I have an Athlon XP 2400 box with XP SP2. I don't plan on doing anything but play games on it (no Internet). I'm trying to get a good framerate with Doom 3, which may be a challenge with this CPU.

I have a Geforce 4 Ti4600, and I get about 28 FPS at 800x600.
I have a Radeon 9500 Pro, and I get about 33 FPS at 800x600.

However, the rendering on the Radeon looks horrible--something is definitely wrong. I'm using the drivers off AMD's site here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop … erOnServer=true

Back to XP service packs, I cannot run Catalyst CC without a later version of Net Framework. I assume that if I install SP3, I will be covered. But will there be a performance hit?

My rig (in sig) uses XP Pro SP2. It can be a little slow on the net but, I've found Opera 12 works the best for just simple browsing when I need to look up something in a pinch. I don't use it for regular browsing though.

Did you have a look into the Doom 3 thread? Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.
As far as I can see the tests were run at 1024x768, but this line should still be relevant:
"48.6 FPS, Standard Def Steve, Athlon XP 2400+ (2GHz, 266MHz FSB), 2GB DDR333 CL2.5, nForce2, 6800GT AGP (182.06), onboard audio, XP Pro SP3 "
Maybe you are still limited by the video card. Does the game run faster if go use an even lower resolution?

I found that thread after posting, thank you. Yes, I think the Ti4600 will stay with my high-end 98SE build. I ordered a BFG 6800 GT OC for this XP build, so I'm hoping to get something in the range of 48 FPS at 1024x768.

Robin4 wrote:

I think you need at least SP2 because of it would solve that 137GB barrier thing.

LBA48 is supported since SP1: How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP.

Open up the wallet and buy or build yourself something that is reasonably recent, there is no reason to suffer unless broke and there is nothing to be had locally.

1) Use 1.0 version of Doom 3 (it's faster),
2) .NET doesn't require SP3 (they are NOT the same),
3) 10.2... better try something like 9.1 - 9.3 first (old games like old drivers).

candle_86 wrote:

yea im forced to agree, my XP 2800 runs like a dog attempting to browser with firefox, chrome wont install and opera just crashes, my P4 however runs fine. Get SSE2

Odd I never had any problems with my slotA tbird or VIA c3 and they both lack sse2.
They can be slow on bloated sites but thats all.

I have used both the newest version of Firefox 3.6 and 10 ESR.
The newest version of FF 3.6 was dumped in 2012 so its not all that too old and ESR10 came out about that same time

shamino wrote:

It's amazing how much SSE2 has become a curse for older CPUs. When it was introduced, I just figured it was another minor tweak to SIMD instructions which had already been around for a while. I never would have expected it to become such a significant break point in terms of compatibility and performance.

That is because x87 floating point really is horrible. The 80-bit precision is odd and non-standard, and the so-called "x87 stack" require special compiler handling, just to name two problems.

And I can still select for example "Standard PC" perfectly fine using F5 on a XP SP3 ISO (tested in a Hyper-V VM).

Robin4 wrote:

I think you need at least SP2 because of it would solve that 137GB barrier thing.

Official 48 Bit LBA support was implemented in SP1 for Windows XP or the SP3 for Windows 2000. Windows 9x has no official support for 48 bit LBA at all plus some issues, but it doesn't prevent third party users and manufactuers provides drivers and hotfixes for unsupported OS

havli wrote:

CPU is the bottleneck here, not OS.
You need SSE2-equipped CPU for decent web browsing... so at least Athlon64 or 2.6 (+) GHz P4.

Browsing with 2Ghz Pentium M is very good, even HD Video (YT) runs with decent Videocard.
Its just a pimped P3 😀

matze79 wrote:

havli wrote:

CPU is the bottleneck here, not OS.
You need SSE2-equipped CPU for decent web browsing... so at least Athlon64 or 2.6 (+) GHz P4.

Browsing with 2Ghz Pentium M is very good, even HD Video (YT) runs with decent Videocard.
Its just a pimped P3 😀

Yes, the Pentium M is based on on the Tualatin Pentium III with several improvements including SSE2 and the P4's FSB interface