These Z440s are ultra-reliable. I worked in a med. Laboratory and had two of them under my table as an expert system. They were running 24/7 with only a weekly restart.
I picked up a old Z420 with Xeon 1602v2 and 32gb ram for $150. Upgraded to a 2667v2 8 core for $50 and GTX 1060 6G with 6 to 8 pin adapter. All said and done had a solid PC for $450. Used it from 2017 till 2022. In 2021 I upgraded it with a RX5600 XT, EVGA 650W PSU and 1440p monitor. Z420 handled it perfectly fine. Really I'm sure I could have used it for few more years. Great PC, a blast from 2013.
I was looking for a Z440 but ended up with a Z620 and a Z230 for the price they wanted for 1 Z440. Both have been great old machines, but they are like new to me since I was using an ancient Dell GX 520 and a Dell Dimension 3000 before that one lol.
If you check even new AAA games, 10-15 y/o i5/7 CPUs even are fast enough, only need new GPUs, 16 GB RAM and SSD. When checking cpu userbenchmark website, you can see that in the last 10 years the CPU speed went up like 100 % only, but stays at like only 50 % effective speed, because of Wirth's Law and similar. Free lunch is over since like 2010 or so, which means single core performance aren't raising like up to Pentium 4 or AMD XP, but they go with multi core and better power saving methods instead. It's only like 5 % speed boost each CPU generation nowadays. GPUs are a different story, gladly still improving, but we pay much more for GPUs than in the past. PCIe Gen. 4+ ofc. needs newer chips and CPUs or you'll loose like 20 % GPU speed when running those on PCIe Gen. 3. Newer GPUs need EFI also. I still don't own such, my GPUs run on classic BIOS PCs.
XP is love XP is life 😍 It's not a real XP video without installation music playing in the background 😉 XP was the first NT kernel windows I liked, grew up with 3x and 9x. Still hard to belive XP came out my senior year of high school... man I feel so old.
Yeah 2000 and XP are one of the best OS MS ever made, next to 7 ofc. I always turned off the effects and colored taskbar in XP since I saw that PassMark Performance Test told me even a P4 3200 will loose like 20-30 % GPU performance because of only those effects and this P4 wasn't slow. I guess you still can see a difference on a C2D E8400 or at least benchmark a difference.
@@sebastianebert4295 Don't know about INTEL* 'n' Pentium 4...AMD BOI(Person? in 2023?) since Socket 7... 😲 *With that said: Wolfdale = Best damn dual-Cores EVER MADE though! Respect from a 939 & AM2 Dualcore user..back then ;-)
@@dallesamllhals9161 Yeah I mostly love the Pentium III 700+ MHz, the Intel C2D E8400 3 GHz, i5/7 2xxx 3+ GHz and newer. And AMD XP 2800+ in favor of P4 HT 3200 (which I both had), AMD 4200+, 5200+, Athlon II x2 260. I'll use the E8400 and/or Athlon II x2 260 for Win XP w/ EAX sound card, as those are even period correct late XP SP3 machines. I used Win 10 on those, which even was okay-ish with SSD. Those two are my newest normal case PCs I kept, having no issues to put some cards into those. My i5/7 2/3xxx are Dell SFF/DT machines, so need low profile GPU, sound card or riser cable quirks. I think I'll keep Win 10 and Linux on those and just use the older ones with a GTX 645 OEM or other cards I can switch, which are fast enough in most cases. Maybe not for GTA 4 (I never played that yet), but for Crysis Remastered it should be fast enough. I thought about getting an AMD RX 6400 for my SFF/DT machines, but that's not XP compatible ofc. A GTX 750 or just my 645 must be enough with the dual cores. I mean I played XP games on the P4, AMD XP, 4200+, 5200+ with even slower ATI 9800 SE 128 MB and ATI HD 4550^^.
@@dallesamllhals91612000 were still considered to be a little bit more "Pro" OS, and was basically still "NT" for both Microsoft and regular users. Professional & not for home. Some games were also not compatible, and of course it had bigger hardware requirements than 98 or Me. XP had some optimizations in that regard, especially boot time. Even XP when released, had a reputation of being...a resource hog - no kidding. This opinion was quite persisting for even 2-3 years. It was the reason why I still used 98 in 2003 on my Atlhon XP 1800+ - a machine that was perfectly capable running Win XP without a problem.
I have recently built 2 Windows XP PCs, one for me and one for my daughter. We are having so much fun playing some older games together connected together for LAN play. Windows XP is just an all around fun OS and the games of that era are in my opinion better than most new releases.
@@philscomputerlab Disabling hyperthreading is stupid advice. Even for windows XP. Id tech 3, id tech 4, and Crysis all can use multithreading and thats well within the era. Just learn how to use a thread scheduling tool like process lasso. ITS FREE.
love your videos. I purchased a z440 3 months ago. Xeon 2960 v4, 32Gb RAM. NVME in a PCIE adapter, esxi installed, vsphere nested, works excellently as a home lab. Although they are kinda retro, they still pack a punch. Thing is, im running out of room to keep all my stuff. The z440 is silient enough to have it in our bedroom, thankfully.
I use one of the Z440s as my main computer. I upgraded the ram to 64gb, added a 1TB ssd on an HP ZTurbo card, and an RTX 2060 Super and it's been great. Put it all together for just under $400 and couldn't be happier.
I was going through parts that were destined to be e-waste such as i3 2120, i5 2400 and have been very impressed with the performance in xp... I like that a lot of the motherboards I found also had regular PCI. Was very happy I saved them from being trashed!
