What people are forgetting, but must've been mentioned here at some point, is that todays "old" is tomorrows "retro". It just takes a long while to get there and it's very hard to predict what this now old hardware will be worth in say 10 years.
And theres always some unforeseen factors that are even harder to predict, mostly things that have never happened before, like certain very popular high-end hardware which had everybody raving about it turning out to have very short life-span or some discovery about some meh-level hardware which all of a sudden could turn it into something very sought after.

Tetrium wrote:

What people are forgetting, but must've been mentioned here at some point, is that todays "old" is tomorrows "retro". It just takes a long while to get there and it's very hard to predict what this now old hardware will be worth in say 10 years.
And theres always some unforeseen factors that are even harder to predict, mostly things that have never happened before, like certain very popular high-end hardware which had everybody raving about it turning out to have very short life-span or some discovery about some meh-level hardware which all of a sudden could turn it into something very sought after.

Yep, though with some certainty we can say PCIe cards of of Geforce 6, Geforce 8/9, Geforce 400/500/600 will never been highly sought after kind of like

Riva TNT is ignored for TNT2, Geforce 256 is ignored for Geforce 2/4MX/ Geforce 3 ignored for Geforce 4.
Geforce FX isn't ignored but only because its the last Geforce with DirectX 3 and OpenGL 1.0 compatability in hardware.

candle_86 wrote:

Yep, though with some certainty we can say PCIe cards of of Geforce 6, Geforce 8/9, Geforce 400/500/600 will never been highly s […]
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Tetrium wrote:

What people are forgetting, but must've been mentioned here at some point, is that todays "old" is tomorrows "retro". It just takes a long while to get there and it's very hard to predict what this now old hardware will be worth in say 10 years.
And theres always some unforeseen factors that are even harder to predict, mostly things that have never happened before, like certain very popular high-end hardware which had everybody raving about it turning out to have very short life-span or some discovery about some meh-level hardware which all of a sudden could turn it into something very sought after.

Yep, though with some certainty we can say PCIe cards of of Geforce 6, Geforce 8/9, Geforce 400/500/600 will never been highly sought after kind of like

Riva TNT is ignored for TNT2, Geforce 256 is ignored for Geforce 2/4MX/ Geforce 3 ignored for Geforce 4.
Geforce FX isn't ignored but only because its the last Geforce with DirectX 3 and OpenGL 1.0 compatability in hardware.

This is all true but hardware refresh cycles are now outpacing software refreshes by a lot. It used to be that generations of hardware and software were in lock step. Now you have about 10 generations of hardware come and go where there have only been a couple of mainstream operating systems during the same amount of time. So there are just so many more options from a hardware perspective you don't even need to worry about the vendor of hardware as long as it is the right generation to run your software. In the Windows XP and newer age there are very few pieces of hardware that stand out. The only ones that might become hard to find is the last generation of hardware that XP Supports. No one really cares about Windows Vista and Windows 7-10 is all supported right up to the latest hardware.

In addition for the most part hardware is commoditized and standardized. How the hardware does it behind the scenes might be proprietary but if you get down to it you can do AMD or Intel for your CPU, or Nvidia or AMD for your GPU and it really doesn't matter you will be able to run your software just fine. There are no longer specialized APIs and your no longer locked down to only 2 or 3 generations of hardware to choose from for the particular OS you want to run.

Final XP hardware will ne indeed interesting. I think there will be a desire to play older games at very high resolutions for example. Period correct won't cut it.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Final XP hardware will ne indeed interesting. I think there will be a desire to play older games at very high resolutions for example. Period correct won't cut it.

I think that depends on game compatibility. For instance with Windows 98 you can put it on Pentirum 4 hardware but the games that run on windows 98 that benefit from that level of hardware would most likely also run on XP. Most people end up running Pentium3 or earlier hardware with 98 because it will run the Windows 98 ONLY games at max AND it will have better compatibility.

For Windows XP I expect it will be the same. So there will be two schools of thought. Those who want the hardware that will allow them to max out the games that only run on Windows XP and won't run on Windows 7 or newer, and those who just want to get the most framerate possible in Windows XP.

