This is not a bad idea for a system (I paid for a Q6600 system in late 2007, specifically for Crysis, funnily enough). I do think it’s a bit limiting to use an 8800 series card in XP, as it restricts you to DirectX 9.0/Shader Model 3.0 (officially, not sure if there are work-arounds for that), but it’s a cool idea nonetheless. Any early DX10-supported game (World in Conflict, Bioshock, 2007/US version of Call of Juarez, etc.) won’t be able to be “maxed”, but I guess you’re mostly just missing out on some extra bells and whistles. The games won’t look bad in DX9.

As far as Crysis is concerned, there are some points worth considering before you decide to fully commit to making a PC tailored heavily for this game:

(1) The game is predominantly GPU-limited. I recently captured footage of me using a late 2003 system, with an Athlon 64 3200+ (early 2.0 GHz Clawhammer variant), a Radeon 9800XT and 2x512MBs of DDR400 2-3-3-6 RAM. The CPU does get a bit bogged down when lots of fighting occurs, but it’s really not the main reason Crysis is considered such a “machine killer”. Dual-core might help a little in some places, but this is only likely to become a problem in very crowded, very explosive and run-and-gun crazy situations, when lots of particles and smoke appears. Even if you put an 8800 GT/GTX in an early PCI-E board from 2004/2005 with a single-core CPU, this will help you out tremendously!

(2) This is related to the first point, but there are ways to make Crysis run significantly faster on slightly older GPUs than 8800 series without sacrificing visual quality all that much. The most demanding visual/GPU features in Crysis are also some of the most subjective ones. This includes most of the post-processing effects, such as motion blur (especially per-object!), sun shafts and color grading. I’ve managed to get very satisfactory performance on a Radeon X1900 XT (512MB) by disabling these effects at 1024x768 pixels. This is only the tip of the iceberg, however, as you can choose to tweak further by disabling stuff like shadow filtering, lowering shadow mapping resolution a little, lowering level-of-detail (LOD) for terrain objects, and so on, with little impact to the beauty of the game!

(3) Yes, you can force Very High graphical settings in Crysis on Windows XP/DX9, but you can’t do so without some visual flaws (at least not in version 1.0 of the game)! These flaws don’t appear everywhere, mind you, and I only remember the second level/map having any distracting artefacts (blurry arms on hostage, super-blocky canopy shadows during the river section later in the level) occurring because of this. Still, worth keeping in mind. It’s not as if you really NEED to max out every setting in DX9 to make Crysis look sweet, but if you consider doing so, you have been warned. The final fight is pretty miserable on the performance side in DX10, on the flip side, so there is that advantage at least! Crysis is a DX9 game at heart, after all.

Look, I’m not trying to discourage you from making a 2007 machine, just not necessarily PREDOMINANTLY for this game. Crysis was a one-of-a-kind tech-wonder, it was one of the poster-children for DX10 at the time, yes, but it was still designed to scale to vastly different configurations and very much still be enjoyed on slightly older graphics cards! I’ve had the privilege of playing it on a 2003 GPU (with some beautification tweaks), 2005 GPU, 2006 GPU and 2007 GPU, each time still admiring its high environmental interactivity and tropical atmosphere, and each time finding joy in the experience of playing it!

I guess what I’m trying to say is something along the lines of “don’t let this one big tree block the rest of the forest from your view”. There are some technically demanding games from 2006 too, some not that far behind what Crysis did. This includes Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes, Neverwinter Nights 2, Gothic 3, and more, that I think are just as worthy of being played as Crysis. I’ve had some of the best times in my life in mid-to-late 2000s games using an early Athlon 64 X2 setup, and I don’t think striving for having a bunch of extra CPU cores is really worth for most (if any) game from the 2000s, in my experience thus far.

Make a CPU and memory platform that conforms to as many games you hold dear as possible, then let the choice of GPU solve for any exceptional cases!
All that blabbering aside, it’s a very cool project and just go with what you feel is right for you! Don’t let my opinions and observations discourage you.

