For WinXP, I did build a C2D E6750, 3GB, and a G92 based card. If you are willing to settle for less, use E4300, a GF9500 and 2GB. X-FI.
I am using a G41 chip set in a µATX case. If you have more space, grab a p35.
If this is to run in years to come, take all solid caps.

The main question is - AGP or PCIe system?

Gamecollector wrote:

The main question is - AGP or PCIe system?

See, that's the thing, this was an era of gaming I completely skipped. I have no idea what the most common requirements would be for games of this era would be.

When did PCIe become standard, the last few years or so? Anything that new I can play on my iMac really. This would be for games that specifically could not be played under Win7. What was the nominal cut off for those, 2004/2005 or so? Maybe 07? If that's the case, I think I'd be fine with high end AGP?

XP ruled for a very long time. So you can easily build 3 or 4 or even more time authentic XP machines.

If you just need XP compatibility, wasn't there a bootcamp for XP?

PCIe started to become popular with the Geforce 6 video cards. They are native PCIe and used a bridge chip for the AGP version.

I like Intel stuff, so I'm thinking of a fast P4 northwood with 2 GB DDR, Asus mainboard, Radeon 9800.

The next step up would be an AMD Athlon 64 PC. Athlon 4000+ (Venice Core with 1 MB Cache) which was awesome for gaming, nforce 2 or late VIA chipset, Geforce 6800GT.

After that it was all Intel Core 2 Duo. Can be bought new for little money. G41 chipset board, DDR2 memory, 3GHz + Core 2 Duo, Geforce 9800GT...

Personally I would go with an Athlon II X2 250e with a fanless Radeon 5xxx series. Such a system would be fairly inexpensive, would acceptably run a large range of games, and with good selection of heatsink and PSU it could run very, very quietly.

My suggestion is the comfortable solution. Speed, ultimate graphics settings and solid AA. I have already got that retro project finished.

Yea that's a very sold build!

Should last you a long time...

Good advice given here 😉

The only thing I could add is, how much are you willing to spend and do you have any potential resources for old computers/parts where you live? Possibly people you know have an old box collecting dust and wouldn't mind giving it to you.

Now back on topic. I have one question though:
How well will older XP software run on hardware (I'm pointing at PCI-E graphics cards in particular) that's practically new or very recent (Think AM2 or post-s755 era)?

I'm not really sure of all the details, but I've heard that some of the newer video cards have issues with older DX7/8 games. I know that Nvidia did some sort of driver fix not too long ago, aiming at some DX7 games... but I'm not quite sure exactly what it fixed.

Just to be safe, though, it might be a good idea to pick up an older card... I played a good number of DX7 games on an 8600GTS, so I figure that (or the 9500GT, which is pretty similar) should be a safe bet for compatibility, would give plenty good performance, and they can be had dirt cheap anymore.

8600 seems like overkill.. For me a Geforce 6800 (AGP) was sufficient for all games up to 2005/6. The fanless version by Gigabyte worked great for me especially after unlocking pipelines. I'm actually not using it anymore so if anyone wants to buy it... 🤣

I had a lot of problems with games from the DX5-7 era on my 8800 when I tried them. I think NV has improved retro support though.

But one major limitation was the lack of 16-bit color dithering leading to incredibly ugly banding in 16-bit color games. I don't know if that was fixed. Some modders created wrappers for some games that would force a 32-bit color depth.

So I still think it might be best to stick with a DX9 or older card. GeForce 6/7 probably.

I'm setting up an xp bootcamp partition on my imac. I want to see if I'll run into any problems with running games there before I start putting together another system. Keep the suggestions flowing though, I'll need a backup.

I wouldn't use a power hungry P4. I'd just build some modern C2D and call it a day. They all support WinXP. If you want to "tone down" the speed at all, then change the video card to something older. But I wouldn't go with a P4 unless you have the parts laying around.

My current rig runs WinXP. If I ever get around to it, I'll dual boot Win7, but I see no reason to get rid of XP.

The years 2000-2006 are my favourite era to build. So many good games and the tech moved really fast in that short timespan. Like others have said, the XP era covers a lot of hardware. I have 3 period correct machines covering that era in current use plus another 2 later machines that I used to run XP on (before Win 7), maybe one of them can serve as a template for your build?

PC1 (c. 2000): DX7, 3Dfx rig- MSI MS6309 VIA694A chipset, Pentium III 1Ghz Coppermine, 768mb PC133 ram, Powercolor Nvidia Geforce 256 32mb + Voodoo 2 12mb SLI (STB Blackdragon), SB LIve! sound card, 10gb Fujitsu + Seagate hard drives, 1.44" floppy, Sony 40x CD-rom, Enlight 300w PSU, Lian-Li PC30 case. Totally period correct build that's currently running Win98SE 😵 but has no probs running XP at a decent clip.

