Windows XP and presence of unsupported GPU's? \ VOGONS

Windows XP and presence of unsupported GPU's?

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First post, by Alexraptor

Posted on 2025-07-05, 16:26

Alexraptor Offline

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I currently have an Ultimate Windows XP machine with a Titan X, that I dual-boot Windows 10 with, which is connected to a CRT monitor.

Lately I've been contemplating giving the system more kick when booting into Windows 10, while maintaining compatibility with Windows XP. So I was wondering, are there any issues with running an unsupported GPU like an RTX 3060 Ti or 4060 Ti (with an HDM-VGA adapter) alongside a Windows XP supported GPU like a Maxwell or Kepler-based card? Or am i good to go?

Reply 1 of 3, by fosterwj03

Posted on 2025-07-05, 18:50

fosterwj03 Offline

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I assume you mean to have two GPUs in the computer at the same time? If so, Windows XP will ignore a second video card as long as you have drivers for the card the motherboard boots as "Primary". Some motherboards can sense the primary card as the one plugged into a single monitor, but I don't know if that's common behavior.

Reply 2 of 3, by agent_x007

Posted on 2025-07-06, 09:07

agent_x007 Offline

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In general there shouldnd't be (maybe taking some RAM capacity from usable pool ?)

You can just disable "VGA compatible" and any other non-supported device from it in device manager.
Alternatively, you can even disable PCIe port responsible for "talking" to said device 😁 (meaning : it won't even show up as present/installed)

Side note : Windows 10 will give you issues if Nvidia GPU driver supports only one GPU generation of the two you are using (Kepler with any RTX40 series, or Maxwell with any driver newer than 578.xy branch).

Reply 3 of 3, by Archer57

Posted on 2025-07-06, 09:43

Archer57 Offline

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One issue i can see is that without drivers loaded power saving likely will not be fully functional and the card will just sit there and idle at max frequencies. Though this may depend on how the card BIOS is programmed to behave.

This may create quite a bit of extra heat...

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