Judging by the games, you don't really need a fast GPU. A 8800GT should be enough for your games. Any midrange card should also be good enough. A GTX 650 for example.
Why such an obsession with AA though? How would a game like MDK look with great amounts of AA? Even a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 should be able to pull that off hehehe.

I can't help you with the video card, don't know enough about the topic...

One thing I do know is that later cards only go back with the drivers for a short period if that makes sense. The 8800GT is a decent card, 8800GTX level performance for little money. You can check the Nvidia download site and maybe create a list or timetine with what cards had support with what driver versions?

But for the Sound Card. The latest and IMO best EAX card is the PCIe Titanium. Last cards to support the XP. The Titanium HD DOES NOT support XP and neither do the new Recon 3D and Z series...

As for CPU and too fast, don't worry about it! Most mainboards these days allow you to disable cores and lower the multiplier. I had a AMD mainboard with a Phenom II 555 and you could configure it as a single core running at 400 MHz 😀

This can likely be controlled via software while running Windows as well.

F2bnp wrote:

Judging by the games, you don't really need a fast GPU. A 8800GT should be enough for your games.

It seems 8800GT is often considered as most "period-correct" video card for XP era, but I'm looking to push the bar further - the same reason why I'm buying 6800GT for my Windows 98 system.

F2bnp wrote:

Any midrange card should also be good enough. A GTX 650 for example.

Hold on, the GTX 650 is a new generation card, isn't it? So GTX 6xx series works well for Windows XP? If GTX 650 works, then so does GTX 690, which is preferable for my design goals.

How about GTX 7xx series? Does it still work well with XP? Do they have XP drivers? How about backward compatibility with DirectX 9? New generation GeForce work pretty well with DX9, don't they?

F2bnp wrote:

Why such an obsession with AA though? How would a game like MDK look with great amounts of AA? Even a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 should be able to pull that off hehehe.

Actually, MDK's low resolution (640x480) is exactly the reason why I aim for AA. At higher resolution, jagged edges are less visible, so AA may not be really important. But at low resolution, jagged edges are quite visible that it needs AA. Yes, AA may make things blurred, but I always prefer blur than jaggies.

Besides, I'm just obsessed with AA. 😉

I'm also looking for SLI card, preferably single-card SLI like GTX 590 or 690. The SLI will be used for one purpose and one purpose only: FSAA, that is.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I can't help you with the video card, don't know enough about the topic...

One thing I do know is that later cards only go back with the drivers for a short period if that makes sense. The 8800GT is a decent card, 8800GTX level performance for little money. You can check the Nvidia download site and maybe create a list or timetine with what cards had support with what driver versions?

I just found a good news: GeForce GTX Titan actually supports Windows XP! It also supports TXAA and FXAA. 😀

Certified for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, or Windows XP: Yes.

I just wonder though: is there any known backward compatibility problems with DirectX 9? Also, newest GeForce lines do not abandon SSAA, do they not?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But for the Sound Card. The latest and IMO best EAX card is the PCIe Titanium. Last cards to support the XP. The Titanium HD DOES NOT support XP and neither do the new Recon 3D and Z series...

Ah, then I should go with earlier (but still latest) sound card that runs on XP.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

As for CPU and too fast, don't worry about it! Most mainboards these days allow you to disable cores and lower the multiplier. I had a AMD mainboard with a Phenom II 555 and you could configure it as a single core running at 400 MHz 😀

This can likely be controlled via software while running Windows as well.

So should I better go with AMD or Intel? I'm tempted to use AMD, but I wonder what AMD motherboards would accept latest GeForce, come with plenty of slots, and still have XP drivers.

There will be absolutely some backwards compatibility issue. Just a matter of what game and testing enough 😀

The latest X-Fi to support XP are the PCIe Titanium. They also sound fantastic and have zero issues. Love them.

AMD or Intel, both allow disabling cores and lowering the multiplier. But this depends on the BIOS implementation of course. My current ASUS does allow disabling HT and configure the number of cores, but has no option to change the multiplier. But many other boards do. Likely a "tweaker" or "OC" board will have all the BIOS options 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

There will be absolutely some backwards compatibility issue. Just a matter of what game and testing enough 😀

Hmmm, I see.

Would single SLI card like 590 or 690 need SLI-supporting mobo?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The latest X-Fi to support XP are the PCIe Titanium. They also sound fantastic and have zero issues. Love them.

