Well, Vista came out 2007. In 2006 you did have C2D E6300, E6400, E6600, E6700 and C2E X6800. You also had socket AM2 athlon 64 X2 up to 5000+ as well as Athlon 64 X2 FX-62. You also had nvidia 7900 GTX and ati X1900 XTX, with X1950 XTX being a little late so you could count that one towards 2007, but those are the last high end dx9 graphics cards. So yeah, talking period correct wise. These would be considered the best winXP PCs. But there's no reason to stay period correct, when theres much newer motherboards, cpus and graphics cards that winXP will work on very wel.

My "go to" :
Early XP : Pentium 4 EE "Gallatin"/FX-57 CPU + GeForce 7900 GTX/X1950 XTX
"Balanced" : Core 2 Quad/Phenom II + GTX 285/HD 5870
"Max. Power" : Ivy and up to 9900k Z390 Dark + Titan Black/Titan X (Maxwell) + NVMe*.

Fastest native XP I build :

And Yes, it can run Crysis 😉

Having max. power for playing old games is dumb though.
At that point you are FAR better off with two GPUs (and switching between them depending on game you want play).

*NVMe support :

agent_x007 wrote:

Having max. power for playing old games is dumb though.
At that point you are FAR better off with two GPUs (and switching between them depending on game you want play).

What do you mean, what's the problem in using Titan X for winXP gaming? Why bother swapping another GPU? Did you find any incompatible/problematic games? If you just think its a waste of power to run 250W graphics card at 1000+ fps for old games, you can cap the fps to like 200 or something, that will vastly reduce heat, noise and power consumption. And a build like this is good because you can dualboot winXP with win7, and while its not the fastest win7 PC possible, its good enough for the task. Using one PC for both winXP and win7 is more space efficient than using 2 separate PCs, so its great if you can do that.

it's dumb because both Titan X and Titan Black are WAY too expensive for what they bring to old games (GTX 980 Ti/GTX 780 Ti FTW).

Besides that, I'm more concerned about driver compatibility actually.
Titan X is locked to Maxwell support (+ you need to hack driver to get above GTX 960 support).
Also, going before official GM200 support is not a good idea.
Similary, Titan Black is linked to GK110 Kepler support.

If game or program needs older to work properly, you are screwed if you don't second/older card.
Personally I didn't encountered it, however I didn't tested 16-bit or DX7/DX8 games on Titan X either.
I think it's not that big of a leap to think that some Win XP more obscure games won't like newest NV drivers.

yeah, thats what Im worrying about, thats why Im currently testing with a 7900gs with very old drivers to see if I can spot any winXP game compatibility difference to my gtx780 with last XP drivers. But theres so many games to test it will take a while to go trough all of them. BTW 16-bit and DX7 games would be reserved to a win98se PC so they shouldnt be a problem really. DX8 games are on the border between win9x and win2k/XP, but so far I havent found any dx8 games that dont work fine on my gtx780. If anyone here can note any particularly problematic winXP-era titles to test, please mention them. Just don't mention win9x-era games, those would obviously require a dedicated win98se PC.

frudi wrote:

Lazar81 wrote:

I have slightly different thoughts about the time period. I focussed on early 2008. For it is the year before main support for XP ended. But yes - the hardware you mentioned is what I am thinking about.

In that case I'd say the best platform would be a P35/P43/P45 motherboard (or X38/X48 if you want to go with SLI) with an E8600. That's the fastest dual core 775 CPU and it overclocks really well, if you're into that - it should hit 4 GHz without needing a voltage increase, so power consumption still stays low. And because of the 10x multiplier on the E8600, 4 GHz nicely syncs up with DDR2 800 or DDR3 1600 memory speed, so you don't need any exotic or expensive memory. Personally I would only go for a quad core if you're looking to also play games that reach well into Vista era, like 2007, 2008 or later. Games before that won't really make use of more than two cores (mostly not even the second core for that matter).

And for graphics you can then go with the GTX 2xx series. Or maybe even go a generation or two newer, but lower tier, to get similar performance at lower power consumption - something like a GTX 460 or 560.

That sounds substantial. I will let it work in my mind. Although I don't understand why not using a GTX 480 or 580/590. As long as power consumption is the only con, then I will consider them as well.

^ GTX 285 / HD 4890 and older cards run DX9 more efficiently, and might have better game compatibility, tho I've yet to find any winXP-era game that doesnt work fine on my GTX 780, so this is just theoretical

I have tried a number of early XP games on my GTX 1080 with windows 10, and I have found most of them work fine. Of those that don't work correctly, I am sure all of them are due to software compatibility, rather than hardware comparability. Not all codecs are supported on windows 10, so some games have issue with video playback. Also, directx 8.1 and earlier are emulated through windows compatibility layer rather than natively supported. I don't know of any features that would be depreciated, hardware wise, on a newer video card.

