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First post, by Robin4

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I want to build an windows XP compatible games machine.. The time period of supported games wouldnt be to big.. Because i know that some games in the year 2000 till 2002 could be having problems running on a windows 7 OS. In addition, I also have a faster system thats running windows 7 32-bit . This system could easilly running some windows xp games from the year 2006 and later.. But for this system i cant decide to go for an AGP base or taking the pci-express route.. Because when going for pci-express, then some games could have some graphical problems, because they would expect to find an AGP base system instead

As example, i know that Age of empires II could have some graphical errors in the game when running this game on an pci-express based system.
Its not intended to running AOE II on this windows xp system, but there can be some games that could may give the same symptoms.

I have some AGP stuff laying here, and i know that faster AGP cards could be some hard to get ( and wont find any good 7 or 8 series on AGP) And also knowing that the 6800 series was almost the fastest AGP card to get..

Philscomputerlab tested the game Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow recent.. The conclusion was that a faster graphics card was profitable.

I also think that a geforce 7 or an 8 graphics card would be a better choice (because of HDR) that the 6series wont support at all.

I like to know can i get in some graphical problems with earlier games thats supporting windows XP? ( iam not intended to using windows 98se alongside of windows xp)

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 1 of 5, by swaaye

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I don't think I've seen PCIe specific problems.....

Reply 2 of 5, by Gamecollector

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Supporting WinXp = DX 8.1 or later. Almost all such games work ok with all compatible videocards.
IIRC the only serious trouble with newer videocards is the VRAM size detection. 512MB/1/2/3/4 GB is too much for some games and is detected as the negative value.
But - there are serious troubles with DX5-DX7 games especially if you use an universal shaders videocard (Radeon HD2xxx+/Geforce 7xxx+).

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 3 of 5, by obobskivich

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From my experiences:

- I've never seen a game actually care if a graphics card is integrated, PCI, AGP, or PCIe. The closest any game seems to come is if it pulls the adapter's ID string and that string includes something like "PCI Edition" or whatever, but that does nothing for the actual guts (its just a "friendly name" for the user). Some games, like The Sims 2, actually reference that ID string against a developer-provided list, and try to automatically adjust IQ settings based on it - this can be troublesome if the card you have either doesn't exist on that list (generally if its much newer than the game), or isn't reported in a format the developer expected (e.g. some Radeon cards will not report their exact model number, but will report instead a broader value, so instead of "Radeon 9800XT" you get "Radeon 9800 series" or some-such).

- I've successfully run plenty of 2000-2002 games on PCIe cards, including Radeon HD 4870X2 (which is a dual-GPU DX10.1 card). The bigger compatibility issues I've seen with PCIe systems is with multi-core CPUs, especially the first-gen AMD X2 series (which have a timing bug). IME this will be a problem even in Windows 2000/XP, as it's an issue with how the game behaves on an SMP system. In Windows XP and above running the game from the CLI (or a bat file) with the start command and /affinity 0 may be a solution (Windows 2000 does not have /affinity, but the affinity mask can be set thru Task Manager once the process is in-flight (some games may not like this)).

- Cards with of lots of memory have never given me a problem with various games. 4870X2 has 1GB per GPU and was no fuss, nor is running my 128MB GeForce FX with games from the mid-90s that expect a 4-8MB card, nor has my 4GB Radeon R9 been any trouble with games that will run in 7x64.

As far as "best AGP card" -

- GeForce 6800 series is the fastest native AGP card ever made, specifically the 6800 Ultra or 6800 Ultra Extreme.

- The GeForce 7800 series are bridged; they're PCIe chips with a PCIe<->AGP bridge. This doesn't matter to software (based on my experience with ATi bridged cards, at least), but some motherboards/BIOSes may not like the bridge - the worst case I've seen with this, on my X1600Pro, is some random flickering when booting FreeDOS or similar, but nothing has locked up or broken. Within Windows it has been fine. PCIe cards with bridges (e.g. dual GPU cards) tend to be bigger sources of compatibility problems, at least early ones - both GeForce 7950GX2 and Wildcat REALiZM 800 (two of the earliest dual-GPU PCIe cards) are finnicky when it comes to compatibility with motherboards and such. However if the board can boot the card and run stable with it etc, games seem to work fine beyond that. nVidia has a list of tested motherboards for 7950GX2 (here: http://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce_gx2_sbios/us.asp), it isn't absolute, but it's a good starting place. I'm not aware of a similar list for the Wildcat (but I can't see why you'd want that card for a gaming system).

