Personally, I find no reason to spend that much sourcing components for a legacy computer. But yes, if you go for the pure maximum, I think that it is 4960X, an X79 board, 4x1 GB DDR3-1866, Titan X ... quad channel is supported.

SSD TRIM is not officially supported by XP. However, you could probably also install Windows 7 on the same machine and periodically use it to trim ("Optimize") the XP partitions.

I personally would just buy a used mainstream Ivy Bridge computer, clean it up and maybe change the graphics card to a used 780(Ti).

what game works in xp but not windows 10 ?

Davros wrote:

what game works in xp but not windows 10 ?

Anything that you want to use hardware accelerated audio and not have to use Alchemy for EAX (which is broken by default unless you manually fix it).

q3azocker wrote:

Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

could someone please recommend me the fastest/best/monster performance Windows XP supported Hardware for gaming? (i apologize if this topic already exists)
I have i solid budget, you can't recommend also the the expensive hardware

I've considered this build:

2697v2/4960x or 1680v2 + Asus Sabertooth x79
4GB DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM, better 4x1 GB? or 1x 4GB? Is quad channel supported, does anyone know?
GTX Titan X/780ti (for better WXP support?)/Titan 6 GB - which is the best ?

would it need a certain SSD or something like that?

Thank you!

I would get faster than 1866 RAM. 2133 is easily doable on the x79 platform and 2400 is probably a better bet as you then have more leeway for getting the max overclock out of your CPU and still have the RAM running at full speed.

Yes, quad channel is supported. It is not OS dependent. The motherboard handles that. I wouldn't worry about only using 1GB sticks either. It will be a lot easier to get higher speed higher density sticks. Who cares if 32-bit XP will only see around 4GB. For that matter, you might as well go ahead and use 64-bit XP so you can use all the RAM.

Whatever SSD you want is fine.

I wouldn't think the Sabertooth x79 would be the best board either. If you want max performance/overclockability, get a Rampage IV Extreme.

And why only 1 video card? You can SLI two 780ti in XP.

cyclone3d wrote:

I would get faster than 1866 RAM. 2133 is easily doable on the x79 platform and 2400 is probably a better bet as you then have m […]
Show full quote

q3azocker wrote:

Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

could someone please recommend me the fastest/best/monster performance Windows XP supported Hardware for gaming? (i apologize if this topic already exists)
I have i solid budget, you can't recommend also the the expensive hardware

I've considered this build:

2697v2/4960x or 1680v2 + Asus Sabertooth x79
4GB DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM, better 4x1 GB? or 1x 4GB? Is quad channel supported, does anyone know?
GTX Titan X/780ti (for better WXP support?)/Titan 6 GB - which is the best ?

would it need a certain SSD or something like that?

Thank you!

I would get faster than 1866 RAM. 2133 is easily doable on the x79 platform and 2400 is probably a better bet as you then have more leeway for getting the max overclock out of your CPU and still have the RAM running at full speed.

Yes, quad channel is supported. It is not OS dependent. The motherboard handles that. I wouldn't worry about only using 1GB sticks either. It will be a lot easier to get higher speed higher density sticks. Who cares if 32-bit XP will only see around 4GB. For that matter, you might as well go ahead and use 64-bit XP so you can use all the RAM.

Whatever SSD you want is fine.

I wouldn't think the Sabertooth x79 would be the best board either. If you want max performance/overclockability, get a Rampage IV Extreme.

And why only 1 video card? You can SLI two 780ti in XP.

Thank you!

Which CPU would you recommend?

Whatever the latest motherboard and CPU is, with whatever the latest GPU is that has drivers for XP.

Why stop at 1 CPU? XP Pro can handle 2 remember.
But as we are talking gaming, clock speed is more important the cores so something like the Core i7-4820K (3.7GHz, L3:10M, 4C, HT, 130W, rev.S1) going off the supported CPU list
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_ … 9/HelpDesk_CPU/
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/RAMPAGE_IV_ … E/HelpDesk_CPU/

Your also missing sound. Very important as XP is the last with EAX support.
Best/last card from Creative is the Titanium Fatal1ty Champion. Although realistically anything based on the EMU20K2 chip is basically the same card, just without all the bells and whistles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X … the_X-Fi_Family

chinny22 wrote:

Why stop at 1 CPU? XP Pro can handle 2 remember. But as we are talking gaming, clock speed is more important the cores so someth […]
Show full quote

Why stop at 1 CPU? XP Pro can handle 2 remember.
But as we are talking gaming, clock speed is more important the cores so something like the Core i7-4820K (3.7GHz, L3:10M, 4C, HT, 130W, rev.S1) going off the supported CPU list
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_ … 9/HelpDesk_CPU/
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/RAMPAGE_IV_ … E/HelpDesk_CPU/

Your also missing sound. Very important as XP is the last with EAX support.
Best/last card from Creative is the Titanium Fatal1ty Champion. Although realistically anything based on the EMU20K2 chip is basically the same card, just without all the bells and whistles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X … the_X-Fi_Family

Thank you!

