Assuming all these things about incompatibility are true... I still don't see the point of having an XP machine if you already have Win7 and Win98SE machines. I can't imagine any programs that are too old for one and too new for the other.

senrew wrote:

Is there a point where newer video cards break dx9 stuff, or should I just go for something modern but cheap for this?

They shouldn't.

bucket wrote:

Assuming all these things about incompatibility are true... I still don't see the point of having an XP machine if you already have Win7 and Win98SE machines. I can't imagine any programs that are too old for one and too new for the other.

and win98se works in dosbox 😉

I still prefer XP over 7 as my day-to-day OS, but I can definitely see why 7 works just fine for most people.

For myself, I just work more efficiently with XP's user interface, and I like the fact that it has such a light footprint compared to 7.

senrew wrote:

The other thing, is that most of these games are available via Steam or GOG and are almost always certified to just work. That's another route I can explore.

That seems to answer your question, then.

I might think the primary reason to keeping around an older "XP" machine would be so that so you could keep using an older video card with older video drivers.

Actually an interesting question and one that I've addressed over the last 6 months.

I keep a dedicated XP/32-bit hard drive in my main W7 rig and boot off it ["bios dual-boot"] if I want to run any post W9x game that doesn't run or run as well, in W7 64-bit. Besides solving 64/32-bit limitation issues, I also disable crossfire on the XP setup to enhance compatibility - games of the early/mid 2000 era run just fine on a single 1gb card and sometimes balk at mult-gpu's.

After painstakingly checking all my XP/W7 era games there weren't too many that absolutely needed XP/32. The most significant one's for me:

Strike Fighters I series [especially the cool Korean Air War mod]
WW-2 Fighters [really a W9x game but likes the extra horsepower/glide wrapper options of a new system]
F1 Challenge [modded 1984-2005]
Steel Beasts Gold [2000]
Deus Ex 2

...and about 12-15 late 90's early 2000's point/click adventure games I like to keep around that won't run in 64-bit. I also moved games that dislike crossfire to the XP drive even if they run if W7 just to cut down on the fussiness.

None the less I was a bit surprised on how little I end up needing XP for gaming. I had expected XP to form the nucleus of a proto-retro build but now I'm not so sure.... Other than a handful of 32-bit games, and a UI which I prefer to 7, there isn't much that doesn't run or run better in 7 - or off one of the W9x retro rigs. For now the XP drive is really just a fail-safe backup if I ever loose W7 to hardware failure...

EDIT: I also keep 30-40 other games on XP that also reside on other W9x retro boxes because they run fine in XP/32-bit.

My main rig is a shitty HP laptop I picked up during a Black Friday sale in 2011. There are no XP drivers for it whatsoever so I'm stuck with just a 32-bit install if I really wanted to go that route, which I don't. Ignoring the other 4gb of RAM I have in there would be painful. The dedicated XP machine would really just be for those games that just won't run in Win8 x64, but need more muscle than my 98 machine can provide or require 2000/XP as an OS.

CoD 1 and 2, and Jade Empire are just three games I randomly pulled from my shelf that fall in that category. Now, I haven't tried them in win8 on my laptop yet, but they definitely will not run on my 98 machine in my sig.

senrew wrote:

...CoD 1 and 2...

These run fine on W7/64-bit btw

tincup wrote:

Deus Ex 2

This is working fine for me in W7/32, or do you mean W7/64?

Anyway, for me the purpose of a WinXP machine would be EAX as someone mentioned above, I still suspect that some games with it would work better without needing Alchemy.

My point exactly. Win8-32 should even have some support for WIN16 programs.
And maybe this is just because I haven't been touched by the glory of EAX, but I don't find it enough of a reason to choose XP over anything (especially if the games still work without it).

Hater Depot wrote:

...This [Deus Ex2] is working fine for me in W7/32, or do you mean W7/64.

