And what aspect of Core 2 that you are unfamiliar with would prevent you from using that instead?

d1stortion wrote:

And what aspect of Core 2 that you are unfamiliar with would prevent you from using that instead?

Obviously how it's spelled. 🤣

When it comes to XP, it's worth to install it in the fastest, most modern system for which the drivers are available.

Unless of course, if it's being built 'period specific'. But 'period specific' for WinXP can be counter-intuitive.

I guess a good WinXP system (or any system, for that matter) should be buillt around video card, whuch begs the question: what is the latest - and most backward compatible - video card supported by XP? If you can build a cost-no-object XP system, which
video card would you choose?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I guess a good WinXP system (or any system, for that matter) should be buillt around video card, whuch begs the question: what is the latest - and most backward compatible - video card supported by XP? If you can build a cost-no-object XP system, which
video card would you choose?

An easier question would be which platform would be the fastest. That would be Z77 or X79. Probably neither will give AHCI though which is a pain and not worth it on XP anyway.

About the video card, hard to tell without major testing, but I'm thinking most regressions came with the DX10 cards. So it depends if you are willing to use an old DX9 card for better compatibility.

XP spanned over 10 years. You will simply not be able to cover it with one video card.

E.g. Splinter Cell: FX 5950 tops. Doom 3: 8800GT

Are you saying Splinter Cell won't run on anything higher than a FX card?

d1stortion wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I guess a good WinXP system (or any system, for that matter) should be buillt around video card, whuch begs the question: what is the latest - and most backward compatible - video card supported by XP? If you can build a cost-no-object XP system, which
video card would you choose?

An easier question would be which platform would be the fastest. That would be Z77 or X79. Probably neither will give AHCI though which is a pain and not worth it on XP anyway.

About the video card, hard to tell without major testing, but I'm thinking most regressions came with the DX10 cards. So it depends if you are willing to use an old DX9 card for better compatibility.

My laptop comes with GeForce 310M, and it works well in XP, so I guess more powerful nVidia cards of the same generation should work too. Not sure about later generations, though.

The video card is going to be a Radeon 9600SE..............

As far as core 2 being different..........I look at the way the chips are mounted, the way the coolers are mounted - everything is different. I also read some reviews some core2 boards..... Asus p2B and some Gigabyte boards.... none of the reviews were very good. Left me with the impression that the overall quality of the boards had gone downhill.

I don't think so. If anything it got better since they switched to solid capacitors, mounted proper heatsinks on the VRMs etc.

The P2B is a Slot 1 board btw.

ncmark wrote:

The video card is going to be a Radeon 9600SE..............

Are you sure that's a good idea? My experience with Radeon cards is that they aren't nearly as compatible with older games as GeForce cards and are more of a pain to configure properly. :P

Ops.... I mean asus asus P5b

With regards to radeon 9600, I am not really building this to be a gaming box. My primary concern is to be able to run Canon Digital Photo Studio and to be able to use external drives ..... neither of which I can do with my current win 98 boxes.

I guess it is something of an experiment - I may not be happy with it, I'll have to wait and see.

I would just BUY a computer... but at this point what are you going to get, windows 8 (gag)

My main Win7 desktop also has a WinXP partition, with the ability to tripple boot - the other being Kubuntu. This is a Core i5 2500K system with 2 HD6950 cards running in crossfire.

The other older system runs with WinXP and Mint. This is an Athlon II X3 450 with GTX 280.

My first ever WinXP system was a socket 478 DFI motherboard running with a P4 1.7GHz with 640MB RAM. I don't have that system anymore. It had the Geforce 2 card.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I guess a good WinXP system (or any system, for that matter) should be buillt around video card, whuch begs the question: what is the latest - and most backward compatible - video card supported by XP? If you can build a cost-no-object XP system, which
video card would you choose?

