Windows XP Old school gaming?

[wdodge0912]

So I'm wanting to build an old school gaming rig with windows XP, so I can play all the old games I have that just dont run right on windows 10. I dont plan to ever hook it up to the internet. they are all old single player games. I know I can just use a virtual machine, but I'd rather have a physical box and stuff for it all.

 

however, I was just a middle school kid back when XP was out, and I dont really know too much about what is supported and such, and what would be decent performance for an XP machine. I want to say when I was playing games (wouldn't say gaming) on it I had a Pentium 4 possibly. I know one  of the few PCs I was handed down was a Dell dimension 2400.

 

anyways, I'm going to try to find used parts, but in the meantime would this run windows XP? tdying to find a good baseline of what performance I should look around for. 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Ka0sGh0sT/saved/GkpGGX

[xriqn]

1 hour ago, wdodge0912 said:

So I'm wanting to build an old school gaming rig with windows XP, so I can play all the old games I have that just dont run right on windows 10. I dont plan to ever hook it up to the internet. they are all old single player games. I know I can just use a virtual machine, but I'd rather have a physical box and stuff for it all.

 

however, I was just a middle school kid back when XP was out, and I dont really know too much about what is supported and such, and what would be decent performance for an XP machine. I want to say when I was playing games (wouldn't say gaming) on it I had a Pentium 4 possibly. I know one  of the few PCs I was handed down was a Dell dimension 2400.

 

anyways, I'm going to try to find used parts, but in the meantime would this run windows XP? tdying to find a good baseline of what performance I should look around for. 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Ka0sGh0sT/saved/GkpGGX

Lucky I still have the first ever computer I used when I was 3 back in 2005. XP pro x86 all day :).

[AskTJ]

Buy an old Dell prebuilt. Chuck an old HD series card in. Add a couple of gigs of ram and your set.

 

Have no idea why buy those components new.

 

Like, $500 for an Athlon, Dual Core system?

 

The Dell prebuilt will run you $150, at most, $200.

[wdodge0912]

58 minutes ago, AskTJ said:

Buy an old Dell prebuilt. Chuck an old HD series card in. Add a couple of gigs of ram and your set.

 

Have no idea why buy those components new.

 

Like, $500 for an Athlon, Dual Core system?

 

The Dell prebuilt will run you $150, at most, $200.

buying an old used machine is probably what I'd do. I just don't know what is overkill, or what the sweet spot would be. If i did have to buy everything new for some reason, I'd go with those parts, but i'm pretty sure they are way overkill for good old XP.  

 

I would like something that uses SATA though, not IDE, just so I can have a small SSD, it won't have much on it, so the extra speed would be real nice

[moonlight-strider]

I'm almost certain that the machine you're looking at for a Windows XP build is far, far too overkill. It really depends on what year span you're wanting to play games in, but almost universally you won't need a machine of that kind of power. I have an Athlon XP build with 1.5GB of DDR memory, and it runs a lot of the games I want it to run just fine.

 

Time-accurate parts are far less expensive than more modern ones, and you could probably build a really decent time-accurate AMD Windows XP rig for less than $200USD. Of course, I don't think these are parts you can look at with PC Part Picker. Instead, you'll have to go to eBay to find stuff like that. Here's a baseline build I'd recommend for a ~2006 Windows XP rig:

 

Motherboard: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-RS480M-Motherboard/142892286368?epid=1825421253&hash=item21450b41a0%3Ag%3AZwkAAOSw~AhbY3bJ&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+motherboard&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0

 

CPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Athlon-64-3400-socket-754-desktop-CPU-2-4-GHz-ADA3400AEP4AX-NewCastle/283073888544?epid=74061465&hash=item41e884c120%3Ag%3A5XQAAOSwsB9WD~c~&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+athlon+64&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

 

RAM: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atech-2GB-Kit-Lot-2x-1GB-DDR-Desktop-PC3200-3200-400-400mhz-184-pin-Memory-Ram/321872623246?hash=item4af11a768e

 

GPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-SAPPHIRE-Radeon-X800-XL-256MB-DVI-VGA-TV-out-PCI-Express/362390591778?hash=item5460299922%3Ag%3A9QYAAOSwCyFbUOad&_sacat=0&_nkw=ATI+Radeon+X800XL+256MB&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

 

Of course, these are all really example pieces. They can be interchanged for roughly similar parts and get the job done the same. That build would cost something $92.61 USD, and would almost guarantee good performance for a wide, wide range of Windows XP era games, including more intensive titles such as Doom 3. 

