retep_110 wrote on 2025-11-26, 09:16:

In the meantime I have done some further research and I think going the lga 775 route would be quite attractive. I fond a Intel DG965WH mainboard near me at a good price. The board even got new caps which should make it even more valuable.

What do you guys think about that mainboard family? A decent pic for a very fast winxp retro gaming machine?

And which core 2 duo cpu would you deem feasible for that board?

Any P35 or P45 chipset motherboard would be my choice for a 775 build.

E8600 is the CPU to go for.

retep_110 wrote on 2025-11-26, 09:16:

In the meantime I have done some further research and I think going the lga 775 route would be quite attractive. I fond a Intel DG965WH mainboard near me at a good price. The board even got new caps which should make it even more valuable.

What do you guys think about that mainboard family? A decent pic for a very fast winxp retro gaming machine?

And which core 2 duo cpu would you deem feasible for that board?

That's probably going to be a very solid (reliable) motherboard, being an Intel board and with a Q965 chipset.
However, note that it only supports 1066 MHz FSB max, and is limited - at least officially - to the Conroe series Core 2 Duo CPUs. This means E6600 or E6700 will be the max supported CPU... again, at least officially. Not sure if the board will still work fine with a more modern Wolfdale C2D like the E5x00 or E7x00 (some Q965 boards do, and some don't - it all depends on the BIOS... and sometimes, if someone hacked in the microcode for these.) The former runs at 800 MHz FSB, so could overclock quite nicely with 1066 MHz FSB... *if* that Intel boards allows any OC-ing (most Intel boards of that era don't allow OC-ing). And the latter (E7x00) series run at 1066 MHz out of the box, so something like the E7500 and E7600 would be the fastest CPUs for your system at around 3 GHz... again, if the board BIOS supports it. When compared to the E8600, the performance drop is probably around 10% or less... or at least in games, I expect it to be around there. So may not be a huge difference.

With all of that said, there's a lot of -IFs- associated with getting that board. Probably best to do more research to see if E5x00/E7x00 (Wolfdale) Core 2 Duo's can run on it and if yes, see how those are priced around in your area too. From what I briefly searched, I don't see anyone that has asked or attempted to run those CPUs in that board, so it may not be feasible.

Alternatively, you can grab a Core 2 Quad Q6600 on the cheap and roll with that. Though for games that don't care for more than 1 or 2 threads, the extra cores on the Q6600 would be kind of useless. And worth mentioning is that the Q6600 is on the power-hungry side overall, eating 150 Watts at max load and usually around 25 to 33% more than a C2D from the same generation and series with a 2-core load only. So if low power / low heat system is your goal, the Q6600 may not be that ideal.

Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-11-26, 13:26:

Any P35 or P45 chipset motherboard would be my choice for a 775 build.

E8600 is the CPU to go for.

G31 and P43 chipsets are also good options.

Nothing against the E8600, but I often find it a little more pricey than necessary compared to E8500 or E8400 - typically around 2-3x more. And for what, an extra 5-10% performance difference tops over the E8500 and E8400? So if the E8600 is going for more than you like in your area, you can always look up the E8500 and E8400 to see how those are priced and if available much cheaper (usually yes.)

E8600 is available for about 25 EUR, similar price in $ so not too expensive yet. Much cheaper from China. I would only consider boards that officially support this CPU.

I may have missed it, but I don't see anyone mentioning sound.

Do yourself a favor and get a Sound Blaster X-Fi to experience the end of hardware accelerated audio in Windows.

FullYes wrote on 2025-11-19, 20:02:

What happens to your available system RAM when you put in a GPU with large amounts of VRAM? I’ve never tried anything more than 2Gb VRAM which gave me 2.75Gb of system RAM. Does it keep going down when you have more and more VRAM?

It feels to me like cards with 1Gb VRAM give the best balance of VRAM:system RAM but I suppose there could be game-specific exceptions.