I did the same thing, i refine gold for people from ewaste and jewellery, so over the years everytime i got old collectable pc gear that i knew was special i kept it .. and now im looking for guys in australia to give it too.. i sent a i5 2400 to a twitch streaming playing games with viewers, that had the i3 2120 and his game was low fps because he was gaming and streaming on the 2120 but making do with it, so i asked if he had a po box to send gifts too and i sent him the upgrade cpu .. he gained like 40 fps in game while streaming pubg live, with a gtx1060.. on Windows 10.. so yeah these old i3 and i5s are pretty dam good even in 2023, ive been giving anything i5 or i7 thats 3rd gen or newer to kids in my area with no PC's and telling there parents they can have the whole computer for free, but the mum or dad needs to buy the a gpu so its usable and i usually go on marketplace and show them a 2nd hand gpu thats say a old gtx1070 or 2070 for under $200au and tell there mum or dad they need to buy that at minimum so its a complete usable pc that will last till after they finish high school, knowing full well im giving them a gaming pc and making sure there parent atleast buys them a good gpu .... to be honest, for me and you we can build a period correct xp system thats way overpowered for the task, for our home xp system... we might aswell just give the systems with i5 or i7 from 1st gen to 5th gen away for free to kids and teens who we know dont have a pc at home, that stuff is still great for modern gaming and there school stuff still... if your in my position with rooms of hoarded pc gear and old collectables saved from years of ewaste refining.. give the usable stuff away to kids man, on my street theres this housing commission family with 2 kids that are little ferals always in the street, so i asked there mum if they have a computer and she said no they use her ipad for online stuff, and i said i have 2 spare computers they can have so they have a real pc each and they dont have to share , so i gave the older one a 3rd gen i5 3400 with a gtx1050, and i gave the toddler a 1st gen i5 750 with a gt 730 garbage gpu but it plays minecraft and roblox and the sims good, and he can play fortnight with low settings so for a 4 or 5 yr old hes over the moon, and his brother whos about 12 never has an annoying little bro wanting to use his pc, and can play pretty much any game at 1080p i only tested pubg because thats the only gpu intense game i have but we got average 125 fps at 1080p med to high settings in pubg before the game optimisation last year.. so yeah man, dont overlook how powerfull those i3 and i5s can be, and powerfull doesnt mean mhz or ghz in multiple cores and threads... Powerfull, is how much an i5 changes the life of a 10 to 16 yr old thats desperate and knows that the persin who gave him this power also gave his toddler brother an i3 so he doesnt feel left out and he isnt bugging his big bro to use his personal pc.... do it, you sound from your comment like you have alot of stuff stored like me from ewaste businesses... if you do, do it, change a familys life because you can.... im sorry i went on, but i felt that if your an ewaste guy like me, you know what im saying, and half the stuff we got sitting around really is way out of some kids or teens or single parents price range especially if there mum or dads on a dole or pension or housing commission.. the first time i gave pcs away i gave 3 to a family with 2 toddlers and one boy whos 11 the toddlers just got old dual core pcs from an old office building with a generic hp gpu each that comes in an office hp poo poo pc, but is amazing to a 2 and 3 yr old for kids youtube and paint and roblox and minecraft, and the 11 yr old we know will wish he can play games with friends online so he got my old gen1 i5 750 and a gtx1050 that my daughter took out of her pc because she bought a stupid gpu shaped like hello kitty that suits her stupid 14 yr old style but it was actually a good rx something so win win, she paid for her own cat shaped rx 580 and gave me the gtx1050 cos i said i use a gtx1050ti oc in my rig and she said well now you have 2, and i said actually im giving it away to the kid down the road, and she said cool tell him to add my steam (online gamers hub) lol... do it, you wont regret it, even if you spend a few bucks here and there to make sure a kid gets a gpu thats usable its so worth it, kids lose their minds, like actually lose their minds and freak out, panic , dance, one kid screamed and ran down the street screaming only to return 1 minute later with his friend who has a pc too he wanted show they can both play now not one at a time.. and 2 different times a kid cried because he was embarrassed a stranger from down the street was helping him with stuff he needed and wanted, that was the only strange reaction ive had but i think he mightve had a much rougher life than i realised, and told him its not really that special but i do want him to keep it and use it.. and the other kid that cried was crying because i think he had no dad ever so he was overwhelmed and about 7yr old and he acted frightened by me, that was weird but his mum just made him watch me set it up in his room so he knew how to turn it on and all that and i just said yeah mate, theres no catch or trick, its your computer to use for you, you can just keep it forever and put anything you want on it, he was confused, i was confused, but i knew he was glad he had a pc after i left... every other kid is just ecstatic to find out there getting a pc, and usually dance around crazy happy when i say yeah mate you get this sweet pc but your little brother or sister gets the other pc in my car if you help me set itvup for them, they realise they arent just the kid with the pc now, there the kid with there own pc now and thats a big thing for kids to know your sibling's have their own pc and dont want yours ever... bigg.. Come on, youve read all this, you realise that actually yes you can give away about 20 pcs at the moment if you found 8 more gpu's to go with them, so yes start giving away the 12 with gpu's and if any teens you give a pc too are over 16 give them a pc with no gpu but a great 6 core i7 or 6 core ryzen , and say hey this pc is op, it just needs a graphics card and tell there parent its a good pc they need to buy him or her a gpu thats $300 plus on there bday or xmas or go halves with them in one asap, but make sure the parents understand your not joking they need to buy the $300 minimum gpu to get them through till there in there 20s... parents never believe they need a gpu.... but they do.. .. Now go do it.. make a family or 2 on your street with young kids year.. My current build for a local 10 yr old girl im building one for next.. Ive got a purple pc case with a i5 3400 and an aftermarket air cooler with purple leds, 16g of ddr3, an old 500gb ssd as a bootdrive with storage for her favourite games, and a 1tb hdd for her mass storage, a cd rom drive, and ive removed the old usb from the front of the case and swapped it for a usb3 multiport with 3 usb's instead of the one slow old usb port.. so i havent spent a cent yet on her one it was just a build from my piles, and all i need to find out now is if her dad is going to buy her a $180 gpu? I recomended at minimum for her? Or if i need to find her a usable one myself?... but most parents have actually been so happy i built there kids stuff just to be nice that they have actually most of them bought a gpu that was better than i recomended at minimum , a few just couldnt but i had good ones, and some kids are so young they dont need a gpu at all to play roblox or paint, or watch youtube.. there the toddlers with distraction PC's to keep them not left out and off there older siblings pcs anyway... Now get too it.. and reply with what systems your giving away, because you can too.
Yeah it's such a waste to trash those. I mean we can even play some AAA titles on those. But the story is leasing PC contracts, trash every 3 years in millions of offices and personnel costs, upgrades to 8 GB RAM and SSD cost more than just buying new PCs. Good for us, getting good stuff for cheap ofc. Also keep an eye out when Win 10 support ends in 2025, the next i7-7xxx will be "useless" in most offices and also home PCs, as most people don't have the knowledge to upgrade PCs. I mean even Win 11 will run on those if using Ventoy, Rufus or manual fixes. 16 GB DDR3 RAM is very cheap and a good Samsung/SanDisk SSD makes sense. Just don't buy cheap SSD.
I have a Z440 I picked up. NOS. 10 years old but brand new in box. Was sitting in some warehouse. Installed a conventional PS and a 2080ti. Upgraded the ram to 128. Tried a 14 core CPU ($20 US). Switch back to the more gamer friendly CPU. It's a fantastic machine. I've done years of programming on a similar machine back in the day. It's still plenty powerful with the right CPU. Had to fab a bracket to mount the PS. HP decided they didn't want people installing a conventional PS. I have Win11 and visual studio on it now.
Yeah several machines have BTX PSU or similar instead of ATX. Well, how did we use CAD on 500-700 MHz Pentium III with HDDs back then? This CPU will last for 10 more years AAA games and 20 years retro games. I think since 15 years or so CPUs are fast enough, only need to upgrade SSD, RAM, GPU every 5-10 years.
@@sebastianebert4295 Yeah CPU performance has kinda plateaued. The computer I first made money with as a programmer was a 286. These day a little raspberry Pi W for $35 is more powerful than those machines.
@@AntiGrieferGames Another method would be to procure a used physical copy for either PC or Xbox 360, but if we're talking strictly about a digital download copy, then yes, the method you're hinting at is the only way.
@Rymante you can't even get it on physical copy. My original disk doesn't work any more as there is digital DRM on it that does online check. Their servers are not active any more. The only way to play it is on console. I have it on PS3.
You shocked me briefly, thought you called the Z440 old. I am still using it daily, but with a Xeon 8c16t, 128GB DDR4 RAM, pure PCIe SSD and an Geforce 3060. Mine was bought in 2019 (so pretty late in their servicelive, but it runs like a charm! Use it for gaming and everything else.
Is that one having PCIe Gen. 4 or 3? I thought about an RX A2000 6/12 GB, 3050, 3060 or 3070 lately, but my Dell PCs have PCIe Gen. 3 only, it would be like 20 % slower. Sadly the 1650, 1050 and similar cards now cost more than new. Yeah even with i5/7-2/3xxx, 16 GB RAM and SSD you can do things quite fast nowadays, even running Win 10 on a daily base. I still run it on my 850 EVO, which is more than 7 y/o I think, migrated from 4200+, 5200+, C2D E6300/6600, two different E8400 and now i5-3570, which is still fast. Sometimes I'm wondering how fast it is. 16 GB RAM and SSD make such a difference. My GPU is only GT 1030 GDDR5, but I like it ultra low power, retro gaming at like 20-40 watts CPU+GPU. Well, not for Win XP sadly. The 1030 would be perfect for XP, if it would run. A tad bit slower than 750 only, but 30 W TDP, even passively cooled. With 128 GB RAM I'd set up a nice Proxmox 8 environment. For gaming I think 16 GB is enough, maybe 32 or more for flight sims running 150 nm view distance and 4-16 k res. Well, I saw some Canadian people on yt tested a cheap AMD RX 6400 with HL2 on a cheap 1000 bucks 8K TV. The HL2 menu had glitches @8K, but in game in ran perfectly fine w/o any patch, they ran it with 8K@300 FPS on this cheap card, which never had an ad to promote 8K, lol. Interestingly the details are impressive, very sharp also, w/o even using FSAA. Think about the details PS1/2 emus can give with multi res using the same unpatched games. Sony made a huge 16K ultrawide screen some years ago.We'll see when it's ready for the masses in like 20-40 " for 1000 bucks or less. Maybe in 5-10 years. At least 8K is pretty cheap nowadays and may be good for 320x240 CRT game emulation (while 4K isn't enough for showing the mask and sub pixels details yet).
