There were some Xeons for LGA775, but I don't think E5450 was one of them?
The LGA771 => LGA775 mod requires a bit more than just BIOS mod, see delidded.com for details.
Those Xeons do have a good bang-for-buck ratio if you can go that route (hmmm idk how well suited they are for gaming though).

I'm not the best person to give any gaming advice, but that GPU seems a bit underpowered.
Whether you actually need a quad or not depends heavily on what you want to run. That E8400 isn't actually too bad.
Sure the quads are great for compiling or video encoding etc, but I'm not so sure there's much benefit for games of that era.

I actually already have a Gigabyte EP35-DS3R v2.1 with a Xeon E5450 with the 771 -> 775 mod working as my personal archive/server, if I remember correctly the BIOS required a microcode update.
I've read some of the comments on one of the topics in the page you suggested, and it seems my Asus board is mentioned and does in fact also require the microcode update.

I'm basically just trying to max out the CPU for those games were the CPU might be the bottleneck, and later I'll eventually upgrade the graphics card for those games where the GPU becomes the bottleneck. I'm also going to use it to test out some programs under Virtualbox so the extra 2 cores will surely help.

I installed Windows XP and Windows 7 on the same partition, since I don't want to split the SSD in half. I used nLite to change the "Programs", "Documents and settings" and "Windows" folders to be installed in C:\WinXP plus a registry tweak to move the pagefile to the same folder, that way both Windows can work completely independent.

I have an EP43-DS3L with a Xeon and I was able to find a BIOS that had the Xeon mod so there's likely one out there for you as well, or a tutorial on how to do it yourself if you aren't as trusting as I was.

Nah, I'll try to add the microcode and SLIC 2.1 myself, it's more fun that way, and the board supports recovery BIOS through DVD or flash drive 😉

E8400 is a strong CPU for the time, GeForce 210 is a weak GPU for the time. I'd be surprised if there is any game in existence where the CPU is the bottleneck instead of the video card.

Video cards are worth their weight in gold now but if you were to snag at least a mid-tier DX11 card it would vastly widen the field of games you could run on that system.

johnyept wrote on 2021-07-29, 16:53:

What is the best Core 2 Quad to replace the current CPU, taking the low price in HUGE consideration? I Googled a bit and found the Xeon E5450 3Ghz/1333 FSB for about $/€15 on aliexpress, seems to be a great replacement, but I'm not sure if the BIOS needs to be modded.

What games will these components be most adequate for? Windows XP/7 games up to around 2010? The board says it's DirectX 10 compatible.

I don't think it's necessary to upgrade to a quad core, unless you want to be Win7 and post 2010 games to be the main thing for this PC.

And yes, the weak spot is the GT210. Regarding it's power, the best game-era for that is early-to-mid 2000s. It's more important to upgrade that than the CPU. The E8400 can easily play all 2000s games with triple digit frame rate with a competent graphics card. If you want to be period correct/period adjacent for XP era, then a GTS250, GTX460 or HD5770/6770, if you want something that won't produce as much heat, then GTs450 GDDR5 (imho underrated graphics card), GTX750, HD4770, 7770 or R7-260X.

Thanks for all the input. I know the graphics card is weak, but currently it's impossible to get a better one at a decent price, maybe in a year or so I'll try to buy a GTX750. I'll be using Windows XP and 7, so the system will be limited to at most DirectX 9.0c/11, anything 11.1 and above will be left for a "future retro Windows 10 PC" 😉

Since I'm also going to use this desktop to try out a few things with Virtualbox, I thought upgrading the CPU from 2 to 4 cores for as low as around $/€15 would be a great investment. Upgrading the RAM from 6GB to 8GB is not worth it, and the SSD 120GB + HDD 1TB is more than enough for what it will be used, so CPU and GPU are the only upgrades I'll probably do.

So 3 computers will be my main target:
- first one for Windows 98SE/2K games and a few DOS games under Win98 (currently with a dead motherbard 😒 )
- second one for Windows XP/7 games (this one)
- third one for Windows 10 games and beyond (not in my todo list for now)

johnyept wrote on 2021-07-30, 09:37:

Thanks for all the input. I know the graphics card is weak, but currently it's impossible to get a better one at a decent price, maybe in a year or so I'll try to buy a GTX750.