Nothing happens that is directly related to bigger VRAM. On 32-bit WinXP only a maximum 256 MB sized 'window' is reserved in the address space for VRAM that the CPU can access. So even 512MB VRAM cannot be addressed directly. Only the graphics driver can access bigger chunks of VRAM.

Tha available sytem RAM on 32-bit Windows XP only indirectly depends on the graphics VRAM. And not the size of the VRAM matters but the lowest address that is occupied by the card's linear frame buffer.
Windows XP x86 SP2+ supports only 4 GB address space even when Physical Address Extension (PAE) is enabled.
Depending on the lowest address used by devices (usually the VGA frame buffer is the biggest consumer) you can have the following available RAM under Windows XP 32-bit:
0xB0000000 -> 2.75 GB
0xC0000000 -> 3 GB
0xD0000000 -> 3.25 GB
0xE0000000 -> 3.5 GB
0xF0000000 -> 3.75 GB

My GA-Z97X-UD5H with Intel 4770K CPU has a 4GB GTX970 and it still has 3.5 GB available RAM while my GA-MA790X-UD4 with Phenom II X4 960T has only a 2GB GTX960 and only 3 GB available RAM.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-11-26, 14:41:

E8600 is available for about 25 EUR, similar price in $ so not too expensive yet. Much cheaper from China. I would only consider boards that officially support this CPU.

yep - cheap and available.

I would avoid quad core CPUs as some games have issues (there are issues with dual core as well but I have found them more pronounced with quad core systems).

A E8600 and a nvidia 750ti will blast pretty much any XP games as fast as you would want. You could swap to a 960 for maximum (supported) graphics power. Or grab a 980Ti and add its device id to the latest driver for absolute max. I have played around with all 3 cards and find I always go back to the 750ti. It is more than enough. It doesn't need external power and it's super quiet.

Falcosoft wrote on 2025-11-26, 15:13:

Nothing happens that is directly related to bigger VRAM. On 32-bit WinXP only a maximum 256 MB sized 'window' is reserved in th […]
Show full quote

Nothing happens that is directly related to bigger VRAM. On 32-bit WinXP only a maximum 256 MB sized 'window' is reserved in the address space for VRAM that the CPU can access. So even 512MB VRAM cannot be addressed directly. Only the graphics driver can access bigger chunks of VRAM.

Tha available sytem RAM on 32-bit Windows XP only indirectly depends on the graphics VRAM. And not the size of the VRAM matters but the lowest address that is occupied by the card's linear frame buffer.
Windows XP x86 SP2+ supports only 4 GB address space even when Physical Address Extension (PAE) is enabled.
Depending on the lowest address used by devices (usually the VGA frame buffer is the biggest consumer) you can have the following available RAM under Windows XP 32-bit:
0xB0000000 -> 2.75 GB
0xC0000000 -> 3 GB
0xD0000000 -> 3.25 GB
0xE0000000 -> 3.5 GB
0xF0000000 -> 3.75 GB

My GA-Z97X-UD5H with Intel 4770K CPU has a 4GB GTX970 and it still has 3.5 GB available RAM while my GA-MA790X-UD4 with Phenom II X4 960T has only a 2GB GTX960 and only 3 GB available RAM.

That's interesting you are seeing the 3.25GB available with a single card. Back in the day I had SLI'd GTX480 (and was warm all winter and sweating in the summer) and had the same 3.25GB. I thought each card was using 256MB of addressable space. But I guess not.

There is a concern with some games having issues with large amount of VRAM. 1-2GB is generally safe, but a few outliers can still be problematic. But 4GB is where things really start to break down.

Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-11-26, 15:22:

yep - cheap and available.

I would avoid quad core CPUs as some games have issues (there are issues with dual core as well but I have found them more pronounced with quad core systems).

A E8600 and a nvidia 750ti will blast pretty much any XP games as fast as you would want. You could swap to a 960 for maximum (supported) graphics power. Or grab a 980Ti and add its device id to the latest driver for absolute max. I have played around with all 3 cards and find I always go back to the 750ti. It is more than enough. It doesn't need external power and it's super quiet.

