This unfortunately happens way too many times... Only when a TH-camr has stopped uploading do their videos get a wider reach... I hope this TH-camr is still there, reading these comments, and ends up feeling like they want to post again c:
Yeah TH-cam has completely broken their suggested content, just today I get recommended a "breaking news" video that's 3 years old, but I don't get recommended content like this when it's relatively new.
@@164BiloKytes Yeah I built a Ryzen 7950 and was forced to upgrade to 10. Didnt realize Microsoft had already labeled it unsipported and obsolete. Still using it with OpenShell, Shutvp10+, and winaerotweaker. I had a ton of BSODs with it all the time, but finally figure it wasnt win10 driver issues, but instead I needed to disable Hardware Graphic acceleration inall my webbrowsers. Once I did that my BSODs evaporated and my Window Reliability History started climbing up from a rockbottom of 1 ... up towards 10. So disable grapic hardware acceleration in all your webbrowsres its not needed and causes sone serios random ble screens.
I was either in the 4th grade when Windows 7 came out and when I got my very first personal laptop from my parents that Christmas, it had Windows 7. Coming from our family pc that had Windows XP, 7 felt so magical! The fact that it can be considered retro now feels so weird lmao
For a retro Windows 7 gaming pc, I would NOT install all of the Windows 7 Updates as they make the response of the pc extremely slow for some reason. I am thinking we need to make special videos of retro XP and retro 7 gaming pc which updates to install, which to ignore, and which to block.
My dad started a TH-cam channel with my mom. He created a intro video and was very excited to show me. For context my dad was a wedding/school/company videographer. But that was years ago so he has had some video experience. Anyways he shows me his intro video and I said I like it it looks retro. Because it looks like his videos from 15 years ago. Anyways this upset him so much he bought the entire adobe sweet, something he swore on his grave he'd never buy but he had pirated older versions. He's created a much more modern one now. Just thought I'd share this story when I read retro.
I love the recent trend of era accurate setups! Because as great as it is to upgrade older games to be on modern hardware, there’s always something special using the authentic tech the was made at that time. It adds to the experience!
Watching this from my AMD & Nvidia Windows 7 machine with a X-Fi Titanium. However, I have a Ryzen 7 2700X (Looking to hop up to the 5800X), and GTX 970. Also, that BIOS and driver installer looks significantly better than the BIOSes and driver installers on most modern boards imo
@@edwineriksson2882 To be fair, Windows 8 did not actually suck because it was developed to be used for tablets in mind, but it definitely sucked if you used it in a PC. In my opinion, Windows XP was actually more iconic than Windows 7 though.
@@NottJoeyOfficial to be honest though, from a windows xp user, I actually like windows 10 more. And then they screwed up again with windows 11. I realize windows pattern is like success then suck and then success then suck again, like windows 2000 and windows xp, windows vista and windows 7, windows 8 and windows 10.
Earlier this year I put together a dual boot WinXP/Win7 machine. I already had the tower, motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU so I was able to save a fair bit of money. It's an old DDR2 board so I just bought an extra bit of RAM to fill up all the slots, a power supply, a DVD drive, a floppy drive (because why not?) and a hard drive. The rig has an E4600 Core2 Duo @ 2.4GHz, 7GB RAM (somehow one of my 4 sticks is actually only 1GB, not sure how I never noticed that before) and it has a Radeon HD 6850 1GB MSI Cyclone edition. The motherboard is Zotac branded, so it has an Nvidia chipset and integrated graphics (Geforce 9300).
@@nikolaievans2432 I'm thinking that a system that old would be a pretty big bottleneck for a 3090ti. It has a much earlier pcie version than what the 3090 is designed for so right off the bat performance will be limited, plus a core2 duo is likely to further limit what it can do. Granted I'm not going to be putting super modern games on that system, but I think that would be a waste. Dual gpus aren't really an option on that board either, because it is a micro atx board rather than full sized, so sadly there just isn't enough room for that kind of expansion. The HD 6850 is a decent card for that board, as it can play both XP era and Windows 7 era games without too many issues. The XP drivers seem to have pretty bad open gl support though. I did recently upgrade the processor from an E4600 to an E8600 and the performance increase is notable with not only a higher clock speed at 3.3 GHz but also an increased l3 cache size and faster bus support.
I have windows xp retro pc its not much but runs most of windows xp games Specs: Cpu :amd athlon 64x2 dual core 3800+ 1.99ghz am2 socket 2 core 2 thread Gpu : msi nvidia geforce 9400gt 512 mb gddr2 (passive cooled) edit:i replaced my gpu now i use nvidia 7950 gt 512mb Ram:5gb ddr2 800mhz (3x1gb 1x2gb) Storage: Hard disk1 : 7200 rpm toshiba 3.5 inch 1tb sata3 (dtaca0100) Hard disk 2 : 2.5 inch hitachi 500gb (taken from laptop) Solid state drive : gigabyte 256 gb sata3 Optical drive :lg on stata 1 inferface As i said its not much but it does what it needs to do - play old games
Great video and great build! I love this sort of build, I've done a couple of windows 7 builds, they are cool! The 730 is surprisingly bad, but I'm glad you figured out the issue in quake 4, it was scary how slow it was haha. Great video, thanks for putting it out.
Must be playing the Steam version of Quake 4 because I just played it a couple of days ago on an HD6450 (1/4 the power of the GT730) and it ran well. What you purchase from those services isn't really the original program and has higher resource requirements. It is often running partially or totally in emulation.
