Hi nuvyi,

I use to think like this as well and ended up givong away my 2 voodoo 2 cards I had. What a mistake. What you will find is that many games will run just fine with either nGlide or dgvoodoo or dgvoodoo 2. However, video card support is not the only requirement for many old games, especially in the 1990's and early 2000. These games also require the proper OS environment and sometime the rigth sound cards. It is possible to get many of those working on PCem or some other emulator, but you will a fasr enough cpu for that to work. In the end (at least at the moment) its better to go for real hardware if you want best compatibility.

Conclusion, if you only have a few games and they run fine using dgvoodoo, then stick with that, its cheaper. If you want to support a full library of old big box games, build yourself a retro rig.

Hope this helps!

It's a matter of finality i guess, if the scope of you playing on real hardware a matter of joy that comes from experiencing the hardware in conjunction with the software or it's only a matter of enjoying the software?

It makes sense if you find joy in something apparently useless but that can actually hold meaning in a non material way (historical, emotional reasons etc.) but if you care only about the software then nah, just use patches etc. almost everything works on new systems through patches, emulation and so on.

For me, I tried, I honestly tried, a really long time to try to make everything work in software. But at some point the fact that every game required it's own unique combination of wrappers, fan patches, compatibility hacks, virtual environments or emulators just burned me the fuck out. I just wanted to install a game (sometimes a feat in and of itself), maybe install the latest official patch, and play. So I went with authentic hardware and never looked back. It's more costly. dgVoodoo2, PCem, etc are free, and it's hard to compete with that. Vintage hardware isn't always without it's own troubleshooting woes either. It may feel like you've swapped one set of problems for another. But on net, I feel once you get a retro rig set up and working correctly, any period correct game generally runs on it without hassle.

Unless the game was just a buggy POS when it came out. Not much to be done about that.

Thank you all! Very interesting to hear various viewpoints. I wasn't pretty clear. I had the idea to build a computer on Windows XP with EAX sound card, but using a more modern (not authentic) video card, and run those problematic pre DX9 games using wrappers. So, can those wrappers emulate all these features properly after all? I mean table fog, EMBM, 8 bit textures..

gnn wrote on 2023-06-17, 22:56:

However, video card support is not the only requirement for many old games, especially in the 1990's and early 2000. These games also require the proper OS environment and sometime the rigth sound cards. It is possible to get many of those working on PCem or some other emulator, but you will a fasr enough cpu for that to work. In the end (at least at the moment) its better to go for real hardware if you want best compatibility.

With the PC architecture constantly evolving, the older the game is the harder it is to run it natively on a modern PC (with patches, hacks, compatibility settings) but also easier to emulate/wrap accurately with good performance.
Then there's always this uncomfortable (and moving) time window of "too old to run without issues, too new to be emulated". I think DX9 is now slowly falling into this category.

I agree Azarien,

This is why I am trying to make my core 2 ultimate retro build with win 98 V3 + win xp hd5770. I did want to get a V1 in the mix, but decided against it because its too expensive and old enough to emulate on PCem. Hell the only reason I setup win 98 in the first place is because of authenticity, since I can run a PCem win 98 with a PII 300 and V3. Win XP on the other hand was a must becuase its too new to emulate and VM's don't always offer good compatibility.

Yesterday, in a effort to ensure not getting caugth in the same paradigm for the win7 era, I tried to add another boot option to win 7, but hit a few walls on video card setups, activation, and screwing up my MBR in my win98 partition (call it inexperience). I started to question the need for win 7 to ensure forever compatibility with games 2010 to 2020. Perhaps I will setup a third partition on win 10 instead. I'm rambling now, so I will stop.

Nuvyi,

If you are going to build a win xp system, you will have to install a video card that have supported drivers for win xp. This will limit you to a 780ti or even 980ti (not sure about that one) or even a R290. Anything newer the that, you cannot run on windows xp. For retro compatibility, yes, you can run older programs from early win xp on those cards, as they should all support dx9 natively. From there you can run older titles with compatibility mode, wrappers and patches. You can go all they way back to the win 9x era, but at some point you will need to emulate again for some older win 9x/dos titles.

