oerk wrote:Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:Thanks. Well I remember reading somewhere that H77 allows you to overclock while H61 doesn't. I could be wrong though.
It seems that there are some newer H81/B85 mainboards that allow overclocking if you flash to a beta BIOS:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g … cking,3888.html
I have yet to find H81/B85 mobos that support Windows XP, but maybe I could try.
Anyway, I'd like to mention the goal of the system again. It is to be a mini ITX Windows XP legacy system, which will be used for three main purpose:
(1) to play early Windows XP games like MiG Alley, Emperor: Battle for Dune, Crimson Skies, and Freedom Force. I already have a GTX 280 for this job.
(2) to serve as HTPC/audiophile PC to feed my AV receiver.
(3) for daily works like browsing, office, Photoshop, virtual machines, and the likes. Naturally, this particular goal is multitasking-heavy, especially since I'm mostly doing my listening while working.
My initial plan is to use intel-based PC; that is, Gigabyte H61-USB3 with Intel Pentium G2030. Hence, this thread.
However, just few hours ago I'm suddenly tempted to use AMD instead. AMD seems to be focusing on multicore performance, while its single core performance is less than desirable. However, I think it suits my need perfectly.
See, AMD seems to have pretty good multicore performance, which suits my daily works - heavily multitasked, with many active applications ranging from Winamp, Firefox, Word, Excel, Visio, Photoshop, and Virtual Machines while copy pasting between those applications.
On the other hand, AMD's slow single core performance would make it perfect for playing old games. I don't have to worry about games like Crimson Skies being unmanageably fast when there aren't many textures on the screen, for example.
My plan is to use FM2-A75IA-E53 with AMD A8-5600K. Yes, the A8-7600 is clocked pretty fast, but it can be underclocked, can it?
There are advantages and disadvantages over the new alternative, but I think they are allminor.
Disadvantages:
(1) the MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 doesn't have SPDIF header, so I cannot connect the Realtek sound chip's digital output to a discrete video card like the GTX 280. Alas, I haven't found any mini-ITX AMD mobo that has SPDIF header. But this is minor issue since I can always use an external sound card like Creative X-Fi USB.
(2) the MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 uses Realtek ALC887, which only supports EAX and not A3D, while the Gigabyte H61N-USB3 has Realtek ALC889 which supports both EAX and A3D. But then again, this is minor issue. Creative X-Fi USB supports A3D, doesn't it?
Advantages:
(1) low single core performance like I mentioned above.
(2) unlike Intel's, AMD's integrated graphics is not shitty. In fact, the AMD A8-5600K has Radeon HD 7560D, which is better than my laptop's GeForce 310M.
I don't know how backward compatible the Radeon HD 7560D is for old games, but at least I can alternate between the Radeon HD 7560D integrated graphics and the GeForce GTX 280 discrete graphics. Jane's World War II Fighters, for example, doesn't run on nVidia's Tesla-generation card (it doesn't run on the 310M), but it runs on AMD 760G integrated graphics.
So I guess using AMD platform has its own benefit.
However, there is one thing I need to know:
Do modern AMD CPUs have backward compatibility problems with old games?
The latest AMD CPU I used is Athlon XP (T-bred), and it never had problems with old 3dfx games - at least the old 3dfx games I played. However, how about newer AMDs? Do they have backward compatibility problems with early Windows XP games?