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Newest possible systems for Windows XP and Windows 7

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First post, by Simmerhead

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Hi there. Hard to imagine, but Windows XP and Windows 7 are becoming the new vintage platforms for gaming. I must be getting old...

Today I have accumulated quite a few systems from various generations of Intel's Core series, however I need to downsize and will be trying to build two "new" mini-ITX systems, one for Windows XP and one for Windows 7.

I'm now running two midi tower systems: Win XP with Intel i5-2500K + GeForce GTX 750 - & - Win 7 with Intel i7-2600K + GeForce GTX 980. Works great, but they take up too much space with all my other systems for DOS, Windows 3/95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. The latter are hard to downsize as mini-ITX wasn't a thing back then, so no chance of downsizing that collection, but it should be possible with newer systems.

- sorry for the long rant -

So, does anyone have knowledge about what's the newest generation of hardware (CPU + Mobo + GPU) you can use with Windows XP 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit? I've been trying to read up on it via Google, but finding so much conflicting advice.

Thanks for any hints, tips, ideas and hardware recommendations.

Simmerhead - Old is gold!

Reply 1 of 65, by Sombrero

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Officially:

Windows XP:
- Intel 7 series (Ivy Bridge) is the last chipset with official support, though it's limited and I know only a few motherboards that have XP drivers and none of them are mini-ITX. Intel 6 series (Sandy Bridge) has wide XP support and probably has mini-ITX boards with XP drivers. No idea about AMD boards
- NVIDIA GTX 960 is the last NVIDIA card with official XP drivers, though from what I've read it's easy to modify the drivers to make 970/980/980 Ti work too. Again no idea about AMD cards

Windows 7:
- Wikipedia says Intel Broadwell is the last chipset officially supported by Microsoft, but you can find up to Intel 200 series (Kaby Lake) motherboards with Windows 7 drivers
- Looks like even NVIDIA RTX 30 series has Windows 7 drivers, I think they've been more like security releases so don't know do RTX cards work just as well as the earlier GTX cards.

If you aren't set on building two mini-ITX PCs, you could build one midi tower for both XP and 7 with Ivy Bridge board that has XP drivers and that GTX 980 of yours. Would have space for a nice PCI/PCIe sound card too.

Reply 2 of 65, by dormcat

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Sombrero wrote on 2022-10-18, 08:51:

- NVIDIA GTX 960 is the last NVIDIA card with official XP drivers, though from what I've read it's easy to modify the drivers to make 970/980/980 Ti work too. Again no idea about AMD cards

The last AMD Radeon supporting WinXP was the Radeon HD 8xxx series (codenamed "Sea Islands"). Its successor, the R5/7/9 2xx series (codenamed "Volcanic Islands") dropped official WinXP support, although I'm not sure about tweaked/modded drivers.

TechPowerUp lists AMD Radeon HD 8990 as the fastest AMD card officially supports WinXP. It's just 2% faster than the Nvidia counterpart GeForce GTX 780 Ti but has 50% higher TDP (375W vs. 250W). For the record, GTX 780 Ti is 62% faster than GTX 960.

Reply 3 of 65, by The Serpent Rider

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Fastest system for Windows XP is X79 platform with Core i7 4960x and GTX 980Ti.
Fastest system for Windows 7 is Ryzen 5xxx series with RTX 3090Ti.

TechPowerUp lists AMD Radeon HD 8990 as the fastest AMD card officially supports WinXP.

That's Crossfire abomination on very flawed early AMD drivers for GCN chips. Avoid at any cost.

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Reply 4 of 65, by Almoststew1990

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I have an H61 m-ATX board for Windows 7 and XP and it's great. I use a Sandy Xeon 4c8t chip and it will happily play fairly modern games but is also comfortable with say Quake 4 with EAX using either a PCI Audigy 2 ZS or a PCI-e x-fi. I use cards from a X1950XT to a 2070S that work fine too.

(Obviously not the 2070 on XP though...)

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Reply 5 of 65, by Simmerhead

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Thanks all, and especially that warning about Win XP drivers for the motherboard...

