My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is:

CPU: Xeon E5-1680 v2 (set to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores, though plenty powerful enough at stock for anything XP)
Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV (X79 chipset, LGA 2011)
RAM: 32GB DDR3 2400MHz (obviously only 4GB usable in XP 32-bit)
GPU: Geforce GTX 980 (officially supported in XP using 344.11 drivers, all others need modification, but will work)
Sound: X-Fi Titanium

Now, this computer actually does triple duty with XP 32-bit, Windows 7 and as a Hackintosh. More than capable of running Windows 10 and pretty modern gaming, though the lack of AVX2 is going to be an issue soon enough.

All of the hardware is properly supported in XP, no mucking about. Haven't had any compatibility problems yet (but I also have an overkill AGP based system for Win98 and early XP if needed). You can get XP running on much later hardware as other have shown, but it does take some messing about and you are on your own if your favourite game doesn't work.

From my benchmarking, performance does continue to scale all the way up to the top of line for LGA 2011... but that's mostly visible in dedicated benchmarks. For actual game performance, there is little difference in XP between any of the Core i* architectures. X58 and X79 platforms come with a memory bandwidth advantage (and tend to be receptive to a solid overclock), but motherboards are still expensive. For consumer Sandy/Ivy Bridge, motherboards are cheap and plentiful, and you can save a buck on the CPU by not picking the i7 - the best-in-socket CPUs still carry a premium. i5s are cheap, and the Hyperthreading the i7s bring makes little difference in XP. There's a pretty big drop off if you are going back as far as Core2 CPUs, but the late Core2Duos and Core2Quads were incredibly good overclockers, though they will still fall a little short (my Core2 QX9650 @4.0GHz can't match my stock Westmere X5680 or Sandy Bridge i5 2500K... and they have good overclocking potential as well).

An i7 3770k based system is going to be great for double-duty as an XP system and good-enough daily driver.

GodsPetMonkey wrote on 2023-12-03, 01:32:

An i7 3770k based system is going to be great for double-duty as an XP system and good-enough daily driver.

And I love how it unsupportedly runs Windows 11 in BIOS/MBR mode (required to dual-boot with XP... at least if you want to use the Windows Boot Manager) just great. No TPM, no secure boot, no UEFI, no nothing, and Windows 11 just runs fine... (just like it runs just fine on a C2Q, I might add...)

(I should note - mine is a 3570k I bought a few months ago from a friend of mine, not a 3770k. A friend who actually has had a history of owning a number of items like, say, a 1GHz titanium PowerBook G4 that, had he kept them, would have been highly desirable in the retro world a decade later, so I figured I would save this motherboard/CPU and turn it into my second retro XP machine...)

It's actually astounding how little innovation there's been in Wintel land the past decade. Imagine in, 2005, taking a top of the line machine from 1994 and being able to run almost all modern software reasonably well - XP, Office 2003, the newest web browsers, etc. That would have been laughable - your P90 with 8-16 megs of RAM would choke on Win98/Office 97 at least without a major RAM upgrade, let alone XP/Office 2003/etc. And yet... the Sandy/Ivy Bridge machines remain highly competent, even with their original 8-16GB of RAM, 11-12 years later. (Hence why Microsoft is trying their best to e-waste them with their artificial Windows 11 requirements...)

It's actually astounding how little innovation there's been in Wintel land the past decade.

There are two reasons why it happened. Intel were complacent after release of LGA1156. PC and console gaming were mostly consolidated by multi-platform releases, with the lowest denominators being the PS3 and later on the Xbox One.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-12-03, 02:25:

It's actually astounding how little innovation there's been in Wintel land the past decade.

There are two reasons why it happened. Intel were complacent after release of LGA1156. PC and console gaming were mostly consolidated by multi-platform releases, with the lowest denominators being the PS3 and later one the Xbox One.

I would also add the "Vista effect" and how people not willing to buy newer machines/newer OSes/etc froze the state of software development at a level where much older machines can still run the software just fine. And if the software isn't demanding faster hardware, why would Intel provide faster hardware (especially at the same or a lower price), etc?

MS also more or less forced many companies to remove native Win7 drivers for many new 2017+ Intel chipsets that are fully capable of running Win7, MS wanted to force people to upgrade to Win10. Win 7 EOL support was January 14, 2020 but Intel, Asus and many oems removed them starting 2018 from public websites (but you can find them if you know what to look for) for specific newer chipset boards...just rambling

Horun wrote on 2023-12-03, 03:09:

MS also more or less forced many companies to remove native Win7 drivers for many new 2017+ Intel chipsets that are fully capable of running Win7, MS wanted to force people to upgrade to Win10. Win 7 EOL support was January 14, 2020 but Intel, Asus and many oems removed them starting 2018 from public websites (but you can find them if you know what to look for) for specific newer chipset boards...just rambling

But this is not a bad thing...