My windows XP machine has a GTS 250 on it, which is G92b (the last revision of the G80 core, and pretty much the same core as in the 8800gt). So far, it has run all of my games just fine. I have found a number of titles that I cannot play at a locked 60+ fps on though, so I am thinking about experimenting with a gtx 960 or even a 980 ti because why not? In the very least, fermi cards were released during a time when people were still using XP for gaming, so anything up to a GTX 580 should probably have good support. The kepler family begins with the six series and ends with the 9 series; I expect those are probably fine too.

Until now I didn't consider to go with SLI. Is the nforce Chipset series the only way to get it work? If so I would think about.. Otherwise I would prefer to look for x48 Mainboards. Also i am doing some research on crossfire at the moment.

Lazar81 wrote:

Until now I didn't consider to go with SLI. Is the nforce Chipset series the only way to get it work? If so I would think about.. Otherwise I would prefer to look for x48 Mainboards. Also i am doing some research on crossfire at the moment.

There's no reason to do SLI/crossfire unless you are particularly curious about it.. there is lots of hardware out there to choose from

My memories of SLI and crossfire is that when it worked, you got the equivalent performance of a single next gen card. Otherwise you got ordinary single card performance, or microstuttering, or occasionally some other weirdness

edit: yeah you can get a nforce board if you want SLI, otherwise you'll have to stick to crossfire

oohms wrote:

There's no reason to do SLI/crossfire unless you are particularly curious about it.. there is lots of hardware out there to choo […]
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Lazar81 wrote:

Until now I didn't consider to go with SLI. Is the nforce Chipset series the only way to get it work? If so I would think about.. Otherwise I would prefer to look for x48 Mainboards. Also i am doing some research on crossfire at the moment.

There's no reason to do SLI/crossfire unless you are particularly curious about it.. there is lots of hardware out there to choose from

My memories of SLI and crossfire is that when it worked, you got the equivalent performance of a single next gen card. Otherwise you got ordinary single card performance, or microstuttering, or occasionally some other weirdness

edit: yeah you can get a nforce board if you want SLI, otherwise you'll have to stick to crossfire

Yap... I presumed that... So I think it would be a far more comfortable choice to stay with one graphics card.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Well, but at that point you might as well just run Windows 7. But then again, the kind of machine we're talking about is better […]
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cyclone3d wrote:

XP does come in an x64 flavor as well. The x64 drivers are mature as well. There are also some games that have x64 executables which run a bit faster than their 32-bit counterparts,

Well, but at that point you might as well just run Windows 7. But then again, the kind of machine we're talking about is better for 7 anyway. Part of the whole reason for running XP to begin with is because of how well it works with 2001-2007-ish-era 32-bit hardware, pre-AMD64.

Perhaps a better question would be: what is the fastest XP setup that is still a 32-bit CPU? In which case the answer would probably be a dual-core Pentium 4 or Xeon, overclocked, with some kind of high-end Nvidia GPU.

As soon as you go 64-bit, you had better have a 64-bit OS to take full advantage of the system, and immediately your best option (depending on your RAM requirements) is either Windows 7 or some Linux distro.

I disagree an Athlon 64 isn't really fast enough to game under 7, an X2 is sure but a single core A64 not really

Lazar81 wrote:

That sounds substantial. I will let it work in my mind. Although I don't understand why not using a GTX 480 or 580/590. As long as power consumption is the only con, then I will consider them as well.

It's just a personal bias of mine. I don't like using obnoxiously power hungry cards for my builds. For a modern system it still makes sense, since it's a trade-off to get top performance. But for a retro build, I just don't want to deal with the heat and noise associated with a 250W or 300W card. It doesn't seem worth it to me, not when I can simply swap it out for a generation or two newer card that will give me comparable performance at substantially better thermals and acoustics.

Since I usually don't care that much about strict period-correctness, at least when it comes to cards less than about 10 years old, this is an easy compromise for me to make. But of course not everyone has the same preferences and I'm not trying to imply mine are in any way superior 😀. If you aren't bothered by power consumption, then by all means, also have a look at cards like the GTX 580 for instance. It might be power hungry, but it also offers excellent performance.

Something to keep in mind when you're processing all this is a lot of companies and branches of government didn't upgrade to Windows Vista. They waited until Windows 7. That means hardware that came out all the way up until around 2009 will more then likely be officially supported under Win XP.

pico1180 wrote:

Something to keep in mind when you're processing all this is a lot of companies and branches of government didn't upgrade to Windows Vista. They waited until Windows 7. That means hardware that came out all the way up until around 2009 will more then likely be officially supported under Win XP.

I think pretty much all hardware until 2011-2012 was still being supported on XP
even games were still mostly being made to run on XP in 2011, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Crysis 2... all worked on XP and were released in 2011

I know I used it as my main OS for gaming until 2012.

SPBHM wrote:

even games were still mostly being made to run on XP in 2011, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Crysis 2... all worked on XP and were released in 2011

Tomb Raider (2013) works too.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are even later games that work on XP. But that's for another topic I think.

