I ordered an ASUS P8H61-M LE from Newegg and found an i3 3225 on eBay. I already have spare RAM, SSD, sound card, power supply and monitor. I need to get a case and find a video card. Gaming will be 1920x1200.

y2k se wrote:

I ordered an ASUS P8H61-M LE from Newegg and found an i3 3225 on eBay. I already have spare RAM, SSD, sound card, power supply and monitor. I need to get a case and find a video card. Gaming will be 1920x1200.

Nice!

I'm using a 2.6 GHz Pentium in a similar Asus board 😀

Currently I'm using a GTX 460 768 MB and that card works well. It's on a similar performance level as a GTX 285. One step up would be a GTX 560 Ti.

I find the x60 cards easier to source and also cheaper. Like the 260, 460, 560, 660...

My wife's computer has a GTX 660 ti in it and I have a spare GTX 770. I thought about swapping the 770 in and using the 660 ti for this XP system until I saw prices on eBay. 😀

The GTX 560 Ti I found on eBay arrived today. I also ordered a case (Fractal Design Node 1100), power supply (SeaSonic S12G-450 - the unit I was going to use is old and doesn't have enough PCIe connectors for the 560) and generic DVD-ROM drive.

y2k se wrote:

The GTX 560 Ti I found on eBay arrived today. I also ordered a case (Fractal Design Node 1100), power supply (SeaSonic S12G-450 - the unit I was going to use is old and doesn't have enough PCIe connectors for the 560) and generic DVD-ROM drive.

Is GTX 560 Ti backward compatible with early Windows XP games? Like, say, Warcraft III or Freedom Force? Because, if it is, then an XP system is not limited to GTX 28x (Tesla) generation.

Also, you should be concerned with too fast CPU. My laptop has Intel i5 2.4 GHz and nVidia GeForce 310M (a Tesla generation). When using max AA and AF, the GPU is too slow even for older games, while the CPU is too fast. An example is Crimson Skies, a Direct3D game released in year 2000. In heavily textured environment, the game is still choppy, while in "untextured" environment (like night missions), the aircraft's turn rate become unmanageably fast.

So, unless you're building a late 1990s DOS system for unaccelerated 3D games, it's better to go for the fastest GPU possible while being conservative with CPU.

The 560 Ti is a great card. Quite easy to find second hand and great performance and power efficient. I prefer the value / mainstream cards over high end. So all the x60 cards like the 460, 560 and 660. They are much cheaper and easier to find.

A lot more testing needs to be done, but the XP games I tried all worked fine.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The 560 Ti is a great card. Quite easy to find second hand and great performance and power efficient. I prefer the value / mainstream cards over high end. So all the x60 cards like the 460, 560 and 660. They are much cheaper and easier to find.

A lot more testing needs to be done, but the XP games I tried all worked fine.

Yes, but are they backward compatible with early Windows XP games? The GeForce generation I have known for sure to be compatible with such games is Tesla generation; I knew that because my laptop has GeForce 310M (same generation with GeForce 2xx, which is Tesla), and it runs almost everything from Crimson Skies to Warcraft III to MiG Alley to MDK. It even runs Hyperblade (with Direct3D patch, since the game is originally 3dfx) without problem. The only game that doesn't run is Jane's World War II fighters.

Npw, are GeForce 4xx, 5xx, and 6xx are as backward compatible with older games as 2xx generation?

That's why I said more tests are necessary 😀

As XP gaming will become popular, we will find out what games are problematic and which ones aren't.

The system is built and running. I tested it with Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and it was able to maintain upper 70 FPS minimum with all graphics maxed and no ini tweaks (1920x1200x32 bit color). That's the most intensive game I'll probably use on it.

Final build:
Fractal Design Core 1100
SeaSonic S12G-450
ASUS P8H61-M LE/CSM R2.0
Core i3-3225 3.3 GHz
Intel 320 Series 160GB SSD
Corsair Vengence LP 8 GB DDR 1600 (2 x 4 GB kit)
Sound Blaster X-Fi
EVGA GTX 560 Ti
Lite-On 18X DVD-ROM
Windows XP 32-bit SP3

It was a PITA getting XP installed in AHCI mode. I have no blank CD-R's in the house and had to try a few different programs to get a working, bootable USB flash drive created. It took a few tries to get the correct AHCI drivers. I ended up using nLite to slipstream the correct AHCI drivers into an SP3 ISO and Flashboot to create the bootable USB flash drive.

y2k se wrote:

The system is built and running. I tested it with Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and it was able to maintain upper 70 FPS minimum with all graphics maxed and no ini tweaks (1920x1200x32 bit color). That's the most intensive game I'll probably use on it.

So GeForce 560Ti works with game as old as Nascar Racing 2003.

Please keep us updated, I'm really interested to see the backward compatibility of the GeForce 5xx series. If you happen to have MDK, could you test it too? MDK is one of those very early 3D accelerated games, and it runs flawlessly on Tesla generation card.

PS: not sure if this article is useful or not, but still...

The only things I'll be running are race sims. They are typically more single-threaded CPU than GPU intensive, especially DX9 era stuff.

If you don't mind my asking, what was the reason for 8GB on WinXP? I suppose if that's all you had, or if you'd be dual-booting into an OS that could use all that, that would make sense.

He could use primocache drive caching, even for 32 bit xp with its 4gb limit using the invisible memory setting. As well, there's a PAE patch to get past the 4GB limit.

clueless1 wrote:

If you don't mind my asking, what was the reason for 8GB on WinXP? I suppose if that's all you had, or if you'd be dual-booting into an OS that could use all that, that would make sense.

No reason beyond I already had a 2x4GB kit and it didn't seem worthwhile to sell it and buy a 2x2GB kit.

y2k se wrote:

The system is built and running. I tested it with Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and it was able to maintain upper 70 FPS minimum with all graphics maxed and no ini tweaks (1920x1200x32 bit color). That's the most intensive game I'll probably use on it.

Beautiful!

Now all I have to do is buy a new racing rig and some pedals to house the current setup so that I can repurpose the existing setup with this XP build, my backup wheel and a single monitor. That won't be until August or September.

CPU : i7 3820 @ 5GHz
RAM : 8GB (~3,44GB usable) @ 2GHz CL8.9.8.24 CR1T
MB : Sabertooth X79
GPU : GTX 780 Ti @ 1098GHz/7400MHz (1241MHz with max. Turbo)
Sound : Xonar Essence ST Dlx.
HDD : ST2000DL003 (SSD won't do => last line of this post)
^Basicly My main rig.

Bench OK with 3DMark's on WinXP :
'03 : LINK,
'05 : LINK,
'06 : LINK.

Problably one of the fastest rigs U can get for XP (not VM'ed)
No AHCI support tho 😒

agent_x007 wrote:

No AHCI support tho 😒

Is that the only thing that doesn't work?

The scores are definitely insane!

Actually a 980ti will run in xp: http://mattpilz.com/windows-xp-drivers-nvidia … 980-ti-titan-x/ but what I'm curious about is what is the lowest performing hardware one can use to achieve 60/120/144 fps minimum framerate for the most demanding games for xp target games,'01-'06(vista released)/09(7 released), to me that's the challenge, getting away with the least with max performance.

agent_x007 wrote:

HDD : ST2000DL003 (SSD won't do => last line of this post)

No AHCI support tho 😒

SSDs should work fine (with a performance hit, but still better than using a hard drive) in IDE mode!?