Speaking for myself personally. I want the best tool for the job. So if I am looking to run a particular game that will only run in XP. I will target the hardware needed to max that particular game out at the resolution I want to play it at. Only time will tell what supply and demand do to the prices of this hardware, but either way there will still be a LOT of hardware choices, I don't think we will ever have a shortage of hardware that will support XP. Not for a long time at least.

Yea like the first two splinter cell games 😀

Maxing out XP will be a mixed bag, considering timeframe from 2001-2014 you have geforce3/Radon 8500 - GeForce GTX 980/R9 290x

Do you go Athlon XP1800+/Pentium4 2.0 or Core i7 3770K

Rhuwyn wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

Yep, though with some certainty we can say PCIe cards of of Geforce 6, Geforce 8/9, Geforce 400/500/600 will never been highly s […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

What people are forgetting, but must've been mentioned here at some point, is that todays "old" is tomorrows "retro". It just takes a long while to get there and it's very hard to predict what this now old hardware will be worth in say 10 years.
And theres always some unforeseen factors that are even harder to predict, mostly things that have never happened before, like certain very popular high-end hardware which had everybody raving about it turning out to have very short life-span or some discovery about some meh-level hardware which all of a sudden could turn it into something very sought after.

Yep, though with some certainty we can say PCIe cards of of Geforce 6, Geforce 8/9, Geforce 400/500/600 will never been highly sought after kind of like

Riva TNT is ignored for TNT2, Geforce 256 is ignored for Geforce 2/4MX/ Geforce 3 ignored for Geforce 4.
Geforce FX isn't ignored but only because its the last Geforce with DirectX 3 and OpenGL 1.0 compatability in hardware.

This is all true but hardware refresh cycles are now outpacing software refreshes by a lot. It used to be that generations of hardware and software were in lock step. Now you have about 10 generations of hardware come and go where there have only been a couple of mainstream operating systems during the same amount of time. So there are just so many more options from a hardware perspective you don't even need to worry about the vendor of hardware as long as it is the right generation to run your software. In the Windows XP and newer age there are very few pieces of hardware that stand out. The only ones that might become hard to find is the last generation of hardware that XP Supports. No one really cares about Windows Vista and Windows 7-10 is all supported right up to the latest hardware.

In addition for the most part hardware is commoditized and standardized. How the hardware does it behind the scenes might be proprietary but if you get down to it you can do AMD or Intel for your CPU, or Nvidia or AMD for your GPU and it really doesn't matter you will be able to run your software just fine. There are no longer specialized APIs and your no longer locked down to only 2 or 3 generations of hardware to choose from for the particular OS you want to run.

People might not care now but one day they will and it doesn't hurt to collect modern hardware when it is so cheap or even free. I wouldn't be surprised that at some point Win7 retro will be a thing while everyone forgets about Vista and cancerous windows 8. I am not a fan of windows 10, there is a reason why it is free and why it is being forced onto peoples machines now.

candle_86 wrote:

Maxing out XP will be a mixed bag, considering timeframe from 2001-2014 you have geforce3/Radon 8500 - GeForce GTX 980/R9 290x

Do you go Athlon XP1800+/Pentium4 2.0 or Core i7 3770K

2004 to 2009 is my time frame for xp, I will be keeping a i5 first gen rig set aside for high end xp but chasing after a ivy bridge build atm is just a little too expensive.

Is there actually some kind of list for XP hardware to look out for?

Tetrium wrote:

People might not care now but one day they will and it doesn't hurt to collect modern hardware when it is so cheap or even free. I wouldn't be surprised that at some point Win7 retro will be a thing while everyone forgets about Vista and cancerous windows 8. I am not a fan of windows 10, there is a reason why it is free and why it is being forced onto peoples machines now.

10 years ago would you have predicited retro boxes built around ME as being common?

Vista may have a similar following in 10 more years

candle_86 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

People might not care now but one day they will and it doesn't hurt to collect modern hardware when it is so cheap or even free. I wouldn't be surprised that at some point Win7 retro will be a thing while everyone forgets about Vista and cancerous windows 8. I am not a fan of windows 10, there is a reason why it is free and why it is being forced onto peoples machines now.

