So I'm building my VOGONG (Very Old Games On New GPU) system; it's based on Biostar A780L3G mobo (integrated GPU disabled), AMD Athlon II X4 620, 3GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7770, and Windows XP SP2. The goal is to test how well does Radeon HD 7770 run old Direct3D/OpenGL games; titles like MDK, Monster Truck Madness, Hellbender, Crimson Skies, and Jane's World War II Fighters, with AA and AF maxed. Those games run well on GeForce GTX 280 except Hellbender and Jane's World War II Fighters, by the way. The system is also to test how much would the lowly Athlon II CPU bottleneck newer games like F.E.A.R and Left 4 Dead.

Whenever I search "HD 7770 drivers for Windows XP" on AMD website, the site always gives me Catalyst 14.4. But whenever I Google "best catalyst for windows xp", the top search results are Catalyst 6.11 and Catalyst 13.9. I guess 6.11 would be too old for Radeon HD 7770, but 13.9 can run the said GPU. So will it be better to use 13.9 or 14.4?

Based on my experience with nVidia, newer drivers tend to have worse backward compatibility with old games, so I tend to use the oldest driver possible that can still run my GeForce. But how about Catalyst? It is said Radeon GPU's are like fine wine; the older it is, the more stable it becomes, because Radeon drivers always improve with newer versions. But does the same apply to old games?