vvbee wrote on 2025-08-04, 13:53:

Efficiency is the primary issue and DX6-9 is what needs to run. Nvidia were always second in legacy support, in that sense it's more interesting to find compatible Nvidias.

Does running nGlide, dgVoodoo (old version for XP) or zackensack's wrapper fix any of nvidia's legacy support issues?

In the case that you don't mind wrapping the most efficient GPU is more likely an integrated Intel one running Wine in XP mode. I personally don't include wrappers in this comparison, they make sense for a few problematic cases but wrapping or working around entire versions of DX on retro hardware is less appealing.

You also can use GTX 465/470/480 on really old drivers and just throttle it to hell. Tesla generation is a bit trickier, because most of the cards of that era do not support software voltage modding or it's very limited.

Out of interest I tested in Wine using an Intel G4560 with 610 integrated graphics. With vsync on at 60 and using DXVK, 3DMark 2001 had 24 W system draw, 23 W in 3DMark 2003. With WineD3D and no vsync, 35 W at 115 FPS in 3DMark 99 and 38 W at 191 FPS in 3DMark 2000. An actual XP system with a 45 W energy efficient Athlon II and the very low power 18 W NVS 300 was pulling a minimum of 65 W with vsync. In a Haswell setup the NVS 300 was at least in the 30-40 W range, but still almost twice the draw of the Wine setup. Of course with Wine you have to deal with wrapper issues.

I would also consider GeForce GT 320. It's rated at 43W, but has 3x performance of NVS 300.

vvbee wrote on 2025-08-04, 19:53:

In the case that you don't mind wrapping the most efficient GPU is more likely an integrated Intel one running Wine in XP mode. I personally don't include wrappers in this comparison, they make sense for a few problematic cases but wrapping or working around entire versions of DX on retro hardware is less appealing.

I guess it just depends on one's priorities then. Running an entire instance of Wine to facilitate XP gaming feels a lot different than just running a Glide wrapper on an otherwise normal XP system to fix problems in whichever games don't work without it.

Like, if I can run an HD7750 and it handles 80% of the games I want to play or an HD5770 for ~90% of them, with some obvious compromises for the oldest games because it isn't a Voodoo card, that's great. But if I could get a good portion of that compatibility with a later nvidia card and also get significantly better image quality in the Voodoo-era games by running a wrapper, I would at least leave it open as an option.

So, again, it would be up to each individual whether the HD7750 or HD5770 were enough to achieve the performance level they want at the upper end of the games (early to mid DX9? who knows...), and if that was worth the trade off of compatibility with whichever DX6 or DX7 games don't look or run perfectly.

Personally, I wouldn't build a single system for DX6 and DX9 gaming because they are so very different. I'm not going to suffer through excessive color banding or other strangeness when a system from ~2002-2003 or so would probably run those earlier games smoothly with fewer graphical problems. Even on a system of that age, a wrapper may improve the experience significantly in some games.

I don't think most DX6 games gain anything at all from DX10+ level hardware because in those days they were so incredibly limited with regard to graphics settings, resolutions, sometimes even frame rates. If there are modern source ports or mods that update some DX5-DX6 era classics to benefit from modern hardware, I think I would rather go that route, vs seeing them with possibly degraded graphics on a system that's 10-15 years newer than the game. Barring that, I would use a wrapper that worked in an OS that the game natively works in (XP), or just run the game on whatever older hardware has zero visual compromises.

All that said: I do appreciate the efforts to figure out which GPUs+Drivers can run the oldest games with the fewest problems without resorting to wrappers. I would not base a built around this premise personally, but it is interesting to see the results anyway, so thank you for doing the digging required. 🙂

gerwin wrote on 2025-08-04, 16:42:

This topic starts to feel similar to that other topic years ago, when trying to argue that Creative SoundBlaster AWE is not the best solution in certain use cases...

I do not think there is any solution which would be "the best" for all use cases.

The issue here is - newer usually means more efficient, but newer also means worse compatibility with older stuff. So there is no "the best" and any solution is going to be a compromise suitable for specific use case.

Even apart from power efficiency - does a GPU even exist which can comfortably run both crysis and the oldest games compatible with XP?

The Serpent Rider wrote on Yesterday, 00:42:

I would also consider GeForce GT 320. It's rated at 43W, but has 3x performance of NVS 300.

You can basically go through the INF file of the 260.99 driver for a list of cards that potentially have decent backwards support. I'm not planning on buying every card on there but in theory someone can benchmark theirs.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 01:13:

I guess it just depends on one's priorities then. Running an entire instance of Wine to facilitate XP gaming feels a lot differe […]
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vvbee wrote on 2025-08-04, 19:53:

In the case that you don't mind wrapping the most efficient GPU is more likely an integrated Intel one running Wine in XP mode. I personally don't include wrappers in this comparison, they make sense for a few problematic cases but wrapping or working around entire versions of DX on retro hardware is less appealing.

I guess it just depends on one's priorities then. Running an entire instance of Wine to facilitate XP gaming feels a lot different than just running a Glide wrapper on an otherwise normal XP system to fix problems in whichever games don't work without it.

Like, if I can run an HD7750 and it handles 80% of the games I want to play or an HD5770 for ~90% of them, with some obvious compromises for the oldest games because it isn't a Voodoo card, that's great. But if I could get a good portion of that compatibility with a later nvidia card and also get significantly better image quality in the Voodoo-era games by running a wrapper, I would at least leave it open as an option.

So, again, it would be up to each individual whether the HD7750 or HD5770 were enough to achieve the performance level they want at the upper end of the games (early to mid DX9? who knows...), and if that was worth the trade off of compatibility with whichever DX6 or DX7 games don't look or run perfectly.

Personally, I wouldn't build a single system for DX6 and DX9 gaming because they are so very different. I'm not going to suffer through excessive color banding or other strangeness when a system from ~2002-2003 or so would probably run those earlier games smoothly with fewer graphical problems. Even on a system of that age, a wrapper may improve the experience significantly in some games.

I don't think most DX6 games gain anything at all from DX10+ level hardware because in those days they were so incredibly limited with regard to graphics settings, resolutions, sometimes even frame rates. If there are modern source ports or mods that update some DX5-DX6 era classics to benefit from modern hardware, I think I would rather go that route, vs seeing them with possibly degraded graphics on a system that's 10-15 years newer than the game. Barring that, I would use a wrapper that worked in an OS that the game natively works in (XP), or just run the game on whatever older hardware has zero visual compromises.

All that said: I do appreciate the efforts to figure out which GPUs+Drivers can run the oldest games with the fewest problems without resorting to wrappers. I would not base a built around this premise personally, but it is interesting to see the results anyway, so thank you for doing the digging required. 🙂

There's compromises you have to accept whichever way you go. This simply isn't the right thread if you want different cards for different versions of DX.