In single thread there is a lot of debate. I expect this configuration would work.

I personally never encountered anything I couldn't run using an i945P and Pentium D 950 yet, not for XP anyway. Some games which require later versions drag their ass, but by then it's fair play because the system was pushing a decade old already. I suspect the GTX 460 has probably saved my ass on this a few times though.

'Doesn't Ivy Bridge chipsets have drivers for XP? The video card... not so much. I never tried multiple graphics cards on the same machine, but you mgiht be able to put two cards in there (depending on your PSU), but only enable one per OS and just dual boot.

HighTreason wrote:

I personally never encountered anything I couldn't run using an i945P and Pentium D 950 yet, not for XP anyway. Some games which require later versions drag their ass, but by then it's fair play because the system was pushing a decade old already. I suspect the GTX 460 has probably saved my ass on this a few times though.

One game in particular (NASCAR Racing 2003 Season) needs every bit of speed it can get.

alexanrs wrote:

'Doesn't Ivy Bridge chipsets have drivers for XP? The video card... not so much. I never tried multiple graphics cards on the same machine, but you mgiht be able to put two cards in there (depending on your PSU), but only enable one per OS and just dual boot.

Its not so much the PC itself (though the 4GB GTX 980 broke Viper Racing), but the game controllers (900° force feedback wheel, separate USB pedals) and three monitors. Hence my desire to build a dedicated PC for these older games.

The P3/1GHz system is for even older games.

So it depends on what you find and for what price. You have a few options:

Option 1:
Go with an LGA775 system. Either a Pentium D or a Core2 Duo should be fine, though I believe a Core2-based processor is a better choice for gaming: it performs better drawing less power. No need to OC or go all out with extreme editions.... Some Wolfdale E8400 should be enough. Stick to Intel chipsets.

Option 2:
Go with something more recent.... I think an Intel H61-based board + an i3 (Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge) and two DDR3 RAM sticks @ 1333MHz will steamroll everything that might benefit from running in Windows XP. Two cores should be enough for almost everything, so even a Pentium Dual Core would be fine (better than a Wolfdale C2D @ stock)... and for those rare cases where having more threads is helpful, well... i3 have HT. An i5 would probably be a waste of money for XP gaming. You can also try something Westmere-based.

Option 3:
AMD. Ask someone else, as I have little experience with AMD hardware past the Socket 754 era.

If my memory doesn't let me down, Sandy and Ivy bridge support XP, but Haswell and later doesn't. With AMD, AM3+ has full support and so does FM2+, but if single threaded performance is what you're after, I think Intel is the way to go.

You can disable cores and have turn an i7 3770 into a single core processor. This sometimes helps games that don't get along with multi core processors.

alexanrs wrote:

Option 2:
Go with something more recent.... I think an Intel H61-based board + an i3 (Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge) and two DDR3 RAM sticks @ 1333MHz will steamroll everything that might benefit from running in Windows XP. Two cores should be enough for almost everything, so even a Pentium Dual Core would be fine (better than a Wolfdale C2D @ stock)... and for those rare cases where having more threads is helpful, well... i3 have HT. An i5 would probably be a waste of money for XP gaming. You can also try something Westmere-based.

This could be an option. It looks like the chipset driver also works for P67 boards.

philscomputerlab wrote:

This sometimes helps games that don't get along with multi core processors.

can you give any examples of games from the XP era that have issues with multi core CPUs?

Only one that comes to mind for me is certain versions of Sim City 4000. The game will randomly crash every 10-30 minutes if using a multi core CPU in Win 7 anyways. funny thing is the problem doesn't seem to exists in XP even if using a duel core.

soviet conscript wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

This sometimes helps games that don't get along with multi core processors.

can you give any examples of games from the XP era that have issues with multi core CPUs?

Only one that comes to mind for me is certain versions of Sim City 4000. The game will randomly crash every 10-30 minutes if using a multi core CPU in Win 7 anyways. funny thing is the problem doesn't seem to exists in XP even if using a duel core.

Need for Speed Most Wanted is another example. You can see it jerk in my latest video How to make old games look better. When I captured the footage I didn't know what the issue was.

Under XP you can just set the CPU affinity through task manager, no big deal. AMD has a driver to address this. I think it's called dual core optimiser or something like that.

But yes, I don't know of others, but then I haven't played / tried that many XP games on a multi-core machine.

But quite a few newer XP era games benefit from a dual core on a fast system with fast graphics card. Far Cry or F.E.A.R. for example.

Lots of games run fine but don't take advantage of multi core.

y2k se wrote:

This could be an option. It looks like the chipset driver also works for P67 boards.