I remember seeing someone run Doom 2016 on XP x64

mothergoose729 wrote:

...My windows XP machine has a GTS 250 on it, which is G92b (the last revision of the G80 core, and pretty much the same core as in the 8800gt). So far, it has run all of my games just fine. I have found a number of titles that I cannot play at a locked 60+ fps on though, so I am thinking about experimenting with a gtx 960 or even a 980 ti because why not? In the very least, fermi cards were released during a time when people were still using XP for gaming, so anything up to a GTX 580 should probably have good support. The kepler family begins with the six series and ends with the 9 series; I expect those are probably fine too.

The GTX 960 is an excellent choice if you're attempting something like maxing out the settings in Crysis and don't want to deal with the power, noise and default temp of 80c (!) of the GTX 780ti; actually all cards between the GTX 670 - GTX 780 seem to have the design feature of maintaining 80c where even the blower style cards are radiating a lot of heat where you don't want it. I'd recommend the ASUS Strix GTX 960 card for being the opposite of all those issues, doesn't matter if it's the 2GB or 4GB for XP stuff but 4GB benefits very recent titles (which it can't run at 60fps anyway).

I'd also say that generally, if your GTS 250 is still rocking, even impressive XP only games like Test Drive Unlimited will run at 1080p 60fps and the experience is the same as a newer card if yours is still running as it should. You have a card which is effectively a die shrunk 8800 with a massive driver window going all the way back to Windows 2000 compatibility if that's important to you or you've found a very picky title you cherish.

There was a period of Geforce XP driver issues somewhere around 330-350, version 327.23 was definitely golden but for a long time the newer drivers broke old games. During that period, cards like the GTX 460 and GTX 660 seemed like your best bet for quiet XP overkill but at some point the issue was apparently noticed and the final 368.81 drivers have been rock solid for me, even with a GTX 960 which is effectively silent for any load XP might reasonably generate, sipping power and not breaking a sweat.

On the chipset/CPU front, Core2Duo is good enough for any XP only game but in terms of maximum performance on compatible hardware, even a very good example of a 45nm dual core Xeon in a P45 board running at 4.4Ghz (8x550) will still be slower in every department than a stock i5-3570k while the VRMs are under a different world of stress and this is a best case scenario for the P45 chipset; it could run a bit faster but not without a big jump in volts, wouldn't bridge the performance gap and anyway that's vs. stock, the i5-3570k reliably runs all core 4.2Ghz at default volts with a far simpler path to that result.

Some have reported USB XP driver issues with Z77 boards which I haven't experienced but I've yet to see any arguments against a good Z68 board and they both offer much better AHCI and RAID performance. Although, bear in mind that a trimmed down XP install on the Core2 based system on SSDs still boots before the progress indicator makes it across the first time so like the GPU, you're using newer kit for the convenience rather than necessity; Although unlike Win98 / DOS builds, I can't find a sacrifice in compatibility.

God Of Gaming wrote:

in fact I wonder if a Core 2 Quad is a good idea for gaming over Core 2 Duo. Core 2 Quad has two Core 2 Duo dies on one PCB under the lid, its not a single monolithic chip. And I'm sure theres at least some lattency in communications between the two dualcore dies, kinda like Ryzen has today. This might show in frametime consistensy tests, but no one was doing such tests back when those cpus were relevant. If I would do a 775 XP build, it would be with E8600, or perhaps Xeon X5270 (which is equivalent to the unreleased E8700) and for graphics use GTX 285 or HD 4890. If thats not enough, as I said earlier, Z77 or X79 with 780ti or 980ti or Titan equivalent. Or if I want to be period correct, then an older 975X mobo like Asus P5W DH Deluxe with Core 2 Extreme X6800, and 7900GTX or X1950XTX. Crossfire or SLi is not worth it imo.

Noooooooo... I realise your recommended setup supports this but just for record, there's no XP only games which will ever touch the extra two cores. Running XP with a quad core on the Core 2 platform you're just using more power, running hotter and if overclocking, seriously limiting your max FSB ~450Mhz vs ~566Mhz. If you want quad core for a system which does more than just running XP games then Sandy/Ivy bridge is a much better bet anyway (also, FSB overclocking is a major PITA).

If someone wanted a super fast XP gaming setup on the cheap, I'd just recommend a used Lenovo M81 or M82 tower. You get a Sandy or Ivy processor, DDR3 (super cheap to max out XP with 4GB), a PCI-E slot for whatever GPU you want, two PCI slots for older hardware and a standard ATX PSU.

It takes a little bit of the cool-factor out of the project, compared to getting "period correct" parts, but I feel that this is more like an XP-era equivalent to the K6-2-based time machine builds that are popular for DOS and early Windows games. It can run anything from a huuuuge span of time without any compromises and yet is flexible enough to have few compatibility issues.

I'm pretty sure you could even drop in a good PCI VGA card and a sound card with good 9x drivers and have the system run basically everything ever made that isn't speed sensitive.