Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 02:23:

I had planned on putting Vista on there?

Anything is installed on Phenom 2, from Windows XP (including 64 bits) to Windows 11 inclusive (through a registry hack to check the TPM and processor).
Why Vista?

A part of me is also wondering if it would be worth the effort of getting a Sound Blaster X-Fi card.

Vista removed direct access to the DirectSound subsystem DirectX.
To run X-Fi, you will need additional manipulation for each game.

Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 02:23:

So, I lucked into getting a Phenom II X4 970, with a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard, and supposedly 32 GB of ram. I haven't powered it on yet. I'd been planning on building a machine for the games my Athlon 64 can't quite hack, probably covering between 2008 or so through 2010. I had been thinking of a Core 2 Duo, but I won't scoff when something free falls in my lap. I have a Geforce 8800 GT and a Radeon X1900XT, but just going off when the CPU came out, maybe something from 2010 like a GTX 470 would be more appropriate?

A part of me is also wondering if it would be worth the effort of getting a Sound Blaster X-Fi card. At the time, I was content to just use onboard audio, but I'm curious if it offered anything unique.

I had planned on putting Vista on there, but supposedly it can't be activated anymore?

There are ..ways to activate Vista still, not that we can talk about a few of them here but IIRC phone activation still works for XP, Vista and Win 7.

I still use a Phenom2 as my main PC, 🤣. The exact parts are a notch below what you listed.
Whenever I retire it from modern duty, my plan is to set it back to high powered WinXP with a GTX285. Which is how it spent most of it's life, anyway.
I like the 200 series cards because it was the last of a previous era (8xxx/9xxx/2xx) that was well tested and targeted by game devs of the time. I think the 400 series GPUs were significantly different, but I don't know if that matters.

I use an Audigy 2 ZS - it can use old style joysticks in XP that way. It's one of the last sound cards to have the joystick port. One obstacle - most of these cards don't come with the joystick bracket, and the pinout probably isn't standardized so using a random one could be a bad idea.
I have 2 of these cards and one of them has a dead joystick port. I wonder how common it is for them to be dead, maybe from people plugging the wrong bracket in - or just from hotplugging, which people forget isn't allowed with legacy joysticks.

I'll probably put a parallel port card back in it, so it can run an old EPROM programmer. I had one in there for a while.

Since motherboards of this generation still have an ATA and floppy port, they can run an LS120, ZIP, or regular floppy drive. Sometimes useful for file transfers to something that's not on the network.

Basically my view is to use it as a high powered XP system that retains legacy capabilities a late XP32 machine can still support, but newer systems can't.

I used my old phenom X4 940 for my high power XP machine. It's totally awesome in this role. I paired it with 5870 from ATI and it has awesome retro compatibility from windows 95 to later vista games.
I tried it with a 750ti and a geforce 580 performances were good but older direct x 5 games crapped out. So I will keep the 5870!

So, to answer some question, Vista because I have a (possibly misplaced) fondness for it, as it was what I used around that time. I enjoyed it's DX10 support in the handful of games that made use of it. Like Hellgate: London.

I really don't need this machine to be a jack of all trades. I have... too many computers. I just want to fill a gap between an Athlon 64 XP machine, and a Core iDontRemember Win 7 machine. So I don't really care about a gameport, I have other machines for that.

The GTX 200 series sound like it could be promising for this machine. I wasn't keeping track of GPUs much around this time, are there specific models to avoid? Any model that seems to be the sweet spot these days for performance and availability on the used market?

I`ld be say, that's more applicable for Phenom 2 is 7870/7970 or 580/680

Currently assigning R9 390 to Phenom II X6/AM3+ box (unfinished) and GTX650Ti to Athlon II X4/AM2+ box, but that is noodling away with an X2 at present while the X4 sits and stares at it, and I'm testing a 1060 in it, IDK regular everyday chaos I guess. Recently had a GT440 in there for a test spin, but it seemed a touch slow even for the X2 260, though it's fine on desktop and old stuff, res was kinda high for DX10-11 speed, it might be happier on a 1024x768 class. If that machine wasn't a mATX build, I might have tried the 560TI on it, but too much bigness and hotness and wattness

Well, I finally finished building this machine. Grabbed a spare case out of storage, a new PSU off Amazon, and a Geforce GTX 470 off a local listing to round it out. Did need a new CMOS battery too, and I'm passing on an X-Fi card for now, although I am curious about getting one at some point maybe. I got Vista installed well enough, and so far everything seems peachy. Like I said, it's basically covering a not quite retro gap between my Athlon 64 machine and my Ryzen 5800X3D daily driver. I think Hellgate London will be the first game I give a solid spin on there, because I have such fond memories for it, even though seemingly everyone else hated it.

I am increasingly sad when I look over the games from the period I would like to play, and come to find there isn't a single completely offline version for many of them. Even stuff I already have on disc, like Spore, Rage, Borderlands 2 and The Sims 3 either requires steam, or at least online activation. There is an increasingly stark reality that most contemporary big releases for the period I'm looking at (2007-2014) have online activation requirements that may or may not even work any longer. Turns out it's only GOG doing the lords work, and re-releasing some games from this era with the DRM stripped out and offline installers. But even then, they haven't preserved more than half the big releases I'm eyeballing for this period. It's really going to suck in another 10 years when the answer isn't to just play it on your permanently online daily driver, because compatibility will have drifted ever further away.

Namrok wrote on 2023-08-16, 15:19:

Well, I finally finished building this machine.

For processors of the k10.5 family (however, like for Intel of that time), the L3 cache does not operate at the core frequency.
The L3 frequency must be equal to or higher than the Hypertransport frequency.
The hypertransport frequency should be 1/3 higher than the memory frequency.

If you can raise the L3 frequency and Hypertransport at least to 2.5 GHz, and the memory frequency to 1666 MHz, then you will experience all the delights of the K10.5 architecture