 

Also, if you're going for a Dell pre-built, DO NOT use the Dimension 2400. It was their budget series of desktops, and as such lacks both PCI-E and AGP standards. Rather, get yourself an OptiPlex GX280 or similar model. Of course, getting a Dell Pre-built is not preferable to building your own whatsoever, in that it will be slower and harder to work with.

[wdodge0912]

1 hour ago, moonlight-strider said:

I'm almost certain that the machine you're looking at for a Windows XP build is far, far too overkill. It really depends on what year span you're wanting to play games in, but almost universally you won't need a machine of that kind of power. I have an Athlon XP build with 1.5GB of DDR memory, and it runs a lot of the games I want it to run just fine.

 

Time-accurate parts are far less expensive than more modern ones, and you could probably build a really decent time-accurate AMD Windows XP rig for less than $200USD. Of course, I don't think these are parts you can look at with PC Part Picker. Instead, you'll have to go to eBay to find stuff like that. Here's a baseline build I'd recommend for a ~2006 Windows XP rig:

 

Motherboard: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-RS480M-Motherboard/142892286368?epid=1825421253&hash=item21450b41a0%3Ag%3AZwkAAOSw~AhbY3bJ&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+motherboard&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0

 

CPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Athlon-64-3400-socket-754-desktop-CPU-2-4-GHz-ADA3400AEP4AX-NewCastle/283073888544?epid=74061465&hash=item41e884c120%3Ag%3A5XQAAOSwsB9WD~c~&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+athlon+64&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

 

RAM: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atech-2GB-Kit-Lot-2x-1GB-DDR-Desktop-PC3200-3200-400-400mhz-184-pin-Memory-Ram/321872623246?hash=item4af11a768e

 

GPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-SAPPHIRE-Radeon-X800-XL-256MB-DVI-VGA-TV-out-PCI-Express/362390591778?hash=item5460299922%3Ag%3A9QYAAOSwCyFbUOad&_sacat=0&_nkw=ATI+Radeon+X800XL+256MB&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

 

Of course, these are all really example pieces. They can be interchanged for roughly similar parts and get the job done the same. That build would cost something $92.61 USD, and would almost guarantee good performance for a wide, wide range of Windows XP era games, including more intensive titles such as Doom 3. 

 

Also, if you're going for a Dell pre-built, DO NOT use the Dimension 2400. It was their budget series of desktops, and as such lacks both PCI-E and AGP standards. Rather, get yourself an OptiPlex GX280 or similar model. Of course, getting a Dell Pre-built is not preferable to building your own whatsoever, in that it will be slower and harder to work with.

what if I could find a Core 2 Duo E8600 and a GTX 460 or HD7770? would that still be overkill?

 

one thing I want to do, is have a period correct case, but not from a prebuilt. I wouldn't be opposed to have to modify the case.  but first I have to find a list of cases that were popular back then.

[moonlight-strider]

Like I said, it really depends on what year range you want. For something from 2006, the Core2Duo and GPUs would be way too much. For any Windows XP rig, both of those GPUs would be out of the year range of Windows XP gaming. The GTX 460 was a 2010 card, and the HD7770 was a 2012 card.

 

I can give hardware recommendations from 2002-2004, 2005-2007, and 2008 to 2009. Once you start getting past that, it gets fuzzy as Windows 7 was released around that time and would be better off for hardware from that era.

 

Like I said, it heavily depends on the year range of the games you want to play on it. Keep in mind that a 2007 rig could still play games from 2002, and so on, so it depends on the newest game you want to play on it.

 

For cases, one thing you could do is go to https://archive.org/web/ and go to tigerdirect from the era you want to see cases from. So if you want a 2006 case, you could go to the case section and find one or two, and then search that same model of case on eBay and see how much it's selling for today.

Edited August 3, 2018 by moonlight-strider
Additional information

[wdodge0912]

10 hours ago, moonlight-strider said:

Like I said, it really depends on what year range you want. For something from 2006, the Core2Duo and GPUs would be way too much. For any Windows XP rig, both of those GPUs would be out of the year range of Windows XP gaming. The GTX 460 was a 2010 card, and the HD7770 was a 2012 card.

 

I can give hardware recommendations from 2002-2004, 2005-2007, and 2008 to 2009. Once you start getting past that, it gets fuzzy as Windows 7 was released around that time and would be better off for hardware from that era.

 

Like I said, it heavily depends on the year range of the games you want to play on it. Keep in mind that a 2007 rig could still play games from 2002, and so on, so it depends on the newest game you want to play on it.

 

For cases, one thing you could do is go to https://archive.org/web/ and go to tigerdirect from the era you want to see cases from. So if you want a 2006 case, you could go to the case section and find one or two, and then search that same model of case on eBay and see how much it's selling for today.

well one thing i would like is dual core at 3ghz. i think that would be overkill, but i'm fine with that. like a pentium d 945 would work, and they are like $6 on ebay.

and gpu, would a GTX 285 be fine? some of those have the cool art on them, maybe one of those in a verticle mount would be cool, in a NZXT Guardian 921 RB case. would need a PCI riser cable, would that work?