I didn't know Win 7 was still supported by NVidia. If I hadn't gone for an 12900K (Got a 13900K on order) I might have been able to make a dual boot Windows 7 system on my main PC with an RTX 3090. Well, shame on me for going "Team Blue".

...and reading you replies I came to the realization that I might just go for a dual boot Windows XP/Windows 7 system with Ivy Bridge and GTX 900-series. Should cope well with most games, and for those rare Windows 7 titles that need more power, I could probably just play them on my Windows 10 rig.

Simmerhead - Old is gold!

Reply 6 of 65, by AlexZ

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I wonder if graphics cards from late Windows 7 era suffer from similar compatibility problems in Windows XP as GeForce cards newer than FX5xxx do in Windows 98 due to having to use drivers that are too new.

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Reply 7 of 65, by Sombrero

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Simmerhead wrote on 2022-10-18, 11:21:

...and reading you replies I came to the realization that I might just go for a dual boot Windows XP/Windows 7 system with Ivy Bridge and GTX 900-series. Should cope well with most games, and for those rare Windows 7 titles that need more power, I could probably just play them on my Windows 10 rig.

That's what I do too, though instead of dual booting I use a SATA backplane and have separate SSD for both OS.

But since you already have that Sandy Windows 7 build you could just use that? You'll get PCIe 3.0 and DDR3-1600MHz with Ivy but it's not worth the cost to build a new rig just for that. Unless you want to build a new rig for fun of course.

Reply 8 of 65, by Simmerhead

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Sombrero wrote on 2022-10-18, 19:05:

That's what I do too, though instead of dual booting I use a SATA backplane and have separate SSD for both OS.

But since you already have that Sandy Windows 7 build you could just use that? You'll get PCIe 3.0 and DDR3-1600MHz with Ivy but it's not worth the cost to build a new rig just for that. Unless you want to build a new rig for fun of course.

I will probably go for dual SSDs instead of a dual boot setup for sure!

Problem with my current Sandy Bridge system is that it's attached to a monster eATX Motherboard. I want to downsize so I can have a few more computers in my "cave" instead of keeping them in my basement storage. So I'm looking for a nice mini-ITX mobo, or possibly a micro-ATX board so I can use a Sound Blaster too.

Simmerhead - Old is gold!

Reply 9 of 65, by Jo22

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Guys, there's an even simpler solution with good old IDE/PATA.

Connect 'Cable Select' line to a toggle switch.
That way, you can switch the boot order.
And indirectly select between the Windows XP and Windows 7 HDD as a boot medium.

Edit: Found the article.: http://www.stefanv.com/electronics/ide_dual_boot.html

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Reply 11 of 65, by liqmat

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I have no idea about Windows XP and current/modern hardware, but I am still using Windows 7 64 as my daily driver on an X570 chipset based ITX motherboard. Also using a Ryzen 5000 series CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM and a PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe. It's absolutely incredible performance, BUT I did have to jump through a few hoops to get it all running smoothly. The X570 chipset may be the very last chipset to support Windows 7 64 and even that statement is not completely accurate. To get the X570 chipset to work with Windows 7 64 you have to use AMD's X470 chipset driver package. Works well. I don't see the X670 chipset being as agreeable to this scenario, but I could be completely wrong and only time will tell. Hopefully, someone will test that out eventually. You also have to use modified USB driver packages to get USB 3.x ports to work properly in Windows 7 64. This becomes a problem during the installation of Windows 7 and it is preferable that you have a motherboard with a PS/2 port (many modern boards still have one) so you can use the mouse and keyboard until the proper USB 3.x drivers are installed. Otherwise, you have to go to the trouble of slipstreaming your Windows 7 install package with the updated/modded USB drivers and the Windows 7 64 NVMe driver which Microsoft so kindly removed from their site. Luckily, you can find it elsewhere. As far as video cards, as others have said here, NVidia GeForce 30 series cards are the top. So a 3090 Ti and below will work just fine. NVidia still updates their Windows 7 64 drivers, but almost strictly for security patches at this point. I think the latest was back in August of this year.