10 years ago would you have predicited retro boxes built around ME as being common?

Vista may have a similar following in 10 more years

That's a good question actually, but the truth is that 10 years ago I was barely aware of building retro PCs being seen as a hobby and actually there being many others out there who kinda see it the same way as I do and did back then. Most info I got at the time was from older overclocking forums and tweaking forums (I remember a fantastic forum about ASUS A7V133, got tons of useful info from there even though I don't have most of the info I got from there anymore, only the most important bits I wanted to know at the time).

I kinda grew into it. At first I just wanted to build PCs and the older parts were dirt cheap, and so I used those. And later I kept liking building certain platforms even though these exact same platforms became older as the years went by, autodefaulting to retro only after I had already started liking these machines.

But some things were obvious to me, one being that whichever part would become wanted later, would be a part that has practical value in whichever way.

I hoarded all the fastest CPU of any type of CPU socket early on, which is why I got those 5x86 Cyrix's and AMDs and 233MMX's and K6-3+'s, tons of Coppermine 1GHz's. Same thing with any part for any slot. Most recent ISA cards, hoarding all those cheap TNT2 M64 PCI cards when nobody wanted anything to do with budget cards at the time (S3 PCI Virge and Trio was basically grab all you want at the time), but I knew such PCI cards would be very useful actually.

I got into collecting 3DFX stuff early on as well, grabbed lots with several Voodoos for next to nothing and now I'm well stocked.

I kept all sA Athlon XP stock coolers as I recognized early on these would make very useful s370 HSFs and the list goes on.

In the early 00s everyone wanted ATX, so AT was dumped en masse.
Back then everyone wanted Intel DX4 and all the other s3 chips were 'just cheap clones'.
Everyone wanted fast, so all slower stuff was for free and later on for next to nothing.
Everyone wanted second hand Slot 1, so Super 7 was cheap.
Everyone wanted AGP, so PCI was very easy to get.
Everyone wanted SDRAM second hand, but I knew SDRAM would one day become cheap, so I skipped buying those PC-66 modules for way too much and simply waited it out.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

This is all just educated speculation but it seems like older parts are going up in price when they should be going down (and no […]
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This is all just educated speculation but it seems like older parts are going up in price when they should be going down (and not the collector grade stuff, im talking stuff that was sold in millions and isnt even rare and is certainly only valuable to people like us who look for this stuff.). I can't figure out why these are all going up so fast, there aren't alot of people looking for a graphics card from 2003 nor people buying Pentiums by the bucketload.

Examples:

ASUS GeForce 256 AGP model V6600: $50
Leadtek A380 Ultra GeForceFX 5950 Ultra: $125
Pretty Much all Radeon 9800's: $50-100
Pretty Much any Mid-High End GeForce 6/7 series card (AGP Versions): 40-120

Whats with all the (going by rarity relative to number manufactured) 20-30 dollar cards going up so quickly. I mean were not talking about collectors grade stuff from the 1990s or 1980's. Were talking about things that most people would scrap. These aren't one off insane people listing things at insane prices either. These are consistant.

Are these things really that rare or is eBays retro computer parts section just at a high price point over all right now?

Your are talking about parts that sold in a million.. Dont forget that lot of those parts are being scrapped or are long processed(for gold and waste). Those parts are getting scars every year has passed.. So people *like on ebay* can ask higher prices on supply and demand. So its not that stupid that prices rises. But dont forget that ebay isnt really the place to look for parts there if you dont want to pay those prices.. But it helps the find scars parts much easier.

candle_86 wrote:

Maxing out XP will be a mixed bag, considering timeframe from 2001-2014 you have geforce3/Radon 8500 - GeForce GTX 980/R9 290x

Do you go Athlon XP1800+/Pentium4 2.0 or Core i7 3770K

Intel core Duo 2 / quad core or and AM3 platform would be then enough.

I would prefer core i5 2500k and higher only for a windows 7 build.

Tetrium wrote:

Is there actually some kind of list for XP hardware to look out for?

Just a few boards and some graphics cards like the x1950xtx ect, the boards span a long period though but most are cheap.