[moonlight-strider]

To be honest, I've probably been quite a bit nit picky throughout this. I just enjoy building as time-accurate a build as possible in a way that somebody back then would've built one.

 

If you're going to go for a dual-core, definitely use a Core2Duo. It shouldn't run as hot and in general they're a better platform than processors that use NetBurst (aka most late Pentium 4's and their derivatives). Seeing as a Pentium D is basically just two Pentium 4's glued together, it's not going to be as good of a solution as an old Core2Duo, which should cost around the same amount, if not cheaper.

 

Like I said, I've been nit picky. If you want to use a GTX 285, go for it. Though I have no idea about PCI riser cables or anything like that. 

 

I assume that people want time-accurate builds, instead of a box that's just designed to play old games Win7 and 10 won't support as well as XP. So I do admit I may have over complicated things a bit. I guess it's not normal to be obsessed with 90's and early to mid 2000's hardware, heh. 

 

I've also looked at the GTX 285. It'll be more than enough for most Windows XP era games, as it supports DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.0, and has a gig of VRAM. Using it's a bit overkill, but it'll do the job if you're looking for a card that'll support most games without spending long periods of time studying the hardware from that era. 

 

So a LGA775 mobo which has Core2Duo support, something like 2.5-3GB of RAM (unless you're planning to use Windows XP 64 bit, but in that case I would max it out at 4), and a GTX 285 will do the trick for most, if not all XP era games. 

 

(Yes, I'm aware that 32 bit OSes have theoretical support for 4GB of RAM, but the most I've ever seen utilized by a 32 bit system with 4 gigs of RAM installed is ~3.2gb, so the extra gig of ram would be pointless in a 32 bit XP install)

[wdodge0912]

1 hour ago, moonlight-strider said:

To be honest, I've probably been quite a bit nit picky throughout this. I just enjoy building as time-accurate a build as possible in a way that somebody back then would've built one.

 

If you're going to go for a dual-core, definitely use a Core2Duo. It shouldn't run as hot and in general they're a better platform than processors that use NetBurst (aka most late Pentium 4's and their derivatives). Seeing as a Pentium D is basically just two Pentium 4's glued together, it's not going to be as good of a solution as an old Core2Duo, which should cost around the same amount, if not cheaper.

 

Like I said, I've been nit picky. If you want to use a GTX 285, go for it. Though I have no idea about PCI riser cables or anything like that. 

 

I assume that people want time-accurate builds, instead of a box that's just designed to play old games Win7 and 10 won't support as well as XP. So I do admit I may have over complicated things a bit. I guess it's not normal to be obsessed with 90's and early to mid 2000's hardware, heh. 

 

I've also looked at the GTX 285. It'll be more than enough for most Windows XP era games, as it supports DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.0, and has a gig of VRAM. Using it's a bit overkill, but it'll do the job if you're looking for a card that'll support most games without spending long periods of time studying the hardware from that era. 

 

So a LGA775 mobo which has Core2Duo support, something like 2.5-3GB of RAM (unless you're planning to use Windows XP 64 bit, but in that case I would max it out at 4), and a GTX 285 will do the trick for most, if not all XP era games. 

 

(Yes, I'm aware that 32 bit OSes have theoretical support for 4GB of RAM, but the most I've ever seen utilized by a 32 bit system with 4 gigs of RAM installed is ~3.2gb, so the extra gig of ram would be pointless in a 32 bit XP install)

i'm not too caring about period correct hardware, other than the case. I do want it to be the best rig it can be, without costing an arm and a leg. era specific cases seem to be quite expensive. 

 

as for ram, idk if i'll use 32 or 64 bit, it'll be whatever i can find. but i figured 4gb  just to have a 2x2 setup. that 8gb would have been way overkill, but maybe i could also dual boot to vista or 7 and play some games newer than xp, but not too new where they would run fine on my PC (not sure what games that would be)

[moonlight-strider]

Unfortunately, there's quite a large discrepancy between new and old games, so much that it makes it considerably harder to make a hybrid rig like that.

 

If you're really wanting to try and compromise between the two uses, get a Core2Quad system and put something akin to a Radeon HD 6770 or 7770 in it and you should be able to play a decent amount of new-ish games on it while still being able to boot into XP and having hardware support. 

 

I know this because my first rig was a Core2Quad Q6600 with 8GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 6770. I was able to play things like Alien: Isolation and Outlast pretty okay, from what I remember.