Older NUCs with a CSM should be able to handle XP...

They will also be super small.

I pulled intel's support docs, and this is about the newest NUC (still real old!) That officially supports XP.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255966416754?chn=ps& … _xoChCIQAvD_BwE

Note the size next to the lovely fruit.

The video hardware will be garbage tier intel integrated GMA video, though. 🙁

For the source; intel DOES tell you what OSes run on what NUC boards.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/ … rted-OS-NUC.pdf

(Warning, PDF.)

So, I ended up trying 2 different machines so far.

The first is a Wyse thin client; which does work with XP but it took quite some efforts to get going, and I believe the main issue here is the drivers that are not optimal. This machine has a GX-420CA and a Radeon HD 8400E

The second is a HP office computer, which is also a small size computer, like a NUC/thin client. Same problem as above: works and boot up but when you run accelerated software on it, the drivers end up being the issue. This machine has an A8 Pro with a R7 Radeon as integrated GPU

Their 3dmark score seems pretty close, I ran few and this is what I got:

~12K in 3dMark 2000 for both
~16K for the wyse vs 13K for the HP on 3dMark 2001
~10K for both on 3dMark 03
~6K for the wyse vs ~5K for the HP with 3dMark 05

So strange enough, the Wyse with a weaker GPU for some reasons score better than the HP on a couple of benchmarks. I ran the tests again and the results were in the same ballpark. Not sure if the difference at this point is the drivers; as they all use catalyst I believe, but on different boards, so I suspect that the difference here is not much in the GPU but in how efficient the drivers for the chipset of the motherboard are, in the XP 32 bit OS.

If anyone have insights about cases like this, with these devices, I would like to get better performances if possible. Not asking the moon for 20 bucks I paid for each of these computers 😁 But I would like to run at the top speed I can for these machines, to max out their potential with XP. Hope this helps others that are trying to build a small XP retro pc

Acer Aspire Revo. Just bought 3 of them. 10euros a piece. Have XP and 7 drivers. Intel Atom 330 plus Nvidia Ion Geforce 9400. 2.5" 320GB HDD. So pretty good retro gaming machine. An they literarly fit on the palm of your hand. Love them.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-06-01, 08:18:

Acer Aspire Revo. Just bought 3 of them. 10euros a piece. Have XP and 7 drivers. Intel Atom 330 plus Nvidia Ion Geforce 9400. 2.5" 320GB HDD. So pretty good retro gaming machine. An they literarly fit on the palm of your hand. Love them.

Strongly suggest replacing the HDDs with SSDs though, regardless of what you're using them for. The 2.5" drives that they come with are horribly slow, even connecting a unit to the eSATA plug can give better speeds.
It's a bit of a novelty to have one mounted on the back of a monitor (using the included VESA clamp) but makes them a bit awkward to power on...

jmarsh wrote on 2024-06-01, 09:28:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-06-01, 08:18:

Acer Aspire Revo. Just bought 3 of them. 10euros a piece. Have XP and 7 drivers. Intel Atom 330 plus Nvidia Ion Geforce 9400. 2.5" 320GB HDD. So pretty good retro gaming machine. An they literarly fit on the palm of your hand. Love them.

Strongly suggest replacing the HDDs with SSDs though, regardless of what you're using them for. The 2.5" drives that they come with are horribly slow, even connecting a unit to the eSATA plug can give better speeds.
It's a bit of a novelty to have one mounted on the back of a monitor (using the included VESA clamp) but makes them a bit awkward to power on...

Dont mind the HDD speed. Even in 7 mode. I have them dual booting XP and 32Bit 7. Bu yeah, the power button is in super akward position. But you need to push it once a day usually.

Acer also made a refresh with Atom D525 (R3700), which is a true dual-core CPU. Atom 330 is glued together single-cores.

If you're trying to run Windows XP games at decent resolutions without compromising performance at all, you'll need at least a somewhat respectable GPU that is compatible with XP.

