For motherboards I think anything with P/G35 or P/G45 chipset should be fine. I'd probably favor MSI or ASUS. I went with an ASUS P5E-VM HDMI for my build for that era, but full ATX size is more convenient.

For CPU, any Core2 is enough whether it's dual or quad core. The 2000s weren't particularly hard on them. If the target is 2007, then Q6600 or Q6700 unless you want to go extreme.
Otherwise the E8000 series are well balanced and you don't really benefit from more than 2 cores in games of that era on XP.

Same for RAM, no reason to overthink it. My personal experience is that anything slower than DDR2-800 can be a bottleneck and yes, 4GB is as much as you want. XP-32 won't see more than 3.2-3.5GB.

But however nice the GTX7800, and don't be mistaken, it is, it'll be underpowered for games after 2006 if you want to max out the settings in era appropriate high resolutions. You might want to keep an 8800GTS-512 (preferably 65nm with a beefy cooler) in active use and even that will struggle in some games, especially Crysis.

And for a case, you can go with a modern one as well, unless you have something at hand already or have something specific you feel nostalgic about.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-11-18, 09:16:

For motherboards I think anything with P/G35 or P/G45 chipset should be fine. I'd probably favor MSI or ASUS. I went with an ASU […]
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For motherboards I think anything with P/G35 or P/G45 chipset should be fine. I'd probably favor MSI or ASUS. I went with an ASUS P5E-VM HDMI for my build for that era, but full ATX size is more convenient.

For CPU, any Core2 is enough whether it's dual or quad core. The 2000s weren't particularly hard on them. If the target is 2007, then Q6600 or Q6700 unless you want to go extreme.
Otherwise the E8000 series are well balanced and you don't really benefit from more than 2 cores in games of that era on XP.

Same for RAM, no reason to overthink it. My personal experience is that anything slower than DDR2-800 can be a bottleneck and yes, 4GB is as much as you want. XP-32 won't see more than 3.2-3.5GB.

But however nice the GTX7800, and don't be mistaken, it is, it'll be underpowered for games after 2006 if you want to max out the settings in era appropriate high resolutions. You might want to keep an 8800GTS-512 (preferably 65nm with a beefy cooler) in active use and even that will struggle in some games, especially Crysis.

And for a case, you can go with a modern one as well, unless you have something at hand already or have something specific you feel nostalgic about.

Hey thanks, I appreciate the response. I'll see what I can throw together and repost the build thoughts. 😀

I got an ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus they are fantastic with core 2's i think theres a deluxe model the chipset NIC is gamer orientated thanks to Nvidia 650i chipset and has its own proprietary hardware firewall controlled by the driver to compliment windows firewall and router firewall. As far as core 2 goes I'd recommend the Quad extreme simply massive cache combined with RAID 0 array blows away most competition.
Like many of the day the special ones are becoming very very rare so though not cheap ASUS is a good brand like gigabyte for longevity and build quality that stands the test of time. 3 PCIE slots well 3 way SLI or maybe add sata iii ,HQ Audio?

I always feel a strange irrational aversion to quad-core WinXP builds. Probably because I never had one. I moved to Vista (and later Win7) by the time I got my first Core 2 Quad.

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-11-18, 17:44:

I got an ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus they are fantastic with core 2's i think theres a deluxe model the chipset NIC is gamer orientated thanks to Nvidia 650i chipset and has its own proprietary hardware firewall controlled by the driver to compliment windows firewall and router firewall. As far as core 2 goes I'd recommend the Quad extreme simply massive cache combined with RAID 0 array blows away most competition.
Like many of the day the special ones are becoming very very rare so though not cheap ASUS is a good brand like gigabyte for longevity and build quality that stands the test of time. 3 PCIE slots well 3 way SLI or maybe add sata iii ,HQ Audio?

the extreme versus no extreme, i have the qx6950 and q6950 available locally but the qx is 300$ and the q is 75$, is the extra 225$ worth the qx? the x6800 is also only 50$

i dont have an e6600 avalabiel so i would have to source that online( which does not bother me)

i also found a Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus + CPU Intel Core 2 6700 locally for 80$. i stopped by an electronics recycle facility and found these:

there is also a decent selection of p5e boards but i know very little about these:
1. Asus P5E-VM HDMI, Xeon X5470, 8GB G-Skill DDR2(f2-8500cl5D), Hyper212 cooler Bundle--200$
2.ASUS P5E-VM DO--50$
3.ASUS P5E-VM SE + C2D E6750 Cpu--175$
4.EVGA Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI 132-CK-NF79-A1, 8GB Ram ( corsair xm3-2048-1600c9dhx), Zalman ZF1125BTH heatsing +fan, e8500 cpu- -400$
5.EVGA Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI 132-CK-NF79-A1 8GB, 8gb ocz3n1800sr4gk nvidia ram?), qx9650 cpu--350$
6..EVGA Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI 132-CK-NF79-A1, e8400 cpu,--240$
7.EVGA nForce 750i SLI 122-YW-E173 , 4GB DDR2 unkown ram, Core2Quad Q9300--65$
8.EVGA NFORCE 680i SLI with Q6600 CPU --120$

also a ton of of asus p5q boards, maybe thats the way to go?

aside from this im going online. wondered about these, and being local....

bl4zz3r73553 wrote on 2021-11-18, 20:42:

also a ton of of asus p5q boards, maybe thats the way to go?