Excellent. Your resource links are always a nice bonus. I just bought a Z440, with an E5-1650v4 and 32gb Quad Channel RAM. With an RX580 or a GTX1660ti it's a great, balanced system and so well built. I'm experimenting with the IOT version of Windows 10 - so far so good.
I had so much fun playing Max Payne. My brother and I built a PC back in 2000/2001. We bought a Voodoo 3 PCI card. A friend of ours bought the 5500 AGP. He didn't know his motherboard didn't have an AGP slot. Our motherboard did have an AGP slot. So, we gave him $50, or something like that, and swapped cards. Unreal was also awesome on that card. We had a lot of fun building it too.
You know theres a letter missing from the pentium4 HT right? its the letter O, in a nutshell they are called pentium4 HOT They make great space heaters in winter.
I had one, P4 HT 3200 MHz. It's mainboard died after 5 years of use. Idle wattage of tower was 120 watts. After that I decided to use lowest power PCs I can build. Now gaming with CPU+GPU 20-40 watts, idling at like 10-15 watts, 32 " TV 40 watts (gaming incl. monitor needs less than the P4 idling, lol). I remember playing on hot summer evenings when days had like 30-35 °C, the P4 PC heated up the room so much you felt the difference after just 30 mins and couldn't play for more than 2 hours. But when some stupid European Green Parties forbid burning oil / coal and maybe even wood in 2026+ or so (while we import more expensive green labeled atomic and coal energy and the whole rest of the world uses atomic, oil and coal, which makes this decision useless), some Europeans need to heat with AC power in winter again. Then an old P4 actually would make sense again (in winter only).
That after leasing PC's now is quite nice but ~ 10 years ago there was on aftermarket a lot of specialy made for oems custom solution like arrangement in case, fancy shape of motherboard, fancy power supply and conector, no agp/pcie slot, etc, so you can't use standard ATX parts and vice versa.
Wow! I am glad I clicked on this video :) It just so happens I have a Zotac GT 640! So I have put that back into my Haswell i5 Machine and installed XP but made a mistake. Make sure (as Phil does in this video) you set your CPU Cores to 1 BEFORE you install Windows XP or XP will not boot if you do it after the installation.
That's interesting. There must be a registry fix I think. It reminds me of Windows 10 not booting, if BIOS is being reset from AHCI to IDE or other way, before you change the registry value for it. Which cause several old PCs with flat RTC batteries or some bugs changing BIOS values even with good battery to not boot Windows 10 even, because many BIOS reset to IDE mode, my Dell 780 with flat battery decides to reset to RAID mode even. But yeah, most games in XP won't need more than 1 core. My P4 HT had 2 soft cores back then. I played Crysis Maximum Edition on it, but never felt that 2 soft cores made a difference...5 % speed difference, if even. I didn't have problems with AMD 4200+, 5200+, but I don't remember if I still used XP or 8. I installed 8 since 2012 I think it was. In 2008 my P4 mainboard died, then I had an AMD XP 2800+ before the 4200+. Some weeks ago I read that XP has problems with either 3+ or 4+ cores sometimes, not starting up. GTA 4 seems to be an XP game which actually can make use of 3 or even 4 cores.
Gotta love Windows XP builds and the flexibility when it comes to what parts you can use makes it even more appealing. Really awesome video Phil, keep enjoying playing those great games, I have to say Prey for sure deserves to be on GOG.
I have a Retro Sleeper PC with XP Professional 32. Old gray case from 1998 with a bit of RGB inside, i5 3570, 4 GB DDR3 1600 in dual channel mode and GeForce GTX 780 and SB XFI PCI.
Prey can be found on myabandonware, which I believe is a legal grey area. Still, from what I've seen, they share only software that can't be purchased anywhere. If a game enters any store again, it gets removed.
EAX was downright amazing, I don't known if modern audio has ever truly equalled what the best of EAX could do. Vista threw Creative Labs for a loop that they never fully recovered from.
I just put together an XP machine with a Dell Optiplex and happen to sell it. I was surprised, just wanted to see if there was interest. Max Payne 1 and 2 were awesome! I'm actually going to try it out on Xemu when I get time. Hopefully today.
I tend to stay mostly period-correct - or close - for my retro computers. My most powerful XP gaming machine is an Athlon 64 X2 with 2GB RAM, Radeon X1900 and Audigy2 ZS. It's perfectly adequate for period gaming. Even runs Crysis at around 42fps.
I had the 4200+, later 5200+. Great CPUs, always loved Cool'n'Quiet, 800 MHz efficient clock. Loved the huge Freezer 64 Pro cooler, which still works on my Athlon II x2 260, AM2 socket. I could go with x6 or even Phenom or my i5/i7, but for XP it's not needed. Crysis Maximum, Doom III, GTA 4, Mafia 2, Godfather 2 I think are some of the latest CPU hogging XP games, but everything before those run w/o any issues, f.e. Farcry, NFS HP2/U/U2/MW and 95 % which we played back then. Crysis Maximum I played since P4 HT 3200, ATI 9800 SE, 30-ish FPS in 2007-2008. RIP ASUS P4P 800 SE, 52 °C indoor temps, P4 72 °C with restarts in hot summer nights. After that I decided to use power efficient PCs with also low power GPU only. I also have the Audigy 2 ZS, great card for up to EAX 4, not 5. Jedi Outcast and Academy were a blast. I now spotted Elite Force also. Those games alone with EAX hardware make me wanna use Win XP again. I dislike most new games, tbh., because I don't like the forced blur and alpha blend effects, pseudo HDR colors and such. Like 70-90 % of all games I have run on XP and older. I play more new indie games than new AAA titles on Win 10, tbh. Games like Trine 1-5, which reminds me of Lost Vikings 1-2 on SNES (LV2 on DOS/Win has the blocky new graphics, but on SNES it's the old pixelated one). As I didn't keep the older slower PCs, my oldest towers are C2D E8400 and Athlon II x2 260 now. But those I'll keep for sure. Well, it's still in the up to 2014 EOL XP era, but long after my P4 HT 3200 and AMD XP 2800+ 2004-2008 times. My GPU now is a GTX 645 OEM or just my older ATI HD 4550, ATI HD 2600 Pro. A bit newer also, but low end, so it fits good for a low power system. I loved the ATI HD 4550 in my 4200+, 5200+. I also expect like 30-50 FPS on those. Maybe limiting the res, using Process Lasso Pro, limiting CPU cores in BIOS.
This is excellent advise. You can also purchase Off-Lease Dell Laptops and Workstations for a really good price. I bought a Core-I5 Dell Optiplex for under $500 and I have been using it as a Plex server for the last 3 years. The best part of going with a Small Form Factor system is the are very power efficient, easy to upgrade and don't take up a lot of space.