Yes exactly - it won't run for me in W7/64-bit.

tincup wrote:

None the less I was a bit surprised on how little I end up needing XP for gaming. I had expected XP to form the nucleus of a proto-retro build but now I'm not so sure.... Other than a handful of 32-bit games, and a UI which I prefer to 7, there isn't much that doesn't run or run better in 7 - or off one of the W9x retro rigs.

That's been my experience as well. I did away with Win 98 recently after I found that almost all my old games can run on XP with some tweaks, and now I'm gonna see how many of them can run on Win 7. I'd wager that it'll be enough of them that I could probably do without an XP rig even.

I found XP pretty solid for W98 era stuff - one reason I hung with XP for so long. Wiith the move to W7 last fall I lost a bunch of them but on the bright side this has made the menagerie of W9x retro boxes even more relevent which is not a bad thing at all:)

Most Unreal Engine (1998-2002) games run very well on Windows 7 and 8. Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, and Nerf Arena Blast work without problems for me. They can also fit any screen resolution if you are using some kind of hardware acceleration. Half-Life and it's expansions including Counter-Strike work well of course, and Quake 1/2/3 work fine. Generally most 32-bit Windows games will work fine, especially the ones that supported Windows NT back in the day. Doom95 doesn't have mouse support but you can download a million other source ports for Windows.

So far, my recent experiences with my brand new Windows 8 x64 rig have yielded the following results:

DX9 through DX11 Gaming: Flawless

Pre DX9 Gaming: VERY Poor Quality, if it even works at all

Anything Reliant on DirectDraw: Same as Pre DX9 stuff

My previous system was an XP x86 machine and I'm fairly glad I never upgraded the thing to x64 OR to Vista/7, plus I finally have it set up independent of my Win8 system. So, if I ever want to play something that requires DirectDraw or was made before DX9 existed, or even if it's 16-bit, I still can. :)

For everything pre-Windows, there's DOSBox! ;D

TBH though, I still have tons of software to test so I may still yet be surprised for pre-DX9 stuff that's hardware accelerated. Quake and Quake II will probably make good test subjects...

Those use OpenGL, it will be interesting to see the results, you seem to have some problems with OpenGL DosBox.

*facepalm* Yeah... I'll need to choose better test programs...

This is what happens when you're racing to do just about anything. You forget simple things like what uses Direct3D and what uses OpenGL. >_>;;;

For the record, not having problems with OpenGL stuff on the new Win8 system.

Your DosBox was misbehaving with OpenGL, or did I dream that?

bloodbat wrote:

Your DosBox was misbehaving with OpenGL, or did I dream that?

If you're referring to the threads I started in the DOSBox section of the VOGONS forums, then yes, you dreamed that... sort of. OpenGL seems to be a lot more picky about which additional machine modes and scalers can be used with it than DirectDraw is. "vgaonly" machine mode and the HQ scalers won't work with OpenGL and force the program back into Surface mode, even if OpenGL is selected as the output type. :P

However, so long as I don't set those things in DOSBox, OpenGL works perfectly fine with it. Granted, some games typically run better with vgaonly than with other machine types, Ken's Labyrinth being one of them, so getting those games working their best on my Win8 system is troublesome.

Looking through my collection, I don't actually have a lot of games that were specifically designed for DX 7 or 8... In fact, most of the ones I "think" were designed for it I'm not even 100% sure about. I'll have to install a bunch when I get a chance and see what happens, but for now though, break's over as I'm already running just slightly late with ADG and need to finish up the video editing.

But yeah, having an x86 XP system still feels like a good idea, all things considered. ;)

Gemini000 wrote:

However, so long as I don't set those things in DOSBox, OpenGL works perfectly fine with it. Granted, some games typically run better with vgaonly than with other machine types, Ken's Labyrinth being one of them, so getting those games working their best on my Win8 system is troublesome.

you can use direct3d for that from gulikoza's patch in ykhwong's build for example