My actual gaming rig aka the "Low Electricity Win7 PC" is running in a DELL Optiplex 7010 Desktop, with 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz in Dual Channel; CPU is an Intel Xeon E3-1240 v2; GPU is an AMD Radeon RX6400; a 256GB SSD on SATA 3, a 2TB mechanical hard disc for data and games; Soundcard is a Soundblaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer 7.1 SB0730 and it runs great. Windows 7 Experience index is: CPU: 7.8, GPU: 7.8, RAM 7.9, Hard Disc 7.9 Total system power consumption = Less than 100 Watts (Xeon max power draw I have seen reported by Open Hardware Monitor is 46 Watts and with the Radeon RX6400 is 53 watts. ( I had in the PC a Nvidia Quadro T600 with hacked drivers to work in Win7, which gave a WEI of 7.9 in GPU, but the RX6400 had native Windows 7 drivers from AMD).
thanks for this video! i got my first desktop and chose for it to be a windows 7 pc :) really helps me get a footing on where to start this project! thank youuuu~
I miss my win 7 rig. I built it for a friend in like 2010 and bought it off his years later, for £40. Nice Lian li case was worth at least twice that used. I upgraded it heavily with a Phenom 1090t, 8gb of corsair ram an SSD, 1tb hard drive and 750ti. Also set up a dual boot with XP. Spans these 2 eras pretty well and maxed out everything I wanted to play. I dunno if 7 still supports Steam but if it does I'd be willing to build something like that again.
Still running a Win 7 PC with an FX8320E and gtx 750 ti as my main desktop, because current hardware prices are ridiculous for a university student. So far no major issues, except for discord screen share not working anymore for whatever stupid reason. If it survives the next two years, it'll have lasted me for 11 years. (Although I did briefly have a 1070 installed which died after a year, great.)
I actually found the same issue with Discord screen share. I haven't tried to share myself, but when I attempt to watch other people's streams they won't load for me. Some people load in the app, some do not. One work around I found for watching streams anyways is to load into Discord in Microsoft Edge, which should be installed on any Windows 7 machine that's up to date with updates. Not sure if that will let you share your own screen, but it's worked without fail to let me watch other streams. For some reason no other Chromium based browser works either, it has to be Edge in my experience.
@@NottJoeyOfficial Well, I guess I'll try that some time. My main browser is the good old firefox, so no chromium there afaik. Used the discord desktop client so far.
@@Luxfalcon yeah, I usually use Firefox too, but since Discord itself is a Chromium based app they still never even tried to get streams working on Firefox last I checked. It's good that Edge is built in at least, so you don't have to download anything additional. Good luck to you.
Windows 7 gaming pc starter pack (hardware): Core i5 2500K Hyper 212 or Corsair H80 AIO ASUS or MSI Z68 board 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 GTX 570 GPU 500-1000 GB hard drive (maybe a 120 GB SSD if you were rich) and of course, the legendary Cooler Master Elite 430 case!!
I only stopped using Windows 7 this year, just over a month ago, putting off updates for ages since my PC was DDR3 and LGA2011 socket any new upgrades apart from the last GPU update were realistically going to require a whole rebuild. Really stable and the only real reason I upgraded is many more new games were incompatible like 40K DarkTide, and some older games also updated to no longer run on Win7. Although I'm fine with the aesthetics of Windows 11 I don't like how Windows 8 and beyond have loads of random sponsored content pushed on you in the default start menu, yes you can do some tweaking to get rid of it but I preferred how non-bloat and unintrusive Windows 7 was on fresh install.
For anyone who wants to know, the fastest officially supported parts for Windows 7 are as followed: i9-9980XE ROG Strix X299-E Gaming II 128GB DDR4-4266MHz RTX 3090 Ti
Weird how 128GB is the maximum RAM amount that's officially supported by Windows 7 even though half of the editions of it are compatible with up to 192GB of RAM.
Eventually, I'm going to rebuild a windows 7 beast in the level 10 gt I kept from the computer I had at that time. I wish I hadn't sold my z77 sabertooth...
man i miss windows 7 i remember playing counter strike source on a crappy windows 7 workstation from the time but now i use linux ever since windows 11 came out
Even a super high end pc with a RTX 3090/RX 6900 XT with a I9 12900k can run windows 7 if you make a custom windows 7 with the drivers integrated in ntlite
I really don't agree with calling Windows 7 retro. I wouldn't call anything capable of running stuff such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and even Cyberpunk 2077 retro. I mean, I'm still using it as my OS right now on my main laptop and desktop. Will perhaps upgrade to 10 whenever I can get a decent GPU for the desktop so I can play more modern games, though. Don't see much point in running 10 on my laptop because none of those newer DX11/12 games could ever run on it anyway.
@@thepirategamerboy12 Yeah, my laptop is a dual boot with 7 and 10, and anything that I can run on Windows 10 also runs on Windows 7 due to the age of this laptop. Even Yugioh Dual Masters runs on 7 despite saying it requires DX11 and Windows 10 as a minimum. I tend to boot into Windows 7 when I need fast access to programs instead of letting Windows 10 boot for a while. It's much more light weight so it's a lot faster to boot.
Similar project. My problem is a driver gap. Newish Acer motherboard probably won't have any drivers for WindowsXP. While the graphics card should work in almost all versions of windows with catalyst.
small detail to the graphics card here, the MSI GT 730 that you are using is DDR3 one, which is absolute the worst version of it, use the GDDR5 one instead and you will get a decent gaming performance
Woah great video. Personally I love Windows 7 a lot , nostalgia bias is also involve. I always do hear Xp being best but I'm sure some of us love 7 more. I always make my windows 10 pc , look like 7. Windows 10 is only supported and I don't think I will go to 11. 10 is perfect only because they bricked 7.