The issues with number of cores can be resolved by setting the core affinity, so you can make it so a game only uses a single core, or just two.

The main issue is most XP games don't use more than two cores. If you are looking at later CPUs, an i7 won't break things. But hyperthreading generally isn't getting you any benefit. So just disable it in the BIOS which turns it into a i5.

In the core2 days the advice was to get a dual core E8600 over an older quad core Q6600 as those were at similar price points. But the updated architecture on the dual core gave you better performance across more games versus the boost you got from having four slower cores.

Now LGA755 is cheap, but 2nd and 3rd gen i3/i5s are just as cheap and give you even more performance. But either is more than enough power for games you'd run on XP unless you're really stretching your definition and playing the games that could "run" in XP but came out near the end of 7's run or even into Win8/8.1.

3.2Ghz quad cores show power in Windows 7 era. Games from that era will suffer with dual core. Windows Vista era is very demanding on CPU clock thus making E8600 a perfect choice.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-11-26, 15:27:

...
That's interesting you are seeing the 3.25GB available with a single card. Back in the day I had SLI'd GTX480 (and was warm all winter and sweating in the summer) and had the same 3.25GB. I thought each card was using 256MB of addressable space. But I guess not.

It's true, some CPU address space has to be reserved for both cards. But as I said not the size matters, but the lowest reserved address. So if your 1st card's reserved address space starts at 0xD0000000 and the 2nd card's reserved address space starts at 0xE0000000 you still have 3.25 GB available RAM. The situation is the same if you have only 1 card and its reserved address starts at 0xD0000000. The available RAM will be the same. That is 3.25 GB.
It does not matter that in the 1st case the overall reserved space for VRAM is 512 MB while in the 2nd case the overall reserved space for VRAM is only 256 MB. The lowest reserved address is the same so you have the same available RAM.

@Edit:
The lowest reserved address by the graphics card mainly depends on the motherboard's BIOS and its TOLUD settings. On forums that are focusing on E-GPU configurations you can find more info about this topic:
https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/topic/ … 901-tolud-size/
https://www.jdhodges.com/blog/dell-m6500-and- … nd-limitations/

PS: In case of E-GPU scenarios lower address is better since it allows reserving address for another card. In case of a normal desktop PC this is not the case since lower address also means less available RAM.

@all Thanks a lot for providing further information .

SScorpio wrote on 2025-11-26, 14:57:

I may have missed it, but I don't see anyone mentioning sound.

Do yourself a favor and get a Sound Blaster X-Fi to experience the end of hardware accelerated audio in Windows.

No you have not missed anything. I have not talked about sound yet but the purchase of a good sound card was planned. Thx for recommending the Sound Blaster X-Fi card.

quote=Lostdotfish post_id=1391265 time=1764170549 user_id=41516]

AlexZ wrote on 2025-11-26, 14:41:

E8600 is available for about 25 EUR, similar price in $ so not too expensive yet. Much cheaper from China. I would only consider boards that officially support this CPU.

yep - cheap and available.

I would avoid quad core CPUs as some games have issues (there are issues with dual core as well but I have found them more pronounced with quad core systems).

A E8600 and a nvidia 750ti will blast pretty much any XP games as fast as you would want. You could swap to a 960 for maximum (supported) graphics power. Or grab a 980Ti and add its device id to the latest driver for absolute max. I have played around with all 3 cards and find I always go back to the 750ti. It is more than enough. It doesn't need external power and it's super quiet.
[/quote]

Thanks for the warning about the potential issues with quad core cpus. I have not purchased the mainboard yet. it is just potential purchase I could. Looking board that supports neat core 2 cpu like the E8600 would be possible.

Also, thank you a lot for the GPU recommendations.

750Ti may not be sufficient for Vista era games though if you intend to play at 1920x1080 with full screen anti-aliasing. It's about the same performance as GTX 480. A GTX 670/770 would be more than enough, they are very cheap.

