VOGONS


First post, by Rhuwyn

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So, here is what I mean with my question. For retro systems we choose our GPUs for a variety of reasons. OS compatibility, driver support, AGP compatibility, API support (particularly Glide) , or maybe it's just nostaglic.

Here is my question. All modern hardware is pretty much Windows 7 and newer compatible, and XP support was really only discontinued last generation. So lets assume we have either a Windows XP or Windows 7 system. You can still get Geforce 960 GTs for about $125 and they work with XP and perform very well. Taking cost completely out of the question. Meaning lets assume all older video cards would also cost us $125 dollars. Is there any practical reason to use an older card over a newer card outside of the fact that you might not find it interesting?

For older systems I can think of reason to use Geforce 4 or Geforce FX because of features that were dropped in FX. The same with even older systems or 6000 series is the last series with official Windows 9x driver support. The 900 Series will probably be pretty sought after at some point because it will be the last generation to have official XP support. But for anything between Geforce 7000 Series and the 900 series (And it's AMD equivalents of course) I can't think of anything that an older card would do that a 960 GT wouldn't. Curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this matter. Now keep in mind I am talking about practical reasons around running software not anything around nostaglia for the hardware itself or you think a particular card is cool or anything like that, I have those reasons also as my ebay purchase history will attest to. I simply want to understand from a feature/compatibility perspective are their games that an earlier card will run better that a 960GT won't.

EDIT: corrected some spelling and grammer.

Last edited by Rhuwyn on 2017-04-25, 23:00. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 15, by PhilsComputerLab

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Can you test a bunch of XP games on your 960 and see how you go? Would be interesting to see if you run into any issues.

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Reply 2 of 15, by agent_x007

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Personally, I would stop stop at GTX 780 Ti card for XP (because it's faster than fastest official XP card from GTX 9xx series ie. above mentioned GTX 960).

Windows XP Min. (my choise) :
Platform : Slot 1 with Pentium II/III CPU (or Celeron 333/450MHz 😀).
128MB RAM
GeForce TNT/TNT2 or ATI Radeon
You can go lower in spec, but for me that's more of a experiment.

Windows XP Max. :
Core i7 990X/Xeon W3690 || OR || Core i7 4960X
A LGA 1366 MB (most, have drivers for all XP support) || OR || LGA 2011/C600 chipset
Creative X-Fi
Intel SATA3 SSD (those have manual trim support)
NV GTX 780 Ti

Windows 7 x64 SP1 Min. :
LGA 775/Socket 939
Pentium 4/Athlon64
2GB RAM
GeForce 6000 series/Radeon X1000 series (DX9c)

Windows 7 x64 SP1 Max (so far...) :
Ryzen/Kaby Lake
16GB+ RAM
GTX 1080 Ti
NVMe SSD

Last edited by agent_x007 on 2017-04-25, 20:13. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 3 of 15, by nforce4max

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If this is a windows 10 system you need to be careful or at the very least image the system before installing xp era games as some used copy protection that causes blue screens on boot up on win 10 systems. I recommend doing this under win 7.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 4 of 15, by vlask

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Anything i cant put into mine test board 😉 - so im limited to max AGP8x cards....
Thats why im not benchmarking PCI-E cards - this needs good CPU - still too expensive - have to w8 for time, when Core i5 will be lowend.... 😁

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 5 of 15, by Rhuwyn

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Can you test a bunch of XP games on your 960 and see how you go? Would be interesting to see if you run into any issues.

Yeah it's on my list actually. I just went on a buying spree buying open box items from my local Microcenter and got a 960 for 76US dollars

Reply 6 of 15, by Rhuwyn

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agent_x007 wrote:

Personally, I would stop stop at GTX 780 Ti card for XP (because it's faster than fastest official XP card from GTX 9xx series ie. above mentioned GTX 960).

Well...maybe I should have said 980 Ti since it's the fastest of the 900 series. 780 Ti is a GREAT card though. I just picked up a 770, 960, and 970 all open box from my local Microcenter

Reply 7 of 15, by PhilsComputerLab

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Rhuwyn wrote:
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Can you test a bunch of XP games on your 960 and see how you go? Would be interesting to see if you run into any issues.

Yeah it's on my list actually. I just went on a buying spree buying open box items from my local Microcenter and got a 960 for 76US dollars

Awesome!

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Reply 8 of 15, by ynari

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Remind me what features were dropped in Geforce 4/FX? I can't remember, and in my list of cards I've got a TNT (somewhere), then nothing until a 7 series (apart from the Ti 4600 in a Powermac)

Reply 9 of 15, by Nipedley

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I've actually been running a GTX 960 under XP for a while (i5 2500k, WinXP & Win10 dual boot)

Makes a great media PC (9 series has H265 / HEVC decoding built in) and also XP gaming rig. I have my Audigy 2 ZS in there for EAX support. I've played a bunch of stuff without any issues so far

Reply 10 of 15, by candle_86

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I'd stick to Fermi as the fastest for XP, anything faster will work but by then XP was devauled and XP was below 30% market share.

Reply 11 of 15, by Rhuwyn

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ynari wrote:

Remind me what features were dropped in Geforce 4/FX? I can't remember, and in my list of cards I've got a TNT (somewhere), then nothing until a 7 series (apart from the Ti 4600 in a Powermac)

I think it's called Shadow Buffers which only geforce 3,4, and FX support. Not many games supported it. The splinter cell games are notable ones that are effected by this. Some folks have made some patches to get it working on newer machines, but I prefer to experience the game on compatible hardware.

Reply 12 of 15, by infiniteclouds

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From reading through older threads here I was under the impression that anything post 285 GTX would have issues with certain XP games -- in particular the ones that have compatibility glitches in Windows 7 - or maybe a 560 Ti.

Reply 13 of 15, by iKarith

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agent_x007 wrote:
Windows 7 x64 SP1 Max (so far...) : Ryzen/Kaby Lake 16GB+ RAM GTX 1080 Ti NVMe SSD […]
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Windows 7 x64 SP1 Max (so far...) :
Ryzen/Kaby Lake
16GB+ RAM
GTX 1080 Ti
NVMe SSD

I'd stop back a generation because Microsoft are evil SOBs. Windows 7 is still supported, but not if you have Kaby Lake or Ryzen. You'll get NO updates, NO security patches, nothing, unless you're running an older CPU. Stop at 6th gen.

Reply 14 of 15, by agent_x007

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iKarith wrote:

I'd stop back a generation because Microsoft are evil SOBs. Windows 7 is still supported, but not if you have Kaby Lake or Ryzen. You'll get NO updates, NO security patches, nothing, unless you're running an older CPU. Stop at 6th gen.

If you don't know the software - sure, but I don't use broken Windows Update on Win 7 since 2015 (updating via Win Update stock Win 7 SP1 was simply unbearable, so no loss there).
In my case, I use WSUS Offline Update for all Win 7 installations I do : LINK.
It uses script for downloading manual update packages (KB...) and combines them all in one packet that is easy to install.
It bypasses Windows Update completetly, so I'm pretty sure it can't bloked by M$ (since they "patched" only WU).

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Reply 15 of 15, by Almoststew1990

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Newer GPUs also have 'quality of life' benefits such as audio over HDMI, fan profiles (rather than 100% speed all the time!), not needing external power supply for the same performance... my XP machine has a n ATI 4850 but I'm thinking of going for a nvidia 640 for a quieter, lower power experience with less cables!