PC2 (c. 2002): Intel D845GBV motherboard, Pentium 4 2.8B Northwood, 1gb ram @DDR266 CL2, ATi FireGL 8800 64mb with modded Catalyst drivers, SB LIve! sound card, 40Gb Seagate Barracuda, 1.44" floppy, ZIP 100 drive, Aopen 16x DVD drive + Iomega CD-RW, iCute 450w PSU and beige casing. This was my recycling experiment rig built entirely out of discarded/ free or otherwise very cheap parts- ex. the Vid card costs $10, free hard disk and drives, ram etc. Currently playing Dungeon Siege on it and for some reason this build seems very very fast and responsive (Intel magic sauce mobo? 😁). Has similar matching free/ supercheap components- Dell Quietkey keyboard/ Samsung ball mouse/ $5 speakers/ mic/ IBM 15" TFT. This is what I like to call a pratical old PC, i.e. economically viable and entirely usable.

PC3 (c. 2004): DFI 865PE-AL Motherboard, Pentium 3.0E Prescott, 1gb DDR400 ram, Palit Nvidia 6800GS, 40Gb Maxtor, 1.44" floppy, Sony DVD/ CD-RW, Tagan 480w PSU, Coolermaster Elite casing. Runs anything up to 2006 pretty decently. Soon to be upgraded further with a SATA drive, 2gb ram and a more modern Radeon DX10 card. Unlike the build above, this was built with many new parts and was a total and complete waste of money. I don't recommend going this route unless you have some strange OCD condition like me 😜.

PC4 (c. 2007): Asus M2A-VM, Athlon LE1600 (2.2Ghz), Asus Nvidia 250GTS (used to have an 8800GT originally- but it fried), 2Gb DDR667 ram, 2x 80Gb SATA drives in Raid 0, Samsung DVD-RW, Gigabyte 450w PSU, Gigabyte Triton casing. Last XP PC I built new- use it for downloading and playing games that have irritating problems on Win7. Mobo has been flashed to allow Phenom 1 chips to operate on it. Had a 7750BE and 4gb ram on it once- but since given those to my mum. This is an example of a really really cheap modern build that should be able to do anything you want it to- a dual core would be recommended though. Super reliable too.

PC5- This is my main rig - built 2 years ago and used to run XP before I converted to Win 7 last year. However, raid 0 is not possible with XP using this system, so is an example of modern systems slowly discarding XP support. Otherwise, Win 7 feels far better on this than XP ever did.

Specs: Asus M4A78Pro (the first Asus AM3 board- DDR2 baby!), Phenom 965BE @ 3.6ghz stock vcore- has no problems going up to 4ghz but I don't like raising voltages and the heat put out is quiet massive for the minimal gain, 4Gb DDR800, MSI Nvidia 460GTX 768mb @ 850/1700/2000, 2x 160Gb Maxtor hard disks in raid 0, 2x500Gb Samsung hard disks for data storage, LG 22x DVD-RW, Tagan 700w PSU, Coolermaster CM690 Pure Black casing. The video card is a bit cheapo for my taste (upside is it's really power efficient and cool) but I got it at a super discount so it'll do as a stop gap until The Witcher 2 comes out- then if it can't hack TW2 at all max settings it will be passed down to rig 5 to make way for, ummm, I dunno- maybe a 6970 as that looks pretty good to me ATM, or any other thing that's a good buy come May/ June 2011.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea that's a very sold build!

Should last you a long time...

Actually, the graphics may be a problem. Those NV cards seem to die easily. Don't forget to stock them up in a few years, when they are next to free.

Tetrium wrote:

The only thing I could add is, how much are you willing to spend ...
Now back on topic. I have one question though:
How well will older XP software run on hardware (I'm pointing at PCI-E graphics cards in particular) that's practically new or very recent (Think AM2 or post-s755 era)?

I did just build the said machine. Currently it is the LAN PC for my opponents but is already predestined for XP Retro. For all parts, I payed about 150€. All brand name stuff.

I have not yet encountered any problems with winxp Software on my machine in general. Where XP fails, Win98 works.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

... I've heard that some of the newer video cards have issues with older DX7/8 games. ...
Just to be safe, though, it might be a good idea to pick up an older card... I played a good number of DX7 games on an 8600GTS, so I figure that (or the 9500GT, which is pretty similar) should be a safe bet for compatibility, would give plenty good performance, and they can be had dirt cheap anymore.

DX7/8 is win98 territory. A 9500GS or GT is currently a very economic solution. Due to reduced heat, it may also live longer.

valnar wrote:

My current rig runs WinXP. If I ever get around to it, I'll dual boot Win7, but I see no reason to get rid of XP.

