If there is a board that has XP drivers and utilities for WinXP - it supports WinXP in my book, example : LINK
Personally, I wouldn't bother with anything faster than X79 for WinXP (unless for benchmarking/hwbot scores).
Since you plan on going Super Sampling (DSR/"Custom Resoultion"), there really isn't many XP games that will require 9900k for best performance on GTX 780 Ti.
Oh, I should warn you - latest driver for GTX 780 Ti doesn't allow DSR under WinXP (ie. option isn't available in NV panel).

Agent, we share an ethos in our builds. I come across your builds frequently. Have you found that your i7-2600k build is the "max" for Doom 3? I'm looking to hit 120-144fps at 1600x1200 with all settings maxed for Quake 4.

What I came up with so far...

One PCIe x16 Gen 3; one PCIe x16 Gen 2 wired x4; one PCIe x1; One PCI 32bit/33MHz

C216 Panther Point (Ivy\Series 7)

I7-3770K or Xeon equivalent.

That's enough for the GTX 780ti primary, X-FI & a SATA card for AHCI

Using your other advice, then I'd slipstream the drivers for the PCI sata card and all should go well from there.

Did you find the overclock was necessary, or just for fun and bragging rights?

Doom 3 is 60FPS caped (IIRC), not sure if BFG edition changed that.
Also, I don't own and never owned a 2600k.

What about Quake 4? If you have it, would you mind cranking the settings and see what you get for a minimum FPS?

You've got an X79 GTX780ti XP build don't you? And I thought a Core2 98 build as well.

Yes on X79 part, nay on GTX 780 Ti. I went a bit higher than that recently 😁

I had a Core i7 980X for my Win98 though.

Mind sharing a link for that 98 build? Never heard of something that new for 98. I thought the Core2 was the limit there. If X58 is doable that opens up a lot of possibilities that makes a lot of this easier.

My multi OS PC : LINK

You probably won't like this result... but it's what I got under after using HOCdemo.demo with Ultra 1920:1200 resolution and AA set as "x8" (Multi procesor support enabled).
AA is SOO heavy GPU wise in this game. FYI : GTX 580 (stock) was around 90FPS mark.

agent_x007 wrote:

My multi OS PC : LINK […]
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My multi OS PC : LINK

You probably won't like this result... but it's what I got under after using HOCdemo.demo with Ultra 1920:1200 resolution and AA set as "x8" (Multi procesor support enabled).
AA is SOO heavy GPU wise in this game. FYI : GTX 580 (stock) was around 90FPS mark.

Since you share a lot of the mindset I have, you might be interested in an idea I've been pondering. I'm thinking about going with an AV desk with built in racks and using a KVM.

I was considered the E5-1660, now you've got me thinking that the 80 is much more efficient and that the single thread will go up greatly at 4ghz. Have you done a single thread benchmark?

Those numbers are pretty okay, it'll be close. A 780ti is almost 1.5x as fast and only 30% slower than the Titan X. Have you had ANY concerns of using that card? Are you just using the old drivers?

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia- … -580/2165vs3150

It's a lot faster. So I'm not sure how that will play out. Sometimes 1.5

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia- … 0-Ti/3282vs2165

Glad I spent the time on the concept though, because half assing it definitely wouldn't have got it done here obviously.

Same settings :
Max. boost clock on reference GTX 780 Ti is 1020MHz (no Power/Temp limits), I locked to it (as can be seen in GPU-z).
Titan X (Maxwell) requires newer drivers (it's card from March 2015), which have troubles with Custom Resolution support 🙁
It also "eats" more system RAM (CPU-z "Memory" capacity values are correct in both cases).

E5-1680 v2 can't clock as high as 4960X/E5-1660 (v2). Because of this, it's VERY specific where it's "more efficient" as you put it (ie. where that additional 10MB of L3 can show itself).
In short, having higher frequency is better in 90% of the cases.

PS. AA 4x result :

Regardless of results : I HIGHLY recommend using tweaked settings for modern cards.
Some textures aren't loading properly (low quality).

agent_x007 wrote:

Same settings : https://i.imgur.com/VUiIJBc.pngMax. boost clock on reference GTX 780 Ti is 1020MHz (no Power/Temp limits), I loc […]
Show full quote

Same settings :
Max. boost clock on reference GTX 780 Ti is 1020MHz (no Power/Temp limits), I locked to it (as can be seen in GPU-z).
Titan X (Maxwell) requires newer drivers (it's card from March 2015), which have troubles with Custom Resolution support 🙁
It also "eats" more system RAM (CPU-z "Memory" capacity values are correct in both cases).

E5-1680 v2 can't clock as high as 4960X/E5-1660 (v2). Because of this, it's VERY specific where it's "more efficient" as you put it (ie. where that additional 10MB of L3 can show itself).
In short, having higher frequency is better in 90% of the cases.

PS. AA 4x result :

Regardless of results : I HIGHLY recommend using tweaked settings for modern cards.
Some textures aren't loading properly (low quality).

Well that is definitely the limit then. On the one hand, my CRT limits 1600x1200 to 109hz, making custom resolution necessary. But on the other hand, on that game, I'd probably rather use a "tweaked" widescreen resolution of 2560x1440 if it wasn't too sharp, which absolutely needs a lot more horsepower to get in the same ballpark (almost twice as many pixels).

But I would need to get back into the game to be realistic about this. One thing I learned from lowly Doom 2 and Quake is that having *too much* resolution is really possible. I suspect Quake 4 was mostly optimized around 1280x1024 or something like that, and at 1600x1200 there's probably areas that are too sharp that expose texture limitations (which I think they finally addressed in Rage).

Good stuff.

So is there any reason you haven't went with the 1660? Sounds like you see that too, but I imagine there's a reason why you've stuck with the 80?

Also, does XP handle multiple monitors with multiple GPUs okay?

That's one way around it. I could run the CRT on the 780ti and put a Titan X in another slot.

It can do multiple monitors, and multiple GPUs.
Catch is both NV GPUs must use the same driver 😒

Why I didn't went with 1660 ?
Because I already owned 4960X (my LGA 2011 road : 3820 => 4960X => 1680 v2) 😉
For rendering stuff, 33% more cores is better than few hundred MHz on Core clock.
In theory, if I wanted to I could drop two cores and use 1680 v2 as Hex Core... I simply don't want to.