Thank you for your detailed input, I appreciate it 😀

Don't worry, I'm not building a PC just for Crysis, as that isn't really a main goal. I can understand how the way I talked about it would give that impression though, so that's on me 😜 I simply mentioned it as a fun curiosity to check out for a realistic idea of how it would handle on a high-end PC of that time. I appreciate your tips and information on the game though! I'll definitely keep them in mind if I decide to benchmark the game on the system.

My main purpose of using it would be to enjoy all sorts of XP games with the best hardware of that time, since I personally like seeing an authentic system not play old games at 400+ FPS at all times. It's quite a refreshing and different experience I enjoy when in the mood for it 😀

I might check out those other games you mentioned as well, they seem fun and interesting.

I hear you! Just keeping having fun exploring all sorts of WinXP titles from that timeframe with whatever hardware does the job for ya!

I used to have a functioning Core 2 Extreme dual-core machine, until the board got ruined by me. Don’t have my first Q6600 PC anymore (the part selection was terrible anyway). I’ve considered making a new one, but I think I might possibly settle on making an XP-and-Vista 32-bit dual-boot/-drive solution for my Athlon 64 X2 machine instead, and just deal with swapping between GPUs when needed. Saves me more space, haha!

limemyth wrote on 2026-07-19, 08:16:

Corsair HX620 or OCZ 700GXSSLI

I'd say don't bother with either of these as you're not gaining anything by buying a 20 year old PSU

Fish3r wrote on 2026-07-19, 12:36:

limemyth wrote on 2026-07-19, 08:16:

Corsair HX620 or OCZ 700GXSSLI

I'd say don't bother with either of these as you're not gaining anything by buying a 20 year old PSU

In terms of performance, reliability and safety, yes, a nearly 20 year old PSU will not do many wonders for any build. But remember the goal here is authenticity and being period-correct, and even if putting in a newer Corsair is a wiser idea, it just misses the point for me. It would bother me a lot while using it 😜

I'll only resort to a brand new PSU if I absolutely cannot find any proper old PSU to use, but it would kind of suck to compromise like that.

I have systems with far older power supplies still in active use. There shouldn’t be any problem any time soon with these older Corsair units, especially when not in constant operation.

By the way, Lime, I spent a bunch of time some year ago thinking about and researching 2006/2007 cooling solutions for Core 2 processors, right before I ruined my 975X board (sob). There is a great review from back in the day that tested all sorts of LGA775 coolers, named the “ LGA 775 CPU Cooler Mega Test”, by HEXUS. Very worthwhile read!

I’ll put up a link that starts off at page 6, right before the test kicks off: https://m.hexus.net/tech/reviews/cooling/8757 … ga-test/?page=6

I also read up on the original Thermaltake Big Typhoon, which is supposed to be an excellent choice too, and ended up buying one. Unfortunately, I slipped with my hand when trying to install the damn thing, which resulted in me being Core 2-less.

I had a slightly newer build in 2008 with Core 2 Quad QX9650 @3.8Ghz and dual 8800GTS 512amb in SLI. Even that struggled with Crysis at max settings (at 1920x1200 at the time) . It was very playable, just not super-smooth. I forget what the actual framerate was now. I still have this machine in the garage. I have intended to restore it for years. Haha.

Just as a heads up, i personally would avoid anything nvidia for this era because they are all affected by bumpgate. If reliablity is not the biggest concern however, by all means go for it. It is a great plan

Since your build is 12V heavy you should not have a problem with modern PSU's. Indeed Corsair is in one of the best but I would feel safer with a new Corsair PSU than a 20 years old one. The only time when you really need an old power supply is when you are trying to build something that does not have the auxiliary power connector such as a socket A system.
Regarding the video card: in EVERY single system that I have built the GPU is far newer than the rest of the system. That is because games from 2001-2006 require far more GPU power than available in that year even if you consider the best of the best!
Practical example: in Company of heroes - a game from 2006 - 8800GTX is actually insufficient, the card is overwhelmed by texture data that takes over the 768mb available on the card. Result: stuttering. Also AA is severely crippling most directx 9 & 10 GPU's. Don't believe Wikipedia where you can read on the article dedicated to the R300 (radeon 9700 pro) that - quote: "Anti-aliasing was, for the first time, a fully usable option even in the newest and most demanding titles of the day. " I would like to know who wrote this and what was he smoking - I want some too!!

