ujav wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:59:

Killermac wrote on 2023-03-17, 20:34:

After some considerations in my previous topic, the idea of ​​having a Windows XP 32-bit computer for legacy gaming is easier to get. What is the most I can have in terms of hardware within these OS limitations?

If this topic is about old legacy gaming on XP, then in my opinion, a 3770k-level CPU from 2012-13, 980ti from 2015 and more than 4GB brings nothing but problems, without giving anything in return. Not a single game of those times can use this hardware by more than, say, 30-50%, relatively speaking.

Although of course this is a very interesting challenge. What is the maximum hardware that can still run XP 32bit with driver tweaks and a hacked OS. But for gaming it doesn't make sense.

Thanks for answering me. Could you please elaborate your opinion on this? The idea here would be a dual boot so that I could also use the computer on a day-to-day basis on a current operating system. You see, as far as games are concerned, I only enjoy playing these old games, I don't like the new and modern games. The Windows 10 part would run, at most, World of Warcraft Classic.

I wouldn't want to have to do a lot of tricks with drivers to make the Windows XP side operational, because as you can see I don't really know how to do these things yet. I would like it to be all original regarding the drivers.

What would be an ideal machine for this, for you?

ujav wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:59:

If this topic is about old legacy gaming on XP, then in my opinion, a 3770k-level CPU from 2012-13, 980ti from 2015 and more than 4GB brings nothing but problems, without giving anything in return. Not a single game of those times can use this hardware by more than, say, 30-50%, relatively speaking.

Late 2000s-era games might start hitting a wall at least CPU-wise.

Based on my own testing, FEAR maxed out seems to be CPU-limited on my 3770k build.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-04-12, 18:13:

ujav wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:59:

If this topic is about old legacy gaming on XP, then in my opinion, a 3770k-level CPU from 2012-13, 980ti from 2015 and more than 4GB brings nothing but problems, without giving anything in return. Not a single game of those times can use this hardware by more than, say, 30-50%, relatively speaking.

Late 2000s-era games might start hitting a wall at least CPU-wise.

Based on my own testing, FEAR maxed out seems to be CPU-limited on my 3770k build.

Hmm, you mean original FEAR, which came out in 2005? This is strange because the first (slow) Core 2 Duo was released a year later, the top CPU at that time was a single-core Pentium D 3.2, 3770k is at least 15-20 times faster.
In my experience FEAR runs silky smooth on something like a X5460 and 560ti, 1080p everything at max. It also works without problems on Windows 7 or 10, as far as I know. In general, these old games are known for their inability to effectively use more than one core, perhaps this is the issue.

Also this game was known for its toll on the graphics card when it came out, using new fancy shaders a lot. One of the fastest GPU for 2005 is the 7800GT/GTX, and 980ti is about 50-100 times faster.

ujav wrote on 2023-04-12, 19:39:

Hmm, you mean original FEAR, which came out in 2005? This is strange because the first (slow) Core 2 Duo was released a year later, the top CPU at that time was a single-core Pentium D 3.2, 3770k is at least 15-20 times faster.

Yup, original FEAR updated to the latest patched version (GOG release).

I benchmarked it in two configs with Windows XP:

E8600:
Min: 29 Avg: 39 Max: 47

i7-3770k:
Min: 48 Avg: 74 Max: 98

In both cases I was running fully maxed out settings, 1920x1200 resolution, 980Ti, 4GB RAM, and Windows XP (32-bit).

Meanwhile if I run FEAR on my more modern Windows 10 gaming machine, I get frame rates well in excess of 100 FPS and at a much higher resolution (3840 x 1600).

In my experience FEAR runs silky smooth on something like a X5460 and 560ti, 1080p everything at max. It also works without problems on Windows 7 or 10, as far as I know. In general, these old games are known for their inability to effectively use more than one core, perhaps this is the issue.

