Should I build a Windows XP gaming PC? - "Use virtual machine!" /thread

[Master Xehanort]

The first question is why would you? Most PC games from that era are compatible or are being rereleased to become compatible. I'm much happier with current versions of Windows personally but that's just me.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The first question is why would you?

Literally answered in the OP.

"Most PC games from that era are compatible" should be followed with an asterisk the size of Texas.

As shown in the video above, many XP era games will work in modern windows, but often will require tweaking and fan made fixes, and even with those you might get strange errors and problems. Virtual machines don't work well either (Accursed Farms had a video about it, but I think it might have been a guest segment on another channel as I've not been able to find it since) as certain graphics options simply don't work, and it doesn't seem to save you from weird compatibility problems.

I do have a Win 10 PC as my daily driver, but this will be an extra machine that is just to play WinXP games.

 

[The Ugly One]

The 2000s weren't the 90s, game devs didn't have to add support for specific sound and graphics cards (Looking at you S3). As long as the video card you're using supports the graphics API of the game, there will be no issues.

API support is via drivers, and since drivers are software, they can have bugs. Hardware can have bugs, too. Even better, when you develop on only one platform, your software might work correctly because you are inadvertently exploiting a bug on that platform, which then causes the software to break when porting to a platform that doesn't have the bug (e.g. how Sim City exploited a bug in DOS's memory management that was fixed in Windows 95).

KOTOR 1 & 2 have well-documented issues on ATI cards, which I have personally experienced:

weird graphic bug,please help

Hi,i have a problem with Kotor 2 graphics (this happen with kotor 1 too)...everything looks weird and bugged ,look at these screenshots: http://img35.imageshack.us/i/charcreation1.jpg/ http://img38.imageshack.us/i/charcreation2.jpg/ http://img44.imageshack.us/i/charcreation3.jpg/ http://img515.im...

forums.obsidian.net

So did Brothers in Arms:

Graphic glitches - Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

For Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway on the PC, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "Graphic glitches".

gamefaqs.gamespot.com

The Radeon 9000 series also had serious QA problems, but I'm guessing the bad ones are mostly burnt up and gone now. And, of course, it's not like recent Radeons were the first cards with that brand for driver issues. ATI cards were notorious for driver bugs in the 00s. ATI was constantly breaking older cards with their Catalyst drivers, so "update to the newest driver" was more often than not a way to fix some games and break others, much worse than NVIDIA's Detonator.

 

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Literally answered in the OP.

"Most PC games from that era are compatible" should be followed with an asterisk the size of Texas.

As shown in the video above, many XP era games will work in modern windows, but often will require tweaking and fan made fixes, and even with those you might get strange errors and problems.

Agreed, but I guess the question is, how many of those games do you really want to revisit, and may those alternatives work just fine?

Of course.. if you really want to game from Ultima 4 to Skyrim HD on the same machine, some of the more sensible people at Vogons have put together some dream systems.

Retro Xeon Rig - 38-year-span (PC) and 13-year-span (Mac) software supported *without* use of emulation \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org

 

[seri0us]

@Judge Dredd Do you still have the 4690K?

 

[Judge Dredd]

how many of those games do you really want to revisit, and may those alternatives work just fine?

It really depends on what you mean by "work just fine".

One that jumps to mind that is high on my list is Dark Corners of the Earth. I never finished it back in the day, and it's been on my todo list for years. It had a problem on modern windows where enemies during a late game turret section would be invisible, making the game basically impossible. I've heard there are work arounds these days, but I'd prefer not to deal with the headache, especially since it's something that happens late game. I think I heard it works fine in Linux under Proton, but I don't know for sure.

So yes, with enough tinkering, most of these games are playable in other ways, and you could turn down some settings or remove some features. If I really had to, I could go without and play something more convenient that works no problem. Recently I've been playing Front Mission 3, Evil Genius 2, and Doom mods.

@Judge Dredd Do you still have the 4690K?

Yes. It has Valkeria Chronicles 4 on it which I want to finish before I tear it down. Then I want to get new hard drives and a GPU for it (the 1060 in it now is too new for XP). There have been real life problems as well which have slowed down my progress on this and other projects.

I also still have an old XP rig that doesn't work, but I've had the space or inclination to work on it.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Literally answered in the OP.

"Most PC games from that era are compatible" should be followed with an asterisk the size of Texas.

As shown in the video above, many XP era games will work in modern windows, but often will require tweaking and fan made fixes, and even with those you might get strange errors and problems. Virtual machines don't work well either (Accursed Farms had a video about it, but I think it might have been a guest segment on another channel as I've not been able to find it since) as certain graphics options simply don't work, and it doesn't seem to save you from weird compatibility problems.

I do have a Win 10 PC as my daily driver, but this will be an extra machine that is just to play WinXP games.

Why has this thread been around for a whole year and you still don’t have an XP box?
The games aren’t that overbearing and you can pick up a shitty Dell for $80 on eBay then upgrade whatever you need (though as already stated, the integrated graphics of the newer machines will probably be enough)

What’s taking you so long?

 

[seri0us]

Why has this thread been around for a whole year and you still don’t have an XP box?
The games aren’t that overbearing and you can pick up a shitty Dell for $80 on eBay then upgrade whatever you need (though as already stated, the integrated graphics of the newer machines will probably be enough)

What’s taking you so long?

That's a good question. The main reason I liked reading this thread is I found the back and forth interesting where OP has a lot of questions that people are willing to answer, except he seems very indecisive.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Why has this thread been around for a whole year and you still don’t have an XP box?
The games aren’t that overbearing and you can pick up a shitty Dell for $80 on eBay then upgrade whatever you need (though as already stated, the integrated graphics of the newer machines will probably be enough)

What’s taking you so long?

he seems very indecisive.

