First post, by myotoxin
Hello there and I will firstly apologize from the get go as I know this type of post is probably as old as time, and even after doing some searching on here and other forums, I'm still not fully 100% sold on what might be best for me, so I wanted to just ask here directly.
So, I am here today because I am currently looking to see what would be the best overall specs (CPU, RAM & GPU) for an XP gaming machine specifically for games around the years 2000 - 2007 (give or take maybe up to 08) and to be able to play these at a solid 60fps on at least a 1280x1024 resolution if possible. Wouldn't be against a higher 4:3 resolution past this, my current monitor is just at this resolution.
The games I'm looking to play are games like:
- No One Lives Forever Series + Contract Jack
- Max Payne 1 & 2
- Doom 3
- Black & White 2
- Enter the Matrix
- Splinter Cell games
- Backyard Baseball series (2001 & 2003)
- Noctune
- Messiah
I hope that's enough to list, but let me know if you need more examples! I know that some of these games are playable on a modern device, but I'm working towards building a little "retro computing" station in my office and having one computer for Win98 that covers 1992-1999ish and then one for XP that can play anything up till 2007 but most likely I expect to play games from like 2000 - 2005 on it.
On top of any specs that anyone could recommend, I'd actually give bonus points (and slightly prefer) if you have any recommendations from say like an Dell Optiplex that could cover exactly what I'm looking for and all I need to do is just add a GPU. Would cover a lot of easier bases for me and is something I'm more familiar and experienced with to get things started (ended up doing that for my 98 Pentium III build).
I hope that all of this makes sense but please let me know if you have any more questions or anything else I can provide. And an early and sincere thank you for anyone and everyone who takes some time to read this over and help me out. I genuinely appreciate it!
98SE: Optiplex GX110 / Pentium III 733 MHz /512 MB Ram / GF 6200
XP: Optiplex 7010 / i5-3570 / 4GB RAM / GTX 750ti SC
Win7/Arcade: Optiplex 7050 / i5-7500 / 16GB RAM / RX 550
Win10: Ryzen 7 5800X / 64 GB Ram / EVGA 3070