my xp and 7 machine are the same pc, first gen i7 (6core+hyper threading) at 4+ghz for decent single core on xp and multi core on 7. 640gt (had it lying around and it has xp drivers)
My Windows 7 rig currently is a Dell Precision 5810🤣 with a Xeon E5 1630v3 32GB DDR4 4x8GB (QChanl, but maybe in Dchanl with 4 available slots) with a GTX 660 until I get the modular 8+6 power cable part ordered. Then I'm putting my shelved Titan Black to use😆 It's about equivalent to my main desktop x99 i7 6850k 32GB QChanl DDR4 (8x4GB) I know it's absolutely unnecessary I only got it because by brother's friend called me to collect it from an abandon rental unit and it supports all kinds of sata and legacy and UEFI boot options, like AHCI that's great cuz when ever I installed Windows 7 on this WD RaptorX drive (the drive with a factory window) I didn't realize that feature was off in that bios I originally installed it on.😬 now it's really hard to get motherboards with that bios setting. if it doesn't have it, its on by default and windows wont boot. I took out the drives it had in it and connected my good'ol reliable WD Raptor drive and it worked!🤣 Sure I really should reinstall it, but do you have any idea how long it takes and how big of a pain it is to re install all The Sims 2 and expansions😵😩 I have a 20 year old game save that has never looked sooo good with custom graphicsrule config tweak 2560x1080 ultrawide resolution.
iam using an old HP pavilion 6214y .. its a athlon II x4 and dual boots win7/64 and windows xp64 on seperate drives.. the onboard is good for xp era stuff but any old radeon HD era car thats 128bit memory interface will be plenty.. i dont game on 7 because most games were online activation or online multiplayer but run my video picture and audio editors in 7. The 2 drives are sata2 8gb ddr 2 memory with a combo drive burner and its perfect for the split task of game box and editor
Sheesh, you're picking stuff from the time instead of maximizing on what it's capable of. You're missin out on the 2700x, RTX 3000s, Freesync or G-sync 3440x1440 QLEDs, DTS X or Atmos, Media Player 12/Media Center for Xbox 360/PS3 streaming. And all that modern stuff Windows 7 can absolutely run and support... I hate Windows 10 and am hoping Windows 11 no longer has initial issues. 2024 update: It can even use RX 6400/6500 XTs. Even Windows 8.1 supports up to the Quadro RTX 8000 which should be very relevant by today's standards. I myself have a Quadro RTX 4000 for 2060 Super performance for 8.1.
retro does not mean old hardware, you can run windows 7 with 3090 with latest CPU as long as the motherboard support CSM. although 3090 is last modern GPU i know that support windows 7. edit: welp i did not read the part 2021 on it mybad
just finished my i5-4690k 1660ti windows 7 build, took me a bit to get my drivers together but it works! never had a windows 7 desktop, only laptops and could never game on them
i still have a 2007 msi megabook m670 that was a upgraded with a dualcore and i had windows 7 on it and it broke in a few months now it doesn't post but it turns on but no post and i also have an asus x551ca-sx029h celeron at 1.5ghz its fully dead
i dont know much about how to build or what parts to pick. any reccomendations on how to start a build like this? this is my favorite era of gaming. honestly if i could just get a list of a parts and software i bet i could probably put it together, id love to max out for this era. where should i start my research?
If you want to max out a build for the era you'll be looking to get parts from around 2012-2013. You'll probably looking at a 2nd or 3rd gen Intel i-series CPU and an NVIDIA GTX 600 or 700 series graphics card. You could even get 2 identical cards and run them in an SLI configuration if you wanted something really overkill. If you want something a little more pre-built, I'd recommend looking into decommissioned servers and high-end workstations. You can find these kinds of systems from about 10 years ago being sold for dirt cheap by government organizations an universities. Look for towers with a Xeon processor (Intel's server CPUs), as they tend to be very reliable and are usually equivalent to at least a mid-range i-series chip in performance. You can check the exact model against a second-gen i7 to see what kind of bargain you're getting. If you find something decent, it's usually just a matter of adding a GPU and installing Windows. I've done this a couple times with Dell Precision towers and have gotten great results. Also, I'd avoid AMD CPUs from this era. The high-end ones can be decent, and I even used one in this build, but they run extremely hot. I'm actually looking to replace the one I used here at some point due to the insane amount of heat waste.
What do you think of using Steam on Windows 7? I recently got a GTX570 on my old IVY bridge system for old games but not sure if it's unsafe to use online just to access my steam games.
It should be safe enough as long as you take proper precautions and don't keep any sensitive info on it. The first thing you should do when you get it online is fully update Windows, and don't open a web browser until that's finished. Then immediately install a better browser along with a good ad-blocker, and a script blocker if you're really paranoid. I'd suggest keeping web browsing on the system to a minimum, and don't click ads or download random files (duh). In my case I also use a PiHole DNS server to block ads and malicious domains network-wide. Personally, I wouldn't trust having my old computers online without it in place. If you want to go really overboard you could set up rules on your router or in the Windows hosts file to block all connections on that machine, except a handful of whitelisted domains. The only other thing I'd suggest is to disable the "hide extensions of known file types" option in folder and search settings so you're less susceptible to trojans. Honestly, most of this stuff is just good practice for any computer, not just obsolete ones.
@@AtomicPurple Good points, thanks. My copy of SP1 didn’t even work with windows update out of the box until I installed the 2GB of grouped KB updates from the Microsoft catalog but it finds new updates now after those were installed. I was surprised to see that Microsoft still updates Microsoft security essentials and still seems to do critical updates like with the print nightmare issues along with some other updates listed as 2021. As you said in your video I find 7 much nicer to use than 10.
I am very much not in favor of running Steam on my Windows 7 machine because it isn't authentic and you might as well play on a modern PC. They are running most of that stuff in emulation and even when they don't, I suspect it is often heavily modified and amended even when not a "remastered edition". I buy old copies of games, often for a lot cheaper than what they cost on Steam or GOG and run them the authentic way. The old code and the old machine kinda goes hand in hand and if you aren't going to do both, why mess with any of it?