I merely mentioned h61 due to price and availability. Good old SATAII+USB 2.0 are more than enough for XP, the integrated memory controller means that even a humble H61 board has dual-channel capabilities, and OCing isn't necessary. Read this article. The i3 is a force to be reckoned, even an E8400 OCed to 4GHz could not catch up, and for gaming (a.k.a software that does not take full advantage of more than two cores) it leaves the OCed Q9550 eating dust, no need for an unlocked processor and overclockable chipset.

alexanrs wrote:

I merely mentioned h61 due to price and availability. Good old SATAII+USB 2.0 are more than enough for XP, the integrated memory controller means that even a humble H61 board has dual-channel capabilities, and OCing isn't necessary. Read this article. The i3 is a force to be reckoned, even an E8400 OCed to 4GHz could not catch up, and for gaming (a.k.a software that does not take full advantage of more than two cores) it leaves the OCed Q9550 eating dust, no need for an unlocked processor and overclockable chipset.

Good read. H61 and Pentium processors are quite cheap, especially second hand. And very easy to work with and also cool and quiet.

I use a Q6600 / nforce 780i / 2x7950GT SLi. Fast and compatible with all winxp games.

If I want more speed I shove in 2x9800GT, but usually the 7950GT cards work fine.

Sandy Bridge / Ivy bridge is indeed very good for XP PC. I'm using it myself as an universal pci-e based winXP gaming platform. I just plug in videocard that fits my current needs and the machine is ready to go. 😀

Just a side note... stay away from SLI or Crossfire, it is only suitable for benchmarks, not actual playing. Yes, it delivers more or less double the framerate of single VGA, but because of microstuttering the actual "smoothness" is usually same as one GPU produces.

philscomputerlab wrote:

If my memory doesn't let me down, Sandy and Ivy bridge support XP, but Haswell and later doesn't. With AMD, AM3+ has full support and so does FM2+, but if single threaded performance is what you're after, I think Intel is the way to go.

You can disable cores and have turn an i7 3770 into a single core processor. This sometimes helps games that don't get along with multi core processors.

I used a Haswell i3-4150 on an Asus H81M-K H81 with XP and that one is working fine. Bought that for a gaming PC for the son of a co-worker. Although Asus doest have XP drivers on there site, I managed to get it all working.

havli wrote:

Sandy Bridge / Ivy bridge is indeed very good for XP PC. I'm using it myself as an universal pci-e based winXP gaming platform. I just plug in videocard that fits my current needs and the machine is ready to go. 😀

For some reason I could never get XP working on my Ivy Bridge system. It's an Ivy-E/x79 board which Asus claims is compatible with XP, but I could never get XP to fully install. After a bit of tomfoolery I can get the text mode portion to complete, but when it reboots it just sits there with a blinking cursor.

I would've loved to get a temporary XP install going just to break Skyscraper's Doom 3 and 3DMark01 records. 🤣

/\ That is another point that might favour an h61 board. The chipset is a bit older so I'd trust them to have better XP driver support. Intel-branded h61 boards should be solid.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

havli wrote:

Sandy Bridge / Ivy bridge is indeed very good for XP PC. I'm using it myself as an universal pci-e based winXP gaming platform. I just plug in videocard that fits my current needs and the machine is ready to go. 😀

For some reason I could never get XP working on my Ivy Bridge system. It's an Ivy-E/x79 board which Asus claims is compatible with XP, but I could never get XP to fully install. After a bit of tomfoolery I can get the text mode portion to complete, but when it reboots it just sits there with a blinking cursor.

I would've loved to get a temporary XP install going just to break Skyscraper's Doom 3 and 3DMark01 records. 🤣

I Remember an XP installation problem like this. IIRC that was with an Asus P53E laptop (HM65 Express Chipset, Sandy Bridge CPU). Worked around it by 'ghosting' a clean system backup from a similar intel system + reactivate: all is well now..

Besides that I use Windows XP on a GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 mainboard, with Radeon 6570 graphics and an Ivy Bridge CPU. Works fine. 😀

Don't forget to disable AHCI disk-drive mode in the BIOS (set it to IDE-mode instead), until you have loaded the proper AHCI drivers in Windows XP.

Roman78 wrote:

I used a Haswell i3-4150 on an Asus H81M-K H81 with XP and that one is working fine. Bought that for a gaming PC for the son of a co-worker. Although Asus doest have XP drivers on there site, I managed to get it all working.

That's good to know. Did you find chipset drivers for it? And what about AHCI SATA drivers?

I've got one Haswell machine with that Pentium anniversary processor. Could give it a shot.

I set the SATA support to legacy/IDE mode. It was not a new installation but an already installed one (there were a lots of games installed and I didn't wanted to reinstall all over again), after it booted I went for a search for drivers. Just entered the Ven and Dev codes from the device-manager into google and found every thing, okee it took a while. I can't remember if I set the bios back to AHCI or left it on Legacy IDE Mode.