If it were me, I'd get something like a Dell Optiplex 9010 or 9020 SFF desktop (or others from the **10 and **20 series) and drop in a Quadro K620, which is basically a low profile GTX 750 with 2GB of 128bit DDR3. It won't be NUC sized but if you can spare less than 12"x 12" x 4" of space you end up with a PC that can natively run Windows XP with a very fast CPU and a GPU that will run circles around any integrated graphics that will actually work in XP (like Intel HD4600).

You'd probably have less than $75 into the system if you found a good deal, or less than $100 if you just bought whatever was available. You may even find businesses throwing one of these PCs away. At least, this is how availability is in the US. Over the past 5 years or so I have had probably 40 of these PCs given to me (as in free) in varying states of neglect... some were pristine and got resold, some parted out, and some I still have for future projects.

I will say, the 9010 (Ivy Bridge model) gives the GPU one slot of breathing room, where the 9020 (Haswell model) does not. I'm not sure how much this would impact a retro gaming PC though.

If you don't need the additional GPU power for whatever reason and would rather have it be as tiny as possible, get an Optiplex 9020 in the "Tiny" size. It is the size of a small book, and if you get one with HD4600 graphics (i5 4570T or 4590T) it'll be significantly faster than most other options available in that form factor.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-01, 23:03:

If it were me, I'd get something like a Dell Optiplex 9010 or 9020 SFF desktop (or others from the **10 and **20 series)

I've had several 7020s and 7xxxes seemed more common than 9xxxes around here at least; is there a material difference between the 7xxx and the 9xxx?

(For the record, the 7020s are great for lots of other purposes. I've been running one as a virtualization server running Proxmox for like... 5 years.)

VivienM wrote on 2024-06-01, 23:17:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-01, 23:03:

If it were me, I'd get something like a Dell Optiplex 9010 or 9020 SFF desktop (or others from the **10 and **20 series)

I've had several 7020s and 7xxxes seemed more common than 9xxxes around here at least; is there a material difference between the 7xxx and the 9xxx?

(For the record, the 7020s are great for lots of other purposes. I've been running one as a virtualization server running Proxmox for like... 5 years.)

I would say about 95% of the systems I've run into of this type were the 9xxx series, so I don't know what all of the differences are, but it tends to be the chipset (Q87 vs Q85 for example) and some things that are a bit more superficial now, like the number of USB 3.0 ports... though that was more of a thing with the older models. There may be other differences though, so definitely do your homework before buying one. I'm not sure if they have any weird limitations on PCI-E slot speed or compatibility for example.

In general, Dell 3/7/9 series means consumer/business/pro, 3 is rather cut down (and has evil digital video connector vs serious business digital video connectors), 7 vs 9 is a smaller difference IMO not worth paying more for - not that, at least here, there's a significant difference nor that the 9s are common 😀

Much more interesting are the differences between the form factors - the USFFs (had a 7010, nice computer with decent flexibility for the size, nasty proprietary fan though) are fundamentally different designs than the larger models, then the SFF is another (and has neat 16x + 4x card slots), then DT and MT have the same motherboards apart from a few connectors less (and of course a decent full size optical drive + 3.5 + 2.5 + 1x + PCI) - back in the BTX age all 3 larger sizes were the same board cut to different lengths!

FYI the codename of the 7010 is Lanikai (for your favorite "laptop" schematics telegram group) and, while every firmware version is EFI based, I'd recommend A04 for using it in BIOS emulation mode since it has the classic boot logo with the model number, no secure boot crap, etc 😀

Got HP T5720 thin client. Am I missing something or you can't remove SSD without disassembling the whole system?

Should be able to use pliers on the plastic clip and wriggle the Dom out

Looking at HP offerings, it looks like T730 (not mentioned on parkytowers) fits the bill. SoC in that client is practically A10-7800/A10-7850K, but underclocked. Dual channel DDR3-2133 with Kaveri GPU which should have XP drivers. Same size as T620 Plus too. Absolute beast of a thin client.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-06-10, 21:30:

Looking at HP offerings, it looks like T730 (not mentioned on parkytowers) fits the bill. SoC in that client is practically A10-7800/A10-7850K, but underclocked. Dual channel DDR3-2133 with Kaveri GPU which should have XP drivers. Same size as T620 Plus too. Absolute beast of a thin client.

