Interesting project! The newer card might be an issue for old games compatibility because the drivers will only go back so far. Did you check how far back it goes?

And what's up with Nvidia's driver archive, so annoying. I'm working on a project and when you search for the 7800GTX the oldest driver is from 2011. But for a 7800GT it is from 2006 which then does support all the 7 series cards 😵

I am sure it might be an issue for some games. The GK208 GPU is basically a Kepler refresh from 2013. It 'should' work well with most games. I just need a place to start and maybe ideas on a benchmark. Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001), Far Cry (2004), Oblivion (2006), who knows?

Intel's Driver archive is also annoying 😉

Great games, which I use at the moment, for benchmarking are:

- Doom 3 (built in timedemo)
- F.E.A.R. (built in performance test)
- Far Cry (external Far Cry benchmarking suite)

If you do play with Far Cry I'm interested to see if you get land mass reflections in the water (set water quality to Ultra). People on GOG.com say it's OS related, others say it's driver / card related. I'm still benchmarking F.E.A.R. so haven't got around to checking it out yet.

ok starting with Far Cry

Going with 4GB ram on XP 32 bit is going to have issues. The complete max addressable space on 32 bit is 4GB, that's counting not just ram but motherboard devices and the video card itself. Basically it's going to go like this: 4GB - 256MB (motherboard stuff) - VRAM = Available RAM

So with 4GB ram and a 1GB video card you're looking at around 2.75GB of usable ram.

How much available memory is the system showing, and how much vram?

I don't see this as an issue. You are still better off compared to going with 2 GB memory.

Link to the Far Cry Benchmarking tool: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=830

EDIT:

Displays correctly on a 7800GTX! More details in the Far Cry thread:

Far Cry

1GB VRAM
3.49GB System RAM

Landmass and cloud reflections in water

squareguy wrote:

Landmass and cloud reflections in water

Nice! So that seems to confirm that the OS is the cause for this bug 😀

HDR really slowed it gown, guessing this is where that extra bandwidth would really help out. Tell me what settings you want to see.

Resolution: 1280×1024
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Pier, demo: 1.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: From System×
Anisotropic filtering: From System×
HDR: level 7
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 72.99 FPS (Run 1)
Score = 73.58 FPS (Run 2)
Average score = 73.28 FPS

Resolution: 1280×1024
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Pier, demo: 1.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: From System×
Anisotropic filtering: From System×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 141.34 FPS (Run 1)
Score = 143.29 FPS (Run 2)
Average score = 142.31 FPS

These are awesome scores! That game is super playable. I guess you can move onto the next one.

F.E.A.R. is very demanding on the graphics card. A 7800GTX clearly struggles.

I use max settings but disable AA and enable soft shadows (you can't have both).

Doom 3 should also fly on that machine.

What are some other, later, XP and DirectX 9 games? I remember Bioshock being one of the first DX10 games in 2007 or so. Far Cry was 2004 so there must be some decent games in between. Half Life 2? Not sure if that has a good time demo.

Quake 4 maybe?

🤣 OK i downloaded the Quake 3 demo.

Default settings = 798.3FPS
High Quality = 781.2 FPS

High Quality @ 1280x1024 = 614.9 FPS

🤣 now those are some serious FPS 😀

Edit: Trying to think of games from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

F.E.A.R. is from 2005 and has a great benchmark built-in. A game I would love to benchmark from 2006 is Oblivion but it doesn't seem to have any benchmark built-in. With games from 2007 they already started to support DX10 or added DX10 support through patches.

Also looking for a DX9 game from 2002 or 2003 with good benchmarking feature built-in.

It's interesting to see how much more demanding F.E.A.R. is compared to Doom 3 and Far Cry.

squareguy wrote:

Level: Pier, demo: 1.tmd

Where did you get this demo from? Couldn't find it in my benchmarking utility...

HardwareOC Benchmark Far Cry Benchmark v1.5

First demo under demo list, PC Games Hardware Demo

I installed Far Cry 1.0 then 1.1 patch, 1.3 patch, 1.31 patch and 1.33 patch

Of course! I mixed up the level names 😵

I went with Ubisoft - Training because it's a mix of indoor and outdoor. But looks like a GeForce 7 card has enough grunt to run this game. Haven't tested with HDR however 😀

I'm using the GOG.com version which has the 1.4 patch.

I identified a few more games. STALKER SOC from 2007. It should have a timedemo feature built in. Same goes for Half Life 2 series.

What about UT 3? Could have a time demo as well.

F.E.A.R

Ok now we are really getting to where I wish I already had the GT730 with its greater bandwidth.

1920x1080 Everything Maxed Out

Minimum: 18
Average: 34
Maximum: 76

1280x720 Everything Maxed Out

Minimum: 35
Average: 70
Maximum: 151

So totally playable at maximum settings @ 720P

Default resolution of 1024x768

Computer: High
Graphics: High

Minimum: 89
Average: 153
Maximum: 329

Computer: Maximum
Graphics: Maximum

Minimum: 42
Average: 80
Maximum: 176

Nice 😀

Yes F.E.A.R. at Full HD is quite demanding. Can't wait to finish benchmarking with the 7800GTX and moving onto a 8800GT (if it works 😊 )

I got a few more games in my list to benchmark, a few I don't have yet and added to the Steam wishlist. Hopefully they are on sale in the near future 🤣

Alright I am not going to fight some of the issues I have had with Nvidia's installer requirements and a couple of other minor details so I installed XP SP3. HDMI audio is now functioning.