@@AtomicPurple Avast seems to work pretty well for free security software. But I still don't do anything super critical on Windows 7. Not logging into my bank account!
@@finkelroy7030 it’s mostly ease of access. My library is already there and I share a triple boot with windows 10 and XP and they all connect to the same steam library directory. If I find an older game that has some kind of compatibility issue I can just switch to 7 or xp and continue where I left off with it.
So my gaming PC (with an intel core i7 7700k +16GB RAM + gtx 1070) (note i have windows 10 on another drive (a 1TB Samsung SSD) but I don’t use it that much)
"I hope windows 11 will be up to the same standard" Oh how this aged like milk. Great video though. Windows truly peaked at 7 as far as design and consistency goes. I can't see Microsoft beating it as currently they have their focus fixated on new gimmicks like AI instead of basic functionality, diverting resources away from user experience. Which is why it comes as a surprise to no-one when the finished product is, indeed, underwhelming when compared to it's previous generations.
I have an hp pavilion elite hpe as a gaming PC it has win10pro and has a redragon gaming keyboard gaming mouse I use 2 hp e243 computer monitors I'm using Samsung speakers with those pin wires Idk about gpu I have 1tb disk 14gb ram the cpu is an i5 750
Windows has been bloated since XP or even earlier, it always comes with a bunch of useless nonsense. It just demanded far less RAM than the versions after it
Id 100% use windows 7 if my hardware had CSM support I cannot find a bios motherboard or a csm one so for now I'm using windows 8.1 themed to look like windows 7
What GT 730 version are you using? Results seems whack. I remember running far cry 2 back in the day maxed out with same in game resolution as what you are using with an HD4850, overclocked Pentium E5200 and 4gb of ram and I'm getting playable framerates than what you are getting. According to Tom's Hardware's gpu hierarchy, the GT 730 GDDR5 version is just around HD4770 performance. Given I was still running with DDR2 mems and weaker cpu than yours you should be getting way better framerates than what you are getting
Bro uses userbenchmark 💀 💀💀💀, I had that exact GT730 (still have it, dead tho) and it is not even a 730, it is GT430 core rebranded. Solid slicon tho, ran it overclocked at 99 degrees C for 4 years and it ran okay until I burned it when plugging it to another motherboard. Real 730 core has twice the performance, Vulkan support and newer drivers.
At mar 9:19 why does he say your not supposed to use windows 7 online and that Hes using pi hole and keeping and eye on it? And how can I do this? Thanks
Maybe you could do a followup once you get a good graphics card?
I plan to.
Edit: update video here
th-cam.com/video/8IlsFRdZge0/w-d-xo.html
Windows 7 is 15 years old as of 22 July 2009
I'm watching this video on Windows XP that my parents bought back in 2003
Ur cool
Cool bro 😎
Ayo do you use antivirus
Which browser are you using??
@@passionatebeast24 a one thats compatible with xp but updated to newest update
This unfortunately happens way too many times... Only when a TH-camr has stopped uploading do their videos get a wider reach... I hope this TH-camr is still there, reading these comments, and ends up feeling like they want to post again c:
Yeah TH-cam has completely broken their suggested content, just today I get recommended a "breaking news" video that's 3 years old, but I don't get recommended content like this when it's relatively new.
Still using Windows 7 in 2023 as my daily driver!
Me in 2024
shoot by now i wouldn't, many games require win10 anymore, not to mention some anticheat probably isn't gonna play nice with legacy os
Me in 2024
It looks great but don't. just build another computer with win 7 for memories
@@164BiloKytes Yeah I built a Ryzen 7950 and was forced to upgrade to 10. Didnt realize Microsoft had already labeled it unsipported and obsolete. Still using it with OpenShell, Shutvp10+, and winaerotweaker.
I had a ton of BSODs with it all the time, but finally figure it wasnt win10 driver issues, but instead I needed to disable Hardware Graphic acceleration inall my webbrowsers. Once I did that my BSODs evaporated and my Window Reliability History started climbing up from a rockbottom of 1 ... up towards 10.
So disable grapic hardware acceleration in all your webbrowsres its not needed and causes sone serios random ble screens.
I was either in the 4th grade when Windows 7 came out and when I got my very first personal laptop from my parents that Christmas, it had Windows 7. Coming from our family pc that had Windows XP, 7 felt so magical! The fact that it can be considered retro now feels so weird lmao
For a retro Windows 7 gaming pc, I would NOT install all of the Windows 7 Updates as they make the response of the pc extremely slow for some reason. I am thinking we need to make special videos of retro XP and retro 7 gaming pc which updates to install, which to ignore, and which to block.
0:16 you mentioned me
LOL
really underrated channel if u ask me, thumbs up
My dad started a TH-cam channel with my mom. He created a intro video and was very excited to show me. For context my dad was a wedding/school/company videographer. But that was years ago so he has had some video experience. Anyways he shows me his intro video and I said I like it it looks retro. Because it looks like his videos from 15 years ago. Anyways this upset him so much he bought the entire adobe sweet, something he swore on his grave he'd never buy but he had pirated older versions. He's created a much more modern one now.
Just thought I'd share this story when I read retro.
Neat
My machine is Vista-7 era (2008) but I think they just wanted to make it cheap but it runs really well in Windows 7 and 8.1 (and 8!)
This was an excellent video and I feel the same about Windows 7 also. It is my favorite OS!
I love the recent trend of era accurate setups!
Because as great as it is to upgrade older games to be on modern hardware, there’s always something special using the authentic tech the was made at that time.
It adds to the experience!
Watching this from my AMD & Nvidia Windows 7 machine with a X-Fi Titanium.
However, I have a Ryzen 7 2700X (Looking to hop up to the 5800X), and GTX 970.