Not bad! I've never heard of these before.

If you need something really tiny with a focus on GPU power, that's probably about as fast as you're going to get on the cheap.

CPU-wise, the i5 4590T is significantly faster, so that is something to keep in mind. The per-thread performance of those Steamroller-based cores is definitely not the strong point of APUs from that time, and downclocking them to make them suitable for thin client use likely had a pretty large impact on performance. Still, it should be faster than a desktop Core 2 Quad or something like that, which isn't bad for an XP system. As far as I can tell, the 427BB has exactly the same specs as the FX-7600P mobile APU, so reviews of that will probably give a rough idea of performance.
https://m.hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70653-am … -kaveri/?page=7

I would love to see some benchmarks comparing an Optiplex 9020 "Tiny" with a 4590T vs an HP T730 with an RX-427BB. Both gaming and general benchmarks of course. For good measure, throw in the next size up of PC, like an Optiplex 9020 SFF with a 4590 and a Quadro K620. All of these systems are probably available in the same price range if you shop around.

EDIT: Oh wow, I just realized the T730 actually has a PCI-Express slot too. I'm not sure how much power the slot supplies, but you may be able to drop in another similar-era low-end AMD GPU for some kind of headache inducing Hybrid Crossfire setup. 🤣 ... could be fun though if it's possible.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-10, 22:34:

EDIT: Oh wow, I just realized the T730 actually has a PCI-Express slot too. I'm not sure how much power the slot supplies, but you may be able to drop in another similar-era low-end AMD GPU for some kind of headache inducing Hybrid Crossfire setup. 🤣 ... could be fun though if it's possible.

The PSU for T620 Plus /T730 is rated 85W. So 45W GPU like Quadro K620 is possible only with undervolting via Afterburner (if it's possible to do).

If you could get away with a small form factor system under your monitor, that would make for an awesome WinXP machine.

The HP Z220 SFF is a good example.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-06-10, 23:43:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-10, 22:34:

EDIT: Oh wow, I just realized the T730 actually has a PCI-Express slot too. I'm not sure how much power the slot supplies, but you may be able to drop in another similar-era low-end AMD GPU for some kind of headache inducing Hybrid Crossfire setup. 🤣 ... could be fun though if it's possible.

The PSU for T620 Plus /T730 is rated 85W. So 45W GPU like Quadro K620 is possible only with undervolting via Afterburner (if it's possible to do).

Yeah, seems unlikely that anything like that would work. I was thinking more along the lines of an Oland based Radeon (like the R5 240), since HP lists the W2100 as a possible option for the T730. Maybe the W2100 can do it as well, but I imagine the drivers make that difficult. Either way, I doubt it's worth messing with.

Which is part of why a larger (but still small) system like a 9020 SFF is a good alternative if you want "maximum" XP gaming performance in a small, cheap and reasonably efficient PC.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-10, 22:34:

I would love to see some benchmarks comparing an Optiplex 9020 "Tiny" with a 4590T vs an HP T730 with an RX-427BB. Both gaming and general benchmarks of course. For good measure, throw in the next size up of PC, like an Optiplex 9020 SFF with a 4590 and a Quadro K620. All of these systems are probably available in the same price range if you shop around.

By the looks of it, Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF is only mildly smaller than a low profile microATX case, which could use much more interesting hardware. You can't beat cheap though. But it's not something I would carry around with me.

Oh! You know, I was just thinking "if something came with a GTX 750 Ti built in that'd be an amazing little XP system..." and I remembered the Alienware Alpha! That has a Haswell i3 CPU and a GTX 860M (identical to the 750 Ti). I haven't looked it up yet to see if anyone has tried this, but as long as the drivers all install properly that'd be a pretty slick little XP gaming PC. You'll definitely spend a LOT more on something like that though, so it'd be more of an aesthetic or experimental thing, rather than a practical price vs. performance setup.

Alienware looks very compelling for such small size.

EDIT: Then again, looks like it's hella noisy and/or may have overheating issues (quick glance in the search confirms it).