Same here: I still use XP, but it is nearing EOL. Since I won't delegate the quad to retro duty and wanted a second seat for gaming, I just build another XP C2D machine. I might grab an E8xxx later, should I ever see the need.

Hater Depot wrote:

8600 seems like overkill.. For me a Geforce 6800 (AGP) was sufficient for all games up to 2005/6. The fanless version by Gigabyte worked great for me especially after unlocking pipelines. I'm actually not using it anymore so if anyone wants to buy it... 🤣

I would not use a GF6800 for an XP retro build. I have the very same model you have but I found it limited in 2006 already. When building a retro machine for gaming, I want compatibility AND sky-high quality settings. The 6800 won't cut it. Not even at 16/6 and 400+. The 7900 could do it, but you get almost exactly the same speed with a 9500 with far less heat. I actually sold my 7900 AGP for 50 Euros and bought a 9500 for 10 this passed fall. The difference of 40 payed my Asus g41 solid state mobo... I then sold 2GB of DDR1 ram for more than I payed for 3GB of DDR2.

swaaye wrote:

I had a lot of problems with games from the DX5-7 era on my 8800 when I tried them. I think NV has improved retro support though.

But one major limitation was the lack of 16-bit color dithering leading to incredibly ugly banding in 16-bit color games. I don't know if that was fixed. Some modders created wrappers for some games that would force a 32-bit color depth.

So I still think it might be best to stick with a DX9 or older card. GeForce 6/7 probably.

Its a driver issue, not a card issue. Actually, I have read that either Vista or Win7 actually fixes some of these games. Win98 fixes them all when you use the proper age driver.

One machine I've come to really like is my Athlon XP build.
Current specs:
Athlon XP 3200+ Barton 400Mhz fsb
Gigabyte KT600 oem motherboard
2x 1GB DDR-400
GF7600GS 256MB DDR2 passive with 8cm case fan attacked to it (originally came with a Radeon 9600 256MB)
100MB laptop harddrive
380W Tagan PSU
Soundblaster Live!
Some random DVD drive.

With the current graphics card it works perfectly with AVP2, BF2142 and even Total Annihilation (granted, TA is actually a Win95 game).
I've been using this system since around 2003 and it's never let me down 😁

I've also used a couple Coppermine 1Ghz systems with XP, usually with the following stats:
Coppermine 800Mhz to 1Ghz
GF2MX 64MB
512MB ram
20GB harddrive
And usually a soundblaster Live!

Though it will run a fresh install of XP pretty much fine, it does have noticeably slower internet performance. Still many 2001 era games will still run pretty well on it.

The thing is, I noticed games from that era often had lower system requirements then the hardware was capable of running.

ux-3 wrote:

Those NV cards seem to die easily. Don't forget to stock them up in a few years, when they are next to free.

Lol, you're right hehe 😜
Though I still prefer to use ATI.

And about the heat issue, I always prefer to use midrange graphics cards over high end ones. Not only because of heat, but having a graphics card also requires you to use/buy a more powerful power supply, which I'd rather not do. I rather spend less on a PSU and more to get equally good midrange cards.

Tetrium wrote:

Athlon XP 3200+ Barton 400Mhz fsb KT600 motherboard 2x 1GB DDR-400 GF7600GS 256MB DDR2 passive with 8cm case fan attacked to it […]
Show full quote

Athlon XP 3200+ Barton 400Mhz fsb
KT600 motherboard
2x 1GB DDR-400
GF7600GS 256MB DDR2 passive with 8cm case fan attacked to it

I had that setup as well (XP-M though). A 7600 or 6800 is a well balanced card for it, a 7900 was too much to put to good use. Mine hated 1GB sticks though. I took it apart. The XP-M will probably drive my fastest DOS/win98 retro attempt, if I ever get to it.

The thing is, I noticed games from that era often had lower system requirements then the hardware was capable of running.

I don't digg that sentence! Do you mean "my hardware"?

And about the heat issue, I always prefer to use midrange graphics cards over high end ones. Not only because of heat, but having a graphics card also requires you to use/buy a more powerful power supply, which I'd rather not do. I rather spend less on a PSU and more to get equally good midrange cards.

Only with new stuff. A GF4600 / GF6800GT or a V5 5500 don't cause any grief these days.

ux-3 wrote:

I don't digg that sentence! Do you mean "my hardware"?

No, what I meant was, hardware got faster so quick in those days and games take a couple years to develop, so often games were released that were well within spec of computers that were out in those times.

For instance, AVP2 came out in 2001. This was the age right after Geforce, Pentium 4 and the gamechanging Athlon. But even when it was new, it ran beautifully on any Pentium 3 and a geforce 1 was plenty for decent framerates.

Actually that was the GeForce 3 / Radeon 8500 year. GeForce 256 was 1999.

Stuff did come out insanely rapidly back then. We went from DirectX 6 to 9 in like 3 years I think.