candle_86 wrote:the Geforce 6xx cards may have XP support but don't bother with them, i remember the reviews at the time showing some strange preformance problems under XP, honestly for XP, your best bet would be the grab a DX10 class card and call it quits, everything in 2007 except crysis could run on an 8800GTX @ 2560x1600p @ 60FPS.\
My XP box runs an x800XT to run certain games that wont work on newer like Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood because of Starforce in the retail version.
I tried my GTX 660 in XP once - I gave up. It just wants a non-stop stream of updates, patches, extra software, etc etc etc. You install one thing and then it cries about another and so forth. It also seems that nVidia's driver numbering doesn't align between XP and 7 - when I first got the 660 it ran 307.xx (whatever the latest was for GeForce 7) in 7, but when I installed 307.xx for XP it refused to recognize the 660. Versus GeForce 7/8 you can just drop them in and go. 😀 I would probably pass on the 8800GTX/Ultra mostly because I remember them being fairly loud and power hungry (same actually goes for Radeon HD 2900) - GeForce 9/200 or Radeon HD 3000/4000 series would be my personal pick; sure some of them won't be much faster (if at all) vs the 8800/2900, but they should run cooler and be quieter. 😎
KT7AGuy wrote:
What are you all doing to keep your XP video cards running for the long haul? Are you doing anything at all? Are modern cards more disposable than the way I think of Win9x-era cards?
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Just my 2c:
I replaced the heatsink on my 5800 (there's a thread about it somewhere here), which reduced temperatures and may help it live longer, but otherwise I don't worry about it too much. Replacing the 5800 itself would probably not be easy, but replacing it with a card that offers similar functionality is not a problem (ignoring that I could just "go to the storage bin" there seems to be no shortage of various GeForce FX/6/7 and Radeon 9/X/X1k boards - I think in some cases we're probably talking Pentium 4 levels of saturation (e.g. I remember reading that FX 5200/5500 was in continuous production until sometime in like 2008; I bought one NIB a few months ago that had 2006/2007 dates on its included marketing materials and drivers, and the box and manual spoke almost exclusively of PCI Express and GeForce 7 and 8800 🤣 🤣 )).
I know that for GeForce FX and 6 (and iirc 4), the GPUs themselves can take pretty ridiculous temperatures (usually like ~120* C is their throttle temp), and I've had good luck over the years with those boards not dying (I still have my original 5900XT from '03, and it still works with no problem). Radeon unfortunately doesn't seem to have fared as well - I see a lot of 8500s on ebay so I assume the R200 is fine, but I've personally junked probably half a dozen R3xx cards that've died anywhere between 8 months and 3 years from being brand new. This came up as a discussion a while ago (not in its own thread and I doubt I could find it again) and others reported similar experiences with R3xxs either cooking themselves to death or otherwise inexplicably dying. OTOH I still see Radeon X800 cards sold as brand new (I've actually bought two - they arrived and looked brand new to me), and it seems that ATi fixed whatever the problem was when they moved to R4xx.
GeForce 7 is also frequently cited as a potential timebomb - up until a few weeks ago I had actually never had one die (and my 7900GS that I bought brand new when they came out still worked flawlessly when I tested it a few weeks ago), but then I had not one but THREE G71 chips all exhibit the "bad solder joints" issues within a 48hr period (a 7950GX2 and another 7900GS - no more SLI for me 🤣 ). However, GeForce 7 cards are pretty common and pretty cheap, and I'm not sure if the issue is isolated to G71 or all G7x chips.
I think newer cards you can potentially have more issues because they tended to run at much higher temperatures while in operation. At least, the higher-end models did. Mid-range and entry-level cards from newer generations tend to be very efficient and run fairly cool IME, and may be a better choice than an older high-end card if your system has PCIe available.