P5Q series is quite alright. I'm on my second P5Q PRO - the first one lasted for about 11 years before it finally stopped POSTing. There are also P5Q PRO Turbo, P5Q-E... The basic P5Q is a little too basic, IMO. I prefer boards with more features / expansion options.

this is what ive managed so far:

-Case: old compaq presario case i have-free
-GPU: 7800 gtx-20$
-CPU: q9650 or E6800 price difference locally is 20$ ( q9650 is 75$ and the e6800 is 55$
-Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro Turbo 80$ ( has a e8400 preinstalled with a coolermaster heat sink)
-Ram: Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2---single 4 gb stick 40$
-psu: evga bronze 750 ( its 40$)
-audio card: X-Fi Xtreme SB0460-20$
-Harddrive: Barracuda 1tb 7200 rpm-60$
-OS: xp home 32 bit-free

despite " era" specific, would bumping the mobo to something that supports ddr3 be a better idea if im wanting to play 2004-2007 games along with crysis to achieve 60 FPS? ( assuming i have an extra card for crysis)

If you expect to watch videos on this machine, a Core2 quad will be good with h.264, a Core2 duo can struggle sometimes. The Geforce 7800 doesn't accelerate h.264 so the CPU will matter for that.
Same for Steam In-Home Streaming, but I don't know if it's possible to connect an XP client to that feature anymore.

For games a dual is usually all you need. A quad might help a little in some late games that most people play on later versions of Windows.

So basically I think a dual is perfect for the focus of this machine, but a quad could help on the fringes, depending how broad you want it's capabilities to be.

I don't know much about chipsets in this era. Were the nForce chipsets affected by their "bumpgate" problems? Reflexively I'd be uneasy about buying an nForce board of this era.

eVGA in these years was using crappy Sacon FZ capacitors on a lot of their video cards, and I've read of them also appearing on some of their motherboards. Keep an eye out for that. They have no sleeves on them, so people often mistake them for polymers, but they have a "K" style vent stamped into them and the letters "FZ" printed on them. I'd be surprised if they haven't all vented by now though, so they should be obvious.
Technically there's a difference in what the "K" vent looks like between Rubycon (good), Sanyo (good), and Sacon (garbage) brand caps, but it's subtle.

shamino wrote on 2021-11-18, 22:51:

If you expect to watch videos on this machine, a Core2 quad will be good with h.264, a Core2 duo can struggle sometimes. The Ge […]
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If you expect to watch videos on this machine, a Core2 quad will be good with h.264, a Core2 duo can struggle sometimes. The Geforce 7800 doesn't accelerate h.264 so the CPU will matter for that.
Same for Steam In-Home Streaming, but I don't know if it's possible to connect an XP client to that feature anymore.

For games a dual is usually all you need. A quad might help a little in some late games that most people play on later versions of Windows.

So basically I think a dual is perfect for the focus of this machine, but a quad could help on the fringes, depending how broad you want it's capabilities to be.

I don't know much about chipsets in this era. Were the nForce chipsets affected by their "bumpgate" problems? Reflexively I'd be uneasy about buying an nForce board of this era.

eVGA in these years was using crappy Sacon FZ capacitors on a lot of their video cards, and I've read of them also appearing on some of their motherboards. Keep an eye out for that. They have no sleeves on them, so people often mistake them for polymers, but they have a "K" style vent stamped into them and the letters "FZ" printed on them. I'd be surprised if they haven't all vented by now though, so they should be obvious.
Technically there's a difference in what the "K" vent looks like between Rubycon (good), Sanyo (good), and Sacon (garbage) brand caps, but it's subtle.

i understand, so the e6800 would be ideal money wise and performance wise for this setup then.
and i think i will go with the asus board. i looked abit in regards to your comments about the evga boards. looks like it could be a risk buying one of them and having it not last long as a best case scenario.

For the prices you are listing, have you thought about LGA1155? They are very inexpensive right now and would be able to handle Crysis.

They were still supported by XP so drivers shouldn't be an issue.

It works out to costing less, while giving you the experience you remember. Not the one you actually had. Modern gaming had spoiled us. We didn't have 1080p 60fps maxed on recent releases.

SScorpio wrote on 2021-11-19, 03:27:

For the prices you are listing, have you thought about LGA1155? They are very inexpensive right now and would be able to handle Crysis.

They were still supported by XP so drivers shouldn't be an issue.

It works out to costing less, while giving you the experience you remember. Not the one you actually had. Modern gaming had spoiled us. We didn't have 1080p 60fps maxed on recent releases.

it had crossed my mind but i was worried about driver support and parts compatibility with each other and games.

are 1155 sockets going to have the better performing cpu's over 775 sockets from a single core perspective for gaming?

its very confusing, so much reading, so many parts for xp, its hard to figure out what is needed for the generation of gaming im looking for exactly, without over killing but also not under powering.

bl4zz3r73553 wrote on 2021-11-19, 04:29:

are 1155 sockets going to have the better performing cpu's over 775 sockets from a single core perspective for gaming?