It's certainly playable, but clearly still limited in FPS compared to a more modern rig. I do suspect that perhaps single-core performance may be the limiting factor.

I also compared Crysis going from an E8600 to the 3770k and there was a substantial jump in performance as well.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-04-12, 19:49:

E8600: Min: 29 Avg: 39 Max: 47 […]
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E8600:
Min: 29 Avg: 39 Max: 47

i7-3770k:
Min: 48 Avg: 74 Max: 98

This is strange, оf course, these are different motherboards and memory speeds etc, but still 29-39 fps for E8600/980ti is incredibly low.

FEAR is a well-known benchmark that depends very little on the CPU and much more on the video card
https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-q3-20 … /results-fear-1

57 fps here for 8800Ultra and E6700, almost the same resolution. 980ti is about 14 times faster, I'm not saying that it should run at 800 fps, but definitely not 39.
https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-2007- … ts/results-fear

In later benchmarks, we see 100-190 fps on GPUs still several times slower than 980ti (and core 2 quads), after that FEAR has ceased to be relevant.
So my guess you have some kind of driver incompatibility problem, or maybe GOG broke something with its update.

Killermac wrote on 2023-04-12, 17:23:

Thanks for answering me. Could you please elaborate your opinion on this? The idea here would be a dual boot so that I could also use the computer on a day-to-day basis on a current operating system. You see, as far as games are concerned, I only enjoy playing these old games, I don't like the new and modern games. The Windows 10 part would run, at most, World of Warcraft Classic.

Ok, I see, then it makes sense. Although you still run into a compromise between hardware compatibility for a very old OS first released in 2001, and insufficient performance for some modern tasks.

As for me, I have already about 5 builds for different games, but lately become too lazy, and run almost all games released after 2003-2005 on my main Win10 rig.
And I rarely encountered any incompatibility, for more than a hundred titles. Almost all popular games either run without problems as is, or have a patched re-release (GOG ftw), or at least there's some unofficial patches, mostly for high-res support. And also, these old textures look terrible on modern monitors, but that's another issue. Trying to finish the original Vice City at the moment, and I'm starting to understand why the remasters were made, the originals are better anyway.

ujav wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:59:

Not a single game of those times can use this hardware by more than, say, 30-50%, relatively speaking.

If target is 1600x1200/1920x1080 60Hz - yes, most of XP game library don't use much. But add stable 100+ fps and/or 2560x1440/3840x2160 screen and it's a different story now.

Update: Today I had the pleasure of receiving the first part of this computer. It's funny that I felt so much more euphoric and happy receiving them than when I received the parts for my modern computer.

I found them on a used electronics sales site here in Brazil, the ad was very detailed with a lot of photos and when it arrived I didn't have any kind of disappointment, they are very well taken care of. I paid R$100, which in the current dollar exchange rate is $19.71.

Here are some pictures:

The next item that will arrive until May 2nd will be an ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77, along with an i7-3770k that I was lucky enough to find. Once it arrives, I'll update again.

Thanks again to all of you, without your advice this would not have been possible.

🤣, I have that RAM in my haswell era system (the 16GB version). It's great RAM.

The engineers who designed it must hate comp technicians, youll find out why when you try to push it in the RAM slots.

But those v2.4 sticks are decent, Elpida BFBG or BFSE if the old lists are correct.

Should be able to do pretty tight timings at 1600 or pretty loose at 2133.

Something I like to drop in on these types of threads is the fact a lot of corporates and government environments didn't migrate Vista. They waited until 7 came out. This means everything up tot around 2011 is, in my opinion, period correct, with legacy support extending all the way until around 2015. Pick a motherboard or a video card and see if the manufacture offers official XP drivers for it. I know official support for 900 series GeForce video cards exists so you may be able to get up to Ivey Bridge, Haswell, and even Broadwell. My XP dream machine is a socket 2011 (All the way up to Broadwell) with a 970 (because it was way cheaper then a 980) and I have had no issues with it at all.

it was just to fun building that rig for dirt cheap and it performs pretty neat and there is a little e-peen in it as well. I love it. It's period correct. and I have the boot drive in a hot swap bay so I swap it out for XP, Vista, or 10 and it has plenty of horsepower to run any of those OS's. AND the hardware is old enough to have official XP support but also new enough to have official 10 support.

