Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-18, 22:15:
The question what you think should be healthy upgrade for mainly playing older games from above mentioned era (2003 to 2010)
1st, this motherboard supports 1333 MHz bus, so I would suggest to upgrade the CPU to either an E7x00 series or E8x00 series. E8600 tends to be more expensive, because it's pretty much a top-end consumer dual-core CPU from the C2D era. But if you move down to the E8400, the price falls significantly without loosing almost any performance (mere few % in FPS in games, so not a big deal.) If your motherboard supports 1600 MHz OC, you can OC an E8400 quite far - 3.5-3.8 GHz easily on stock voltages. And if the board cannot OC to 1600 MHz bus, then something like an E7500 or 7600 should still be cheap enough, but produce quite a bit of OC at 1333 MHz bus.
In any case, I do NOT recommend you go with a Core 2 Quad CPU, though, and I will explain why a little further below... but TLDR: that beige case will likely have very poor cooling and will suffocate with a Core 2 Quad. It's a nice case, but not great for any kind of high-power-dissipation build.
2nd: if you stick to XP, 2 GB of RAM would be a bit on the low end (particularly for games from 2007 and onward), but 3 GB should be fine. And 4 GB won't detect fully on XP 32b, so no point going above 4 GB. Even if you dual-boot Win7, 4 GB will be OK for the most part. I can't actually think of any games from 2010 that won't work fine with 4 GB. Of course, if your Win7 install has all kinds of junk running in the background (but who does that here?), then OK, 4 GB might become problematic.
FWIW, I'm posting this from an Athlon II X4 machine with 3GB of RAM and Win7 32-bit. I can do basic browsing pretty comfortably with latest Firefox ESR, so long as I don't open too many tabs and restart Firefox from time to time, as it likes to munch on memory otherwise.
3rd: For video card, go with something low-mid range, but from the late XP era / mid 7 era - e.g. GeForce GTS 450 or GTX 460 or 550 or 560. These will handle games up to 2010 pretty well. Though again, if you plan to keep the case, you might have to punch a little lower then to keep things from overheating. On that note, I have used a GT430 and Quadro 2000 for that era of games, and they don't use much power but still produce very decent FPS. With the GTS 430 for example, I can crank all settings to high in Portal and Portal 2 (a 2007 and 2011 games, respectively) at 1280x960 (was using CRT monitor at the time) v-sync'd to 85 Hz and experienced zero dropping of frames below 85 Hz. In Mirror's Edge (a 2008 game) using the same resolution, the Quadro 2 was cranking 60 FPS (frame limit of the game) all the time at same resolution... and I don't think it dropped much at 1600x1200.
Ultimately, though, if you want to make sure you are never GPU limited yet still not use much power (and produce too much heat inside the case), a GTX 750 (TI or non-TI model, doesn't matter) would be the wisest choice... and hence why it's recommended here so much for XP builds.
Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-18, 22:15:
Oh yeah, and computer case has very old school white Pentium design which i love dearly.
That case is looking great indeed.
However, the only issue with these old beige cases is they are very poorly ventilated. The one you have doesn't even have holes punched on the sides of the panels. And the front has nothing either, except for the vent on that removable drive cage. Also, I know these old beige cases well - the rear exhaust fan below the PSU usually has very restrictive holes punched in... so even when a fan (or two) are installed, they still can't move much air... not to mention they got nowhere to take it from, unless you remove all of the metal PCI brackets below. But even then... the cooling would still be lackluster at best.
Now, I'm not suggesting to replace the case, because I also myself like these cases. But rather, I'm pulling your attention to it so that you don't end up putting some hot hardware and then end up killing it once you start gaming. A Core 2 Quad and a high-end GPU will SUFFOCATE in this machine... BADLY.
Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-19, 13:21:
Older cards from 8000 and partly - 200 series come from bumpgate period, are all defective and extremely unreliable. So at least avoid that.
+1
shevalier wrote on 2025-07-19, 14:27:And what games of this period won't work on...
Ryzen 9800x3D
9070XT (RTX5xxx without 32-bit physix)
Creative AE5+/Titanium HD
Wi […]
Show full quote
Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-18, 22:15:
The question what you think should be healthy upgrade for mainly playing older games from above mentioned era (2003 to 2010)
And what games of this period won't work on...
Ryzen 9800x3D
9070XT (RTX5xxx without 32-bit physix)
Creative AE5+/Titanium HD
Windows 11
I'm just curious. 😀
Need For Speed Underground 2
... OK, it will work, but anything Windows Vista or newer, the keyboard settings (keymapping) won't save properly, so you would have to re-set them every time you start the game.
Need For Speed Porche Unleashed 2 - I just can't get it started on Widnows 7 or newer, even with some user no-CD patches or the >2GHz-patched EXE.
I'm sure there are more games I can think of, but the above 2 are regulars on any of my more frequently used retro rigs from that era, so I know on what they work and on what they don't.
Oh, and anything newer than XP --> no EAX support. So if you want that, at least with genuine EAX hardware from the time, you have to stick to XP.
That said, the XP era is a bit tricky, because some games from 2007 and > featured DX10... and if you want those DX10 effects, then you do need to dual-boot to Vista or 7.
But anyways, probably the biggest reason why I would NOT use the above hardware: because I don't see a reason to further shill Windows 11.
FWIW, I haven't even moved to Win10 yet, and that's to be EOL'd late this year. Windows 11 - not a f-ing chance, not for me.
