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Which retro Pentium for Win XP?

GiGaBiTe said:
No such thing as a 8800 GTX 640. The 8800GTX had 768 MB of RAM. The only 8800 series card with 640 MB was the GTS 640 based on a cut down G80 core, it's considerably slower than a GTX.

A GTS 640 is not worth $50.



Those Optiplex models would fit single slot cards with dual slot coolers if they were under 6 or 7" IIRC. There were some GTX 600 cards that would fit. I wouldn't recommend anything higher because the power supplies in all of those units were IEDs and rife with capacitor plague. I've replaced or recapped well over a hundred PSUs for that era of Dell. The DT ones were recapped because they were proprietary, the MT power supplies were just replaced with normal ATX supplies after snapping the hook off the case so they'd fit. The original PSUs were something barely adequate, like 250 or 300W.

The DT versions of the case had an optional card cage to install full height cards, and those would accept a two slot card if it was short. The downside to that though is the card is directly in line with the CPU's hot exhaust.

You'll never find a case for those motherboards, because they're BTX form factor, the failed replacement for ATX that Intel tried to force down everyone's throat in the mid 2000s to try and deal with their horrific Netburst architecture.
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Ahh, okay, I got a little confused here. I do have a 8800 GTX on the way. The GTS will go in the scrap pile. Oh well. I now finally have the original Dell up and running, 8GB Ram, SB Live and stock video for right now. I also have the new Gigabit machine up and running. Likely I will sell the two dells and stick with the Gigabit. It will have the 8800, X-fi and maybe a different Mobo before done. T he dual boot at present that was promised doesn't work yet. I have to play with that a bit. A 7950 GT OC came with the new machine. Maybe after I get some specs it can go in the fast dell if I change out the PSU.
 
Two schools of thought when building a XP system:

1) You have XP on a shelf and want to use what ever you have at hand to get it all up and running. Obviously, the most economical route.

2) You have XP on a shelf, or are thinking of acquiring a copy, and you need some hardware. More or less starting from scratch.

I went that latter route on this build, had a few components and bought some others. I already had a nice Corsair case and a CX 750 PSU from a previous Anthlon II Phenom build. The case has a CDROM on the top hole and bottom has the 3.5 with a bezel adapter. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 which was about $20. The CPU is an Intel Core I7-870 which was about $20 too. Also, 4GB of memory from the bottom of the drawer. The video card is refugee from previous build. I went with the ATI Radeon 5850 Black. Some would say it's an overkill for XP and it is. It sports 1GB of memory, takes up 2 slots, and requires 2x6 power connector. Contrary to most advice, it seems to run all of my DX9 (and below) games with no issues. One of the up-checks for this video card is that it offers 2xDVI, 1xHDMI, and 1xDP. If I ever decided on dual booting W7 or even W10 (not optimum), I could do that easily. My current monitor is a 24" Acer using HDMI. The system boots up through the POST and onto the desktop in 45 seconds or less. Just food for thought.
 
Agent Orange said:
Two schools of thought when building a XP system:

1) You have XP on a shelf and want to use what ever you have at hand to get it all up and running. Obviously, the most economical route.

2) You have XP on a shelf, or are thinking of acquiring a copy, and you need some hardware. More or less starting from scratch.

I went that latter route on this build, had a few components and bought some others. I already had a nice Corsair case and a CX 750 PSU from a previous Anthlon II Phenom build. The case has a CDROM on the top hole and bottom has the 3.5 with a bezel adapter. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 which was about $20. The CPU is an Intel Core I7-870 which was about $20 too. Also, 4GB of memory from the bottom of the drawer. The video card is refugee from previous build. I went with the ATI Radeon 5850 Black. Some would say it's an overkill for XP and it is. It sports 1GB of memory, takes up 2 slots, and requires 2x6 power connector. Contrary to most advice, it seems to run all of my DX9 (and below) games with no issues. One of the up-checks for this video card is that it offers 2xDVI, 1xHDMI, and 1xDP. If I ever decided on dual booting W7 or even W10 (not optimum), I could do that easily. My current monitor is a 24" Acer using HDMI. The system boots up through the POST and onto the desktop in 45 seconds or less. Just food for thought.
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Sounds fun!

Now that both Dells work, there is a chance I may not do much more. I have very little cost in the pair. Some old HDs in them from a stash I had, memory cost me $20 for the Full 8Gb. The better of the two should go for more than the other. I can do like many do and Pwrk it on eBay until it sells for what I want.
 
Agent Orange said:
Two schools of thought when building a XP system:

1) You have XP on a shelf and want to use what ever you have at hand to get it all up and running. Obviously, the most economical route.

2) You have XP on a shelf, or are thinking of acquiring a copy, and you need some hardware. More or less starting from scratch.