And I have a bit of a crush on those dirt cheap Xeon v3's and their new sexy chines motherboards.

Just my $.02 rant.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-04-12, 19:49:

I benchmarked it in two configs with Windows XP: […]
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I benchmarked it in two configs with Windows XP:

E8600:
Min: 29 Avg: 39 Max: 47

i7-3770k:
Min: 48 Avg: 74 Max: 98

In both cases I was running fully maxed out settings, 1920x1200 resolution, 980Ti, 4GB RAM, and Windows XP (32-bit).

I stumbled upon this video from PhilsComputerLab, where he gets about 138 fps on average in F.E.A.R., 8x AA and 1080p, with the same i7-3770 and WinXP. And 373 fps at 1440p without AA.
All that on a GTX 960 that should be about twice as slow as your 980 ti.
https://youtu.be/QAt6g9lVxww
So yeah, something's definitely wrong with your setup or drivers maybe.

In general, it is quite easy to install XP on a modern system, like i9-1090k for example, using installer tweaks and modified drivers. Usually this is done for SuperPI records, but of course it doesn't make sense for older games.

ujav wrote on 2023-05-01, 22:28:

I stumbled upon this video from PhilsComputerLab, where he gets about 138 fps on average in F.E.A.R., 8x AA and 1080p, with the […]
Show full quote

I stumbled upon this video from PhilsComputerLab, where he gets about 138 fps on average in F.E.A.R., 8x AA and 1080p, with the same i7-3770 and WinXP. And 373 fps at 1440p without AA.
All that on a GTX 960 that should be about twice as slow as your 980 ti.
https://youtu.be/QAt6g9lVxww
So yeah, something's definitely wrong with your setup or drivers maybe.

The difference at least partially appears to be settings. I notice in that video he has soft shadows off. Whereas the benchmarks I posted were running fully maxed out including soft shadows turned on. That one setting can chew up performance.

Turning off soft shadows resulted in a jump to 90+ FPS average on my current setup. Unfortunately, he doesn't list all of his settings for FEAR, so it's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison.

At the moment, I'm not overly concerned about anything being wrong with my system or drivers, given games in general seem to perform well. For example I get >110 FPS average in Crysis, running fully maxed @ 1920x1200.

I recently built an ASRock Z68 Pro3-M mATX machine with a Core I3-2150 CPU installed. After several headaches, that I won't bore anyone else with right now, I [finally] managed to get this system working with a SATA III SSD. By way of comparison, I originally installed Win XP Pro SP3 x86 onto a SATA II HDD - in this system - via a SATA II connector on the mobo. After that install ... which went relatively well, by the way ... it took roughly 58 seconds from Power ON to see the great old XP home screen. After getting XP Pro SP3 to load onto the SATA III SSD, the same startup process takes under 15 seconds. I honestly don't know how to tell if the SSD is actually transferring at SATA III speed, but it is plugged into one of the two SATA III sockets that the mobo came from ASRock with.

This is all pretty cool, but the problem is that this mobo came to me with one of the SATA III sockets ripped off of the board. As I will be using this new/old machine to process large multichannel audio files, I'd like to employ a second SATA III storage SSD as a pseudo-slave (archive) drive. Needless to say, XP wasn't written to process large files, so any help with transferring files this large [some can be >700MB] is highly desirable.

With this in mind, I'd like to find a regular-size ATX mobo that will work well with XP Pro SP3 and, obviously, work well with a SATA III SSD. I assume that the "most modern" XP mobo available would be the obvious choice, but my assumptions aren't always right, so that's why I'm asking here on the "Latest hardware for a Windows XP 32-bit computer" thread.

