ultra wrote on 2023-02-13, 06:51:

the Windows XP era starting around 1998 and ending in 2010.

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista. 98-2001 was still the 9x era, and Crysis is in the Vista+ era. Fallout 1 is dos/9x if you want to be period-correct (but is patchable for modern systems).
Your chosen specs would be a little too weak for Crysis @ high 60 fps, but also might have issues with some XP games and are incompatible with 9x (though the 960 does have XP drivers).
I would go for something much older that has both 9x and XP support (you could dual-boot for max compatibility), and stick to playing Crysis on the best system you've got 😀

I don't have crysis to confirm actual functioning, but an asrock g31 mainboard coupled with an nVidia GT9600 and a core2duo E86oo + 2gb ram makes for a nice year 2009 machine.
EDIT: it may be noted that winXP wasn't actually discontinued until 2014 and i can confirm that sandybridge drivers exist for XP, they'll work on Packard bell easynote TS laptops, which were made around June 2012.

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:12:

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista. 98-2001 was still the 9x era, and Crysis is in the Vista+ era. Fallo […]
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ultra wrote on 2023-02-13, 06:51:

the Windows XP era starting around 1998 and ending in 2010.

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista. 98-2001 was still the 9x era, and Crysis is in the Vista+ era. Fallout 1 is dos/9x if you want to be period-correct (but is patchable for modern systems).
Your chosen specs would be a little too weak for Crysis @ high 60 fps, but also might have issues with some XP games and are incompatible with 9x (though the 960 does have XP drivers).
I would go for something much older that has both 9x and XP support (you could dual-boot for max compatibility), and stick to playing Crysis on the best system you've got 😀

Thank you! It seemed to me that all games that require a minimum of Windows XP could be considered to be from the XP era 😁 Crysis has Core 2Duo and 2 GB of RAM listed as Recommended system requirements, so I assumed my specs would suffice

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:35:

I don't have crysis to confirm actual functioning, but an asrock g31 mainboard coupled with an nVidia GT9600 and a core2duo E86oo + 2gb ram makes for a nice year 2009 machine.
EDIT: it may be noted that winXP wasn't actually discontinued until 2014 and i can confirm that sandybridge drivers exist for XP, they'll work on Packard bell easynote TS laptops, which were made around June 2012.

Interesting. Were there any problems with the games of the early 2000s?

ultra wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:49:

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:35:

I don't have crysis to confirm actual functioning, but an asrock g31 mainboard coupled with an nVidia GT9600 and a core2duo E86oo + 2gb ram makes for a nice year 2009 machine.
EDIT: it may be noted that winXP wasn't actually discontinued until 2014 and i can confirm that sandybridge drivers exist for XP, they'll work on Packard bell easynote TS laptops, which were made around June 2012.

Interesting. Were there any problems with the games of the early 2000s?

I've not used it as a gaming machine, but rather for retro cgi work. one thing i do know is that max payne 1 will not run on any PCIe systems without a patch or so, even if its a lowly pentium4.

You can't cover a 12 year long time period with adequate performance on the tail end and perfect compatibility of it's earlier parts. A GTX960 is more than fast enough to max out everything in fullHD running at 60+ fps until 2010. Some early games though play better with a GeForce 7 series card or older.

I'm running a Q6600 with a GTS450 for XP, though I have a separate PC for Win9x pre-2001 games with an Athlon XP with a Geforce FX5700. With the XP rig there are some minor inconveniences, like Soldier of Fortune needs a community patch to run, Need for Speed Underground 2 needs to set its CPU affinity to one core to not crash randomly and some others.

But it's the same for the W98 PC too. Very driver dependent, some games need community patches.

This is simply that kind of hobby.

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:12:

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista.

Debatable. Vista never really had an era of its own. XP mainstream support lasted until 2009 and extended support until 2014 and was essentially unchallenged until Windows 7.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:17:

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:12:

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista.

Debatable. Vista never really had an era of its own. XP mainstream support lasted until 2009 and extended support until 2014 and was essentially unchallenged until Windows 7.

I think the same.

If we consider how much 98SE and XP were rivals,
then we could also say that XP encapsulated the Windows 98 era, too - which started in 1998, the date the OP named.

Windows 98/SE/Me support officially ended on July 11, 2006 - but users likely continued to use it for a while.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:27:

I think the same. […]
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RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:17:

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:12:

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista.