The Windows platform is on life support at this point. Just about everything new written in the last decade is written for Chrome/web. If software vendors feel it's necessary to pretend they have a Windows desktop app, they write in in Electron (and guzzle hundreds of megs of RAM/hard drive unnecessarily). Even Microsoft's apps, e.g. the 'new Outlook', are going in this direction. If you look at the software one needs Windows for, it's basically games or productivity software with 2-3+ decade-old code bases.

Look at Mac world. Apple releases an OS every year and roughishly supports 3 OSes. In, say, 2018, if you're writing Mac software, the oldest you need to seriously worry about is El Capitan (2015) and, frankly, requiring Sierra (2016) or High Sierra (2017) is not that insane. So, in 2018, you can use APIs that Apple gave you three years earlier. And, if anything, Mac fans might be pleased that you're adopting even newer APIs and newer ways of doing things and requiring Sierra or High Sierra. In Mac world, what makes people angry at software vendors is i) not supporting the new OS pretty much immediately on its release, and ii) not adopting new Apple things quickly enough (e.g. being Intel-only in 2022, or PPC-only in 2008). The most-loved Mac-only programs (BBedit, GraphicConverter, PCalc, etc) have a history of spending every summer between WWDC and the launch of the new macOS updating themselves for the new stuff and being ready with whatever new things Apple has cooked up, pretty much on release day (e.g. I suspect they had ARM versions out the day the first Apple Silicon machines shipped). And folks like Adobe, Microsoft, etc who used to be slow... no longer really are. Microsoft shipped ARM versions of Mac Office in mid-December 2020, one month after the commercial launch of M1 machines; Adobe had Photoshop on ARM 3 months later.

Meanwhile, in 2018, in Windowsland, you still need to support Windows 7, so you are locked into the Windows platform as it was nine years earlier (with whatever little additions were added in the service pack). And Windows users would scream bloody murder and demand refunds if you don't support their Windows 7 machines in 2018...

Interestingly, Microsoft tried to quietly adopt the Apple model with Windows 10, i.e. do a full new release every year (but call it Windows 10 each time) and encourage software vendors to only support the latest feature update or two or three rather than the original 2015 release of Windows 10. Then they did a complete U turn with Windows 11...

I would further note that some large organizations, particularly in the public sector, were still deploying new Windows 7 machines in 2018 with no real plan for getting off Windows 7 in time for end of support (and, at least in some cases, no big pricy extended support contract with MS). I don't think Microsoft trying to put a stop to that is such a bad thing.

GodsPetMonkey wrote on 2023-12-03, 01:32:

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is: […]
Show full quote

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is:

CPU: Xeon E5-1680 v2 (set to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores, though plenty powerful enough at stock for anything XP)
Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV (X79 chipset, LGA 2011)
RAM: 32GB DDR3 2400MHz (obviously only 4GB usable in XP 32-bit)
GPU: Geforce GTX 980 (officially supported in XP using 344.11 drivers, all others need modification, but will work)
Sound: X-Fi Titanium

Now, this computer actually does triple duty with XP 32-bit, Windows 7 and as a Hackintosh. More than capable of running Windows 10 and pretty modern gaming, though the lack of AVX2 is going to be an issue soon enough.

All of the hardware is properly supported in XP, no mucking about. Haven't had any compatibility problems yet (but I also have an overkill AGP based system for Win98 and early XP if needed). You can get XP running on much later hardware as other have shown, but it does take some messing about and you are on your own if your favourite game doesn't work.
...

I have been looking into the X79 platform for WinXP 32bit, but... I assume the bios (and install) is only doable without AHCI ?
IDE mode only ?

bestemor wrote on 2024-02-17, 19:15:

GodsPetMonkey wrote on 2023-12-03, 01:32:

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is: […]
Show full quote

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is:

CPU: Xeon E5-1680 v2 (set to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores, though plenty powerful enough at stock for anything XP)
Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV (X79 chipset, LGA 2011)
RAM: 32GB DDR3 2400MHz (obviously only 4GB usable in XP 32-bit)
GPU: Geforce GTX 980 (officially supported in XP using 344.11 drivers, all others need modification, but will work)
Sound: X-Fi Titanium

Now, this computer actually does triple duty with XP 32-bit, Windows 7 and as a Hackintosh. More than capable of running Windows 10 and pretty modern gaming, though the lack of AVX2 is going to be an issue soon enough.