You meant 50 bucks not 500. Yeah i5/7 2/3/4 are really cheap nowadays, even with 16 GB DDR3 RAM, sometimes even SSD for under 100 bucks complete. As you mentioned Plex. I only used Kodi so far, but that reminds me of Batocera Linux, including Kodi also. Btw., RetroBat for Windows is a spin-off of Batocera Linux (once renamed from RecalBox Remix, which was like RecalBox, but with newest packages) and RecalBox. I think Plex and Jellyfin is better for having a server-based database, but I never used such yet. My thoughts for such SFF/DT systems are to use for HTPC and Proxmox. The only downsides are low profile slots, less slots and on newer ones the PCIe x16 slots don't allow to insert dual slot GPUs or such with big heatsinks and ofc. 50 W PCIe limits and low PSU. But f.e. for a low end Win 10 PC the GT 1030 GDDR5 is perfect. Or older 750 ofc., when limited to 50 W it's a bit slower, but for XP gaming more than enough I think. I'd limit FPS to 60 anyways to save heat production and energy waste. On my PC I once played Anno 1800 even with 30 FPS lock using MSI Afterburner. For such games 30 FPS 1080 res look better than thought. W/o lock it was 40-70 FPS, but unstable having hickups. 30 FPS stable looks better. Other games with like 50-80 FPS unstable also look better with stable 60 FPS locked on this 30 W GPU and 77 W CPU, which Dell limits to 65 W. HWiNFO64, Argus Monitor Mini and Remote Sensor using Android show CPU-z and Cinebench renders the 77 watts i5-3570 CPU up to 66 watts. Temps are very low even on 100 % load never hitting 70 °C, casual gaming at 30-50 °C, fans are perfectly designed on those SFF/DT cases. I think the 65 W limit also makes it possible to more often use the boost frequencies, which indeed makes the CPU a bit faster. I didn't try undervolting yet. I's not needed yet, lol. It should make the PC faster even, ofc. I once undervolted a C2D E8400 Dell 780 MT with it's big 12 cm fan, which resulted in 37 °C idle temp showing up instead of 42 °C. Well, CPU diode of that CPU doesn'T show values below 37 °C, so it may be lower even. On an i5/7 it also should save some 1-2 watts while idling and maybe 5-10 watts while gaming or so, having faster 100 % performance also, because the 65 W limit is the same, but needing less watts for the same performance means it's faster. You could virtually get those 77 watts out of the CPU this way. I wasn't able to undervolt the GPU yet. MSI Afterburner seems to underclock only, not undervolt. 0.75 V is the minimum I see here, retro gaming runs at like 0.8 V mostly, max. 30 watts GPU load I have at I believe 1.2 V, if not limiting it. I'd like to see less than 12 W idling GPU ofc. Retro games like NFS HP2 run at like 15 W GPU @ 60 FPS 1080p here, which is quite low, but 12 W idling is high in my opinion. I didn't play on Intel HD 4000 yet, but for an HTPC this would be enough ofc. What I saw in Windows 10 is, the GT 1030 is not able to de-interlace and instead shows a vertical line in some videos no matter which Kodi and Nvidia options I set. In forums I read that GPU manufacturers from Nvidia at least weren't able to fix it since 2015+ GPUs or so. I haven't verified that with own tests. People wrote use Intel HD instead for video playback. Will test it with Batocera or LibreELEC or just Linux live and the same Nvidia GT 1030 GDDR5. On my i5 laptop with Intel HD 4000 and Raspberry Pi 2 with Videocore IV I don't have that vertical tearing line in videos and also H.265 play fine with software more there. AV1 is a problem, needs new GPUs. I saw it on youtube since some weeks. You should use h264ify and disable it, if it helps. There's no AV1 option, but h264ify next or similar has an option for VP8/9 also. The i5-3570 + GT 1030 GDDR5 game at 20-40 watts only, CPU package is idling at 5 watts, GPU sadly at 12 watts, some other GPUs idle at 5-6 watts. Thought about an AMD RX 6400, which then would idle at 5-6 watts, but is only twice as fast and expensive just for a little boost. I'm not sure about those new GPUs and non EFI boot. And my PCIe is Gen. 3 not 4, will be 20 % slower also. So +100 % * 0.8 maximum for 50 instead of 30 W TDP for 160 bucks extra...I said no. For this money you can buy 2-3 of those SFF PCs with 8-16 GB RAM each. I'll wait a bit for a faster entry level GPU and will not pay 160 bucks for it, lol. I mean my old ATI HD 4550 cost 38 bucks new, the GT 1030 GDDR5 was 74 bucks new. Both passively cooled, so even more expensive than standard models. Fast GPUs cost 300-500 bucks back then. Now entry GPUs cost 150 and fast ones 2,500. But I think the times for new cheap entry level GPUs are gone since China bans, the flu and China's own faulty lockdown restrictions. Many ships didn't leave harbors for weeks and months, trucks didn't arrive at harbors. Well, in long-terms this raised prizes worldwide, so China won in a certain way.
I purchased this pc without a video card for 50 dollars. It came with a 512 m.2, 512 ssd and 32gb of memory. I upgraded the cpu to the Intel Xeon E5-1650 3.6ghz for 15 and a 980ti for 50 bucks. This thing is pretty darn good, for what I paid for it. But I will say this. I hate that bios though. First time owning a workstation, and that bios took me a while to get use too.
Still rocking my Z620, watching this video on it, upgraded processors last year to e5-2667's, the Z6xx's are the way to go, more power, more room and will last forever!
I picked up an HP Z400 for free from work. I replaced the 4c/8t Zeon with a 6c/12t Zeon and added a GTX 1660 ti. A pretty good low-mid Win 10 gamer. I have 24gig of ECC ddr3 ram 1800 ghz running in triple channel.
Nice! Literally just got one of these about 3 weeks ago. Put a Xeon E5-2699 v3 in there, 18 cores 36 threads, and what a beast it is! Waiting on my Tesla P4 to come in with its dual NVENC, and the ol' girl will be a happy lil' Unraid Camper.
I once saw that beast of a CPU with 1.5 TB RAM and 1 or 2 Tesla M6000 installed when it was new. RAM test at boot took some mins or so. Sadly it was too expensive to be able to test it, so it directly was shipped to the customer after anything was installed w/o that we could use it.
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Super happy to see more gameplay! Prey is such a great - and often forgotten - game! Max Payne is a great game that I have not touched since its original release. It was very nice to see it here too. I would love to see a full teardown of this machine. This kind of proprietary PCs are often put together in interesting ways. Their cases have all sorts of latches, air ducts and little things that regular homebuilt PCs almost never do. Thanks for yet another great video, Phil!
These machines are very proprietary! Not difficult to take apart, but very hard to do a case transplant, likely not possible. Very easy to work with though!
Friends ask me why I bother when “Windows 10 can play all this stuff.” UGH. Just, leave me be and let me enjoy my old box. Thank you Phil for this project!
One of my favourite games from years ago was the original colin mcrae DIRT game, have installed it on alot of systems from win 7 , 10,11 and have never had it run like it should, spent hours fiddling with graphics settings, applying different patches etc, nothing worked , even though , hardware wise, it ahould easily run ... It would stutter and frame rate would fluctuate from frozen to 100s fps so it was unplayable, had an old fx6300 xp system and installed the other day and it runs perfectly, numerous games dont run properly on newer os.....
My SandyBridge E is still going strong as a server and game streaming host for the kids. When I replace it with a quiet mini pc I think I might repurpose it as an XP machine. PS2 keyboard and 4:3 LCD? Yeaaah!
the last sound card I bought for the Windows XP and Vista system was the X-Fi Xtreme Music card which had onboard RAM and was considered the more premium model compared to XtremeGamer (non-Fatal1ty) card and was a notch below the Titanium model. I still have it but am using an up to date Audigy RX card (could've went higher but I don't know how long I will use discrete sound cards in future builds).