The modded USB 3.x drivers for Windows 7: https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/solution-wi … t-systems/33603

Some posts about my setup:

Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?
Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Edit: I should also point out if you do get an X470 or X570 chipset motherboard you will most certainly need to replace the M.2 WiFi card if it has one. I use the 'Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265' as a replacement which has plenty of bandwidth for me at 866Mbps max. Some of the X470 boards have a LAN port that is compatible with Windows 7 64 and some don't. None of the X570 boards I've come across have LAN drivers for Windows 7 64. So check what network chipsets they have. You may be stuck using a third party network card or using a USB LAN dongle that has WIndows 7 64 drivers. All of the integrated audio chips on both the X470 and X570 boards I've used have Windows 7 drivers available.

Last edited by liqmat on 2022-10-19, 16:17. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 12 of 65, by The Serpent Rider

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SPBHM wrote:

people have managed to install windows xp on much newer systems with good success,
even the Haswell (4th gen Intel) drivers exist afaik, even for the IGP.

While you can install it, there will be issues with things like ACPI. Last modern chipset which will work smoothly with XP is Z87 though.

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Reply 13 of 65, by Shponglefan

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AlexZ wrote on 2022-10-18, 17:18:

I wonder if graphics cards from late Windows 7 era suffer from similar compatibility problems in Windows XP as GeForce cards newer than FX5xxx do in Windows 98 due to having to use drivers that are too new.

I've been using a GeForce GTX 980Ti in my Windows XP build without issues. It's about the newest/fastest GPU that can be used under Windows XP.

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Reply 14 of 65, by gerwin

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SPBHM wrote on 2022-10-18, 19:56:

people have managed to install windows xp on much newer systems with good success,
even the Haswell (4th gen Intel) drivers exist afaik, even for the IGP.

A Haswell (4th gen Intel) Graphics driver for Windows XP x86 and x64 exists yes. Haven't tried it though.

I found the intel Graphics drivers with 3rd gen Ivy Bridge support, to be somewhat troublesome in game compatibility. Whilst 2nd gen Sandy Bridge ones are completely fine. So I reverted back to v6.14.10.5384 of 10-9-2011 when possible.
Edit: New test result: I could not find such issues with the new intel graphics driver on a H67 desktop board with ivy bridge CPU. So the issues with newer drivers were somehow particular to the earlier test system: HM65-chipset laptop with Sandy Bridge (mobile) CPU.

Also was there ever a 7-series intel USB 3 driver made for XP? From what I know it is more desirable to have a XP compatible third-party USB 3 chip, as often found on a 6-series board.

Last edited by gerwin on 2022-12-13, 22:32. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 16 of 65, by gerwin

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-10-19, 16:16:

Whats the point when newest windows 11 can run all of the XP/Win7 software perfectly?

Why do something? Like, why build DOS machines? How about another topic for questions like that?

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Reply 17 of 65, by leileilol

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-10-19, 16:16:

Whats the point when newest windows 11 can run all of the XP/Win7 software perfectly?

If Windows were ever perfect, this place wouldn't exist.

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Reply 18 of 65, by Shagittarius

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-10-19, 16:16:

Whats the point when newest windows 11 can run all of the XP/Win7 software perfectly?

Except for when the software contains DRM that Windows 11 deletes.

Reply 19 of 65, by Jo22

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-10-19, 16:16:

Whats the point when newest windows 11 can run all of the XP/Win7 software perfectly?

Certain things don't work anymore, sadly.
Windows XP supported DirectMusic for the last time, for example.

Softsynths like SYXG50 (XG Standard) or Roland Soundcanvas v3 (SC-55, SC-88) were able to appear as both MCI and DirectX compatible synthesizers.

It also supported other audio APIs via proprietary drivers.
A3D 1.0+2.0, EAX v1+v2, DirectSound 3D (HW mixing on the soundcard), OpenAL, ASIO etc.

And it supported the legacy components ISA, MPU-401 and Gameport still.
Okay, strictly speaking, ISA support was mainly restricted to the newer ISA PnP,
but old hardware could still made work with a bit of thinkering. 😀

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//