- There is no AGP GeForce 8. The GeForce 7 represented the end of nVidia AGP support. ATi has a few odd cards past then, like the 3650, 4350, and 4650. None of them will likely offer significantly higher performance over something like a 6800, and in many cases will be inferior, as they generally have lower fill-rates. Their shader throughput is probably higher, but if we're talking about DX5-7 games that don't rely on shaders, that's going to be mostly irrelevant.

Gamecollector wrote:

But - there are serious troubles with DX5-DX7 games especially if you use an universal shaders videocard (Radeon HD2xxx+/Geforce 7xxx+).

GeForce 7 (G70) is not a unified shader part - it's fixed-function DX9 SM3.0, and based upon NV40. They're quite similar. GeForce 8 (G80) introduced DirectX 10 and unified shaders for nVidia. And like I said above, I've not experienced much fuss with USM parts and older titles - this is across multiple generations too. Driver versioning can be important here though, as a game or some feature in a game may have been broken in some newer update.

Robin4 wrote:

I also think that a geforce 7 or an 8 graphics card would be a better choice (because of HDR) that the 6series wont support at all.

GeForce 6 supports SM3.0 and HDR. It will not, however, run HDR + AA well together in many applications due to a quirk in how the pixel pipes are arranged. GeForce 7 addressed this to an extent, but performance still takes a large hit if HDR + AA is engaged. Many older games that implemented HDR early (e.g. Oblivion) will also lock out HDR + AA due to performance/quality problems within their engines (you can force HDR + AA in Oblivion via the .ini file, at least on newer cards, but there are anomalies that do not exist in Fallout 3 (which is built upon an improved version of the same engine)).

Games from 2000-2002, however, will not implement HDR. It requires SM2.0+, and many implementations require SM3.0.

Robin4 wrote:

I want to build an windows XP compatible games machine.. The time period of supported games wouldnt be to big.. Because i know that some games in the year 2000 till 2002 could be having problems running on a windows 7 OS. In addition, I also have a faster system thats running windows 7 32-bit . This system could easilly running some windows xp games from the year 2006 and later.. But for this system i cant decide to go for an AGP base or taking the pci-express route.. Because when going for pci-express, then some games could have some graphical problems, because they would expect to find an AGP base system instead

What I did for a build here, was a Netburst Xeon and a GeForce FX. It has more than enough performance for the odd DX5-8 game that won't play nice with 7x64, and then DX9+ titles are run in 7 on my modern system(s) (and I've yet to encounter one that actually does not work - Phil documented FarCry having some issues with water reflections in Vista+, but as far as I know the game is otherwise playable).

As example, i know that Age of empires II could have some graphical errors in the game when running this game on an pci-express based system.
Its not intended to running AOE II on this windows xp system, but there can be some games that could may give the same symptoms.

The "HD remaster" of AOE2 runs 100/100 on every modern DX11+ card I've tried it on. May be worth looking into as opposed to fussing with the original.

Reply 4 of 5, by candle_86

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if your goal is 2000-2002 get a second hand P4 AGP system, grab a used AGP card, I've seen 9600pro/6600 256mb AGP cards dirt cheap and be happy.

Reply 5 of 5, by PhilsComputerLab

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Pandora Tomorrow came out mid 2004 or so. It's important to realize that during this period, computing and graphics performance exploded and nearly doubled every year. So it's critical to know what kind of games you want to play.

The more apart game release date, and graphics card / driver are, the more possible it is to encounter issues. But the vast majority of games won't have issues. Many games I tried work with the final driver available from Nvidia. Other games have issues, like in BF2142, AA is broken after a certain driver number or Bio Shock stutters.

So what I'm saying is that there is never one fits all, and it's always a compromise.

Personally I would go with a PCIe system. You can choose great value cards such as the 6600 GT, 7600 GT, 9600GT, depending on how much power you need.

If you're looking for older games, then I would go for a Pentium 4 system with Intel chipset and a GeForce Ti or FX card (5800 or 5900 series).

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