Falcosoft wrote on 2025-11-26, 15:13:

Nothing happens that is directly related to bigger VRAM. On 32-bit WinXP only a maximum 256 MB sized 'window' is reserved in th […]
Show full quote

FullYes wrote on 2025-11-19, 20:02:

What happens to your available system RAM when you put in a GPU with large amounts of VRAM? I’ve never tried anything more than 2Gb VRAM which gave me 2.75Gb of system RAM. Does it keep going down when you have more and more VRAM?

It feels to me like cards with 1Gb VRAM give the best balance of VRAM:system RAM but I suppose there could be game-specific exceptions.

Nothing happens that is directly related to bigger VRAM. On 32-bit WinXP only a maximum 256 MB sized 'window' is reserved in the address space for VRAM that the CPU can access. So even 512MB VRAM cannot be addressed directly. Only the graphics driver can access bigger chunks of VRAM.

Tha available sytem RAM on 32-bit Windows XP only indirectly depends on the graphics VRAM. And not the size of the VRAM matters but the lowest address that is occupied by the card's linear frame buffer.
Windows XP x86 SP2+ supports only 4 GB address space even when Physical Address Extension (PAE) is enabled.
Depending on the lowest address used by devices (usually the VGA frame buffer is the biggest consumer) you can have the following available RAM under Windows XP 32-bit:
0xB0000000 -> 2.75 GB
0xC0000000 -> 3 GB
0xD0000000 -> 3.25 GB
0xE0000000 -> 3.5 GB
0xF0000000 -> 3.75 GB

My GA-Z97X-UD5H with Intel 4770K CPU has a 4GB GTX970 and it still has 3.5 GB available RAM while my GA-MA790X-UD4 with Phenom II X4 960T has only a 2GB GTX960 and only 3 GB available RAM.

The attachment GTX970_4GB.png is no longer available

Thanks for this. Good info! Perhaps I won’t sell my old 980TI afterall!

Just providing my experience. I picked up dumped computer on the side of the road that just needed a HDD and some front panel clips. It has an X38 mainboard, E6850/3Ghz dual core CPU and an ATI HD5870 GPU. I added a HDD, X-FI XtremeGamer, AsMedia USB 3.2 card and a Graugear multi-function USB3.2 front panel.

It's been completely solid and I'm very happy with it as an XP rig. It's still very powerful for earlier XP games or late 98 games so you have to either force vsync or keep RTSS handy to cap the framerate.

XP couldn't be installed with a SATA HDD in AHCI mode, I used the method of installing in IDE mode and injecting the AHCI driver after install

Thanks for the further information. Got a general question about the gpu. Which gpu would you guys deem as the best gpu for winxp gaming.

Not the best the sense of the last gpu still compatible with winxp drivers. With best I rather mean the last cpu that is compatible with all graphical features winxp has to offer without any compability issue with sound and certain effects.

mainboard wise I am in negotion to get a GIGABYTE GA-P35- board with new caps. The board is available in my hometown unlike the other board I have mentioned as an option. So can see it in person which makes it more attractive than the other offer.

As cpu I plan to get one cpu of the core2 e8000 series as recommended.

As GPU get something cheap available locally - GeForce GTX 670/770/960. The slower 2xx, 4xx, 5xx series may have performance problems with maxxed out full screen anti-aliasing.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-11-28, 10:22:

As GPU get something cheap available locally - GeForce GTX 670/770/960. The slower 2xx, 4xx, 5xx series may have performance problems with maxxed out full screen anti-aliasing.

Ok thanks for your advice this makes things rather easy. The geforce gtx series widely available. I have seen a gtx 670 and 770 at a decent price. I will look in that direction and will avoid the slower 2xx, 4xx, 5xx series because maxing out most of the settings is my goal.

@all Another question about the soundcard. TheSound Blaster X-Fi was already recommend to me. When looking it up I found that there are many different versions of that card. Are they all equally good or should I look for specfic model.