Yes the Creative X-FI cards are final cards that support WinXP which was the last OS to support EAX natively so it's a good pairing. PCI or PCIe doesn't matter.
Just don't get the Titanium HD as this dropped XP support.

CPU I would just test. My most demanding XP game is probably GTA SA which I found ran pretty good on an old CPU I had lying around... Until I got the upgrade itch and upgraded anyway.

Hey , what advice you are looking for ? If you want to make build with listed parts it would be possible if hd 2600xt is agp variant. However it isn't good build . I would go for i865g chipset at matx form factor there is various models of those. This way you will get native sata usb 2.0 and room for win98 to win 7 .

Thanks for your quick replies,

so far I have put the system together in a working state and managed to install XP but it ain't final yet (still need to wait for my molex floppy cable to arrive) So I can finish up the cable management. My HD2600 is a AGP card with passive heatsink so lucky it works in this system. I'm aware that an i865 Board would be the better solution here but I don't really wanna go for another board here since I'd like to work with the things I already have.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-02-24, 00:41:

Yes the Creative X-FI cards are final cards that support WinXP which was the last OS to support EAX natively so it's a good pairing. PCI or PCIe doesn't matter.
Just don't get the Titanium HD as this dropped XP support.

CPU I would just test. My most demanding XP game is probably GTA SA which I found ran pretty good on an old CPU I had lying around... Until I got the upgrade itch and upgraded anyway.

I just got a deal on a X-Fi Extreme Music so I think I'm retty good with this one once it arrives. Good to know about the Titanium not being compatible anymore, I always wondered if this version was just a "re-fresh" with the same capabilities but it seems thats not the case.

So far I've tested a few CPU's I have lying around and the 2,8Ghz P4 is doing a good job. The ol' Celeron D will be turned into a keychain tho since it's only good for cooking the mosfets on the board while actually being slower than the 2,4Ghz P4... 😁

Everything went smoothly yet theres only ONE thing that gives me headache:

I can't seem to enter the bios settings. When I get promted to press "del" at the post screen all I get is a flashing cursor in the left upper corner of the screen. When I press CTRL+ALT+DEL the PC simply restarts. I still can boot into Windows and the Bios detects all my installed hardware but as soon as I want to enter the CMOS Setup nothing happens.

Things I've done so far:

- clear CMOS jumper on the board
- removed the battery over night
- tested different CPU's
- removed everything from the board
- tested different RAM and even different Keyboards
- tested different GPU's (also tested integrated graphics)
- Updated the bios using the ROM file provided by the MSI Website

The Board uses an Award Bios so I flashed the newest version using Uniflash and it went through without any issues so I don't quite understand why I can't access the bios settings. Before you ask, yes I have tried different key combos but that didn't work either. The last time I was able to get into the bios settings the PC froze when I enter the "hadware monitoring" section so I turned it off since it was pretty late at night and the next day the symptoms started listed above. That's very strange behavior... Also I should mention that it acted like this BEFORE I updated the bios and I hoped that a new flash of the bios would solve this issue but it didn't.

You guys have any ideas?

A silly question, but have you tried hitting F2 instead of Del? The manual for your board clearly states it's set to the Del key, but sometimes F2 is an alternate option. I doubt it in your case, but worth a try.

Also, are you using a PS2 or USB style keyboard? Some systems, especially older ones, have issues accepting keystrokes during POST over USB. I keep a couple PS2 keyboards around just for this.

Actually I have tried every single button on my KB but no luck. I have 2x USB Keyboards with an PS2 adapter which the bios seems to recognize since I need to press F1 in order to boot into Windows and that works.

It kinda feels like the bios might be partially bricked since everything else like initial boot devices and such work without issue. I just can't enter CMOS settings it looks like it tries to "load" the Bios interface but then it just shows me a blinking cursor. Shouldn't a bios flash rewrite the whole bios chip? Or is there any hidden feature that I need to do in order to get it working again?

~ARW4U

Is it a wireless keyboard? I have issues with some receivers not being ready to discover the actual keyboard before it's too late to press DEL.

No it is a wired USB keyboard hooked up with a PS/2 adapter. Inputs get recognized otherwise I couldn't get out of the post screen since it prompts me to press F1 to boot into Windows.

For better understanding, I made a short video where you can see what happens when the Post screen comes up and the Bios prompts me to press "del" to enter CMOS settings:
https://youtu.be/v1XkEC8E9s8?si=AiORD2Lr5kg1l6Uk

(I'm not sure how to embed the YT player here but the link up there shall work)

Nothing happens, just a white blinking underscore. If I press "F1" then the PC decets any boot media and boots into Windows. So technically the PC boots into anything just not the bios settings... It's so strange and I can not explain what is going on.

Earlier today I flashed the bios again using uniflash and it went through without issues yet the problem persits. I really need to enter the bios to change the boot order and enable legacy USB settings since those are turned off by default. I'm slowly getting the idea that the bios chip may be faulty. Last time I was in the bios settings the hardware monitoring tab just "froze" and I had to press reset button on the case. The next day I couldn't enter CMOS settings screen and now I am stuck with what you see in the video.

Any ideas?

Alright I've came to the conclusion to give up on this board. The last time I was able to enter the bios I've changed some settings for good but it's not worth my time anymore.

Instead I got another µATX Board which is already up and running and my build is almost completed. The board I've got is an MSI MS 7031 which to my knowledge is from a Siemens Scaleo P from around 2004/5. The Board itself comes with a rather interesting Chipset made by ATI and supports 800FSB Preshot P4's. I didn't found much about the board and it's history but I saw one review mentioning the chipset performing better with Preshot than Northwood which is kinda unusual but good enough for my 'lonely' P4 530J to have a new job now.

Everything went smooth so far yet I seem to encounter some sort of weird latency issues. One time after a cold start I can play games without any problem and then suddenly the whole game stutters and becomes unplayable - every game I have tested so far shows this behavior. First I thought it may be a dodgy GPU driver so I did a clean install of catalyst 6.2 but same problem presists.

After digging a bit deeper I found out that the RAM is acting up all over the place. Suddenly EVEREST and AIDA64 shows me around 312ns of RAM latency in the benchmark section which puts the system on the last place of the list, performing worse than a K5... The same goes for bandwitdh and copy benchmark.

I've swapped out the RAM with a pair of ELEXIR DDR 400Mhz which I had used in my Dell GX270 and the results went back to good until I start to "stress" the RAM by either playing a game or doing a benchmark. Memtest says the sticks are good which you can see in the pic below but the transfer speed seems pretty low for Dual Channel.

In the bios I can choose between interleaved mode "Gaming and optimal system performance" but none of them do really any difference. I've set timings manual but no change.

here are the system specs:

MSI MS 7031
P4 HT 530J (3,00/1M/800)
2GB DDR 400 dual channel
ATI Radeon XT 2600 Pro
SB 0460 X-FI
Win XP Pro SP3