Any sound card is better than onboard sound. Tho I have to say that since HDMI I use less sound cards in my Win 10 build now. The question is what's true hardware EAX 4/5/HD running in XP and how does it compare to Linux using OpenAL or other methods or ALChemy in Win Vista and newer. I read about audio cracks and other glitches using ALChemy at least. But hopefully OpenAL will be better in the future. I hope game devs will bring back the quality of A3D and EAX, because 5.1 is just not the same w/o effects on each single sound source.
@@sebastianebert4295 I agree discrete soundcards are better than all onboard audio but the premium boards have pretty good sound cards in their own right (I wish we'd get more that have actual audio processors onboard as I remember Sound Blaster and Aureal being included on a few motherboards and nVidia's Soundstorm was quite nice) but sadly things are moving more towards headsets only and USB powered ones at that. More people are opting for external sound processors than card expansions but there are still trade-offs.
Problem isnt game dev, but WSAPI (Windows audio system in Vista and newer). Microsoft cutt of support of Dsound (DX3D audio API) in Vista system. So in XP dont use OpenAL, but Dsound 3D audio positional system build in DirextX. Native A3D/EAX. In Alchemy is used Dsound wrapper with OpenAl API (instead of Direct Sound API) OpenAl is used for direct comunication between wraper and audio HW and alow use all HW capabilities of audiochip (so not only Creative cards). About Audio cracks - there is needed set right duration for audioefects. Too long, or too short lead to audioglitches. In Win 11 is dsound.dll library restricted by system, so Alchemy not work anymore.
Another xp era game that's really fun is Star Wars Battlefront 2 (now called Battlefront 2 classic to avoid confusion with the 2017 version.) It's a first/third person shooter that supports EAX, something I've never been able to try because I don't have a compatible sound card, and has a fun campaign and game modes against bots. The multiplayer was brought back officially in 2015 however it requires either steam or gog galaxy. The standalone installer from gog won't work with it. There are some 3rd party tools for custom servers that work on xp but they've been pretty inactive since the official multiplayer came back.
Yeah BF1+2 original (2004+2005 I think) are very good. Next to Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Elite Force 1-2, SWAT 3 TGOTY, SiN Gold, NOLF 1-2, SoF 1 Platinum, COD 1-2, CNC RA2+YR+MO (Mental Omega is quite new). Yeah the new releases of the old game brought crossover gaming, but need those new online services. There's old and new GOG versions. The one which brought crossover gaming deleted the old LAN stack sadly. If you still have the old GOG installer it should work. I've read some people wrote there's a fix, if not starting the game in MP mode: Inserting a microphone into the 3.5 mm jack. I didn't test it yet. But I think the original CD game is better for true old LAN gaming. Yeah that's true. Most people will just use online accounts nowadays. But for 1v1 Hamachi or really local LAN game, the old one works ofc.
Absolutely. Nothing more fun then building a Frankenstein machine and watching it come to life! But yeah, even playing C&C or Sin on it will be a blast.👍
SiN, NOLF, Project IGI all have graphics issues in the menu on Win 10, but are good to play in game like 90 % okay. CNC RA2 YR crashes very often on Win 8 and/or 8.1 and I think also on early Win 10 17-19 sth., at least 1 time it crashed on newest Win 10 22H2. Also having speed sensitive issues, sluggish micro stutterings while scrolling even with fixes. But it never ever crashed on XP SP3 and runs fast w/o micro stutterings. Yeah I like to use early dual cores or i5/7 for XP builds, being faster than my best time XP build with P4 3200 I had back then. Maybe use an SSD if being impatient on intalls and copying stuff, but once installed it's not even needed, tbh. If you only play games you won't even need defragmenting it or only once a year maybe. Having laying around some silent quality Samsung Spinpoint 60/120 GB IDE HDDs from already used office PCs which never failed, but also newer bigger ones with SATA. Even the capacity will be enough for those old games. I remember that I had up to like 60 games installed at the same time on 30+120 GB IDE HDDs back then, ofc. having also music, some pics and vids, docs.
Thank you Phil I just bought a gt640 gddr5 on ebay after watching this to replace the gt240 I was using in my xp box. It only had 512mb gddr5. My xp box uses a q9550 but after watching this I went out and ordered the same gpu you used in this video. Cheers mate.
I found a super cheap old CCTV security camera controller PC (just a small XP machine), threw a fresh install of XP on there, swapped the capture card for an old PCI GPU I had lying around (no AGP or PCIe slot), and it works well enough for retro games. It's super small, so I just have a monitor on top of it.
I'm just finishing building my XP machine. Hp P6 2302, Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality, GTX 750ti, 17" CRT monitor running at 1024x768 85Hz, 1Tb HDD. Thinking about installing additionally Windows 7 on it too.
@@philscomputerlab Fairly easy build. Power supply does have enough juice to run all of it. Luckily my gtx 750 ti doesn’t need separate power connector. Also that tower pc was fairly cheap. Paid about £40 for it. GPU and soundcard were more expensive. Have to admit that this x-fi sounds great with my open back headphones(Philips Fidelio x2hr).
Awesome video Phil. My ultimate xp build is a i7 with a 660ti. It's ridiculous but best thing if you just want to play anything with reliability maxed out.
Pray & Pray: Deluxe Edition is 75% off on GOG right now. (10/11/23 British, 11/10/23 US) I only use Win XP 32bit as 64bit has compatibility issues & always did. I’m considering an ATX compliant X99 motherboard based PC as you can build a PC like that with standard power supplies etc. but starting with a workstation like that can save you a bunch of money if you understand there can be issues with non-standard PSU’s/motherboards etc. Great video, Phil, thanks.
The Prey (2017) game sold by GOG isn't the same as Prey (2006) which Phil was playing in this video. They share the same name, but are completely different and unrelated games.
Cheers Phil. I'm in Sydney and I bought an HP Z440 on eBay for $230 after a $20 discount for a first purchase in 2021. A few years ago I had a Dell Precision T5400. I learnt about the bullet proof nature of Xeon Workstations. The HP was basic with a E5 1620 V3, 16gb ram and a k2200 Quadro. The PSU is the 525watt version. I doubled the ram for $55 also on eBay. I hope to put an NVME in one day for something to do and upgrade to a E5 1650 V3. These cpu's are less than $30 on eBay. I don't game or do any demanding tasks. I just wanted bullet proof reliability. Cool video bro 👍
Amazing to see that the x99 platform supports xp. I just picked up a x79 motherboard and a 2667v2. With the sacrificd of avx2, I wish i knew this before 😂 I am planing to use it with a 980ti as a Dual boot mashine with xp and win 10. I hope i will be able to use it as a modern mashine for a few years before having to build something new.
Yea it's not officially supported but I think what happened is large companies like Dell or HP wanted their machines to have some sort of XP support for some of their customers so that's how drivers got to projects like Snappy Driver Installer Origin somehow...
It's at the edge at 2014 EOL support ;) That CPU will run for like 10 more years playing AAA games and like 20 years for retro games or when the caps fall apart ;) Some years ago 8 GB RAM and SSD made the most difference for me. Now 16 GB RAM for Win 10 still runs fast.
HP is one of those brands where the consumer line is complete garbage but the business/workstation stuff is and always has been great. Almost like it should be two different companies entirely, same applies to their laptops where the ZBooks are great and built so differently to the consumer stuff that there's no resemblance.
Great video again. I own some vintage workstation too. An HP Z600 with two CPUs, a Dell Precision T5810 mit a Broadwell Xeon and a GTX 1080 FE, two Dell Precision T3xxx. One of the T3xxx is a XP machine with a Core 2 Duo E8600 and Quadro with G80 or G90 GPU. The oldest one is a custom build workstation in a beautiful Chieftec case. It has 8GB of RAM, two Xeons (Irwindale). I usally use WD Raptors instead of SSD in very old machines. I like the full retro experiance.
Great video. I do wish to point out that you made one technical mistake. The 750ti is on Maxwell just like the 960. It runs the same drivers due to the core being maxwell.
