If that is your thing than congrats.
For me and I guess for a few others like AlexZ playing those games again at max details is what we are after. Today i want the dream experience, not the experience that I had back in the day (by the way I had a 6600GT in 2004-2005 and I was so disappointed with it) or the correct time period experience (because even with a top of the line graphic card released in the year "you name it" you can not max out the games released the same year).
I just started again FEAR with the GTS 250 and it looks amazing even 20 years later with everything turned on. I think I will keep this machine after all testing is done in order to play fully maxed out the games that are not possible on a socket A system - I am even thinking that I will put a Creative X-Fi into the system to get the complete experience.

To Joseph Joestar: you are correct sir. 2 cards are better than one and certainly constitutes a solution to the "period correct hardware has insufficient performance" problem!

Archer57 tested 8800 GT SLI in Crysis and the results were not great Re: Socket 939 dual core build. Decisions, decisions....

nd22 wrote on Yesterday, 02:42:

No they are not! Most games of the era will NOT run fine on 8800GTX! Try Quake 4 (a 2005 game released one year before G80) .

I suspect your idea of runs fine is going by the modern gamer (derogatory) definition where everything needs to run at 240FPS locked. Quake 4 runs great on a range of hardware from that era that I've used. An 8800GTS even will handle it fine at 1680x1050 and hold close to 60 most of the way through, in fact I've run it at that resolution on the higher end geforce 7 cards and not had it become unplayable.

If I wanted the maxed out max performance experience I'd just use my main desktop that obliterates anything from the 2000s. To me at least the point of builds like this are to get a specific experience.

Fish3r wrote on Yesterday, 11:48:

I suspect your idea of runs fine is going by the modern gamer (derogatory) definition where everything needs to run at 240FPS locked.

I think it would be best to ground the discussion in facts and statements expressed by posters. nd22 did a lot of benchmarking of various games including Quake 4 on single cores and dual cores so his feedback is relevant.

AlexZ wrote on Yesterday, 12:48:

Fish3r wrote on Yesterday, 11:48:

I suspect your idea of runs fine is going by the modern gamer (derogatory) definition where everything needs to run at 240FPS locked.

I think it would be best to ground the discussion in facts and statements expressed by posters. nd22 did a lot of benchmarking of various games including Quake 4 on single cores and dual cores so his feedback is relevant.

They said it doesn't run fine on an 8800GTX which is just straight up wrong by any reasonable definition of the word. That's all I was pointing out, it's not going to run poorly on the PC specs being proposed.

Fish3r wrote on Yesterday, 14:29:

AlexZ wrote on Yesterday, 12:48:

Fish3r wrote on Yesterday, 11:48:

I suspect your idea of runs fine is going by the modern gamer (derogatory) definition where everything needs to run at 240FPS locked.

I think it would be best to ground the discussion in facts and statements expressed by posters. nd22 did a lot of benchmarking of various games including Quake 4 on single cores and dual cores so his feedback is relevant.

They said it doesn't run fine on an 8800GTX which is just straight up wrong by any reasonable definition of the word. That's all I was pointing out, it's not going to run poorly on the PC specs being proposed.

I quote myself: Try Quake 4 (a 2005 game released one year before G80) at max details for example. PS: maximum details: every single option enabled and the highest available setting selected.
I specifically said several times: MAX DETAILS.
PS: I do not want 240 FPS as my main monitor for retro stuff is Eizo 21.3 inch with 60 Hz refresh rate. I strongly dislike games that appeared in the modern era (everything after 2010).

Ultimately, it’s a matter of differents perspectives and expectations of what you want to get from playing games on older systems. nd22 is a no-compromise, full throttle enthusiast who gets a kick from getting most visual quality out of any old PC game being played, even if it means cranking the resolution up to 11. “Finally, I don’t have to settle for the crap GPUs we were stuck with back then! Give me all the bells and whistles game X has to offer, newer graphics card!”, is what nd22’s motto might be. Then you have f*ckin’ weirdos like me saying “Oh, so that’s the kind of performance most people might have had when playing X game on hardware from back then! Very interesting; these frame-rate drops are quite wild. I’ll continue my analysis of how much this game slows down tomorrow, but now I will spend some time playing a few casual rounds of this other game with crap performance instead because that’s just the kind of hardware you had back then”, or something like that.

That is why I like VOGONS! An enthusiast community that accepts that not everybody thinks the same and each and everyone may have a different idea about what constitutes retro and we can gather here and have all kind of discussions and do all sort of tests and present our systems the way we build and like them!

I appreciate the different perspectives and feedback in the thread 😀 It's fun to see people's preferences and various information about hardware performance.

I agree that having overkill performance is a lot more practical and enjoyable for games that would struggle back then, and if I only had one build I could make, I'd do the best XP build I possibly could. But like it was brought up earlier, I'm chasing a specific experience from the past, so the lower performance is personally a draw for me. As someone who didn't actively PC game in that period, lower settings and framerates on F.E.A.R. and Crysis sounds like a fun thing to experience first-hand and would make me feel more immersion for that era. But I understand that the people who were there wouldn't miss having to play them on 1024x768 medium at 30 FPS.