Nice plan!

What graphics resolution will you be playing at?

And what games? Maybe list a few...

I found that at 1920 x 1080 resolution, you quickly need a beastly graphics card, which rules out AGP platform straight away. Something around a GeForce 8 or 9 should work well.

I've had good experiences with nForce 4. Very stable, solid SATA controller, no complaints.

Which resolution i dont know yet. I think that back in the days i used 1024x768 regular.. I really dont know if switching to 1920 x 1080 would be a good idea in the first place, because maybe some games could get in trouble i think.. Because 1920 x 1080 wasnt the native resolution back then. But iam also think to go that way around GeForce 8 or 9, and or maybe one or two series later perhaps if i see that it would needed.

I think that to downside of the earlier board would be the older previous versions of pci-express (like version 1.0 and 1.1) I think it would probably recommend to get a pci-express 2.0 board instead. I really like to hook up a nice SATA III pci-e x4 controller to get some faster storage / controller going.. SATA II would just nice to hook up some older harddisk, but for connecting an SSD i would definitive go for using an Sata III controller instead.

Also you said in the farcry topic, when max out on resolution, that you recommended to go for a later motherboard with faster cpu (cpu would be bottlenecked). So i think about that too as well.

Most games i really want to play where from the windows xp period (thats why i going make this system) I cant give you the whole list of games i want to play, because i dont have one here. But when i think on, that i want to go play; Half-life 2, farming simulator 2011 perhaps if it could, return to castle of wolfen stein, battlefield 2, Call of duty II, serious sam I, II, III, simcity 4, Quake 4, Doom III, Farcry 1, Older GTAs, and more..

Maybe it could that i mentioned some game pre 2009, but those i have an other older system here where i want to run this games on.. I really have to see if its needed Windows XP or windows vista or windows 7.

I might try a run on the n-force 4 board to try it out, but iam affraid that pci-express 1.1 would be the disappointment if i want to have some seriouser controller in this system.

Before suggesting anything let me tell you my XP experiences first. My first XP box was an AMD socket 754 with Asus K8N-E deluxe board, 3200+ CPU, 2GB RAM, a GeForce 6800 256Mb display card and other necessary trivia. It goes like that till mid 2009 when I built something new (Core2 quad 9550, Asus P5Q Premium, 4GB RAM, Asus GTS250 512MB display card). I'm still using this machine with slight upgrades (a BD RW drive, an Asus GTX 560 Ti, bigger HDDs, etc.) and until the summer of 2013, it was also an XP machine.

The first machine I told you, have been relegated to "secondary/backup" PC status, and also it is still something I use, and my only XP box, (after updating the C2Q to Windows 7 in 2013). But not like the newer rig, I continuously updated this older one, with the second hand parts I found.
- Display card downgraded to FX6200 after FX6800 blown
- CPU upgraded to 3700+
- RAM upgraded to 3GB (board max)
- Display card upgraded to first a 512 MB HD3650, than a 1GB HD3650
- Motherboard upgraded to Asus K8N4-E Deluxe and display card upgraded to Geforce GTS 250 1GB
- Motherboard upgraded to Asus A8N-SLI Premium, RAM to 4GB, and CPU to X2 3800+

So, based on the experience I had, my suggestion to you:

- If you want an XP beast, which can churn out anything you will throw at it, then go for the newest hardware having still XP support/drivers. I mean not even Core2 Quad, Phenom II, but much newer. To say the truth, I really don't see the point with this one. Such a machine can be considered as "daily rig", can run Windows 7 easily and happily, and can play all titles even the modern ones with ease (providing a good display card is also on board).

- If you want a bit of nostalgia and excitement, I suggest socket 939 is way to go. The board you mentioned, A8N-SLI is a very solid one. For display, when I also asked the same question here sometime ago, mentioning that I'm a nvidia guy and like some sort of overkill, people suggested something with Nvidia G92 (8800, 9600, 9800, GTS250, etc.) and I'm actually very pleased with my current GTS250.