Ah, thanks! Will go for it. 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

AMD or Intel, both allow disabling cores and lowering the multiplier. But this depends on the BIOS implementation of course...

[/quote]
Which one is better when slowed down?

I would skip SLI/CF altogether to be honest.

Intel or AMD doesn't really matter that much IMO. A Pheonm II or Athlon II will be just as good as a Core 2 Duo or i series. Intel might be cheaper to source however. More units sold and all of that.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I would skip SLI/CF altogether to be honest.

Why? I thought most problems associated with SLI/CF are related to SFR and AFR. Since I'm going to use neither (only use the configuration for AA), would it be problem-free?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Intel or AMD doesn't really matter that much IMO. A Pheonm II or Athlon II will be just as good as a Core 2 Duo or i series. Intel might be cheaper to source however. More units sold and all of that.

I see.

Well I may still be using i5 since it comes with four cores instead of two (necessary for games like Falcon 4.0), but I'll underclock it.

F2bnp wrote:

Why such an obsession with AA though?

Flight sims and/or serious racing sims is my guess hehe....

On Topic: Fastest XP rig? thankfully this is a question with a happy ending so to speak - you can get there by many routes and get 99% of what you want with only being 75% correct. My own version was an over-clocked AMD 555BE @ 4ghz on air, a pair of HD 5770's on an inexpensive Asus 790 EVO board - not the last word in performance but a *killer* XP setup. The only issue was the occasional need to limit a game to 1 CPU core, or disable Crossfire. A single HD 5870 would be just as fine and spare you the Crossfire related issues...

Strike Fighters series I, or rFactor, maxed out 100-150+ FPS. Stalker no problem. Decent but not stellar with Rise of Flight/DCS A-10 Warthog - but they suffer without the Dx10 stuff that makes them run faster and smoother.

Please don't tell me you are considering getting a Titan to enable insane amounts of AA in old games...
At least, get a GTX 780, half the price, only slightly slower... The only reason I see you wouldn't pick a card like 8800GT is that it lacks support for some newer AA methods such as TXAA that you referred to. But what's the point on getting the fastest card?

Critical fyi - D3D 10 and newer cards have horrible 16-bit color quality. They don't do dithering. This is very bad for any games without 32-bit color mode.

I don't know if you have that opinion that certain games just look "cheap" with maximum framerate, but for some strange reason Nvidia's FPS limiter doesn't work in XP even though it's in the driver. Also if you want to play 640x480-only games, that resolution is broken since a certain version and you will need to create a custom resolution, which only works for one color depth at the time though. Found all this out by myself 😀

As for video card, as I've written in another thread, why not go with a 7900 GTX? Could be a sweet spot for some old games... GF8+ is well known to be finnicky and sometimes it displays only garbage+the aforementioned dithering issue. On the ATi/AMD side it's probably similar, HD2000 is a similar break...

Oh, and finally about TXAA: this needs to be requested by the application, so not exactly what you will be using with old games 🤣 look into supersampling, downsampling et al...

I'd say that any midrange graphics card released within the last 5-6 years should EASILY be able to run any game at 640x480 or 800x600 with any level of AA you'd wanna throw at it. A Titan will run most recent games at 1080p with AA, or a 3x1080p (triple screens) without AA, which is pretty much what it was intended for. Totally overkill and waste of money for a project like this. If the point is "I want to put a Titan in an XP system", then go ahead, I'm sure it's possible, but I doubt it'll be the best solution.

tincup wrote:

On Topic: Fastest XP rig? thankfully this is a question with a happy ending so to speak - you can get there by many routes and get 99% of what you want with only being 75% correct. My own version was an over-clocked AMD 555BE @ 4ghz on air, a pair of HD 5770's on an inexpensive Asus 790 EVO board - not the last word in performance but a *killer* XP setup. The only issue was the occasional need to limit a game to 1 CPU core, or disable Crossfire. A single HD 5870 would be just as fine and spare you the Crossfire related issues..

Interesting. I also consider Radeon 5xxx and above. Does the series (and above) support SSAA? Do they have problem with older games? How about 16 bit color games? Do newer Radeons dither better than newer GeForces?

swaaye wrote:

Critical fyi - D3D 10 and newer cards have horrible 16-bit color quality. They don't do dithering. This is very bad for any games without 32-bit color mode.

Does it apply only to GeForce or Radeon as well?