Agreed with this reasoning. Mau1wurf1977 makes a good point about how long XP was out (2001 to 2014) and how much things changed throughout that, but in general the "later era" of games that are really demanding tend to be Vista/7 compatible (for example Skyrim will run on Windows XP, but it will run just as well on Windows 7 because it came out after Windows 7 was available). The more demanding DirectX 9 titles that are "true XP era" (remember that XP overlaps both Vista and 7; so what I'm meaning here is games that pre-date that) like Doom 3 or FEAR tend to be playable on high performance systems from their era. If you want all settings at the absolute limit, you'll need a newer machine, of course.

d1stortion wrote:

About the video card, hard to tell without major testing, but I'm thinking most regressions came with the DX10 cards. So it depends if you are willing to use an old DX9 card for better compatibility.

DX10 cards, IME, are no problem at all for DX9 and DX8 games under XP. DX11 cards is usually where you see the huge performance drop-offs (I should say, lack of performance gains) for DX9 (and I'd assume DX8) - for example GeForce 8800 and Radeon HD 4800 (thats two generations; not competitors) are both fantastic choices for DX9 gaming and will do a fine job with 8 via XP (IME DX8 titles tend to suffer somewhat under Windows 7).

Basically keep to Radeon 4000/GeForce 200 or older and you shouldn't have any problems with older games - "final era" DirectX 9 games, like Mass Effect 3, should run swimmingly on modern hardware because that's what they're designed around on some level. For games from the earlier part of the 2000s or late 1990s you really don't need anything approaching that level of performance; a GeForce 7800/7900 or Radeon X1800/1900 (the fastest DX9-era cards) should make quick work of any of it, unless you're hooking into a 4K display or something.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

My laptop comes with GeForce 310M, and it works well in XP, so I guess more powerful nVidia cards of the same generation should work too. Not sure about later generations, though.

There isn't technically a GeForce 300 series for desktops (there's a few low-level OEM cards); they basically jumped from the 200-series (GT200 based) to 400-series (Fermi based); I'd avoid Fermi unless you need that level of performance and application support, primarily due to the power requirements (modern Kepler cards use less power and are faster though). The few 300-series parts that are available, are GT200 based.

IME the GT200 (just like G92 and G80 before it) are no problem in WinXP or Vista, and shouldn't be a problem in 7 or 8 either. But you have to consider power/heat conditions for a lot of these cards - many of the high-end models since the GeForce 8800 are pushing on the 200W TDP bar, and require a fairly hefty power supply. If your specific game/application really needs that card, that's something you have to make work, but if you're running something older and less demanding, I'd probably drop down to something slimmer like a GeForce 7 (they are *much* more power efficient - even relative to the Radeon cards of their era).

ncmark wrote:

Ops.... I mean asus asus P5b […]
Show full quote

Ops.... I mean asus asus P5b

With regards to radeon 9600, I am not really building this to be a gaming box. My primary concern is to be able to run Canon Digital Photo Studio and to be able to use external drives ..... neither of which I can do with my current win 98 boxes.

I guess it is something of an experiment - I may not be happy with it, I'll have to wait and see.

I would just BUY a computer... but at this point what are you going to get, windows 8 (gag)

Last I knew you could still get brand-new systems with Windows 7 from certain OEMs, usually sold as "business machines" which shouldn't be a problem given that you aren't interested in gaming. For example the Dell OptiPlex line still ships with Windows 7, and they aren't terribly expensive (~$500). They'll be *much* faster than an AthlonXP as well.

As far as your specific goals here - the AthlonXP is a fine CPU for Windows XP, within reason. It doesn't support SSE2, which will hurt with multi-media and some games. It's also not the most powerful thing in the world, and you'll certainly feel that if you expect the machine to be a browser/general use system. Core 2 Duo would be a better system overall, and there's nothing wrong with their motherboards on the whole (the cap plague point on AthlonXP has to be considered as well) - IME their mounting system is also more "fool proof" - with AthlonXP you're dealing with an exposed die, so if you're careless you can literally shatter the CPU while installing it. The Core 2 is pretty much "pick and place" and away you go. 😀

I wouldn't worry about the Radeon 9600 - ATi's drivers have improved considerably since the 1990s, and even when the Radeon 9 was new, they were pretty reliable and easy to live with.