To say the truth, I don't consider an XP gaming machine as a practical thing. I'm not a deep core player, but had no experiences of any games yet which runs in XP but not in Windows 7, especially none of my Steam or GOG titles (250+ in total). This certainly includes Half-life 2, Return to Castle of Wolfenstein, Call of Duty II, Serious Sam, Simcity 4, Doom III, and Farcry. If any of my games can played in my Windows 7 machine, then I choose to do just that. My XP rig is just a nostalgic side project for me, not a video game platform.

Is there anyone who can give me more advice on which OS to install.. i have both windows xp as windows vista here.. I know that windows vista is saver to use..

Solid advice tayyare!

AFAIK Intel goes up to S1155, AMD FX990 gear also still supported.

Robin4 wrote:

Is there anyone who can give me more advice on which OS to install.. i have both windows xp as windows vista here.. I know that windows vista is saver to use..

Well Windows OSes generally come in two sorts, the DOS type (Windows 98, Windows ME and earlier), and the NT type (Windows 2000, Windows XP, and later). Older games only play nicely with the former, and newer games only play nicely with the latter. And games that were created during that transitional period between the two types play nicely with both. What I mean by play nicely, is natively, without the need for any crazy workarounds.

So it really depends, on what end do you want the flexibility to lie? There's always dual-booting though.

I would build a socket 939 system running a single G92 Geforce 8800GTS 512. You dont build a system like this for the software it lets you run, you build it so you can tinker with it!

My advise has always been: for windows vista or higher the minimum is a dualcore machine with 2gb ram. What this means by my standard is: anything lower is a windows xp machine.

I like to use barton athlon xp cpu's (and geforce 6/7) for xp since it is what i used the most back then. Athlon64 and geforce 8800 or higher is beast.

My concerns is more about get this system secure to use on the internet.(muliplayer games as task)(maybe there is still a battlefield II server online) As i said earlier iam not intended to make this my regular main pc, also i wont doing bank accounting or 100% websurfing..
The main task would be to run windows xp games on it, but on the secure way.. So i can use it for multiplayer also.. Like to install steam and using GOG.com games..
About the hardware i really dont care much if i cant do anything with first period hardware. Because an n-force 4 doesnt not have much pci-express slot.. For more newer games i always can user a better system for it.

If i would use the system only for offline, the best way would be just install an installation of windows xp.. (so security dont bother me much)

But i want to use this system for offline and online.. I really dont save any important information on it.. But i really like to get hacked..

I really like to know, if i would install 8GB of memory (for virtualizing) and would install an 32-bit version of vista, i know that the system only would see 4GB of memory.. Would it be possible if i install virtualizing software that i can allocate the remainder of the other 4GB of memory?

Robin4 wrote:

My concerns is more about get this system secure to use on the internet.(muliplayer games as task)(maybe there is still a battlefield II server online)

Why don't you find out what games still have an online presence, and then decide what you need? Any game that still requires an XP machine with a particular configuration in order to be played is likely to have a very, very small online community.

I really like to know, if i would install 8GB of memory (for virtualizing) and would install an 32-bit version of vista, i know that the system only would see 4GB of memory.. Would it be possible if i install virtualizing software that i can allocate the remainder of the other 4GB of memory?

No, virtualization does not work that way. Also, it would be more like 3.5 GB of memory.

Skyscraper wrote:

I would build a socket 939 system running a single G92 Geforce 8800GTS 512. You dont build a system like this for the software it lets you run, you build it so you can tinker with it!

Nicely worded!..🤣

philscomputerlab wrote:

Solid advice tayyare!

AFAIK Intel goes up to S1155, AMD FX990 gear also still supported.

😊

meljor wrote:

My advise has always been: for windows vista or higher the minimum is a dualcore machine with 2gb ram. What this means by my standard is: anything lower is a windows xp machine.

I like to use barton athlon xp cpu's (and geforce 6/7) for xp since it is what i used the most back then. Athlon64 and geforce 8800 or higher is beast.

Try running an updated installation of XP SP3 with a current browser and other software on a lowy s754 Athlon 64 with 512-768MB RAM. It'll be far from beast, on the "barely acceptable" side of things. 🤣

GeorgeMan wrote:

meljor wrote:

My advise has always been: for windows vista or higher the minimum is a dualcore machine with 2gb ram. What this means by my standard is: anything lower is a windows xp machine.