F2bnp wrote:

Please don't tell me you are considering getting a Titan to enable insane amounts of AA in old games...
At least, get a GTX 780, half the price, only slightly slower... The only reason I see you wouldn't pick a card like 8800GT is that it lacks support for some newer AA methods such as TXAA that you referred to. But what's the point on getting the fastest card?

Maybe not, but if Titan still supports Windows XP, then so does previous generation cards like GTX 580 and 480.

d1stortion wrote:

I don't know if you have that opinion that certain games just look "cheap" with maximum framerate, but for some strange reason Nvidia's FPS limiter doesn't work in XP even though it's in the driver.

Me? No, why? The greater the framerate, the better.

d1stortion wrote:

Also if you want to play 640x480-only games, that resolution is broken since a certain version and you will need to create a custom resolution, which only works for one color depth at the time though. Found all this out by myself 😀

Interesting. How did it happen, and with what card? 3D in 640x480 still works well in GeForce 310M, and it is relatively new series (it's launched in 2010, so it belongs in the same generation with GTX 3xx series, and newer than 8800). At which generation lower resolution starts to break?

d1stortion wrote:

As for video card, as I've written in another thread, why not go with a 7900 GTX? Could be a sweet spot for some old games... GF8+ is well known to be finnicky and sometimes it displays only garbage+the aforementioned dithering issue. On the ATi/AMD side it's probably similar, HD2000 is a similar break...

Well Radeons before HD 5xxx generation doesn't have SSAA, so their AA may be problematic with older games.

d1stortion wrote:

Oh, and finally about TXAA: this needs to be requested by the application, so not exactly what you will be using with old games 🤣 look into supersampling, downsampling et al...

How about FXAA instead of TXAA?

LunarG wrote:

I'd say that any midrange graphics card released within the last 5-6 years should EASILY be able to run any game at 640x480 or 800x600 with any level of AA you'd wanna throw at it. A Titan will run most recent games at 1080p with AA, or a 3x1080p (triple screens) without AA, which is pretty much what it was intended for. Totally overkill and waste of money for a project like this. If the point is "I want to put a Titan in an XP system", then go ahead, I'm sure it's possible, but I doubt it'll be the best solution.

Actually, I'd rather go to previous generation but still top of the line video card, like GTX 580, instead .

Anyway, here is MDK on GeForce 310M. The 310M is a relatively new video card (2010), certainly newer than GeForce 8800 GT. It has no problem running 640x480 resolution, and it has no problem running non-32 bit color either (is MDK only 256 colors?). So it shows that relatively new generation GeForce doesn't have problem with older games on Windows XP.

The problem is, the 310M is not fast enough. There are choppiness when playing Crimson Skies at 1024x768, for instance.

I wonder if newer generation nVidia cards like 580, 680, or Titan would have backward compatibility problems with such old games. At which point backward compatibility start to break? For example, 16 bit color dithering; at which does it start to break?

Anyway, the AA in the pictures below is not perfect, especially on the third pic, but it was because I was stupidly used CSAA when capturing those images. When I switched to SSAA, the AA noticeably got better - much better.

Relevant thread for the 640x480 issues: 640x480 being output as 656x496

FXAA is post AA. It's meant as a cheap way to get AA without the big performance impact of MSAA etc. It softens the image and causes a loss of sharpness which is OK for games that have that soft, non-realistic look to them. It can't do anything about temporal aliasing (ie movement). It's certainly nothing that you should be concerned with if you want the best IQ.

d1stortion wrote:

Relevant thread for the 640x480 issues: 640x480 being output as 656x496

I see, so it's driver issue instead of hardware issue, yes? However, driver also limits the hardware can be used. For example, if I'm using driver below 185.xx, then I won't be able to use newest GeForce cards.

Anyway, my 310M used 266.58 version, yet I don't see anything wrong with MDK despite it's not 32 bit color.

d1stortion wrote:

FXAA is post AA. It's meant as a cheap way to get AA without the big performance impact of MSAA etc. It softens the image and causes a loss of sharpness which is OK for games that have that soft, non-realistic look to them. It can't do anything about temporal aliasing (ie movement). It's certainly nothing that you should be concerned with if you want the best IQ.

I see, temporal AA doesn't concern me much, by the way.

You guys want a GTX Titan to run MDK, a game that runs at 30 fps in software mode on a Pentium 90, just to destroy an old classic games with "smoothing" effects? And you wonder why I sometimes think you guys have waay to much money and spare time.