All of the hardware is properly supported in XP, no mucking about. Haven't had any compatibility problems yet (but I also have an overkill AGP based system for Win98 and early XP if needed). You can get XP running on much later hardware as other have shown, but it does take some messing about and you are on your own if your favourite game doesn't work.
...

I have been looking into the X79 platform for WinXP 32bit, but... I assume the bios (and install) is only doable without AHCI ?
IDE mode only ?

No, you can use AHCI. You'll need to do an internet search for Windows XP AHCI drivers. If you want to install the drivers during XP's setup, you'll need to slipstream the downloaded AHCI driver package onto your install media first.

Alternately, you can install with the computer configured to boot from SATA mode. Once you're in Windows XP (post-install), enter the Device Manager and right click on the Intel SATA controller to update the drivers. Install the AHCI drivers from the downloaded package. Restart the computer, enter the BIOS/UEFI, and change the controller to AHCI mode. Save the BIOS/UEFI settings and reboot. Windows XP should boot properly (it might need to re-detect the storage controller, but that's fine).

GodsPetMonkey wrote on 2023-12-03, 01:32:

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is: […]
Show full quote

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is:

CPU: Xeon E5-1680 v2 (set to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores, though plenty powerful enough at stock for anything XP)
Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV (X79 chipset, LGA 2011)
RAM: 32GB DDR3 2400MHz (obviously only 4GB usable in XP 32-bit)
GPU: Geforce GTX 980 (officially supported in XP using 344.11 drivers, all others need modification, but will work)
Sound: X-Fi Titanium

An i7 3770k based system is going to be great for double-duty as an XP system and good-enough daily driver.

This is the "General Old Hardware" topic of a forum dedicated to the retro PC experience...

Why not see what you can do with the limiting factor of a 32-bit CPU.... you can still run all retro games at max frame rate at 1080p...

I suspect the X-Fi would count as retro these days... 😜

MikeSG wrote on 2024-02-18, 07:31:

GodsPetMonkey wrote on 2023-12-03, 01:32:

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is: […]
Show full quote

My absolute end of the line, overkill XP machine is:

CPU: Xeon E5-1680 v2 (set to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores, though plenty powerful enough at stock for anything XP)
Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV (X79 chipset, LGA 2011)
RAM: 32GB DDR3 2400MHz (obviously only 4GB usable in XP 32-bit)
GPU: Geforce GTX 980 (officially supported in XP using 344.11 drivers, all others need modification, but will work)
Sound: X-Fi Titanium

An i7 3770k based system is going to be great for double-duty as an XP system and good-enough daily driver.

This is the "General Old Hardware" topic of a forum dedicated to the retro PC experience...

Why not see what you can do with the limiting factor of a 32-bit CPU.... you can still run all retro games at max frame rate at 1080p...

X79 is factory supported for XP. XP can also be installed on today's most modern machines, modernized drivers have been written.
In addition, Win98 up to Zen2 is the same by default, with AHCI on, as well as for more modern machines, because the VCache error has also been reprogrammed.
And the sound card is the SB0060, which is more retro than the XFi 😀

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-02-18, 14:28:

I suspect the X-Fi would count as retro these days... 😜

Really?

I hope not because that would make me antique.

The X-Fi shipped in late 2005. That was almost 19 years ago, as of this writing.

If it makes you feel better, it's about as retro as an Xbox360, which also came out that year.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-02-18, 19:20:

The X-Fi shipped in late 2005. That was almost 19 years ago, as of this writing.

My X-Fi that I think needs a capacitor replacement was acquired in summer 2006 for an E6600 build. I think it... might actually be the only part from that build I still have, or maybe the Mitsumi card reader/floppy combo that's been sitting unused for over a decade came from there.

Last card from the glory days, I'd be tempted to say, before Vista basically ruined nice Creative cards...

I cant believe its been that long. I still think of it as one of the new sound cards after the SB Live! 😀

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-19, 02:29:

I cant believe its been that long. I still think of it as one of the new sound cards after the SB Live! :)

I feel same about the Asus Xonar D1.. ^^

Jo22 wrote on 2024-02-19, 02:55:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-19, 02:29:

I cant believe its been that long. I still think of it as one of the new sound cards after the SB Live! 😀

I feel same about the Asus Xonar D1.. ^^

If we look at it, even SBLive is modern 😀, it can be installed under Win11 as well. And the XFi series goes everywhere. Under XP there is also EAX, but then it was cut...