I like to use barton athlon xp cpu's (and geforce 6/7) for xp since it is what i used the most back then. Athlon64 and geforce 8800 or higher is beast.

Try running an updated installation of XP SP3 with a current browser and other software on a lowy s754 Athlon 64 with 512-768MB RAM. It'll be far from beast, on the "barely acceptable" side of things. 🤣

I completely agree with that. My previous XP setup (just upgraded to 939 dual core 3800+, 4GB) was a socket 754 3700+ with 3GB of RAM and fully updated XP SP3, and it was only "acceptable as a occasional spare PC" when it comes to daily jobs (MS office, internet, ACDsee/Paintshop Pro, etc.) And I'm comparing it only to a 2009 core2 duo system, not any new fancy systems. Today, I never think ANY generally usable XP system would be ok with less than a couple of GBs RAM.

Skyscraper wrote:

I would build a socket 939 system running a single G92 Geforce 8800GTS 512. You dont build a system like this for the software it lets you run, you build it so you can tinker with it!

I dont think if you want to play farcry on higher settings, it could cope with these slower processors.

It is nice to have a nforce 4 system, but there are some limitations on.

One issue with XP gaming is that many PC milestone games from that era, ran fine on a typical 17" or 19" monitor. But playing at 1600 x 1200 or Full HD, the cards from that era are quickly reaching their limits. Benchmarks is fine, but if you actually play Doom 3, Far Cry, FEAR and reach some of the more taxing levels, the situation changes a bit 😀

Something else you will find is performance with two cores. I read a few launch reviews, and the usual message is that two cores does bugger all. But when I did a few tests, I found these games benefit greatly from a second core. The hardware, or software, simply didn't show this.

I find a 7900 GTX simply not up to the task. A 8800GT and one of it's many offspring does much better. I believe the GTS 250 1GB is the last / best card like that. Been chasing a cheap one for a while...
They are old enough to support period correctish drivers and reasonibly easy to obtain. For value gamers, the 9600GT is great. Not far behind the 8800GT, which surprised me a bit. It's more powerful than I thought.

The later cards like the 8800GTX 512, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+ all had much better coolers.

I don't know about the 400 series. I've got an old 460 768MB, but never done anything with XP (yet).

If you are worried about performance at 1920x1200 with AA and stuff get a Geforce GTX 285, its the fastest of the Tesla cards but a GTS 250 1GB as Phil suggests should be enough.

CPU wise even a single core Socket-939 CPU like the Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHZ should be enough for any XP-era game.

Skyscraper wrote:

If you are worried about performance at 1920x1200 with AA and stuff get a Geforce GTX 285, its the fastest of the Tesla cards but a GTS 250 1GB as Phil suggests should be enough.

CPU wise even a single core Socket-939 CPU like the Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHZ should be enough for any XP-era game.

285? Nice, will keep it in the back of my mind in case something pops up.

Regarding the processor, I've done a bit of testing, but not enough to make up my mind / publish something. But my gut would want something faster than that 😵

philscomputerlab wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

If you are worried about performance at 1920x1200 with AA and stuff get a Geforce GTX 285, its the fastest of the Tesla cards but a GTS 250 1GB as Phil suggests should be enough.

CPU wise even a single core Socket-939 CPU like the Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHZ should be enough for any XP-era game.

285? Nice, will keep it in the back of my mind in case something pops up.

Regarding the processor, I've done a bit of testing, but not enough to make up my mind / publish something. But my gut would want something faster than that 😵

Well its always nice to have some headroom 😀. The FX 57 and FX 60 is expensive though so if going for Socket-939 a better option is making sure the CPU your buying is a San Diego core and overclock it to 2.8 GHz which 90+% of the San Diegos can do without increasing the voltage, at least the higher bins. The dual cores have some timing issues (that never bothered me) so its perhaps best to avoid those.

The Geforce GTX 285 is nice as it isnt as power hungry as the GTX 280 and performs even better! It needs more power than a GTS 250 though.