Also, that BIOS and driver installer looks significantly better than the BIOSes and driver installers on most modern boards imo
I just built an xp machine with an X-Fi Titanium, great sound card
Windows 7 will ALWAYS be the BEST operating system that microsoft ever released!
@@overfl0w-op5xg Windows 8 sucks kook!
@@edwineriksson2882 To be fair, Windows 8 did not actually suck because it was developed to be used for tablets in mind, but it definitely sucked if you used it in a PC. In my opinion, Windows XP was actually more iconic than Windows 7 though.
@Exempt 1 yes iconic haha well that happens
@@ivankong1065 It is more iconic, but it's not the best OS ever made by Microsoft. This OS is the best one they have ever made.
@@NottJoeyOfficial to be honest though, from a windows xp user, I actually like windows 10 more. And then they screwed up again with windows 11. I realize windows pattern is like success then suck and then success then suck again, like windows 2000 and windows xp, windows vista and windows 7, windows 8 and windows 10.
Still using windows 7 on my OptiPlex 9020
i7-4790
Radeon R5 240 1 GB GDDR3
16 GB RAM
500 GB HDD
im running windows 7 on my pc with an rtx 3090 and a core i9 12900k, it also has a 1tb nvme ssd and an intel wifi card. It works great
Which motherboard are you using?
gigabyte b660m d3sh ddr4 @@zenvultra
Earlier this year I put together a dual boot WinXP/Win7 machine. I already had the tower, motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU so I was able to save a fair bit of money. It's an old DDR2 board so I just bought an extra bit of RAM to fill up all the slots, a power supply, a DVD drive, a floppy drive (because why not?) and a hard drive.
The rig has an E4600 Core2 Duo @ 2.4GHz, 7GB RAM (somehow one of my 4 sticks is actually only 1GB, not sure how I never noticed that before) and it has a Radeon HD 6850 1GB MSI Cyclone edition. The motherboard is Zotac branded, so it has an Nvidia chipset and integrated graphics (Geforce 9300).
For windows 7 you could go for a rtx 3090ti and a gtx 960 for winxp if you want to max it for out
@@nikolaievans2432 I'm thinking that a system that old would be a pretty big bottleneck for a 3090ti. It has a much earlier pcie version than what the 3090 is designed for so right off the bat performance will be limited, plus a core2 duo is likely to further limit what it can do. Granted I'm not going to be putting super modern games on that system, but I think that would be a waste.
Dual gpus aren't really an option on that board either, because it is a micro atx board rather than full sized, so sadly there just isn't enough room for that kind of expansion. The HD 6850 is a decent card for that board, as it can play both XP era and Windows 7 era games without too many issues. The XP drivers seem to have pretty bad open gl support though.
I did recently upgrade the processor from an E4600 to an E8600 and the performance increase is notable with not only a higher clock speed at 3.3 GHz but also an increased l3 cache size and faster bus support.
I have windows xp retro pc its not much but runs most of windows xp games
Specs:
Cpu :amd athlon 64x2 dual core 3800+ 1.99ghz am2 socket 2 core 2 thread
Gpu : msi nvidia geforce 9400gt 512 mb gddr2 (passive cooled) edit:i replaced my gpu now i use nvidia 7950 gt 512mb
Ram:5gb ddr2 800mhz (3x1gb 1x2gb)
Storage:
Hard disk1 : 7200 rpm toshiba 3.5 inch 1tb sata3 (dtaca0100)
Hard disk 2 : 2.5 inch hitachi 500gb (taken from laptop)
Solid state drive : gigabyte 256 gb sata3
Optical drive :lg on stata 1 inferface
As i said its not much but it does what it needs to do - play old games
I had that mouse back in 2013/2014, I loved it
Interesting. I also have a retro WIndows 98 and XP.
I think it's time to build also a Windows 7 retro PC.
The trinity of extra PCs
Windows 7 is not retro dude
Great video and great build! I love this sort of build, I've done a couple of windows 7 builds, they are cool! The 730 is surprisingly bad, but I'm glad you figured out the issue in quake 4, it was scary how slow it was haha. Great video, thanks for putting it out.
Glad you liked it.
Must be playing the Steam version of Quake 4 because I just played it a couple of days ago on an HD6450 (1/4 the power of the GT730) and it ran well. What you purchase from those services isn't really the original program and has higher resource requirements. It is often running partially or totally in emulation.
@@AtomicPurple My pc is worse then this 😭
Quake 4 runs fine at playable rate even in Intel Igpu -HD 2500 from old 3rd gens , probably some card/ windows update or drive issue or the AA
My actual gaming rig aka the "Low Electricity Win7 PC" is running in a DELL Optiplex 7010 Desktop, with 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz in Dual Channel; CPU is an Intel Xeon E3-1240 v2; GPU is an AMD Radeon RX6400; a 256GB SSD on SATA 3, a 2TB mechanical hard disc for data and games; Soundcard is a Soundblaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer 7.1 SB0730 and it runs great.
Windows 7 Experience index is: CPU: 7.8, GPU: 7.8, RAM 7.9, Hard Disc 7.9
Total system power consumption = Less than 100 Watts (Xeon max power draw I have seen reported by Open Hardware Monitor is 46 Watts and with the Radeon RX6400 is 53 watts. ( I had in the PC a Nvidia Quadro T600 with hacked drivers to work in Win7, which gave a WEI of 7.9 in GPU, but the RX6400 had native Windows 7 drivers from AMD).
thanks for this video! i got my first desktop and chose for it to be a windows 7 pc :) really helps me get a footing on where to start this project! thank youuuu~
Definitely I have a plan to build a Windows 7 PC ☺ depending on the parts availability
“Retro” I guess tech before 2009 is considered ancient
I miss my win 7 rig. I built it for a friend in like 2010 and bought it off his years later, for £40. Nice Lian li case was worth at least twice that used. I upgraded it heavily with a Phenom 1090t, 8gb of corsair ram an SSD, 1tb hard drive and 750ti. Also set up a dual boot with XP. Spans these 2 eras pretty well and maxed out everything I wanted to play. I dunno if 7 still supports Steam but if it does I'd be willing to build something like that again.