If there are electronics recycling center not too far away from your residence, try digging through their "collections." I got my functioning Radeon HD 5670 (now on my XP build) and passively-cooled HD 6450 (as a spare / testing control) for NT$100 (US$3.57) each, with 585% and 237% performance boosts than a nVidia 210, respectively, according to TechPowerUp GPU Database.

Even at eBay or other auction sites, used low- to mid-range GF 2/4/600 series and their contemporary Radeon HD 4/5/6000 series are not very expensive, unless you want enthusiast-range and/or newer models like 7 series.

Unfortunately there's no such places like that (that I know of) in Portugal, so I'm limited to online shopping sites or local charity shops (they sell stuff that people give away on the cheap and use the money to help the most needed) who "sometimes" have a computer or two and a few printers/monitors/peripherals, but I don't even go to those since between work and home, I don't have any time and/or patience left to go to such shops.

I don't have nothing against Radeons, I only mentioned the GTX 750 because it was usually available on aliexpress, but since the shortage of semi-conductors, the prices have skyrocketed. I think I have two graphics card at home that may be better than the 210, I'll try to find them over the weekend. Maybe someone will bring me a broken desktop with a good graphics card inside. I most definitely doubt it, but one can only hope. Heck, every hardware I have was given to me other the years, including the once broken laptop I'm typing from which has a few almost unnoticeable scratches on the display and has been my work bench for over four years, so I can't be picky 😉

Well I found the cards, one is a weak AGP, the other is an Asus Radeon EAH4850 512MB, unfortunately it's not working. I remember taking a look with a magnifying glass, and it seemed it was missing a small component, but without high resolution pictures of an identical card, I can't be sure.

I'd go with a low-end GeForce 700-series or 10-series card, preferably with 2GB GDDR and not one that requires a power connection.

johnyept wrote on 2021-07-30, 11:11:

I don't have nothing against Radeons, I only mentioned the GTX 750 because it was usually available on aliexpress...

Beware, there were also fake "GTX 750" cards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq6BYRW2tBI

Ydee wrote on 2021-07-31, 09:50:

Beware, there were also fake "GTX 750" cards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq6BYRW2tBI

Thanks for the info! Coincidentally Youtube suggested as the play next on the right a Phil's video about the same subject 😉
Are there fake ones with 2GB or is it limited to the 1GB version? If I could manage to fix the HD4850 that would no longer be a concern to me...

EDIT: Phil mentions in his video that the memory is also faked, they can report having 2GB or 4GB but only have 1GB.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-07-30, 08:17:

I don't think it's necessary to upgrade to a quad core, unless you want to be Win7 and post 2010 games to be the main thing for this PC.

Yah, fully crunk and with a younger GPU a quad can still play modern stuff at 1080.

The Q6600 is still used by gamers of old games and is considered a good choice. Pair it with some fast dual-channel DDR2 and a solid GPU and you're good to go.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-07-31, 12:41:

Yah, fully crunk and with a younger GPU a quad can still play modern stuff at 1080.

Not all more and more modern games demand instruction sets the Core2 doesn't have and without those the games won't start. And those which do if it's really modern stuff and not 5+ years old, that is only modern compared to a 15 years old Q6600, run slowly with constant stuttering. That CPU is simply too outdated for modern games.

I know older games won't gain much (if at all) with the jump from 2 to 4 cores, but the responsiveness of the machine will certainly gain from it. It's already blazing fast booting Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 x64 with the Samsung SSD, and I know for a fact that the other computer I have with a E5450 is noticeably faster when running CPU intensive programs than my i5-M430 laptop, so the very low cost CPU upgrade is a no brainer.

As for the graphics card upgrade, I would be very grateful if someone with an Asus Radeon EAH4850 512MB PCI-E could take hi-res pictures of the card, either the full card in one picture or split in several pictures, as long as all the components are visible, so I could visually check for differences or missing components.

Well I google EAH4850 and see 4 different cards, might be two PCBs and two cooling variations on each. I have one that I can't even tell if it's an ASUS, that looks a lot like this one, with an aftermarket cooler on it...

🤣 that was such a dumb move on my part, asking people for photos of a graphics card before showing photos of the exact model I have...

That one is very similar to the one I have, the fan connector is further away than mine, so it could be a different revision, and mine doesn't have that black round plastic over the cooler, it was already missing when a friend gave it to me.

Not sure what happened to the bottom of the 2nd picture, my phone is kinda messed up.