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Building an XP gaming computer

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First post, by SpaceCowboy87

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A few years back a friend gave me an HP Media Center 876x complete with screen and all. It sports an Asus P4SD-LA Stingray mobo with a 2.4 GHz P4. I purchased 4 gigs of crucial DDR to try and make it more snappy. I tried playing FEAR on it but the stock graphics can't keep up at all and the whole map goes crazy (missing walls, blocky shape characters). What can I do to max out this motherboard for fluid XP gaming?

Reply 1 of 49, by PhilsComputerLab

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What graphics card does this PC have?

FEAR is a late era XP game and quite demanding. You might be better off playing older games such as Serious Sam.

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Reply 3 of 49, by nforce4max

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

What graphics card does this PC have?

FEAR is a late era XP game and quite demanding. You might be better off playing older games such as Serious Sam.

Looked the system up and it shows as having a FV5200 agp with only 128mb vram but good news is that op has a system that can use proper agp cards.

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-pavilion-medi … b-120-gb/specs/

Grab a 6800 GT or something similar performance wise while the prices are still reasonable and upgrading the cpu is dirt cheap.

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Reply 5 of 49, by gdjacobs

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The FX 5200 isn't really appropriate for DX9 gaming. It was low performing in 3D even for an entry level card at the time. Upgrading your graphics should see a dramatic improvement in performance.

Any of the mid or high end models in the Radeon R300 to R500 series would be excellent, as would FX 5600-5950 and 6600-6800 series nVidia GPUs. Avoid the FX 5800 Ultra as it's notorious for sounding like a hovercraft.

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Reply 6 of 49, by nforce4max

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SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

Awesome! Theres hope. I wasn't sure if I should abandon the idea of using that mobo or try to use an Asus A8N-SLi SE I have sitting around

Nice board you got there, as for this HP you got options that are often very affordable so go for it. If you can't get a 6800 agp there is the 7800 gs agp and they are still fairly common atm. The only con to the 7800 gs is the stock cooling sucks and the card does pull about 50 or 60w.

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Reply 7 of 49, by SpaceCowboy87

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I'm considering getting a whole new case for it with sufficient airflow. As well as the best P4 CPU that mobo can take. FEAR recommends around 3ghz so I wanted to find the best CPU that could perform at 3ghz or higher.

Reply 8 of 49, by nforce4max

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gdjacobs wrote:

The FX 5200 isn't really appropriate for DX9 gaming. It was low performing in 3D even for an entry level card at the time. Upgrading your graphics should see a dramatic improvement in performance.

Any of the mid or high end models in the Radeon R300 to R500 series would be excellent, as would FX 5600-5950 and 6600-6800 series nVidia GPUs. Avoid the FX 5800 Ultra as it's notorious for sounding like a hovercraft.

Trust me he won't find a Dust Buster FX 5800 Ultra as some have been looking for years and not scored one yet. The 5900 and 5950 are okish but not worth it except for tinkering/collecting

AGP Versions
On the dirt cheap 6600 gt/ 7600gs/ x1650 pro <---- Best value
Good prices 6800 gt/ 7800gs/ x1950 pro (if you get lucky) <---- Best choice for almost everyone and almost always below $50 shipped
Overpriced 2600 pro / hd 3650/ hd by HIS 4650-4670/ 7900 gs by xfx / HD 3850 by Sapphire <---- sometimes cheap but often prices are steep and there is competition
Unicorn Rare and stupid expensive x1950 xtx by Gecube, 7950GT by XFX and some generic versions <---- often attracts a lot of high paying bidders and collectors

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Reply 9 of 49, by gdjacobs

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Be careful of going too modern as some titles (Splinter Cell) are notoriously touchy wrt graphics hardware.

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Reply 10 of 49, by nforce4max

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SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

I'm considering getting a whole new case for it with sufficient airflow. As well as the best P4 CPU that mobo can take. FEAR recommends around 3ghz so I wanted to find the best CPU that could perform at 3ghz or higher.

HP support shows that you can use up to 3.2ghz with 800mhz fsb so good luck.

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Reply 11 of 49, by PhilsComputerLab

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Great, you do have indeed lots of options.

Depending on the game / year you want to play, great cards are:

Radeon 9700 / 9800 / X800 series
GeForce FX5800/5900/6600/6800 series

For F.E.A.R. and Far Cry it depends a lot on the resolution, but a X800 or 6800 series is what I would recommend.