My main PC has Windows 7, I can confirm that Steam still works
My main computer runs 7 steam supports it.
Still running a Win 7 PC with an FX8320E and gtx 750 ti as my main desktop, because current hardware prices are ridiculous for a university student. So far no major issues, except for discord screen share not working anymore for whatever stupid reason. If it survives the next two years, it'll have lasted me for 11 years. (Although I did briefly have a 1070 installed which died after a year, great.)
I actually found the same issue with Discord screen share. I haven't tried to share myself, but when I attempt to watch other people's streams they won't load for me. Some people load in the app, some do not. One work around I found for watching streams anyways is to load into Discord in Microsoft Edge, which should be installed on any Windows 7 machine that's up to date with updates. Not sure if that will let you share your own screen, but it's worked without fail to let me watch other streams. For some reason no other Chromium based browser works either, it has to be Edge in my experience.
@@NottJoeyOfficial Well, I guess I'll try that some time. My main browser is the good old firefox, so no chromium there afaik. Used the discord desktop client so far.
@@Luxfalcon yeah, I usually use Firefox too, but since Discord itself is a Chromium based app they still never even tried to get streams working on Firefox last I checked. It's good that Edge is built in at least, so you don't have to download anything additional. Good luck to you.
15:40 Ah yes, the glorious IdTech 4 optimization
Windows 7 gaming pc starter pack (hardware):
Core i5 2500K
Hyper 212 or Corsair H80 AIO
ASUS or MSI Z68 board
8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
GTX 570 GPU
500-1000 GB hard drive (maybe a 120 GB SSD if you were rich)
and of course, the legendary Cooler Master Elite 430 case!!
Oh Windows 7 please come back alive!
This guy made really interesting videos i hope he comes back soon
This video is good BUT what if you could get any parts you wanted, what would you get so that windows 7 can run without problems???
I only stopped using Windows 7 this year, just over a month ago, putting off updates for ages since my PC was DDR3 and LGA2011 socket any new upgrades apart from the last GPU update were realistically going to require a whole rebuild.
Really stable and the only real reason I upgraded is many more new games were incompatible like 40K DarkTide, and some older games also updated to no longer run on Win7.
Although I'm fine with the aesthetics of Windows 11 I don't like how Windows 8 and beyond have loads of random sponsored content pushed on you in the default start menu, yes you can do some tweaking to get rid of it but I preferred how non-bloat and unintrusive Windows 7 was on fresh install.
For anyone who wants to know, the fastest officially supported parts for Windows 7 are as followed:
i9-9980XE
ROG Strix X299-E Gaming II
128GB DDR4-4266MHz
RTX 3090 Ti
Weird how 128GB is the maximum RAM amount that's officially supported by Windows 7 even though half of the editions of it are compatible with up to 192GB of RAM.
Eventually, I'm going to rebuild a windows 7 beast in the level 10 gt I kept from the computer I had at that time. I wish I hadn't sold my z77 sabertooth...
man i miss windows 7 i remember playing counter strike source on a crappy windows 7 workstation from the time but now i use linux ever since windows 11 came out
Windows 7 is lowkey the most beautiful os Microsoft has ever made
Windows 7 is not retro, I use every day still in 2023 it's the best OS ever made !!!! And people saying the opposite are simply stupid !!!
Even a super high end pc with a RTX 3090/RX 6900 XT with a I9 12900k can run windows 7 if you make a custom windows 7 with the drivers integrated in ntlite
Running 7 on my 12900k with a 770
@@himmelskibet nice
I dunno man. While it might be considered retro time-wise, it doesn't really look retro like XP
Even XP falls between retro and modern
I really don't agree with calling Windows 7 retro. I wouldn't call anything capable of running stuff such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and even Cyberpunk 2077 retro.
I mean, I'm still using it as my OS right now on my main laptop and desktop. Will perhaps upgrade to 10 whenever I can get a decent GPU for the desktop so I can play more modern games, though. Don't see much point in running 10 on my laptop because none of those newer DX11/12 games could ever run on it anyway.
@@thepirategamerboy12 Yeah, my laptop is a dual boot with 7 and 10, and anything that I can run on Windows 10 also runs on Windows 7 due to the age of this laptop. Even Yugioh Dual Masters runs on 7 despite saying it requires DX11 and Windows 10 as a minimum. I tend to boot into Windows 7 when I need fast access to programs instead of letting Windows 10 boot for a while. It's much more light weight so it's a lot faster to boot.
Similar project. My problem is a driver gap. Newish Acer motherboard probably won't have any drivers for WindowsXP. While the graphics card should work in almost all versions of windows with catalyst.
The bios style is not ugly its preety and nostalic
It's not ugly, it's horrendous
small detail to the graphics card here, the MSI GT 730 that you are using is DDR3 one, which is absolute the worst version of it, use the GDDR5 one instead and you will get a decent gaming performance
Windows 7 came out a few months before i was born
“I hope Windows 11 is up to the same standard.”
Hello I’m from the future and I’ve got some unfortunate news.
so windows 7 updated properly, no warnings about hardware etc....
i use win7 with I9 9900k and RTX 3060 Ti. has win7 drivers
Fact: i was still using windows 7 when this came out
i have that same monitor! it is amazing and has never failed me, to the point that i use it with my rtx 3060!