I went from a Q6600 to an i7 2600K back in the day and it was a huge performance increase.

You can get an unlocked K series processor and underclock if you ever run into speed issues.

I think I had the Q6600 overclock to 3.6Ghz while I ran the 2600K at 4.4Ghz all core.

My XP rig is an Asus P67 Deluxe with i5 3570 and a 750ti with an Auzentech Prelude 7.1 X-Fi.

The compatibility issues I've seen are related to multi core problems which a core quad would still run into. Just skip the i7s, hyper threading wouldn't get you much of anything in XP games.

bl4zz3r73553 wrote on 2021-11-18, 22:09:

despite " era" specific, would bumping the mobo to something that supports ddr3 be a better idea if im wanting to play 2004-2007 games along with crysis to achieve 60 FPS? ( assuming i have an extra card for crysis)

No, as I said RAM speed below 800MHz can be a bottleneck in some cases, I had experienced with STALKER: Call of Pripyat that with those set to 667MHz it became stuttery, but I experienced no benefit from going above 800.
Crysis is also not a RAM speed sensitive one. It needs a fast GPU. I think the HD5870 was the first single GPU that could run the game maxed out in 1080p with consistent 30+ fps. If you aim for period correct resolutions, something like 1280×1024 or 1680x1050, than a GTX280 or HD4890 is the slowest you should aim for. But for Crysis you have to let period correct hardware go. If you aim for ~60fps than the minimum is GTX670 or HD7950.

bl4zz3r73553 wrote on 2021-11-19, 04:29:

SScorpio wrote on 2021-11-19, 03:27:

For the prices you are listing, have you thought about LGA1155? They are very inexpensive right now and would be able to handle Crysis.

it had crossed my mind but i was worried about driver support and parts compatibility with each other and games.

I've got a Sandy Bridge based XP machine.

Ivy Bridge (Intel 7 series chipset) does still "support" Windows XP, but there might not be drivers available for all motherboards. In fact, I don't think I found any while I was doing research before building the PC. Sandy Bridge (Intel 6 series) still has full driver support and is fully compatible.

One thing to note with 6 series, revision B2 of all others than Z68 motherboards (which didn't have a B2 revision) had a bug that could cause the 3 Gbit/s SATA 2 ports to break with time. It was fixed with B3 revision motherboards, so if you do go for Sandy Bridge try to get a Z68 motherboard or a B3 revision of the others. The B3 should be in the motherboard name directly so no need to wonder what revision it is.

I'm starting to sense a power creep.
Soon we get to recommending an i7-2700K and GTX Titan SLI 😁

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-11-19, 08:53:

I'm starting to sense a power creep.
Soon we get to recommending an i7-2700K and GTX Titan SLI 😁

Hey, he did mention Crysis didn't he. I don't think he wants the period correct experience with that game 😜

All those other games he mentioned could probably be run with a tuatalin Pentium III.

Sombrero wrote on 2021-11-19, 09:01:

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-11-19, 08:53:

I'm starting to sense a power creep.
Soon we get to recommending an i7-2700K and GTX Titan SLI 😁

Hey, he did mention Crysis didn't he. I don't think he wants the period correct experience with that game 😜

All those other games he mentioned could probably be run with a tuatalin Pentium III.

Technically...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cUFHH5b-DI

Though it's true, this is not A Tualatin Pentium III.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-11-19, 10:22:

Technically... […]
Show full quote

Sombrero wrote on 2021-11-19, 09:01:

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-11-19, 08:53:

I'm starting to sense a power creep.
Soon we get to recommending an i7-2700K and GTX Titan SLI 😁

Hey, he did mention Crysis didn't he. I don't think he wants the period correct experience with that game 😜

All those other games he mentioned could probably be run with a tuatalin Pentium III.

Technically...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cUFHH5b-DI

Though it's true, this is not A Tualatin Pentium III.

Haha, impressive! Always did wonder what the heck was the point of dual pentium III rigs, I guess that's something 🤣

Still, seems to run way better than I would have thought.

Sombrero wrote on 2021-11-19, 07:11:

Ivy Bridge (Intel 7 series chipset) does still "support" Windows XP, but there might not be drivers available for all motherboards. In fact, I don't think I found any while I was doing research before building the PC. Sandy Bridge (Intel 6 series) still has full driver support and is fully compatible.

Ivy bridge used the same LGA1155 socket as Sandybridge, and could be used in Sandybridge motherboard if a support BIOS update was released.

As for power creep, yes but many games are of this era are less speed sensitive. If you are comparing an Core2 vs an i-Series then you aren't really limiting yourself going for more power. XP is difficult to spec because P4/A64 is technically period correct, but it was around so long you argue newer hardware is also accurate.

I stick to DirectX 9 games for XP, anything lower I play on a 98 box. I pretty much don't run into any issues.