How about 4790k+sabertooth z87? cuz of 4ghz cores? would it a better choise as 4820k+sabertooth x78 ? Thanks!

I would go with an x79 setup. The 4930k can easily hit 4.6Ghz with a decent air cooler. Mine will do 4.7Ghz on air although I run it at 4.6Ghz on all cores which is super duper easy to get, even with the power saving stuff enabled.

You also get quad channel RAM which is going to about double the RAM throughput of any of the dual channel boards.

You also get 40PCIe lanes with the 4930k or 4960X or XEON 1660/80 v2. With the 4820k you will only get 28 PCIe lanes which is not enough for dual x16 PCIe video cards.

The lower end (115x) socket also has only enough PCIe lanes for 1 x16 PCIe video card unless you don't mind dropping down to x16/x4 or x8/x8.

With a higher end XEON (1680v2), you can also get more cache and 2 more cores which will help in some circumstances. Most likely will not be able to get as high of clocks due to the extra cores but there are very few games that can use that many cores anyway.

All of this hardware is still relatively expensive, despite being nearly 8 years old, in part because it's still quite competitive (provided you're using an OS that it supports). It would be hard for me to justify a used Rampage IV Extreme and 4960x in 2019 when I can get a decent Zen 2 rig for a similar amount.

Davros wrote:

what game works in xp but not windows 10 ?

By works, do mean whether it runs at all, or whether it runs without any unofficial tweaking (that was not needed in XP)? If the latter, then perhaps Fallout 3 GOTY and New Vegas. When I ran Fallout 3 in Windows 10 around two years ago, I needed to use the d3d9x.dll trick to get past the startup crash bug. I had no such issues running the game in XP or Windows 7.

I wonder if running WinXP in a virtual machine on a latest PC won't be faster than running WinXP on some old one.

VMWare running Windows XP runs decently on my computer (GTX 1050 Ti, Intel i7 2600). It actually runs at the same speed (similar) as a Pentium 4 machine with a NVIDIA FX 5500 GPU. I haven't done extensive testing, but it works alright.
VMWare doesn't support Windows XP offically (anymore at least). The integration drivers/components are still available for download though.

Also for games that work on Windows XP, and not on Windows 10, Monopoly Tycoon, Ford Racing 2 and Test Drive 6 all have issues running on Windows Vista and later. This is because the Windows Media Source Filter (WMA filter for DirectShow) was removed in Windows Vista (early in development too). It was deprecated, then removed mainly because of inferior playback quality (and MIcrosoft being Microsoft).
I managed to figure out how to get all three games working again though, which is a huge plus to no longer have to use Windows XP.

another game:
Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga (music = game crash)

C2D E8600+some Z97 board and 4GB DDR2, I would probably choose an older card like a 580 and use older drivers because they screwed up a bunch of old games like Oblivion and a few others.

As for games that won't run on Windows 10, anything with old versions of StarForce, and anything with SafeDisc, LaserLock or SmartE for starters. There are many of these games which have no DRM free release.

You really don't need a "monster" machine for XP.
Everything that would make the best use of it would work just as well on a Win 7 machine which supports NVME drives, Ryzen Processors, and Nvidia 10/20 series cards.

Aim for a smaller more budget build that still kicks ass.
I'm doing an XP build now and I'm going with a Mini ITX H61 motherboard, i5 3470, 750 Ti SC (for PhysX and good quality graphics in a low TDP card), and 8GB of DDR3 1333 RAM, a 128GB boot SSD and 1TB WD Black data/swap drive. For EAX support, I'm using a Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro USB (it supports hardware-accelerated EAX up to 5.0)

RoyBatty wrote:

C2D E8600+some Z97 board and 4GB DDR2, I would probably choose an older card like a 580 and use older drivers because they screwed up a bunch of old games like Oblivion and a few others.

As for games that won't run on Windows 10, anything with old versions of StarForce, and anything with SafeDisc, LaserLock or SmartE for starters. There are many of these games which have no DRM free release.

Uhhh.. Z97 is not LGA775 nor does it use DDR2.

DNSDies wrote:

For EAX support, I'm using a Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro USB (it supports hardware-accelerated EAX up to 5.0)

Is EAX supported via OpenAL for games such as original DOOM 3 or Quake 4?

Edit: Asking because I didn't find ct_oal.dll in the driver installer unless it's packed in some .cab I didn't bother trying to unpack, though I just remembered it might work through wrap_oal.dll on XP.

Maybe ct_oal.dll is only used on Vista+ for HW accelerated audio on certain cards? I only found Host OpenAL (Sens_oal.dll), which is software based.

Also wondering if Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 PRO supports EAX on XP? I guess it does since it's part of X-Fi line.

EAX didn't work for me on Doom 3 until I used the original retail XP drivers.
You may need an older version?

Oof, yeah I meant X-38/X-48, I confused my P5E with my P97-Pro because I've been working on both computers at once, my bad.