QX6700 B3

I would avoid B steppings quads... but hey, it's extreme edition so 20% more swag by default.

HD 5850
XFX HD 7700 GHOST

Judging again by swag factor, 5850 is more interesting choice. After all it was quite high end card when it was launched.

Use QX6700 if board is FSB locked.
Use Q6600 if it enables OC'ing.

I would go with HD 5850 over 7770 for XP.

Board has FSB controls, but OCing is limited, have the stock QX6700 cooler atm 🤣.

candle_86 wrote:

QX6700 B3

candle_86 wrote:

Board has FSB controls, but OCing is limited, have the stock QX6700 cooler atm 🤣.

I'd personally go for the Q6600 if you need 4 cores, or the E8400 for older games that can't use them but need more juice/core.
As for the VGA, the 5850 should be perfect.

Well outside some Quake 3 games, I intend to use this system for everything from Combat Flight Simulator 2 to Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood/Lotor Battle for Middle Earth II, as well as my GOG Library.

Looks like everyone is ignoring the Sandy Bridge option.

If you drop in an i5 or i7 down the line, you should get a faster and less energy inefficient system than those OC'd C2Qs, and possibly better build quality of the motherboard, too. But you'd have to buy the i5/i7 (used ones are still relatively expensive), and I doubt that Dell board supports any kind of overclocking.

I'd go with the E8400. It's XP, you don't need more than 2 cores. Game that take advantage of 4 cores should be put on a newer Win7/10 machine.

I've recently become a fan of the Wolfdale chips. They feel nice and fast, have SSE4 support, yuge 6MB cache, etc. My own E8600 is overclocked to 4GHz and paired with 1600MHz memory running NSYNC with the FSB. I don't even use it for XP; it's more of a secondary Win7 machine. When it comes to internet performance, I usually don't notice a difference between the 4GHz E8600 and my 4.6GHz 4930K!

That e8400 with the HD5850 would make an excellent XP system.

SW-SSG wrote:

Looks like everyone is ignoring the Sandy Bridge option.

If you drop in an i5 or i7 down the line, you should get a faster and less energy inefficient system than those OC'd C2Qs, and possibly better build quality of the motherboard, too. But you'd have to buy the i5/i7 (used ones are still relatively expensive), and I doubt that Dell board supports any kind of overclocking.

No I can get an it for $20 or an i7 2600 for 40

I would use the Sandy bridge option. More efficient, faster per thread and it's probably going to last longer.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.ph ... cmp[]=1039

I can't think of any specific reasons to use a Core 2 over anything somewhat newer for XP. Socket 775 is IMO a fantastic platform that was very long lived but aside from some really crazy and obscure time machine builds (maybe some early 775 systems with native PCI for DDMA, floppy controllers etc) it doesn't have much to offer for retro builds over Sandy Bridge which is better in every way that I can think of.

I'm jealous that you have a Sandy Bridge board to spare for an XP build, I'm still using an old HP with a Q6600 as a daily driver Windows 7 machine and I could certainly use a cheap upgrade. 😳

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

I'm jealous that you have a Sandy Bridge board to spare for an XP build, I'm still using an old HP with a Q6600 as a daily driver Windows 7 machine and I could certainly use a cheap upgrade. 😳

Why be jealous? You can get a used Lenovo M92P tower (a real tower, not an SFF system) with an Ivy Bridge i5 3470 or 3570 and 8GB of RAM for around $150 on eBay, or maybe a little higher price at other online stores. Sandy Bridge systems cost a little less.

You get a Windows license that will let you install Windows 10 (or whatever came on it, but 10 basically always works with the existing license), a platform from 2012 (probably Intel Q75 in most of these), USB 3.0, PCI-E 2.0, 4x DDR3 slots, a decent basic PSU (a $5 adapter cable can be purchased that will adapt any recent PSU to work on a system like this) and CPU performance that competes decently with modern 2c\4t Pentiums and i3s or low-wattage quad cores. Unless you can't live without a system made from retail boxed parts with tons of BIOS options, its a no brainer if you need a cheap upgrade.

In these days when RAM prices are more than twice what they were a few years ago and CPU performance is still barely increasing year after year (and then dropping back to 2013 levels after security microcode updates), buying a second hand system is a great way to save money.

Heck if your vigilant you can find them in the trash, I've got 5 Vostro 260's and another 9 270's and 3 optiplex 3010's

^Then you should have no problem with swapping your G645 with one of the i3s or i5s in there. 😎

yes I would, they are all pentium G's I didn't hit the jackpot but i got a lot of 1155 based computers, likely going to recycle most of them

Sorry for claiming I was jealous about the idea of using a Core i3/i5 for an XP build, I thought a Core ix system would be wasted for that purpose since some people already claimed that even a Core 2 was wasteful for pure XP usage, I'd imagine a Sandy Bridge would make a great multi-booting machine to cover XP+7+10 on a single system.

As for getting a newer computer, I'm actually thinking about getting a used 2nd/3rd/4th-gen Core i3/i5 desktop at some point in the near future (maybe next month or so) now that I know about how Spectre and Meltdown are being used as an excuse for "planned obsolescence" since Intel claimed that only the Core ix CPUs were affected when in reality it was anything P6 or newer (so even Pentium Pros are vulnerable to them). Besides, I have a ton of VHS tapes and DVDs (home recorded ones) that I'd like to transfer digitally so when I do get a newer system for Windows 7, I'll reinstall Vista on the one I'm currently using so I can use VideoStudio and my capturing dongle again.

candle_86 wrote:

Heck if your vigilant you can find them in the trash, I've got 5 Vostro 260's and another 9 270's and 3 optiplex 3010's

If it wasn't illegal to trash old electronics (including computers, obviously) here, I guess buying a used/refurbished system at a recycler is an option for me, I'll see what route I end up taking when the time comes.

maybe but i dont need a multi boot system, my primary rig is a Ryzen 5 1600 with an RX 580 🤣

Only you can weigh the value of nostalgia or period-correctness and in my opinion, there would be absolutely no other reason to use a Core 2 over a Sandy Bridge for XP games. Per-thread performance is higher, compatibility should be the same and power consumption (and heat) are far lower. Anything that greatly benefits from a quad core (regardless of per thread performance) will definitely run better on your Ryzen system.

I'd use the Sandy Bridge Pentium and test out the games you intend to play with the 5850 and the 7700. I don't know if there will be compatibility problems with either. Most likely you will have issues with the oldest games, either way but it sounds like you have a 7900 GTX SLI rig too.

candle_86 wrote:

So I've got two very similar computers and I only need one the other one becomes parts, and I want to take the best and put them […]
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So I've got two very similar computers and I only need one the other one becomes parts, and I want to take the best and put them into my Dell Vostro Case, meaning using the ECS G33T board or my Dell H61 Board.

CPU choices

Q6600 G0
QX6700 B3
E8400
Pentium G645

Video Choices

HD 5850
XFX HD 7700 GHOST

Which way to go for XP high end gaming, my SLI 7900GTX also remains in use for the awesome factor and certain games with Nvidia specific extensions

My XP rig is an E8500 + Radeon 7700 + X-Fi Fatality ... currently smashing Doom3 (original no BFG) and FarCry1...and a bit of COD1. Sweet ride.