For me, playing my childhood/teenage year’s favourite games is only part of the experience. Running the hardware is a massive part of the draw to the experience.

This is why I have 60+ video cards spanning from DOS era ISA EGA and VGA through to current day, and a number of platforms to match. I can typically build a machine that is year (or maybe a couple of years) specific for anything from 1989 through to current year, though I’ll only ever have four to eight PCs built at any one time (space constraints for keeping more than about 6-8 cases).

Emulation for me is something I only tend to use for legacy game consoles on the move (thanks emudeck!), I prefer real hardware if possible!

gnn wrote on 2023-06-18, 14:24:

Nuvyi,

If you are going to build a win xp system, you will have to install a video card that have supported drivers for win xp. This will limit you to a 780ti or even 980ti (not sure about that one) or even a R290. Anything newer the that, you cannot run on windows xp. For retro compatibility, yes, you can run older programs from early win xp on those cards, as they should all support dx9 natively. From there you can run older titles with compatibility mode, wrappers and patches. You can go all they way back to the win 9x era, but at some point you will need to emulate again for some older win 9x/dos titles.

Yep, I was just about to look for something from the 600 or 700 series. Surely drivers are available under XP. So I can try to make one computer to rule them all. 😂 I hope so.

gnn wrote on 2023-06-18, 14:24:

or even 980ti (not sure about that one)

I can confirm that the GTX 980 TI works in Windows XP, it just requires adding it to the driver .INF file.

Does the 980ti support gpu scaling for aspect ratio on xp? Its the only thing holding me back from sticking with amd. I really want the better compatibility, but not at the expense of stretchy graphics.

gnn wrote on 2023-06-18, 15:48:

Does the 980ti support gpu scaling for aspect ratio on xp? Its the only thing holding me back from sticking with amd. I really want the better compatibility, but not at the expense of stretchy graphics.

In my case I'm using a monitor (Asus ProArt PA248QV) that isn't supported by Windows XP. For whatever reason the XP nVidia drivers see it as a television and not a monitor. The nVidia control panel doesn't provide any scaling options.

However the monitor itself supports native switching between 4:3 and 16:10. So I always get proper aspect ratio, even in cases where the same game uses different aspect ratios for menus, FMV, or gameplay. The monitor just auto-switches between them.

edited to add: I should also note I'm using a Displayport -> HDMI adapter for connecting the monitor. It's also the only way I was able to enable both 75 Hz refresh rate and aspect ratio detection / switching. The whole feels a bit janky, but it works so I haven't bothered to fiddle with it.

gnn wrote on 2023-06-18, 15:48:

Does the 980ti support gpu scaling for aspect ratio on xp? Its the only thing holding me back from sticking with amd. I really want the better compatibility, but not at the expense of stretchy graphics.

I can't speak for higher tier cards, but my GTX 650 Ti does support scaling under WinXP with 355.98 drivers. However, only when it's connected to a monitor using a DVI cable. See here for screenshots and more details.

I had no luck with enabling scaling over HDMI under WinXP. Not sure if it can be done. Similarly, there is no such option over VGA but that's not an issue, since my monitor can easily change the aspect ratio to 4:3 when using an analog connection.