I went that latter route on this build, had a few components and bought some others. I already had a nice Corsair case and a CX 750 PSU from a previous Anthlon II Phenom build. The case has a CDROM on the top hole and bottom has the 3.5 with a bezel adapter. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 which was about $20. The CPU is an Intel Core I7-870 which was about $20 too. Also, 4GB of memory from the bottom of the drawer. The video card is refugee from previous build. I went with the ATI Radeon 5850 Black. Some would say it's an overkill for XP and it is. It sports 1GB of memory, takes up 2 slots, and requires 2x6 power connector. Contrary to most advice, it seems to run all of my DX9 (and below) games with no issues. One of the up-checks for this video card is that it offers 2xDVI, 1xHDMI, and 1xDP. If I ever decided on dual booting W7 or even W10 (not optimum), I could do that easily. My current monitor is a 24" Acer using HDMI. The system boots up through the POST and onto the desktop in 45 seconds or less. Just food for thought.
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I've got dual 5850s on a win7 build, good to know they'd handle XP well. Might even be a better choice for that machine. There's not a lot than 7 can do but XP can't. Besides have usable support for 64 bit.
 
Unknown_K said:
There is also Windows Vista.
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I did have a hiccup on the video driver for the 5850. Somehow I downloaded what I thought was the latest 'legacy' driver from the AMD ATI page. It was version 14.4 and the install went with a few errors but appeared to run somewhat okay, but would not run H.A.W.K.. I checked Device Manager and sure enough, there was the tell-tale yellow caution sign telling me that XP was running on Microsoft's Basic Display Adapter, therefore no graphics, which meant that my 5850 driver, in fact, did not at all install. So, I knew then that the download package was bogus. I located the original 5850 box and retrieved the CD and ran install, first uninstalling the 14.4 driver and then the proper setup with the original driver. Now all is well. Bottom line is be wary of some downloads.
 
I made a Vista gaming rig because I never used it when it was around (jumped from XP to Windows 7 after SP1) and it was OK for an OS (after all the upgrades they did to it). Windows 8 is probably one I won't ever bother with.
 
Unknown_K said:
I made a Vista gaming rig because I never used it when it was around (jumped from XP to Windows 7 after SP1) and it was OK for an OS (after all the upgrades they did to it). Windows 8 is probably one I won't ever bother with.
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My experience with is Vista is the desktop interface to install games is a kludge. It makes to you work at it and performance-wise, I see no advantage of Vista over XP, especially if your running 32-bit as I do. If you're going to do Vista might as well do W7.
 
Agent Orange said:
If you're going to do Vista might as well do W7.
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This. 7 is basically a working version of Vista.

I never personally used Vista as my main OS, but I did have to devote many moons to installing and tuning it on the lab computers at work. Horrible experience all the way around, but I got it to run well enough with some heavy tweaking.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
This. 7 is basically a working version of Vista.

I never personally used Vista as my main OS, but I did have to devote many moons to installing and tuning it on the lab computers at work. Horrible experience all the way around, but I got it to run well enough with some heavy tweaking.
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I agree that once up and running it was solid as a rock. I just didn't care for the way they had a 'special' folder that had to be accessed for games.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
I've got dual 5850s on a win7 build, good to know they'd handle XP well. Might even be a better choice for that machine. There's not a lot than 7 can do but XP can't. Besides have usable support for 64 bit.
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Windows XP Professional x64 Edition had great 64 bit support. It was basically Server 2003 x64 with an XP GUI slapped on. I used it on my main workstation for at least a decade before moving on to Win 7. The only reason I moved to 7 is because XP was perpetually stuck on DX9.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition had great 64 bit support. It was basically Server 2003 x64 with an XP GUI slapped on. I used it on my main workstation for at least a decade before moving on to Win 7. The only reason I moved to 7 is because XP was perpetually stuck on DX9.
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2k3 had the exact same GUI as XP. The only difference I can name is that it had a different "theme" load by default. Otherwise you cannot tell the two apart. I used 2k3 x64 as my workstation up until 2018. Could not tell it apart from my XP builds.
 
Found a nice 550W PSU for one of the Dells, it's new so no need to worry about caps. It was has the PCI-Express 6+2 pin Connectors, so it just needs a single 75W slot graphics card and will be complete. If I were not sticking to XP there would have been some nice options, lol.
 
Any PSU will work fine with XP. Aside from giving some things headers instead of relying on adapters, the ATX PSU hasn't actually changed in 20+ years.
 
Ahh, the challenge here is getting an old dog to do new tricks, IE, Dell OEM has limits, but we shall overcome them for my fun XP Machine. Next fun thing might me to change out the stock CPU chiller with something that will give me room for an optimal video card. While it will be a single card, it should max the capability of this machine and make a solid XP gaming rig! Most people wouldn't change the stock cooler because it would void the warranty back in the day. Well, we don't have that problem now, and I am guessing we can cool that CPU better than Dell ever imagined back in its time. And when I play like this, I make sure I have 2, so if I "#$%# it up, we can replace the MOBO, or whatever. While there will be more money in this machine than the period would support, it will definitely create fun!
 
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Unknown_K said:
There is also Windows Vista.
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I liked Vista, once I started using it on hardware that could run it. And once service packs fixed most of the annoying issues. MY experience was that the 64bit version of vista seemed to work better than the 64 bit version of XP, but that might be just because the software I wanted to run better supported 64 bit, and maybe it wasn't an issue with the OS. I just remember that on XP I was always in the wrong web browser, so I was constantly switch from 32 to 64 or 64 to 32 depending on what didn't want to work. I don't recall doing that so much in Vista.

We also ran it on some "service processors" on some hardware at work, and it seemed just fine for probably close to 10 years. Eventually everything had to be upgraded to 7, and eventually 10, because of security patches, not because Vista had any reliability issues for us.
 
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