I kind of feel like from XP and beyond those games run pretty well on my modern system. But the older machines from Windows 98 and back are where I really love to build retro machines to experience them to their fullest!
I agree that 9x/DOS is more interesting, but there are still reasons to have something dedicated for XP. A big one is native EAX hardware support, which was a thing in a surprising number of games like Battlefield 2, San Andreas, Halo and KotOR. Then there are all the games which don't support modern resolutions, as well as problems with disc DRM and high core counts etc. You can work around a lot of it, but it's nice to have everything work natively. Of course some of us also just enjoy playing with old high end hardware, and the nice thing about XP is that most stuff is still pretty cheap.
Dang a 18 core/36t.. I was checking for fun that xeon vs a ryzen 7600 6 core/12t. Time really showed omg improvements. That 6 core totaly destroys it. I'm Running an old Dell win xp pc with the GT635.. I wanted a GT640 but couldn't find one:( Both cards are the same but the 635 sadly has 64 bit memory. But its still good.
For XP gaming I'm sticking mostly with C2D or C2Q. With these I had no problems in terms of having multiple cores. In my case only HT was a problem and with AMD CPUs like the Athlon 64 X2, even the AMD driver (Dual Core optimizer if I am remembering correctly) didn't help much in some games. UT99 with Intel Core 2 Duo -> no problems but with Athlon 64 X2 I had fps all over the place. The problem was that UT99 has its own CPU Speed detection routine, which sets a wrong speed with AMD multicores, so you had to set it manually via game start paramters. Prey 2006 was at first also a game developed by 3DRealms but has gone nearly the same path as their Duke Nukem Forever. Announced in mid 90s, people left, starting from scratch multiple times... finally another developer took over.
I read that 3+ or 4+ cores are problematic sometimes. Maybe also Process Lasso Pro can fix it for some games. For sure it can minimize micro stutterings, made my Win 10 x64 faster with X-Plane 10, but also Firefox, Chrome, WinRAR, 7z were like 20 % faster while just optimizing priorities and core affinities. I haven't tried it yet, tbh. GTA 4 is one game which indeed profits from 3-4 cores natively I read. One of the few XP games supporting multi core. Maybe you disabled Speedstep in the Intel system? Because I often had that with BIOS standards on many C2D systems. Or test set the CPU governor in Windows to performance with that game. AMD CPUs go down to like 800 MHz, while the E8400 uses 2000-3000 MHz. This may be the reason UT99 thought the AMD CPU is too slow when idling. I never played Prey yet, looks a bit like Portal vs. Doom III. Well, Portal was sold in 2007+. Who knows who copied the idea or maybe they even had one same dev.
That generation is more powerful than most people would think. It can dig into second gen Threadripper territory with a 2696 v3. Still very usable with the right workloads and scenarios!
Recently i got a broken 1366 mobo for free. I might give that a chance. I ordered a xeon w 3505 for it and 3 1gb sticks ddr3 after getting it running. Nice perspective in this video 👍
Lol, the 4770k is still good for modern games with a 3070ti lol.. lol its a legit beast man 😂, bro if youve retired a 4770k system, just buy a 2nd hand gpu like a 1080ti or rtx2070 , and do the right thing.. give it to a kid who cant afford a gaming pc, or a little cousin, or that broke kid down the street... do it man, for the price of a 2nd hand gpu, you can really change a kids life.. ❤❤❤❤ do it ❤❤❤❤
One way around soundcard height limitations would be to use an external USB audio DAC, most don't require drivers, or a Audio Interface from Edirol or the such.
I love my z440 turned gaming pc I paid 6 dollars for a 2630v3, 30 for a mb, 90 for a 1660 and 30 for ram and I can play most games at 1440p cranked. Amazing machine
I think all SB0880 cards have X-RAM. IIRC, the base model has 16MB while the Fatal1ty model has 64MB. If you press ~ to open the console in Doom 3, it should tell you how much X-RAM your card has.
I have two Dell OEM SB880 pci express boards that I bought off ebay some years ago. I just now checked and they have a 128MB DDR memory chip on them. Dell part number: 0F333J which the internet tells me should be the X-Fi Titanium. What I can tell is you is that they work fantastic with WinXP. Fully compatible from the early EAX in the original retail Half Life to the EAX 4.0 like in the Doom3 engine games. No SB16 emulation nor any DOS support but that's not what that care is for :D
Very interesting review. I am in the research now for the second rig (my first is a pentium 3 with Win 98 and a Voodoo 3 3000) and the operation system I plan to use is Win XP. It never crossed my mind that you could use a workstation and downgrade it for that purpose. This path could be potentially interesting for me as well. I am not sure though if there are lots of these workstations out in the wild here in Austria. But I will look into the workstation market nonetheless. These machines seem to have some high-quality parts and playing old games on a workstation that was not built for that purpose also sounds rather cool. 😁
It would be very interesting if f.e. a C2D can make use of a PCI Voodoo 1, 2 or 3, combining both worlds. As long as the PC is slow enough for the newer DOS games at least (not thinking of Wing Commander and such older ones, but Tomb Raider and newer ones). Athlon II x2 and 4200+, 5200+ at least can go down to 800 MHz, while C2D stay at like 2/3 frequency like 2-3 GHz for the E8400. So maybe running such at lowest freq. makes those useable for old Frankenstein rigs.
at work we are recycling these machines whenever we come across them since they are too old to support the security requirements of the network, I would never have thought they would be decent XP machines since they're so new by comparison with NVME drives and UEFI BIOS (never checked to even see if they had legacy BIOS) :D
The Z400s, 600s, and 800s are the lesser known machines for making decent gaming and editing rigs. You get multiple cores (and occasionally processor slots) and at least DDR3 memory. The only downsides wouldn't necessarily be the age of generation, but two, namely all memory is ECC which increases the cost, and HP didn't make it fully ATX pin compliant, meaning it is much more difficult to get a higher PSU in there, though there are people in the community attempting to do so.
Highly unsuspecting machine for XP compatibility due to how new it is. Would not at all be my first choice due to how much you have to gimp it, but fascinating that it works.
@@Synthematix It's actually far worse than that. My employer's previous IT manager built them a new infrastructure ~8 years ago on Dell hardware, which is all now way out of warranty & support. Can't do anything with it. Need a new motherboard? Good luck. Either they try to sell us a whole new machine, or we are forced to buy used. Need a new HDD? Might have to find one with specific firmware (in our case, we have a Dell/EMC SAN which requires otherwise off-the-shelf disks that requires special unobtainable firmware... to be fair, this doesn't affect workstations, but still....). HP may not be as bad but I doubt it. I'm currently trying to get a budget for upgrades, which will use in-house builds to replace all this crap. Company is not big enough to afford the useless support contracts. Hardware always magically lasts at least a little past warranty/support, and if it's in any way proprietary, you're screwed. Sorry to be a bit off-topic & rant but I get so frustrated with these companies when having to deal with them daily lol
@@ruthlessadmin I understand completely, because these companies dont want any customer returns due to end users screwing up the bioses, in turn renders these computers useless for 90% of people, that want a proper performing mainboard
2690v2 with Noctua NH-D15. Asus Sabertooth X79, BCLK 114. 3,7 all core, 4,1 1 core boost. 24GB DDR3 2133 10-11-11-26 CR2. GTX980. Sound Blaster Live 5.1!. 2 SSD SATA 3. First with Windows XP, second with Windows 10. And second PC on LGA775 ASUS P5E3 DeLuxe, QX9650 4 GHz with Noctua NH-D14, GTX970, 16GB DDR3 1600 7-9-9-24 CR1, Sound Blaster Live 5.1!, 2 SSD SATA2 with Windows XP and 10.