Woah great video. Personally I love Windows 7 a lot , nostalgia bias is also involve. I always do hear Xp being best but I'm sure some of us love 7 more. I always make my windows 10 pc , look like 7. Windows 10 is only supported and I don't think I will go to 11. 10 is perfect only because they bricked 7.
In the school I've was attended for, each computer in the ComLab has Windows 7 OS.
my xp and 7 machine are the same pc, first gen i7 (6core+hyper threading) at 4+ghz for decent single core on xp and multi core on 7. 640gt (had it lying around and it has xp drivers)
Sounds interesting...
i7-980?
@@kevinyoliveira68 xeon x5675 but its the same cpu die as the i7 980 980x 990x (the xeons are WAY cheaper than the i7s)
@@vincentschumann937 Make sense thank you
My Windows 7 rig currently is a Dell Precision 5810🤣
with a Xeon E5 1630v3 32GB DDR4 4x8GB (QChanl, but maybe in Dchanl with 4 available slots)
with a GTX 660 until I get the modular 8+6 power cable part ordered.
Then I'm putting my shelved Titan Black to use😆
It's about equivalent to my main desktop x99 i7 6850k 32GB QChanl DDR4 (8x4GB)
I know it's absolutely unnecessary
I only got it because by brother's friend called me to collect it from an abandon rental unit
and it supports all kinds of sata and legacy and UEFI boot options, like AHCI
that's great cuz when ever I installed Windows 7 on this WD RaptorX drive (the drive with a factory window)
I didn't realize that feature was off in that bios I originally installed it on.😬
now it's really hard to get motherboards with that bios setting.
if it doesn't have it, its on by default and windows wont boot.
I took out the drives it had in it and connected my good'ol reliable WD Raptor drive and it worked!🤣
Sure I really should reinstall it, but do you have any idea how long it takes and
how big of a pain it is to re install all The Sims 2 and expansions😵😩
I have a 20 year old game save that has never looked sooo good with custom graphicsrule config tweak
2560x1080 ultrawide resolution.
iam using an old HP pavilion 6214y .. its a athlon II x4 and dual boots win7/64 and windows xp64 on seperate drives.. the onboard is good for xp era stuff but any old radeon HD era car thats 128bit memory interface will be plenty.. i dont game on 7 because most games were online activation or online multiplayer but run my video picture and audio editors in 7. The 2 drives are sata2 8gb ddr 2 memory with a combo drive burner and its perfect for the split task of game box and editor
1:03 I have that EXACT laptop, but I use another one
NOW this is quality content!
Why you have a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 and you said that this is a 590-FX?
Sheesh, you're picking stuff from the time instead of maximizing on what it's capable of. You're missin out on the 2700x, RTX 3000s, Freesync or G-sync 3440x1440 QLEDs, DTS X or Atmos, Media Player 12/Media Center for Xbox 360/PS3 streaming. And all that modern stuff Windows 7 can absolutely run and support... I hate Windows 10 and am hoping Windows 11 no longer has initial issues. 2024 update: It can even use RX 6400/6500 XTs. Even Windows 8.1 supports up to the Quadro RTX 8000 which should be very relevant by today's standards. I myself have a Quadro RTX 4000 for 2060 Super performance for 8.1.
I still main 7 but to absolutely no one's surprise 11 is even worse than 10.
This is me using a gaming PC that has Windows 10 but the keyboard has its Windows 7 window button
Next time you need to blow away an entire disk with all partitions on it, you can do that with diskpart.
You have the same exact keyboard I have for this build!
this channel needs more subs
retro does not mean old hardware, you can run windows 7 with 3090 with latest CPU as long as the motherboard support CSM.
although 3090 is last modern GPU i know that support windows 7.
edit: welp i did not read the part 2021 on it mybad
When you see that a gtx 670 is from that time. Me having a nvidia 550 Ti on my old pc that is 11.
AMD FX 8350 and 8370E have 4 cores, not 8
Steam finally just dropped support for 7. NOW it's officially retro.
And it is still getting updates as of 05/19/2024
6:41 I own this exact display and I am using it as I write this comment!
Windows Vista TOO?
just finished my i5-4690k 1660ti windows 7 build, took me a bit to get my drivers together but it works! never had a windows 7 desktop, only laptops and could never game on them
6:55 that's weird, that Spore icon lacks the shine that I have. Did EA update the shortcut at some point.
Still 1 of the BEST OS
I'm watching this on Windows 7
FR
And on modern hardware
Watching this on a 4060 and i5 14500😮💨
DUDE no way... i have a Radeon HD 4850 in my custom XP build is well ... holy crap, small world
I've got a 660 just lying around right now...
i still have a 2007 msi megabook m670 that was a upgraded with a dualcore and i had windows 7 on it and it broke in a few months now it doesn't post but it turns on but no post and i also have an asus x551ca-sx029h celeron at 1.5ghz its fully dead
I use an HP w2207 as a secondary monitor
i dont know much about how to build or what parts to pick. any reccomendations on how to start a build like this? this is my favorite era of gaming. honestly if i could just get a list of a
parts and software i bet i could probably put it together, id love to max out for this era. where should i start my research?
If you want to max out a build for the era you'll be looking to get parts from around 2012-2013.
You'll probably looking at a 2nd or 3rd gen Intel i-series CPU and an NVIDIA GTX 600 or 700 series graphics card. You could even get 2 identical cards and run them in an SLI configuration if you wanted something really overkill.
If you want something a little more pre-built, I'd recommend looking into decommissioned servers and high-end workstations. You can find these kinds of systems from about 10 years ago being sold for dirt cheap by government organizations an universities. Look for towers with a Xeon processor (Intel's server CPUs), as they tend to be very reliable and are usually equivalent to at least a mid-range i-series chip in performance. You can check the exact model against a second-gen i7 to see what kind of bargain you're getting. If you find something decent, it's usually just a matter of adding a GPU and installing Windows. I've done this a couple times with Dell Precision towers and have gotten great results.