XP runs even on the most modern computers. REMOVED, can be edited for brand new machines, Ramsey included the editor, AMD-Intel AHCI + other drivers can also be compiled. It has 128GB of RAM and all contemporary programs and games run nicely on my R3800X+B450. Moreover, even Win98 can be loaded with modded drivers, edited video driver+Loew mem/AHCI drivers, etc...

XP :

Win98 :

So it is not important to think about buying an older machine, retro systems run on the newest ones as well. In a Win98 session, DOS7.1 is also great, nowadays there are modern deceleration programs.
Of course, I have retro machines, I wrote it just in case someone only has a modern machine on their desk...

Cheers for replying to my post, @DarthSun. Although it's on my personal Pending Projects List, I don't presently own a modern PC. Way back in the day, I used to build PCs for our small business, but, given all of the time we spent each day trying to correct Windows issues, I was talked into trying a Mac machine. Although I was initially reluctant to even try a Mac machine, I'll keep it simple by writing that I've been using them for well over 12 years now.

That said, we recently came upon a project that requires an old [expensive] Win XP x86 utility that is now "abandonware." In short, it is no longer supported and there is no hope of any type of upgrade. Regardless, we still need it and it was written exclusively for Win XP x86; hence, the need for that particular OS. We've made contact with an engineer who still uses the subject software and the very first thing he told us to do was build and/or acquire a standalone Win XP PC. Apparently, he has tried running this utility on a newer PC, via a Win XP VM, and it doesn't function properly. Apparently, it has something to do with how XML files were handled - after the XP operating system era - but I'm not a developer, so I'm not asking too many questions. The guy has been kind enough to offer his assistance, so I'm simply following his advice. By the way, this engineer is well known to be an expert with the software we wish to use.

I really don't like feeling like I've hijacked someone else's thread, so perhaps I should ask the same question via a new thread?

Maybe you misunderstood, XP and W98 do not run virtually on my Zen machine, they are completely native, there are now suitable installers for this. Regardless of this, of course, you can also purchase an earlier machine with native XP support for the purpose.

DarthSun that is interesting, if that board did not have PS2 port you would have had a hell of a time getting XP to install even with mods/slipstreams/etc 😀

The problem arises from the fact that the XP installer switches to its own USB driver during setup. Under DOS, for example, the mouse and keyboard work with the legacy USB setting of the BIOS. However, with the Zone Integral editor, the appropriate USB support can be included in the installer.
In the case of Win98, it is more complicated, you probably need at least a PS2 port for the mouse. The USB keyboard works, but the mouse is buggy, the USB drivers ported from the X58 package work partially, if I remove or disable it, the keyboard and flash drives stop as well. I'm still looking for a solution to this. But after all, XP is in the center here, I ported Win98 just for the sake of interest.

(my comments may be less understandable, my knowledge of English is severely lacking)

XP will run on a pair of E5-2637 V3 Haswell core Xeons really well. 3.5Ghz, 4 cores 8 threads x2
Though the E5-2643 v3 gives better performance over all with 3.4Ghz 6 cores 12 threads x2
but you can also run a pair of E5-2699 V3 thats 18x2 Haswell cores with 36 x2 threads at 2.3Ghz but theyre still a little pricy but well worth it imo but wasted on XP, they do better under Win2k3 as you can ram up the RAM in the higher SKUs.

All of those CPUs are Haswell core, and they will take down an i7-3770k, in fact it has, I know those first two systems will outperform my i7-3770k system.

XP uses per socket licencing so running an i7-3770k gets you about 50% of an "Ultimate XP System"
Though I will say they do make a really nice gaming system for XP era games. Im in the process of building a nice XP gaming system myself, but it will be based on a 4th gen not 3rd gen. as they are supported and outperform 3rd gen i7s