That's a great start!

And I agree that building a Windows XP gaming machine is a cool thing to do 😀

Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, and I have absolutely no idea about the graphics card (except that maybe it should be VGA-compatible? 🤣)

I feel like you could upgrade that e7200 to a c2q and have a perfect XP rig. You have a nice GPU for it, nice audiio, a good enough motherboard and enough ram. However if your old I7/ gtx 580 are handy and spare I cant see why not replacing it! More HP is always welcome!

I don't see a quad as necessary. XP games go up to around 2005 or 2006. You will see a benefit between dual and single core though.

There is no "perfect machine". The "XP era" was so long that you're always bound to smack into one driver-compatibility issue or another sooner or later.

At least you're unlikely to encounter any issues with the system being "too fast" for one reason or another – unless your goals include a desperate desire to retain the excitement of staring at loading screens.

Nice topic - I seem to be in a conundrum as to building a machine that would do both Win XP and 98 stuff. Is there a list of Win98 games that don't work well in XP?

Currently I have my main rig (i5 2500k @ 4.5, Radeon 7850, 8GB RAM, X-Fi Fatal!ty) running XP on a bootable external laptop drive for testing purposes. It seems this machine could slice through anything but isn't period correct, and once I upgrade the video card it seems there are no more XP drivers. 🙁 I have on the way my old E8400 and Gigabyte EP35C-DS3R that I'm thinking of resurrecting. Probably recap the board for good measure.

So the benefits XP has over later systems include support for all DRM schemes including SafeDisc and SecuROM, a lot of older stuff using 16-bit installers, unsigned driver level stuff and EAX hardware. I don't think there are too many incompatibilities between even DirectX 8 stuff from 2001 and whatever the newest XP compatible hardware is, so the sweet spot is definitely a Core build of some kind. Newer the better?

Performance wise, I think the best you could do is Ivy Bridge era... so, either a 3770K or something around that era. I have gotten XP to work nicely on my old build which was a 3770K and a Z77 ASrock board... the video card was a RADEON 7870.

firage wrote:

Newer the better?

Not really. It usually comes down to what parts you got lying around 😀

The GPU is likely the most critical part, the motherboard, CPU, it doesn't matter much to be honest. Get a X-Fi card for EAX / CMSS-3D sound and you're set. Don't rule out AMD. AM3+ makes a great XP retro platform.

Shagittarius wrote:

As we all eventually move towards Windows 10 and beyond it's becoming obvious that there will be an advantage to maintaining an XP machine for compatibility with older games.

Slightly off-topic perhaps, but I also see advantages to patching games for portability. For the sake of digital longevity it would be interesting to fix Win9x and XP games to work with present-day versions of Windows.
The APIs are still the same, and the hardware is still the same 32-bit x86 as well, so any compatibility issues are down to bugs in the code, or doing things that are too OS-specific (eg using 16-bit installers, or using custom device drivers for low-level hacks).

RetroBoogie wrote:

Is there a list of Win98 games that don't work well in XP?

Things keep changing. Sometimes problems can be easily solved by using WineD3D or dgVoodoo; other times, people actually manage to patch out the problems. SimCity 2000 Network Edition was a particularly problematic one for the longest time, but even it got patched eventually.

As always, the question should not be "is there a list of games that don't work well in XP", but "do any of the games I actually want to play not work well in XP".

It seems this machine could slice through anything but isn't period correct

It's very hard to see anything concrete that might be gained by being "period correct" in this case.

I use an XP machine as my daily driver. I think a quad core cpu would help, not necessarily with games, but with web browsing or any other activities besides gaming. I do find with lots of tabs open, Firefox starts to bog down (approaches 2GB memory consumption), which with a 3.2GB machine is pretty significant.

I use an 8800GTX for my graphics, which is more than fast enough for any XP-era games, but at some point I'm going to move over to a 750Ti which will be even faster with half the power consumption and take up less space in the case. 😀

First or second gen i5 4gb of ddr3 1866 or 1600 with tight timings, some cheap mlc SSDs, and a pair of 5970s or a single GTX 590. GTX 280s are also really good for the job provided the coils (vrm) haven't burned out yet.

Gpu wise id go for a AGP card just to try and be period correct. Yeah there were pcie cards then, but that wasnt around when XP released.

I have a nvidia 6800gt. I think the 6800 series woyld be great as its the last series to officially support windows 98 as well as XP.

goodtofufriday wrote:

Gpu wise id go for a AGP card just to try and be period correct. Yeah there were pcie cards then, but that wasnt around when XP released.

I don't see the point of making it "period corect", because Win XP "period" is 2001-2007 (2001 - XP release, 2007 - Vista release). You could even streched "XP period" up to April 2014, and official "end of support".

agent_x007 wrote:

goodtofufriday wrote:

Gpu wise id go for a AGP card just to try and be period correct. Yeah there were pcie cards then, but that wasnt around when XP released.

I don't see the point of making it "period corect", because Win XP "period" is 2001-2007 (2001 - XP release, 2007 - Vista release). You could even streched "XP period" up to April 2014, and official "end of support".

No doubt of of period correct diesnt matter then no need to go agp.
In that case though id use a amd hd6990

agent_x007 wrote:

goodtofufriday wrote:

Gpu wise id go for a AGP card just to try and be period correct. Yeah there were pcie cards then, but that wasnt around when XP released.

I don't see the point of making it "period corect", because Win XP "period" is 2001-2007 (2001 - XP release, 2007 - Vista release). You could even streched "XP period" up to April 2014, and official "end of support".

I would say the XP period ended when market share of Windows 7 overtook XP, that is, late 2011.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I would say the XP period ended when market share of Windows 7 overtook XP, that is, late 2011.

I guess it depends on context. I suppose in this case it's about a game machine. So the XP period ended at the time when games stopped supporting XP (DX10+ only games).
I think that may have been even later than 2011?

Either way :
Sandy/Ivy Bridge hardware (with GTX 780 Ti) running Win XP SP3, can play the same games that Pentium 4 and GeForce 3 running plain Win XP can.

So... what's the point of "period correctness" in case of Win XP for a game PC ?
I thought "period correct" PC is meant for games/programs that need special features because are software limited to them.