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these

Ti 500/Ti 4600/FX 5800 Ultra/FX 5950 Ultra/6800 Ultra/7800GTX 512/7900GTX/7950GX2/8800GTX/8800 Ultra/GTX 285/GTX 295

Boards Id think would be

Nforce2/Nforce3/Nforce4/Nforce4 SLI/Nforce5

And then Highend Socket A, 754, 939, AM2, AM2+ cpu's

The ATI/AMD Graphics and chipsets I'm not as familiar with, nor am I really fond of 2000-2006 Intel parts, but Core2 and up is worth finding the good ones, X6800, QX6850, QX9650

candle_86 wrote:

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these […]
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For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these

Ti 500/Ti 4600/FX 5800 Ultra/FX 5950 Ultra/6800 Ultra/7800GTX 512/7900GTX/7950GX2/8800GTX/8800 Ultra/GTX 285/GTX 295

Boards Id think would be

Nforce2/Nforce3/Nforce4/Nforce4 SLI/Nforce5

And then Highend Socket A, 754, 939, AM2, AM2+ cpu's

The ATI/AMD Graphics and chipsets I'm not as familiar with, nor am I really fond of 2000-2006 Intel parts, but Core2 and up is worth finding the good ones, X6800, QX6850, QX9650

775 is really good for XP though in general as the boards are often cheap and they are often reliable. P35/P45 are often solid and if one can score a working 680i,780i, or a 790i they are in for a treat provided they can tame the heat these boards make as these boards are often good overclockers. X38 and X48 are the cream of the crop for Intel and even better than Nvidia boards, use a registry hack to enable sli on these boards 😉

AM2 and AM3 Phenom 2 is really nice for XP as they are rock solid!

nforce4max wrote:

AM2 and AM3 Phenom 2 is really nice for XP as they are rock solid!

I agree, I think AM3 will become a very good choice for a Windows XP retro system.

I'm not sure about 775 though. Later boards run XP just as well and you can disable cores and lower clocks for extra compatibility if necessary. This works on most AM3 boars as well.

With Intel there are just so many sockets and chipsets, so it will be interesting to see what will emerge as "favorite".

Personally I'd go with something like a socket 1155 for Intel.

candle_86 wrote:

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these […]
Show full quote

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these

Ti 500/Ti 4600/FX 5800 Ultra/FX 5950 Ultra/6800 Ultra/7800GTX 512/7900GTX/7950GX2/8800GTX/8800 Ultra/GTX 285/GTX 295

Boards Id think would be

Nforce2/Nforce3/Nforce4/Nforce4 SLI/Nforce5

And then Highend Socket A, 754, 939, AM2, AM2+ cpu's

The ATI/AMD Graphics and chipsets I'm not as familiar with, nor am I really fond of 2000-2006 Intel parts, but Core2 and up is worth finding the good ones, X6800, QX6850, QX9650

nforce 2 and nforce 3 arent really worth it to collect those.. memory problems.. Try to find and high-end AGP is hard and why waisting your time with AGP (because it ends on nforce 3) if you easilly find an PCI-e graphics card more often and cheaper..

Robin4 wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these […]
Show full quote

For XP era parts to keep an eye out for, id say these

Ti 500/Ti 4600/FX 5800 Ultra/FX 5950 Ultra/6800 Ultra/7800GTX 512/7900GTX/7950GX2/8800GTX/8800 Ultra/GTX 285/GTX 295

Boards Id think would be

Nforce2/Nforce3/Nforce4/Nforce4 SLI/Nforce5

And then Highend Socket A, 754, 939, AM2, AM2+ cpu's

The ATI/AMD Graphics and chipsets I'm not as familiar with, nor am I really fond of 2000-2006 Intel parts, but Core2 and up is worth finding the good ones, X6800, QX6850, QX9650

nforce 2 and nforce 3 arent really worth it to collect those.. memory problems.. Try to find and high-end AGP is hard and why waisting your time with AGP (because it ends on nforce 3) if you easilly find an PCI-e graphics card more often and cheaper..

There are still high end agp cards to be had at least in the states for cheap even for chicken feed prices, there are some x1950 pro agp cards that people are ignoring atm. Even found a 7950GT agp for $66 shipped that is new open box.