect such a list. That's why I've asked this question to a community with many experienced users. I think the most hardware demanding games are ususally the blockbuster titles from the single years when they were released.
That's why I thought that it can only be a handful which run only on XP, but not on later OS versions. Maybe most games released in the XP era will run fine on Windows 7 and it's only some games from the Windows 98 era that will still run on XP but not on later versions.

genau_der wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

No one knows. No one has tested every game ever on Windows 7 64-bit and made a list of the most hardware demanding ones that fail to run.

Wait until you actually have a problem before you try to solve it.

I didn't expect such a list. That's why I've asked this question to a community with many experienced users. I think the most hardware demanding games are ususally the blockbuster titles from the single years when they were released.
That's why I thought that it can only be a handful which run only on XP, but not on later OS versions. Maybe most games released in the XP era will run fine on Windows 7 and it's only some games from the Windows 98 era that will still run on XP but not on later versions.

I can't think of any blockbuster titles that run on Windows XP, but not Windows 7. Nowhere near a handful. It's mostly more obscure games that haven't been patched for Windows 7.

Even if I could think of a title, how exactly would it be a useful reference to you? Say I mention that Monopoly Tycoon runs badly on Windows 7, that's really only going to be relevant to you if you want to play Monopoly Tycoon. Otherwise spending money on hardware in case you ever want to play Monopoly Tycoon would be stupid, wouldn't it? That's why you need a list, to find the games relevant to you.

ZellSF wrote:

I can't think of any blockbuster titles that run on Windows XP, but not Windows 7. Nowhere near a handful. It's mostly more obscure games that haven't been patched for Windows 7.

Even if I could think of a title, how exactly would it be a useful reference to you? Say I mention that Monopoly Tycoon runs badly on Windows 7, that's really only going to be relevant to you if you want to play Monopoly Tycoon. Otherwise spending money on hardware in case you ever want to play Monopoly Tycoon would be stupid, wouldn't it? That's why you need a list, to find the games relevant to you.

There are quite a few "big" games that run well on Windows XP but poorly on Vista and up. Some have copy protection issues, others have massive glitches. Most have been fixed by all sorts of work arounds since these ARE big games so many people are invested to get them working but the work arounds are often shaky. For example, Desperados in Windows 8 and up is very sluggish due to DirectDraw being emulated.

Sure, out of the box there's a lot of games that run better on XP than Vista/7, but when you want to play a game is 5 minutes to configure it that big of a deal?

Since you didn't specifically mention it, I should say that Desperados of course can be made to run pretty great in 8+ (though OPs question was about 7). People have had success with dgVoodoo2, DXGL and DxWnd. Nothing shaky about any of those. Plus there's an official SDL2 compatibility upgrade now. Not to mention it would work great under emulation or virtualization, which would also be relevant to OP who might be considering investing quite a bit of money into hardware.

This same question just came to my mind and my search engine led me here.
I'd define the question as what are the graphically most hardware demanding games that can still show all graphical features/details on Windows XP (so don't have any benefit running on a DirectX 10 capable OS)?

genau_der wrote on 2018-07-04, 13:52:

With XP Games I mean games that do run on XP or earlier, but don't run on Windows 7 (x64) or later.

This way it's a very pointless question. Maybe some games that have a broken DRM on anything newer than XP and never been updated. Like the version of Starforce Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones came out with is incompatible with Windows 7, but the game was patched and modern digital releases removed Starforce on GOG and Steam so those are unaffected.

@villeneuve
If you get rid of DRM, probably Wolfenstein: The New Order. It only comes in 64-bit, so need 64-bit XP.

Not sure about 32-bit XP...was there anything bigger after Rage?

@UCyborg I hadn't thought about the existence of 64-bit XP when I was typing my question. 😀 But according to the game cover Wolfenstein: The New Order requires Windows 7. Even though in case it runs on XP 64-bit that's a Windows 7 game for me anyway.
Maybe it isn't even a first person shooter but an RPG, racing sim or something else that's the most demanding.

EDIT: Currently browsing MobyGames, what about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat?

Well nobody said whether it should be officially supported or not. Technically, the engine itself is compatible and also determines the savegame directory with respect to lack of dedicated saved games folder that is usually there on Vista+.

While OpenGL is a bit alien to me, if search results are correct, the engine uses OpenGL 3.2 features, which is rough equivalent to Direct3D 10, which is beyond 9.0 that XP supports. I imagine there aren't many games that use GPU features that, when accessed through Direct3D, are only accessible on Vista and beyond. So that's why I find this game particularly interesting.

Similarly, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood runs on Vista, despite "requiring" Windows 7 officially. The bumped up requirement relative to previous game could be artificially imposed by targeting Vista with used compiler alone, rather than explicitly depending on some Vista+ feature, though it's not something I researched. Getting newer things running on older Windows can be painful.