Dipshidian wrote on 2026-07-21, 05:49:

...the “ LGA 775 CPU Cooler Mega Test”, by HEXUS. Very worthwhile read!

Thanks, I'll take a look 😀

sparki wrote on Yesterday, 08:56:

Just as a heads up, i personally would avoid anything nvidia for this era because they are all affected by bumpgate. If reliablity is not the biggest concern however, by all means go for it. It is a great plan

Reliability to me is not a huge deal personally for this build specifically, mostly because finding 8800s locally is fairly easy (even if its just GTs and not GTSs for instance). I will keep it in mind as a potential failure point though.

nd22 wrote on Yesterday, 09:37:

Since your build is 12V heavy you should not have a problem with modern PSU's. Indeed Corsair is in one of the best but I would feel safer with a new Corsair PSU than a 20 years old one. The only time when you really need an old power supply is when you are trying to build something that does not have the auxiliary power connector such as a socket A system.

I have some spare newer Corsairs in my parts bin, should the old one not work (which would discourage me from getting another old one 😜). But at least for the first try, I'll take a gamble on it and try it out.

nd22 wrote on Yesterday, 09:37:

Regarding the video card: in EVERY single system that I have built the GPU is far newer than the rest of the system. That is because games from 2001-2006 require far more GPU power than available in that year even if you consider the best of the best!

I had a sense this would be the case. Personally, I'm okay with the performance hit.

You should be ok with an 8800 as long as you avoid the GT with the single slot cooler. Just make sure to repaste and clean the dust out so the temps don't get too high. Bumping the fan speed up a bit in rivatuner helps too.

If you move your goal post by one year, you get Intel E8600 (dual core 3.2Ghz) which is a much better solution. It is so fast AMD needs 3-4 cores to match it at the same clock speed. Dual cores are most authentic for Windows XP.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 has frequency just 2.4Ghz which will be very limiting in games. Those early games are mostly single threaded, some utilize 2 threads. It is a similar situation to Phenom X4 2.6Ghz. A great CPU for work, but not great for gaming. Too many cores for that period, too slow when the CPU becomes relevant.

Need for Speed Carbon (2006) will run poorly as it is single threaded and probably deserves at least 2.6Ghz CPU. Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) runs ok on 2.2-2.4Ghz single core as long as reflection update rate is set to low (overloads CPU). Test Drive Unlimited (2006) will run poorly as well. It needs a fast dual core.

8800 GT is not sufficient for Crysis. On 2.4Ghz AMD X2 CPU it runs at about 27 average fps in benchmark (Re: Socket 939 dual core build. Decisions, decisions.... ). My 2.4Ghz single core with GTX 275 runs at about 30 average fps, but with lower mins. 8800 GT, 9800 GT will also be affected by bumpgate.

Intel E8600 + GTX 480/580/660/760 would make for a great Windows XP machine. It took Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz to match it.

The fastest dual-core CPU prior to the Crysis demo coming out in October 2007 would have been the E6850, and QX6850 for quad-cores (both 3.00 GHz and both retailing in late summer ‘07). Back then, the E6850 was many times cheaper ($266) than the QX6850 ($999), so it was much more difficult to decide on whether to bet on dual-cores still lasting years into the future compared to the then-underutilized and power-hungrier quad-core parts. An increasing number of games after ‘07 started being made with 3-core (or higher) processors in mind, but plenty of early 2010s games are still largely sensitive to higher clocks and don’t benefit super-much from more than two cores. Certainly not as much as from raw GPU power! Battlefield 3 and onward, however, are a slightly different story…

It’s worth keeping in mind that pretty much everything in 2007, except for Crysis, ran perfectly fine on the 8800 GT/GTX. Part of the fun of using a period-correct GPU — as opposed to future GPUs — for Crysis is that it gives you an idea of how out-of-this-world nuts that game really was, as compared everything else on market in ‘07! Besides, it’s pretty satisfying to tweak away and attempt finding the sweet-spot between looks and performance (or maybe I’m just weird). It’s also an incredibly resolution-sensitive game, so expect to play it at 1024x768 (give or take) even on top-of-the-line cards of that time if you desire better frame-rates!