The problem is that Geforce 7 cards seem to be going for quite a lot of money in general. On ebay it appears that a 260 can be had for the same price as a 7800...

I'm also under the impression that video card failure rates went up quite a bit in the second half of the 2000's. Noticed many GF6-7 cards being listed as dead online. Guess this also contributes to the inflated prices for working ones. Or maybe a lot of people just intend to build DX9 XP rigs right now 🤣

d1stortion wrote:

The problem is that Geforce 7 cards seem to be going for quite a lot of money in general. On ebay it appears that a 260 can be had for the same price as a 7800...

Define "quite a lot of money" - $50? $500? $5000?

I picked up a 7950GX2 in as-new condition for around $60 not too long ago, and the seller did have multiples. It's worth pointing out that the GX2 is kind of finnicky when it comes to what systems it will play nice with (more correctly, what systems its PCIe-to-PCIe bridge will properly work with). A quick look on ebay and I've found a 7900GTX for under $30, a slew of 7900GS boards for $20 or less, some 7800GTXs for around $20, a few FX 5500s for $90 or less, and a number of FX 4500s for between $50 and $80. GTX 260s appear to be $50-$100. *shrug*

Personally if I didn't need the processing power of a GT200 card, I wouldn't deal with supporting one - 7950GX2 is arguably the king of DX9, and has a TDP of around 140W (although I've read it claimed that this is a very liberal estimate on nVidia's end, after the whole "GeForce 6800 re-rating scandal"). The single-GPU parts are much better - unless you need very high levels of AA or very high resolution (The two things the multi-GPU parts excel at), one of those 7900GS boards would be a fantastic choice for most games up to around 2006-7 (7900GTX can actually run Skyrim; 7950GX2 by rights should, but I haven't gotten that far yet).

Another thing that ALWAYS has to be noted with GF8-later cards: they run CUDA and GPU computing, and a lot of people bought them for F@H, SETI, coin-mining, etc and ran them at 100% 24x7 for months or years to that end. Newer Radeon cards should be scrutinized to the same degree (much worse in the case of the 7000 and R series; the almost year-long shortage has been blamed almost exclusively on "coin people"); personally I wouldn't touch a card that's been used for intensive computing.

I'm also under the impression that video card failure rates went up quite a bit in the second half of the 2000's. Noticed many GF6-7 cards being listed as dead online. Guess this also contributes to the inflated prices for working ones. Or maybe a lot of people just intend to build DX9 XP rigs right now 🤣

Nothing I've ever heard of - my guess is that it's the result of a few factors though:

- Those cards were mass-produced on levels previously unseen, especially shipped in OEM gaming computers (like Dell XPS or Alienware) and subjected to lord knows what over their lifecycles. The corollary to this one is: a lot of these cards had previously unseen levels of power and cooling requirement, which didn't stop folks from dropping them into rinky-dink machines with inadequate PSUs, ventilation, etc just to run whatever latest game on the cheap.

- Newer cards (GF8 and later) are commonly used (abused?) to run GPU computing and are quite literally cooked to death.

- In recent years I've noticed a trend of salvagers/scavengers listing broken/dead/defective stuff for sale in an attempt to turn blood from stones, usually with hedged phrases like "easy to fix if you know how" or "good for someone interested in learning" or "my loss is your gain" etc. Time was we had a solution for those kinds of devices: the waste bin.

As far as "what about Radeon?" - they're fine choices too, but the X1000 series tended to run hotter, be physically bulkier, and use more power. Also remember that with the exception of the X1950s, CrossFire on older Radeon cards is nowhere near as competent/universal as SLI was at the time (you needed one of the rare and expensive "Master" cards, and the associated dongle connectors).

obobskivich wrote:

d1stortion wrote:

The problem is that Geforce 7 cards seem to be going for quite a lot of money in general. On ebay it appears that a 260 can be had for the same price as a 7800...