@@philscomputerlab Not a fan. It’s just that these fans were the very first and most expensive in our region, which were heavily advertised. Since then I’ve only installed them. Habit. Although there are most likely better fans. When I made my retro computers, a prerequisite was the presence PCI slot for Sound Blaster Live 5.1! and official support Windows XP. The sound under XP drivers is the best.
Well this is fascinating, I wasn't aware that XP could work with chipset support on anything beyond Intel's 4th generation. That fast of a CPU would make for an interesting hybrid dual-boot XP/Vista or XP/7 machine.
Just finished my XP/7 dual boot rig, it's brilliant. Z77 chipset, Core i5 3570K, 8 GB RAM, GTX 970, 1 TB SSD, X-Fi card. Initially I tried with a GTX 660, but it's not fully compatible with my daily driver 4K monitor. I'm limited in terms of space and didn't want to add another screen for the retro rig, so I upgraded to the 970. It really doesn't have the specs or the appearance of a retro machine, but it plays stuff made over a span of 15 years. Next I'll try some 3dfx games with nGlide on XP, that should extend compatibility even further.
I bought Prey on DVD, it’s a good game and I enjoyed playing it but I got so far into it and couldn’t figure out how to go any further. It was very frustrating.
Man, this got me to revive old nettop with Atom CPU (Atom 230, 2GB SO-DIMM DDR2 800MHz and 480GB spare SSD to replace aging 320GB HDD) with Windows XP (booted from USB Optical Media without issues) including Snappy Drivers pack which I'm keeping on one 120GB SSD in caddy just in this cases. The only official driver which was installed was the Nvidia ION GPU driver. Rocking this machine for old GTA games and NFS until Carbon which is also at 640x480 on an old 17 inch VGA monitor works flawlessly. HDMI to VGA adapter needed to be all working fine, even at 1280x1024px resolution of that old 17 inch almost 18 years old Asus monitor.
I currently use a Z420 for livestreaming, and I'm about to move up to a Z440 for that task. Granted, I livestream vintage computer repairs and not gaming, so a 10 year old workstation is just fine... and better than a desktop because of all the PCIe lanes available for capture cards. That and I have a GTX 970 (to be moving up to a 1060) so that I can use NVENC for video encoding, so the older generation processor isn't really an issue.
For streaming these machines are really nice. The PCIe lanes are all directly connected to the CPU, so you can load up the slots and everything is still smooth. The CPUs are especially suitable for encoding because of the many cores, although a modern Nvidia GPU maybe does it even better like the one you're using.
I am using a GT 650 ti for my XP machine with a Core2Duo E8500.I will install an OEM sound card soon just to try the joystick/Flystick I have of wich I do not know if it works.
This gives me some ideas. I still have a Haswell motherboard with a CPU and RAM that I used to use. I do have a Pentium 4 with a 6800GT that I use for XP right now, but a more powerful system might be useful. Only thing for me is that the GPU I used with that Haswell system is a Kepler Titan. I still have it, but for compatibility reasons, I might need to get something with less VRAM. Will have to see.
I use the old pc from my dad for win xp. Its a amd phenom i think. Fast enough. Yesterday i found out that many games are ok with win 10. I installed timeshock pinball. Works good and its from 1996. C&c generals needed a minor patch and was good for wide screen.
Someone gave me an old HP slimline s3300f the other day and downgraded it from Vista to XP. Now its slowly becoming my retro Windows XP gaming rig, just gotta get a R7 250 since the GT430 i have in it is 1GB of VRAM on a 64 bit memory bus.
G'day Phil, While GOG games are W10 compatible & lots will even play on my Athlon 200GE PC using IGP I prefer playing my old games on my XP PC. For those games my C2Q9650, G33M-S2, 4GB DDR2-800 combo in HP Pavilion t680a case is a Beast & mated to a 500W PSU allows me to swap out my Retro GPU Collection which includes a Gainward GTX460GS GLH, Zotac AMP! GTX560Ti, Quadro FX8200 (GTX285 4GB) plus my Gigabyte HD5770SOC, 260SOC, 275SOC (1.8GB), 460SOC, 470SOC, 560SOC, 560Ti SOC to give them all some love. For CPU cooling in the HP Case I coverted a Coolermaster AIO to 92mm RAD & be quiet! Fan. For my SOC collction I also have a 570SOC, 680SOC Windforce 5 but they are ridiculous for XP Era Games so just give them a run on my testbench with more modern games for some fun every now & then.
Thx for these great tests! Yeah those business class PCs are very robust and because of 2-3 years leasing contracts in millions of offices, Win 7 to 10 upgrade fails on many home PCs with clueless non IT personnel and now official Win 11 needs like TPM2, i7-8+ gen. and such, being sold for very cheap in millions. I have 4 of those so far, after having used Asus, Gigabyte, Legend QDI and other mainboards with like 40+ DIY PCs (always migrated parts for 30+ years) and don't wanna have anything else like those business class PCs, if getting "new" stuff tbh. Ofc. I'll keep all the old stuff I haven't sorted out by now. But screwless design, easy access, good fan design makes Fujitsu, Compaq/HP, IBM/Lenovo, Dell and such a true blast. The only downside is maybe a weaker PSU with non workstation systems. But if you stay with up to 75 W GPUs, those are fine and also have very efficient PSU. Some ideas: - It would be interesting to know if the wall mounted power meter shows a difference in idling f.e. 1 vs. 4 cores. Are the cores really shut down or just being ignored by the system? - Process Lasso Pro ofc. is an option, if using more cores, but also for 1 core only to limit the priorities of all background processes, minimizing micro stutterings. It might help Crysis as it helps X-Plane 10, f.e. - I think limiting the CPU to 1 core even gets you better latency, less IRQ hickups. The Windows XP era also brought us some great sound apps for MIDI playing, which may not work with newer Windows versions and Win XP is having better IRQ timings anyways, compared to 8-11 at least (if not using Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Linux). - Maybe GTA 4 is worth a try to activate 3-4 cores (one of the few XP capable games supporting it), but for most games we won't need it. I'm not sure if it supports EAX, never played it. But some people wrote it's one of the best version topping GTA V (which I only played once, but didn't enjoy as much as GTA III and VC back then...I'll check out the PSP versions LCS, VCS emulated). - Check out the DX 10 alpha patch or what it was called for Crysis Maximum Edition. I remember having used it on my old P4 HT 3200 Prescott S478 back in 2007-2008, but with much older GPU PowerColor ATI Radeon 9800 SE 128 MB (DX 9c card). Well, DX 10 was way slower than DX 9 (like DX 12 is compared to DX 11 on entry level GT 1030 or similar cards), but it worked in XP, seeing the water pearls is beautiful. Now having both faster CPU and GPU, it would be worth a retry. It's been more than a decade since I played it. Crysis Maximum Edition was a blast with the 2 SP mode games. - For older games like NFS HP2 I'd like to use dgVoodoo to crank up resolution, force MSAA (set up anything but Phong Shading and Mipmapping I think). - I like to force limit FPS to 60 with MSI Afterburner and use RTSS to check CPU+GPU load with on the fly FPS caps switching and see how it looks, check the reported wattage, as long as the system reports it (my C2D E8400 didn't report the CPU wattage stats, but my i5-3570 is doing). Why limiting to native screen FPS? Because it limits power needs, heating up and gives more stable FPS in games like Crysis I think. Unless it looks bad having tearing or so. I wanna use the C2D E8400 or Athlon II x2 260, because those are my full profile PCs I have several GPUs for, f.e. Nvidia 645 OEM, ATI HD 4550, ATI HD 2600 Pro, ATI HD 3850/70? (I won't use this beast, but a test would be nice). - Raven Software is a very good company which made high quality games. I loved Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Next to Heretic, Hexen, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force 1. SoF 1 Platinum. Some of the games which defined EAX.
