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 2025-08-05, 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 2025-08-05, 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.

Yes, can put into use is 65W sandy or better yet, 45W ivy bridge CPU into HP Z220 and GTX 750 or TI. Southbridge chipset is no different from slim all the way to desktop computers.

Ivy Bridge CPUs is better option for highest CPU frequency since even i7-2700S is not that high and at 65W, rather high per your wish list while, the i7-3770T is 45W, which is best fit for low power budget computer.

Edited to reflect the corrections after realizing the mistakes.

Cheers,

A technicality perhaps but the best FPS/Watt may well be one of the AMD APU's, A10 5800 with HD7660D uses about 100w for both CPU & GPU parts and is fully XP compatible.

Useless information if you have a system that you want to upgrade though admittedly!

Windows XP compatible APUs are hampered by memory bandwidth and can't provide the best provide best performance per watt.

I wouldn't say it can't without testing, don't need tons of bandwidth for old DX. But I'm also not looking to buy a new motherboard + CPU just to see whether it can.

The Radeon low FPS in Gothic 2 can be fixed by running a program in the background that allocates and holds about 200 MB of VRAM. Strange, but works. Apparently this was an issue since Catalyst 7 or so and was never fixed in XP, fixed in Windows 7 though.

Some PCIe DX6-7 compatibility tests with select cards:

A score of 1 means all games worked, 0 means half of them worked, and -1 means none of them worked. For reference, the Matrox G550 PCIe scores 1. Maxwell does poorly here and especially in DX6, although the GTX 745 has 4 GB of VRAM and some old games don't like that either.

FPS/Watt in 3DMark 2000, stock and with maximum underclocking and undervolting:

Most gains come from underclocking rather than undervolting. Some cards don't allow very low clocks to be set in Afterburner and most don't support undervolting. Only stock measured for the HD 7750 and Quadro FX 1500.

Multiplying the stock FPS/Watt ratio with the compatibility score to get a combined efficiency + compatibility score for DX6-7:

173 NVS 300
260 Radeon HD 3450
345 Radeon HD 7750
443 Quadro FX 1500
541 Radeon HD 5770
634 GeForce GTX 560
728 Radeon R7 360
828 Radeon HD 3870
9 0 GeForce GTX 745

Leaving out cards that don't perform well in DX9, and the GTX 745, sorted by stock FPS/Watt in 3DMark 06:

10.44 Radeon HD 7750
20.41 Radeon R7 360
30.35 Radeon HD 5770
40.33 GeForce GTX 560

None of the cards hit 60 FPS at 1080p here so underclocking is out of the question.

Overall the HD 7750 again comes out on top for DX6-9, the NVS 300 is good for sub-DX9. The GTX 560 isn't bad when underclocked.

Various architectures of Nvidia GPUs tested in DX6-7 compatibility. Scores:

10.9: GT218S
20.7: GF114, GT216
30.6: G71
40.5: GF116, GK104, G94
50.0: GM107

The GT218 is the most compatible Nvidia in this DX range and the NVS 300 is the best card with that chip. If you tested with different games you might have different results.

Not so simple. F1 2000 crashes on launch with an access violation if Afterburner i.e. probably RSS with a particular detection level is running, which is wasn't for the GT218S and was for the others. So the Nvidias that scored 0.7 could be as compatible as the GT218S if they can run the game otherwise. This makes the 60 W TDP GT216 based GT 220 more interesting from an efficiency standpoint. Most of the Radeons can start the game but have visual corruption, so they're not affected.

With F1 2000 retested, some changes in the DX6-7 compatibility scores. Also turns out that unlike the other Radeons the HD 7750 can run F1 2000 with the iCafe driver. The R7 360 can't and the rest aren't supported by it. Downside is the iCafe driver by default displays 640 x 480 in the native resolution.

10.93 AMD Radeon HD 7750
20.90 Nvidia GT218S
30.90 Nvidia GT216
40.90 Nvidia GF114
50.90 Nvidia GF104
60.83 AMD Radeon HD 3450
70.73 AMD Radeon HD 5770
80.63 AMD Radeon HD 3870
90.63 AMD Radeon HD 2600 PRO
100.60 Nvidia G71
110.53 AMD Radeon R7 360 E

The Nvidia GM107 would score either 0.00 or 0.20 but I didn't bother retesting. The G94 could go from 0.60 to 0.70 but didn't bother retesting.

So the story remains Radeon HD 7750 for efficient DX6-9 and NVS 300 for efficient DX6-8/9. The GTX 560 underclocked is semi-efficient in DX6-8 but the Radeons have better support for SSAA so I don't see a reason to go this route.

vvbee wrote on 2025-08-07, 16:28:

The Radeon low FPS in Gothic 2 can be fixed by running a program in the background that allocates and holds about 200 MB of VRAM. Strange, but works. Apparently this was an issue since Catalyst 7 or so and was never fixed in XP, fixed in Windows 7 though.

Better than a background program is a passthrough wrapper for ddraw.dll that automatically reserves the VRAM and does it from the game's own process. Idea courtesy of GPT-5 and implementation by Gemini 2.5 Pro. Works. Software development is easy these days.

GPT-5 speculates the problem may have to do with costly writing to surfaces the driver is optimizing for read-only performance, and pre-allocating a chunk of VRAM discouraging the optimization. Maybe yes and maybe no, I haven't seen a better explanation.

Maybe it's also possible to have a wrapper massage the surface flags so they don't take a slow memory path to begin with.

If you're willing to amp things up a notch, GeForce 9800GT ECO opens up access to really old Nvidia drivers while still having power draw in 75w range. I'm looking at it right now, and GPU is tuned to work at 1.0v, which is as low as you could get for a G92b card really. I consider it as one of the best FPS/watt cards one can get on 55nm lithography.

With the 7750 you don't have to go old with drivers, the iCafe ones from 2015 appear to have the widest backwards compatibility for that card. For example they fix F1 2000 (DX7), Monster Truck Madness 2 (DX5), and Formula 1 (DX3).

There's a GPU graveyard between fast enough for DX6-8 and fast enough for DX9. To be comfortable in DX9 you need let's say 10x more performance than you do for DX6-8. The closer to the performance edge you skim it the more likely you are to pull the full TDP and not something much lower.

7750 is obviously better option, because it's a 28nm chip. Radeon 7750 also supports Vulkan, so it's a decent option to use in Linux for old games via Proton.

vvbee wrote on 2025-08-20, 15:15:

To be comfortable in DX9 you need let's say 10x more performance than you do for DX6-8.

That depends. I did some tests on 8800GT and overall concluded that if you're willing to play 1280x720 (Xbox 360/PS3 quality basically), it's a comfortable experience.

EDIT: Forceware 197.45 supports all GeForce GT 2xx/3xx cards on 40nm lithography, so it's worth a try for better compatibility.