There is an option to scale my hd5770 under xp using the latest supported catalyst driver with hdmi on a lg 2k monitor. For the vga output of my voodoo 3, I am waiting on the delivery of an extron vga-hdmi 300a, which should do the trick. Its good to know that some nvdia cards have an option for it. I will have to research it further.

nuvyi wrote on 2023-06-18, 08:32:

Thank you all! Very interesting to hear various viewpoints. I wasn't pretty clear. I had the idea to build a computer on Windows XP with EAX sound card, but using a more modern (not authentic) video card, and run those problematic pre DX9 games using wrappers. So, can those wrappers emulate all these features properly after all? I mean table fog, EMBM, 8 bit textures..

sounds like a reasonable approach to me, you can play all those games again so the result is what you wanted 😀

nuvyi wrote on 2023-06-17, 21:43:

Hey! AFAIK, formerly games like Splinter Sell could only be played on real hardware, but I was surprised when I saw a video of how shadows and lighting can work properly on any video card thanks to dgVoodoo. My question is does it make sense to chase real hardware if I don't care about authenticity? Can some patches and such software emulate 8-bit textures and table fog or is it too early to put hardware on the shelf?

I think you will be hard pressed to find a game that won't run at all on modern windows, but you might have to make some compromises and it might take you a while to find the right combination of patches/game versions (and usually no CD cracks) to get it working. But this is also true with real hardware. If the only thing you care about are playing games IMO you don't need a retro PC.

Personally, I own a lot of real hardware. I don't plan on giving it away, but I have found that I can almost always get better results (for me) through emulation and wrappers. With DOS games I find emulators give me better sound and more flexibility. With windows games I can usually get better performance and a cleaner rendering via better filtering and higher resolutions.

nuvyi wrote on 2023-06-18, 08:32:

Thank you all! Very interesting to hear various viewpoints. I wasn't pretty clear. I had the idea to build a computer on Windows XP with EAX sound card, but using a more modern (not authentic) video card, and run those problematic pre DX9 games using wrappers. So, can those wrappers emulate all these features properly after all? I mean table fog, EMBM, 8 bit textures..

Lots of stuff should work fine. I think dgvoodoo 2 uses newer direct X and vulkan APIs in its translation layer, so you might get the best results in say windows 10 compared to windows XP in certain situations.

You can build fairly modern and powerful computer that will still run XP, but I also don't think booting XP is strictly necessary. One nice thing about XP though is that it still supports legacy DRM like secure disk, which means you wont' always have to source a NO CD patch or buy everything you want to play on GoG/steam ect.

As for hardware, I recommend getting a maxwell or later nvidia GPU in particular, as this is the first generation to have good support for Dx12 and vulkan APIs. Maxwell is also compatible with XP (officially for the GTX 960 or below, but any maxwell card can work with a trivially simple driver tweak).

AMD cards for XP is also a good choice for running games in XP, as late AMD drivers are better in a number of ways than late Nvidia drivers, however, AMDs opengl support is consistently terrible and opengl is used a lot in emulation. I dont't believe any AMD gpus that can be made to work in XP support vulkan/dx12 either which can also limit your emulation options.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-06-18, 19:07:

Lots of stuff should work fine. I think dgvoodoo 2 uses newer direct X and vulkan APIs in its translation layer, so you might get the best results in say windows 10 compared to windows XP in certain situations.

You are correct, dgvoodoo2 does use dx11-12, so you can't use that on XP. However nGlide and I beleive dgvoodoo "1" uses previous dx versions, so they would work perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, nGlide does not run 100% well on win10 and 11 , at least not as well as on previous versions of windows, because dx9 is not natively runned by windows.

gnn wrote on 2023-06-18, 19:29:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-06-18, 19:07:

Lots of stuff should work fine. I think dgvoodoo 2 uses newer direct X and vulkan APIs in its translation layer, so you might get the best results in say windows 10 compared to windows XP in certain situations.

You are correct, dgvoodoo2 does use dx11-12, so you can't use that on XP. However nGlide and I beleive dgvoodoo "1" uses previous dx versions, so they would work perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, nGlide does not run 100% well on win10 and 11 , at least not as well as on previous versions of windows, because dx9 is not natively runned by windows.

Right. It's not that you can't use wrappers in XP, but you might not always get the best possible results.

I recommend dual booting modern windows with XP if emulation is one of the focuses of that build.