Sorry about that.

The reasons vary, and I don't want to power level too much, but I'll try my best to answer.

When I made the OP we were in the midst of a GPU shortage. I wanted a XP box but the price had me suspect. The idea was for it to be a high end XP machine to avoid compatibility problems.

As it stands now, the GPU shortage has ended, I've built my new daily driver, and my old PC (which is on the desk beside me right now) is a Haswell machine, I just need to buy a XP compatible GPU and HDD for it. I was expecting to have this done by Christmas, but that didn't happen.

Another problem is that various RL obstacles have been standing in my way. Problems with 2FA slowed down me buying things online. My bicycle broke down. Things like that. For more recent examples, the last few days I was in bed due to something bad I ate, and during that time a family member started getting a divorce. Shit like that takes priority and takes away from my fun side project time.

 

[SilentDuck]

When I made the OP we were in the midst of a GPU shortage. I wanted a XP box but the price had me suspect. The idea was for it to be a high end XP machine to avoid compatibility problems.

As it stands now, the GPU shortage has ended, I've built my new daily driver, and my old PC (which is on the desk beside me right now) is a Haswell machine, I just need to buy a XP compatible GPU and HDD for it. I was expecting to have this done by Christmas, but that didn't happen.

GTX 960 is the fastest GPU for XP with official drivers. Pairs very well with a 2500k and there are many high end motherboards of that era that have XP drivers. I've tried faster CPUs but 2500k seems most stable to me. They are also dirt cheap now.

The GTX 970 and GTX 980 also work in XP but require driver hacks.

9xx cards are being hoarded because they are the last that still have an analog out signal that can be converted for CRT so are ideal for video game cabinets and non-XP retro purposes, etc. prices won't be getting any better

 

[Neil McCauley]

Just built a PC with an i7-4790k on a Q87 mobo, HD7950 and 16GBs of RAM. Dualbooting XP integral edition and 10 LTSC. Running any game I throw at it like a champ, and even got some late 90s games like the retail version of Half-Life running well on XP.

 

[seri0us]

you know what I'm drunk af I will post them in the morning sorry for postponing the sauce.

what about now

 

[Ghostface Killah]

I just picked up a working HP 64GB DDR2 ECC Dual socket Intel Xeon system for 60 bucks. Thinking about slapping a Maxwell Titan into that bad boy or something.

 

[innocent jogger]

"Most PC games from that era are compatible" should be followed with an asterisk the size of Texas.

I thought that was Pedobear in the corner of the video at first and that the link was a prank. lol

 

[TVB]

I thought that was Pedobear in the corner of the video at first and that the link was a prank. lol

Or maybe some dumb little Bonzi Buddy-like virus

 

[Neil McCauley]

This crawls into territory of 90s gaming but is a PC from 2004
I have assembled a unholy fuckjob of parts to make a Athlon 64 PC compatible with Windows 98 and XP to play old Tomb Raider, Duke, Quake, etc

MSI K8T Neo2, Athlon 64 3500+, ATI Radeon X800 XT on AGP and a whopping 1GB of DDR400 RAM, can't forget the Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS.
When I assemble this mess I will share pics of the case+98 and XP if anyone is interested. Any games you want me to try let me know.

I was originally going for a Pentium 3 and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 but the Voodoo 3 is overpriced and every Pentium 3 motherboard is in some eastern european shithole and had $50 shipping.

 

[TVB]

This crawls into territory of 90s gaming but is a PC from 2004
I have assembled a unholy fuckjob of parts to make a Athlon 64 PC compatible with Windows 98 and XP to play old Tomb Raider, Duke, Quake, etc

And especially both Half-Life 1 and 2.

 

[Ghostface Killah]

This alone has been worth it

 

[Perfectly Innocent]

Highly recommend considering 32-bit NT 5.2 (Server 2003 R2) over XP. 4GB RAM limit doesn’t apply to it, meaning you can put in a higher end compatible card and still max out your RAM slots.

It also supports Volume Shadow Copy properly (unlike XP) which means you can snapshot your disk daily with minimal performance overhead on a modern SSD. This is handy for rolling back saves and performing proper, clean backups.

As an added bonus, the VLK releases of it aren’t pozzed like XP. Not only no activation nonsense but no Genuine Advantage crap either.

 

[Neil McCauley]

Highly recommend considering 32-bit NT 5.2 (Server 2003 R2) over XP. 4GB RAM limit doesn’t apply to it, meaning you can put in a higher end compatible card and still max out your RAM slots.

It also supports Volume Shadow Copy properly (unlike XP) which means you can snapshot your disk daily with minimal performance overhead on a modern SSD. This is handy for rolling back saves and performing proper, clean backups.

As an added bonus, the VLK releases of it aren’t pozzed like XP. Not only no activation nonsense but no Genuine Advantage crap either.

Going back to this thread, and thought I could provide some input and start the discussion back up.

The NT 5.1 branch was officially supported up to September 2019 when Windows POSReady 2009 was discontinued, and all of it's updates can be installed on normal XP. They patched a lot of security holes, such as Eternal Blue and also added support for TLS 1.2.

My question is, did NT 5.2 ever get any of these updates? I can't find an exact answer on the Internet, but I really hope it did end up receving those updates, as you are very correct about Volume Shadow Copy. Building vintage workstation PCs is pretty sick.

I have always had a great experience with XP Integral Edition, as it includes all updates including the POSReady ones I mentioned, and several drivers/patches to help XP work better on more modern hardware adding SATA and USB 3.0 support. It also de-pozzes XP, removing all activation/Genuine Advantage shit and disables the clown theme by default. NT 5.2 is capable of everything Integral Edition adds, but it's a more bitching process involving slipstreaming with nLite. An XP Integral Edition for NT 5.2 64-bit would be awesome.