Debatable. Vista never really had an era of its own. XP mainstream support lasted until 2009 and extended support until 2014 and was essentially unchallenged until Windows 7.

I think the same.

If we consider how much 98SE and XP were rivals,
then we could also say that XP encapsulated the Windows 98 era, too - which started in 1998, the date the OP named.

Windows 98/SE/Me support officially ended on July 11, 2006 - but users likely continued to use it for a while.

W98 third party support was dropped very fast after XP released. 2006 is the release of the G80 GPU and the G70 already wasn't supported and for the NV40 Windows 98 was an afterthought. Back then many people adopted XP even on Pentium 2 era PCs.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:42:

W98 third party support was dropped very fast after XP released. 2006 is the release of the G80 GPU and the G70 already wasn't supported and for the NV40 Windows 98 was an afterthought. Back then many people adopted XP even on Pentium 2 era PCs.

Hi, I don't deny this. On the other hand, both Windows 98SE and XP topped out with DirectX 9 support.

- Sure, a few of these later XACT DLLs and other updates in the DirectX 9.0c days
may have not been available to 98SE/Me platform anymore.

But at its core, both systems had about the same game support.
Some gamers in the early 2000s even made a swear on Windows 98SE, claiming it would give them more FPS over XP.

Edit: What Windows 98SE made shine is its library of obsolete VXD drivers from the Windows 95 days.
Windows 98SE was very legacy friendly, thus.

It could handle ISA era hardware better (say, AWE64 style soundcard) and could share two GPUs on a single AGP slot.
The ATI Rage Fury Maxx used that concept, afaik.
Such hardware didn't work properly on Windows NT systems.

Edit: I'm just saying.. Let's don't worry, I won't go off-topic any further by mentioning Windows 98SE here. 🙂

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:17:

You can't cover a 12 year long time period with adequate performance on the tail end and perfect compatibility of it's earlier parts

That's so unfortunate. I really wanted to have everything on one pc.

ultra wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:42:

Crysis has Core 2Duo and 2 GB of RAM listed as Recommended system requirements, so I assumed my specs would suffice

It will suffice to run it, yes. I wouldn't expect great performance on high settings even with that card. You probably know how infamously demanding it was back in the day.

ultra wrote on 2023-02-13, 09:19:

That's so unfortunate. I really wanted to have everything on one pc.

Well, at least you can definitely run Crysis and Fallout 1 on one PC.
It's the D3D8 and earlier games that give the most trouble.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 08:17:

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 07:12:

No, XP came out 2001 and that era ended in 2007 with Vista.

Debatable. Vista never really had an era of its own. XP mainstream support lasted until 2009 and extended support until 2014 and was essentially unchallenged until Windows 7.

W7 was based on Vista and I would put them in the same era🤷‍♂️

GTX 960 should suffice to run majority of the games of the era. They will run on highest settings until you are talking about Crysis.

You can also expect to see issues with the oldest games. In that case, using something like DxWnd or DXGL or DDrawCompat can be tried.

feda wrote on 2023-02-13, 09:39:

W7 was based on Vista and I would put them in the same era🤷‍♂️

It.. Depends. Windows XP was superseded by 7, not Vista.
Vista and XP ran side by side for a long time, with XP being slightly ahead.
Users with powerful hardware could benefit from Vista's offerings, though.
Vista surely was both a generous and extravagant lady for those who could handle her. ;-)

Windows 7's WDDM 1.1 driver model added things back from the XP days, namely 2D GDI acceleration.
And a better functioning multi-monitor support, afaik. Vista was a bit limited here.

On the other hand.. Windows Vista got certain things from Windows 7 backported.
DirectX 11, for example. However, it was still limited to WDDM 1.0 drivers.

That being said, both Vista and 7 can still use XPDM drivers from XP.
That way, VGA support in NTVDM can still be haved.