Also, I'd avoid AMD CPUs from this era. The high-end ones can be decent, and I even used one in this build, but they run extremely hot. I'm actually looking to replace the one I used here at some point due to the insane amount of heat waste.
Honestly thought you would use Ivy bridge
I'm sorry to tell you this but it's not... Windows Vista is more Retro than 7, especially because 7 run alot of things where Vista doesn't...
Grab yourself either a GTX 680, a GTX 960 or a Radeon 7970/R9 280x and be happy.
What do you think of using Steam on Windows 7? I recently got a GTX570 on my old IVY bridge system for old games but not sure if it's unsafe to use online just to access my steam games.
It should be safe enough as long as you take proper precautions and don't keep any sensitive info on it.
The first thing you should do when you get it online is fully update Windows, and don't open a web browser until that's finished. Then immediately install a better browser along with a good ad-blocker, and a script blocker if you're really paranoid. I'd suggest keeping web browsing on the system to a minimum, and don't click ads or download random files (duh).
In my case I also use a PiHole DNS server to block ads and malicious domains network-wide. Personally, I wouldn't trust having my old computers online without it in place. If you want to go really overboard you could set up rules on your router or in the Windows hosts file to block all connections on that machine, except a handful of whitelisted domains.
The only other thing I'd suggest is to disable the "hide extensions of known file types" option in folder and search settings so you're less susceptible to trojans.
Honestly, most of this stuff is just good practice for any computer, not just obsolete ones.
@@AtomicPurple Good points, thanks. My copy of SP1 didn’t even work with windows update out of the box until I installed the 2GB of grouped KB updates from the Microsoft catalog but it finds new updates now after those were installed. I was surprised to see that Microsoft still updates Microsoft security essentials and still seems to do critical updates like with the print nightmare issues along with some other updates listed as 2021. As you said in your video I find 7 much nicer to use than 10.
I am very much not in favor of running Steam on my Windows 7 machine because it isn't authentic and you might as well play on a modern PC. They are running most of that stuff in emulation and even when they don't, I suspect it is often heavily modified and amended even when not a "remastered edition". I buy old copies of games, often for a lot cheaper than what they cost on Steam or GOG and run them the authentic way. The old code and the old machine kinda goes hand in hand and if you aren't going to do both, why mess with any of it?
@@AtomicPurple Avast seems to work pretty well for free security software. But I still don't do anything super critical on Windows 7. Not logging into my bank account!
@@finkelroy7030 it’s mostly ease of access. My library is already there and I share a triple boot with windows 10 and XP and they all connect to the same steam library directory. If I find an older game that has some kind of compatibility issue I can just switch to 7 or xp and continue where I left off with it.
would have been cool to see the actual building part tbh, only critique i have for this vid, otherwise solid
So my gaming PC (with an intel core i7 7700k +16GB RAM + gtx 1070) (note i have windows 10 on another drive (a 1TB Samsung SSD) but I don’t use it that much)
"I hope windows 11 will be up to the same standard" Oh how this aged like milk.
Great video though. Windows truly peaked at 7 as far as design and consistency goes. I can't see Microsoft beating it as currently they have their focus fixated on new gimmicks like AI instead of basic functionality, diverting resources away from user experience. Which is why it comes as a surprise to no-one when the finished product is, indeed, underwhelming when compared to it's previous generations.
I have an hp pavilion elite hpe as a gaming PC it has win10pro and has a redragon gaming keyboard gaming mouse I use 2 hp e243 computer monitors I'm using Samsung speakers with those pin wires Idk about gpu I have 1tb disk 14gb ram the cpu is an i5 750
i still use windows 7 because my PC lags like hell on windows 10
Windows 7 On Modern Hardware Is Just Too Fast Since It Did NOT Have Any Sort Of Bloatware😊
Windows has been bloated since XP or even earlier, it always comes with a bunch of useless nonsense. It just demanded far less RAM than the versions after it
@@Cedalus tbh windows 7 is kinda bloated but it is to uninstall permanently unlike windows 10 keep reinstalling it when a update occurs
@@IshY8T true it doesn't constantly reinstall onedrive and edge
@@Cedalus that’s my point but you can use a plugin to stop from occurring
It's strange that gt730 cannot even run a game from 2005
Id 100% use windows 7 if my hardware had CSM support I cannot find a bios motherboard or a csm one so for now I'm using windows 8.1 themed to look like windows 7
If you want it to be period accurate just use a HDD
But good work nonetheless
Actually, the MSI 730 you have is probably the GT 430. Yes.
What GT 730 version are you using? Results seems whack. I remember running far cry 2 back in the day maxed out with same in game resolution as what you are using with an HD4850, overclocked Pentium E5200 and 4gb of ram and I'm getting playable framerates than what you are getting. According to Tom's Hardware's gpu hierarchy, the GT 730 GDDR5 version is just around HD4770 performance. Given I was still running with DDR2 mems and weaker cpu than yours you should be getting way better framerates than what you are getting
6:58 me too
shoot i still have my i7 860 and i still use it
Impossible my main PC is still Windows 7!
Windows 7 is retro??
08:34 Oh my god did this man just call gui GOOEY??
Bro uses userbenchmark 💀 💀💀💀, I had that exact GT730 (still have it, dead tho) and it is not even a 730, it is GT430 core rebranded. Solid slicon tho, ran it overclocked at 99 degrees C for 4 years and it ran okay until I burned it when plugging it to another motherboard. Real 730 core has twice the performance, Vulkan support and newer drivers.
At mar 9:19 why does he say your not supposed to use windows 7 online and that Hes using pi hole and keeping and eye on it? And how can I do this? Thanks