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Reply 12 of 49, by SpaceCowboy87

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I'll start searching and see what I can find. Would a sata CD/drive and ssd drive be a worthy upgrade as well? Im sure boot-up would be faster with a ssd but are they compatible with old hardware or would that just be overkill?

Reply 13 of 49, by stuvize

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SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

I'll start searching and see what I can find. Would a sata CD/drive and ssd drive be a worthy upgrade as well? Im sure boot-up would be faster with a ssd but are they compatible with old hardware or would that just be overkill?

The SSD would be faster but the i865/875 chipsets have a slight flaw with the SATA controller if any PATA/IDE resources are enabled the SATA controller which should have transfer rate of 150Mbps is reduced to the PATA speed of 133Mbps. Not a big hit on performance but is something to consider.

Also would like to comment about the FX5200, bought one years ago to upgrade from onboard video in my Dimension 4600 really was a horrible card could barely run halo on high detail low detail didn't make much difference have seen it referenced as Nvidia's cockroach card that just keeps showing up, bought a 6800GT about 6 months later was like nitrous boost to the computer.

Reply 14 of 49, by Tertz

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If the aim is XP games, like the title says, then you need faster than P4. And videocards like GF6xxx are good for support of Win9x, but are not best choice for XP. For XP specific machine you need to look at recommended hardware for games in 2009 year or later.

Last edited by Tertz on 2016-03-17, 20:17. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 15 of 49, by candle_86

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Tertz wrote:

Trust me he won't find a Dust Buster FX 5800 Ultra as some have been looking for years and not scored one yet. The 5900 and 5950 are okish but not worth it except for tinkering/collecting

Unless of course he needs DX5/6 support in Windows XP like I do then the FX 5900 becomes the best card to cover from DX5 to DX9 on hardware for a single card.

Reply 16 of 49, by SpaceCowboy87

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Tertz wrote:

If the aim is XP games, like the title says, then you need faster than P4. And videocards like GF6xxx are good for support of Win9x, but are not best choice for XP. For XP specific machine you need to look at recommended hardware for games in 2009 year or later.

Well the point of this build is to use a mobo I already have, the Stingray can take up to 3.2Ghz P4 so it should be interesting to see what the system can do with 3.2Ghz once I get one. I also have an Asus A8N-SLi Se I plan on utilizing, its a socket 939 mobo with an Athlon 64 3400+. I currently use it with Linux Mint and its fairly decent, but I want to turn this into an XP build for gaming as well since I believe it can take PCIe GPUs in SLi. Dunno if 2 GPUs is even worth it, I've heard different things about dual GPU configurations.

Reply 17 of 49, by PhilsComputerLab

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SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

Well the point of this build is to use a mobo I already have, the Stingray can take up to 3.2Ghz P4 so it should be interesting to see what the system can do with 3.2Ghz once I get one

With that CPU and a 6800GT you're looking at around 60 fps in F.E.A.R. at medium details and 1024 x 768 resolution.

Older games will run much better!

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Reply 18 of 49, by SpaceCowboy87

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:
SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

Well the point of this build is to use a mobo I already have, the Stingray can take up to 3.2Ghz P4 so it should be interesting to see what the system can do with 3.2Ghz once I get one

With that CPU and a 6800GT you're looking at around 60 fps in F.E.A.R. at medium details and 1024 x 768 resolution.

Older games will run much better!

What if I use a faster card like a 7950GT or HD4670? Does 1GB make a huge difference for fps?

Reply 19 of 49, by nforce4max

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SpaceCowboy87 wrote:
PhilsComputerLab wrote:
SpaceCowboy87 wrote:

Well the point of this build is to use a mobo I already have, the Stingray can take up to 3.2Ghz P4 so it should be interesting to see what the system can do with 3.2Ghz once I get one

With that CPU and a 6800GT you're looking at around 60 fps in F.E.A.R. at medium details and 1024 x 768 resolution.

Older games will run much better!

What if I use a faster card like a 7950GT or HD4670? Does 1GB make a huge difference for fps?

The agp versions of those cards run anywhere from $75 to $400 and those prices are often for used cards, only the HD4650/70 agp is 1GB while the 7950gt agp is 512mb and sometimes 256mb.

Just get a 6800 GT agp for $15-40

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.