I'm putting together a Core 2 Duo 8400 system that currently has 4GB DDR3 installed. It's a surplus HP 6000 Pro SFF system. The supposed limit for wattage in the PCIE slot is 35w but I've heard of people pulling more than that without issues supposedly. But I have some questions.

I want to be able to play games that won't normally run on my Windows 11 rig without fixes. I do have a Windows ME machine with a 1.4 Tualatin and 512mb PC100 ram and a GeForce4 TI 4200 AGP card for older Windows games. I figure I need to cover maybe 2002/2003 - about 2010 or 2011 and most things after that should be pretty easily ran on the Win11 rig right?

I'm considering a GeForce 730 or 750 because even though it's not period correct, I THINK it should cover my entire time period if playing on a CRT at a max of 1024x768. I don't think drivers will be much of a backwards compatible issue will they?

I'm also stuck on which VRAM size to get. Mostly because I am assuming I'll have to run XP 32 bit if I want the easiest install and play compatibility? I'm thinking SP2 because it tends to be lighter than SP3 unless the drivers for the card require SP3? This bring me to the 4GB of accessible RAM limit of 32bit XP. I k ow I can overcome this if I install 64bit but that goes back to possible compatibility issues and let's be honest, XP 64 was a bit buggy and drivers are more scarce / picky. I could install Vista 64 but again compatibility goes a step or more back.

I can get the GDDR5 1GB 730 and still have roughly 3GB of RAM available to 32 bit windows. Or, the 2GB version of one of these cards would go be more VRAM but knock half of my addressable system RAM down. This only takes place while addressing that much VRAM during gaming right? Or is it even a limiting factor in file operations and such on the desktop? I think the 760 only comes in a minimum of 2GB.

Like I said, I don't think having more than 1GB of VRAM will limit me for the period I'm trying to cover. Will it? Am I better off just doing a 64bit install of XP or Vista for this period instead? I don't mind Vista persay once it's patched up and running 64bit would allow me to up the ram to 8gb. Maybe someone can help me make sense of all this.