nVidia GTX 750ti - the most powerful, supremely overkill graphics card for retro games, has working drivers for Windows XP SP3.

Windows XP should have plenty of drivers for Ivy Bridge (your CPU generation), and the system will be way overboard for retro gaming. Just keep in mind the 4GB memory address limitation of 32-bit OSes like Windows XP (Yes, there's a 64-bit version of Windows XP Pro, but finding drivers for that is a nightmare). The 750ti comes with 2GB of video memory, so you'll only really be able to have 2GB of RAM installed in your system and working. Everything else will effectively be ignored. You can install more RAM than that (to get dual-channel mode working), but Windows XP won't be able to see or use more than it can handle.

Besides, my old WinXP gaming laptop only has 2GB and that's more than enough for XP to be happy. And it's pushing a 7800GTX card with only 256MB of memory to a 1920x1200 display. And that only uses a single-core Pentium M @2.1GHz, no Hyper-Threading at all. Will XP be able to use more than 1 core? Sure. It's based off of the NT kernel, after all, so it plays nicely with 2-core and 4-core setups. I've just never used a multi-core CPU with XP before. I never needed to. Dual-core CPUs always meant Windows Vista or Windows 7 to me, usually with 4GB of RAM or more.

I don't think ram of the video card matters. I have been using winxp with pc that has 8Gb of ram and 3Gb video card ram in geforce 780ti. Windows XP uses the normal 3.25Gb from that 8Gb of ram in my case too.

Thanks for the reply, gonna go for it then. I also plan to run a 1920 by 1200 monitor since alot of the games I wanna play will do 1600x1200 out of the box. Hoping to have enough horse power to also record gameplay. Also plan to use this machine for burning cd/DVD for retro consoles or whatever.

FFXIhealer wrote:

nVidia GTX 750ti - the most powerful, supremely overkill graphics card for retro games, has working drivers for Windows XP SP3.

From what I can tell, there's XP drivers even for 9xx cards. You could even run a Titan if you wanted 😜

GTX 750 is nice of course... but I definitely wouldn't call it the most powerfull and overkill. In fact once you bump the resolution up and add some AA, you will hit the wall quite soon.

Indeed, you can run a 960 with official support or a 980ti if you're maybe looking to run XP games at 4k or something.
However, by luck or judgement the 750 is a great choice for a Dell Optiplex chassis / PSU.
To the OP, yes, the Optiplex 7010 has XP drivers.
https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/pr … ex-7010/drivers

I have a C2D E8500 on an ASUS P5E board with a 680 3GB that runs XP just fine, can dual boot it and Windows 7 or Vista. It's overkill for most XP games.