Define "quite a lot of money" - $50? $500? $5000?

$70-90 BIN. Over here in Europe I've seen cards actually being sold for that kind of money. I consider that overpriced since Geforce 7 falls in that "just obsolete, not vintage" territory for me where I'd normally expect prices to reach their low. Also they are all PCIe so it's not like any of it is due to some people clinging to their old AGP machines.

About the GPGPU thing, that is certainly something to consider, though outside of scientific computing the typical scenario would have been Bitcoin mining. Those are the cards that are most likely to wind up on ebay. Here ATi/AMD cards were/are used vastly more often compared to Nvidia ones due to their architecture being a better fit for that specific task. The 5870 in particular was quite popular IIRC. 480 was rather used to fry eggs 😉

d1stortion wrote:

$70-90 BIN. Over here in Europe I've seen cards actually being sold for that kind of money. I consider that overpriced since Geforce 7 falls in that "just obsolete, not vintage" territory for me where I'd normally expect prices to reach their low. Also they are all PCIe so it's not like any of it is due to some people clinging to their old AGP machines.

Region of the world should be noted too I guess. 😵 🤣

IMHO GeForce 7 is one of the better GPUs designed from a performance/efficiency perspective - they bettered the previous generation, and competition, both in terms of performance AND power consumption, while also bringing in better SMP capabilities. At $90 BIN that's a little nutter-butters though; just amazing that the prices are so gouged-up on the other side of the pond. 😲

GeForce 6 would be a fine substitute, as long as you don't absolutely need HDR. 😀

Also what about Radeon? Those tend to go for lower prices per generation IME, does the same hold up for you?

About the GPGPU thing, that is certainly something to consider, though outside of scientific computing the typical scenario would have been Bitcoin mining. Those are the cards that are most likely to wind up on ebay. Here ATi/AMD cards were/are used vastly more often compared to Nvidia ones due to their architecture being a better fit for that specific task. The 5870 in particular was quite popular IIRC. 480 was rather used to fry eggs 😉

I know the 8800 and 9800 (especially the GX2) were very popular for F@H some years ago, which ranks up there with clothes dryers and Class A SET amplifiers as a "gigantic power waster" in my book. 🤣

And yes - nowadays the ATI cards are much more popular for cryptocurrency - the markup on cards like the R9 290X reflects that very heavily. 😵

And yeah - Fermi was a real burner; I actually remember one of the review sites setting up tin foil on the back of one of them and cooking up an egg and some bacon... 🤣 ATI wasn't entirely free of their own burners; the 4870X2 would run hot enough to boil water (and that's WITH cooling) while gaming...GTX 480 was/is something like 250W TDP, I think the X2 is closer to 300, and supposedly the new ATI dual-chip is going to be approaching 500W. You know, so you can cook your breakfast, heat the water for your shower, and run your jacuzzi all while playing Crysis...

If the main purpose of this XP proto-retro rig is to be the "final refuge" for apps/games that do not run/play nice on 64-bit W7/8 systems, I think you're basically looking at a single-core CPU/Dx9/non-SSD/4gb DDR2 max ram spec.

Single-core; as to avoid fussing with Affinity settings, black screens etc.
Dx9; native good fit for XP
Non-SSD; not a strict prohibition, but you can run into problems installing OS, imaging C: etc.
DDR2: though a later Athlon 64 is needed to support it

Max single-core approach suggests the Athlon 64 'San Diego' or P4 Prescott range. GPU? Assuming a CPU era 2005-2006, you're looking at Ge 6800 Ultra [SLI maybe?], 7800GTX or 7900GTX/512mb. This would be no slouch at all for XP era games. Additionally, if a W98 dual boot is in the picture, the 6800 has W98 drivers, and there are modded drivers for the 7800/7900's as well. Coupled with the RLOEW memory patch W98 can coexist on an XP rig of this spec.