So.. Yeah. It's quite debatable. Certain point of views can be considered as valid.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-13, 10:19:

It.. Depends. Windows XP was superseded by 7, not Vista. Vista and XP ran side by side for a long time, with XP being slightly a […]
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It.. Depends. Windows XP was superseded by 7, not Vista.
Vista and XP ran side by side for a long time, with XP being slightly ahead.
Users with powerful hardware could benefit from Vista's offerings, though.
Vista surely was both a generous and extravagant lady for those who could handle her. 😉

Had an acer SA90 in early 2008, as a representative of my first time vista experience = awful hardware.
if the thing didn't have a traumatising habit of rebooting as i was about to confirm a last-moment bid on eBay, then i might of been fair on it.
Then in 2012 the 500w PSU actually blew up into a thick black cloud. Yay!
Never looked back when we got a PB easynote TS with win7, though i do miss playing inkball.
I kept the case of the SA90 and gutted it to accomodate the custom E8500 rig i previously mentioned.
Moral of my story is: nothing could handle vista, not even the PSU.

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-13, 12:16:

Had an acer SA90 in early 2008, as a representative of my first time vista experience = awful hardware.

My condolences. 😔 It seems to have had a "Vista Basic" sticker, too.
Which translated to "Vista makes it to the desktop; PC can barely run XP, either."

The success of Windows 7 was largely based on Vista's hardware requirements.
The Windows 98 era PCs, which were slightly upgraded to run Windows XP over the years, were finally deprecated/retired.

This also helped XP to run better, since 512MB RAM were a minimum requirement to run Vista.

So penny wise users were finally forced to upgrade RAM.. I loved Vista for this circumstance. 🥳

Edit: Just noticed, I'm a bit too chatty again. My bad. 😅

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-13, 10:19:

Windows 7's WDDM 1.1 driver model added things back from the XP days, namely 2D GDI acceleration.

Yeah, but… overall Windows 7's performance was similar to Vista's on the same hardware. It's the people's PCs that got more RAM in the meantime, making the upgrade from XP feasible.

Very high RAM usage of Vista and later (as opposed to XP, not to mention Win98) was a major drawback of Vista in its early days.

Fine. How about leaving Windows XP with a Core 2 Duo but shifting the time interval to 1995–2006? Which cards will be more compatible? I'd rather have a green one.

ultra wrote on 2023-02-14, 05:17:

Fine. How about leaving Windows XP with a Core 2 Duo but shifting the time interval to 1995–2006? Which cards will be more compatible? I'd rather have a green one.

Even more tricky period to pull off with a single PC, especially with XP if you want maximum compatibility. The peak of Glide games, which have wrappers, as well as optional A3D, which as far as I know doesn't work on XP and really need an Aureal Vortex to take advantage of.

The Geforce FX has decent compatibility for W98 and its games, but also has poor performance in DX9. The Radeon R400 is the fastest GPU for W98, but for you, early era compatibility would suffer. This one is definitely fast enough for 2006, but doesn't support SM3.0 so game compatibility drops right after that. Geforce 6 also dropped a lot of legacy features and slower than the R400, but has SM3.0... also at this point you might as well go Geforce 7 if it's exclusively for XP. That's the last card to support some early-to-mid 2000s features like the early gameworks version of bump mapping some games like Republic Commando use.

A generalist build from the W98-XP transitional period is very difficult to pull off.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-14, 06:15:

Even more tricky period to pull off with a single PC, especially with XP if you want maximal quality. The peak of Glide games, w […]
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ultra wrote on 2023-02-14, 05:17:

Fine. How about leaving Windows XP with a Core 2 Duo but shifting the time interval to 1995–2006? Which cards will be more compatible? I'd rather have a green one.

Even more tricky period to pull off with a single PC, especially with XP if you want maximal quality. The peak of Glide games, which have wrappers, as well as optional A3D, which as far as I know doesn't work on XP and really need an Aureal Vortex to take advantage of.

The Geforce FX has decent compatibility for W98 and its games, but also has poor performance in DX9. The Radeon R400 is the fastest GPU for W98, but for you, early era compatibility would suffer. This one is definitely fast enough for 2006, but doesn't support SM3.0 so game compatibility drops right after that. Geforce 6 also dropped a lot of legacy features and slower than the R400, but has SM3.0... also at this point you might as well go Geforce 7 if it's exclusively for XP. That's the last card to support some early-to-mid 2000s features like the early gameworks version of bump mapping some games like Republic Commando use.

A generalist build from the W98-XP transitional period is very difficult to pull off.

I understand now why retro enthusiasts have 2-3 PCs for retro gaming... Apparently I know absolutely nothing about the technologies of that era.. (Except about Glide maybe). GeForce 7 appears to be the only option for me that is somewhat okay. Thank you for such a detailed answer!