My current XP rig is a first Gen i5 with a a 960 4gb. Loving the performance but your comment about compatibility has me worried. What games have issues with high vram? I also disable all but 1 core and that helps a LOT of games.
@@Fahrenheit38 Haha! There is an expression I think. Something with paralysis / overthinking.. Seriously if the games you play all work, don't get hung up too much 😊
I think I might go for Win 98 SE for a retro machine as that does native dos also. Very interesting vid, thanks for this, and hi from a fellow Aussie. I am curious, how are your feelings for XP vs 98 SE for a retro gaming PC? I have a TON of original CD games that I honestly miss.
Well the xeon v4 single thread might be slow compared to current cpus but when the price is compared there is no contest as I have z440 with 2690 v4, 128gb ram and 1660ti for less than 400€ and that 1660 ti was 100€ of that set. Running virtual machines is easy and memory is cheap and 14 cores @3.2ghz isn't too bad as most games are bottlenecked by that gpu @1080p
im from australia as well so as i go to make my own XP PC your videos have been a MASSIVE help thanks so much mate, what specs do you suggest for something period correct?
Im in nsw australia, i have old PC's and pc parts ive saved as i used to getvpaid to scrap them, so i saved old stuff and collectible stuff.. Reply with what you are looking for mate, and if i have some stuff you need ill give it to you for free.. i have a lot of old pc stuff, so dont be shy to ask, if i have it and you need it, its yours.. ❤❤
@philscomputerlab hmm not too sure. I'd love something from 2007-2009 which I guess vista was already released by then so it's not fully period correct but alot of the games I own that work on XP are from this time. For CPU I already own an LGA 775 motherboard so I was thinking of going for something like an e8700. As for GPU I'm not sure how practical SLI or crossfire are but I'd love dual GPUs if viable. I've looked at snagging either a couple of HD 4870 or HD 5770 from radeon, as for nvidia, I'd live something from their geforce 200 series looks good
@4kays160 honestly not too sure, I was born just before vista was released and grew up with windows 7 and 10 so all my parts lists are off a little bit of information that may or may not be wrong
Really great video Phil!! about AHCI, why you don't use nLite and made a custom WinXP ISO with the AHCI drivers included? I made a custom iso with all intel AHCI drivers and works everytime For some reason, Max Payne looks diferent from my memories, I remember did play on a Voodoo2 and looked awesome at 800x600.
Max Payne AFAIK runs on Direct3D, I'm surprised it runs on a Voodoo 2! I'm using the Easy2Boot or similar projects usually, they have AHCI drivers integrated (likely the same pack as the ones floating around for nLite). Sometimes I go oldschool and use a USB floppy drive and load the AHCI driver by pressing F6. I simply ran out of time to figure it out for this one...
These Z440s are ultra-reliable. I worked in a med. Laboratory and had two of them under my table as an expert system. They were running 24/7 with only a weekly restart.
We have a lot of z440 doing render running 100% cpu and gpu all the time for years since 2015 and we never restart unless for software update
@@eaglemaster7 Restart necessary for database maintenance.
@@eaglemaster7How that can be cost effective and how much RAM machines have?
@@mikakorhonen5715 the z440 have 8 ram slots, so that can be 64 or 128gb easily
Hearing hp be reliable.... I thought I'd never hear that with my experience with their consumer products over the years from 2018-now
I picked up a old Z420 with Xeon 1602v2 and 32gb ram for $150. Upgraded to a 2667v2 8 core for $50 and GTX 1060 6G with 6 to 8 pin adapter. All said and done had a solid PC for $450. Used it from 2017 till 2022. In 2021 I upgraded it with a RX5600 XT, EVGA 650W PSU and 1440p monitor. Z420 handled it perfectly fine. Really I'm sure I could have used it for few more years. Great PC, a blast from 2013.
I was looking for a Z440 but ended up with a Z620 and a Z230 for the price they wanted for 1 Z440. Both have been great old machines, but they are like new to me since I was using an ancient Dell GX 520 and a Dell Dimension 3000 before that one lol.
If you check even new AAA games, 10-15 y/o i5/7 CPUs even are fast enough, only need new GPUs, 16 GB RAM and SSD.
When checking cpu userbenchmark website, you can see that in the last 10 years the CPU speed went up like 100 % only, but stays at like only 50 % effective speed, because of Wirth's Law and similar. Free lunch is over since like 2010 or so, which means single core performance aren't raising like up to Pentium 4 or AMD XP, but they go with multi core and better power saving methods instead. It's only like 5 % speed boost each CPU generation nowadays.
GPUs are a different story, gladly still improving, but we pay much more for GPUs than in the past.
PCIe Gen. 4+ ofc. needs newer chips and CPUs or you'll loose like 20 % GPU speed when running those on PCIe Gen. 3.
Newer GPUs need EFI also. I still don't own such, my GPUs run on classic BIOS PCs.
@@sebastianebert4295 Alan Wake 2 is the most demanding GPU title one right now. CPU doenst care on that.
@@AntiGrieferGames yeah even the RX 6400 can play that game only enjoyable at like 720 low or maybe 1080 or 900 res with 30 FPS cap.
XP is love XP is life 😍
It's not a real XP video without installation music playing in the background 😉 XP was the first NT kernel windows I liked, grew up with 3x and 9x. Still hard to belive XP came out my senior year of high school... man I feel so old.
Why not Windows 2000 if you grew up with 9x'er? All that BLING on XP 😛
Yeah 2000 and XP are one of the best OS MS ever made, next to 7 ofc.
I always turned off the effects and colored taskbar in XP since I saw that PassMark Performance Test told me even a P4 3200 will loose like 20-30 % GPU performance because of only those effects and this P4 wasn't slow. I guess you still can see a difference on a C2D E8400 or at least benchmark a difference.
@@sebastianebert4295 Don't know about INTEL* 'n' Pentium 4...AMD BOI(Person? in 2023?) since Socket 7... 😲
*With that said: Wolfdale = Best damn dual-Cores EVER MADE though!
Respect from a 939 & AM2 Dualcore user..back then ;-)
@@dallesamllhals9161 Yeah I mostly love the Pentium III 700+ MHz, the Intel C2D E8400 3 GHz, i5/7 2xxx 3+ GHz and newer.
And AMD XP 2800+ in favor of P4 HT 3200 (which I both had), AMD 4200+, 5200+, Athlon II x2 260.
I'll use the E8400 and/or Athlon II x2 260 for Win XP w/ EAX sound card, as those are even period correct late XP SP3 machines. I used Win 10 on those, which even was okay-ish with SSD. Those two are my newest normal case PCs I kept, having no issues to put some cards into those.
My i5/7 2/3xxx are Dell SFF/DT machines, so need low profile GPU, sound card or riser cable quirks. I think I'll keep Win 10 and Linux on those and just use the older ones with a GTX 645 OEM or other cards I can switch, which are fast enough in most cases. Maybe not for GTA 4 (I never played that yet), but for Crysis Remastered it should be fast enough.
I thought about getting an AMD RX 6400 for my SFF/DT machines, but that's not XP compatible ofc.
A GTX 750 or just my 645 must be enough with the dual cores. I mean I played XP games on the P4, AMD XP, 4200+, 5200+ with even slower ATI 9800 SE 128 MB and ATI HD 4550^^.
@@dallesamllhals91612000 were still considered to be a little bit more "Pro" OS, and was basically still "NT" for both Microsoft and regular users. Professional & not for home. Some games were also not compatible, and of course it had bigger hardware requirements than 98 or Me. XP had some optimizations in that regard, especially boot time.
Even XP when released, had a reputation of being...a resource hog - no kidding. This opinion was quite persisting for even 2-3 years. It was the reason why I still used 98 in 2003 on my Atlhon XP 1800+ - a machine that was perfectly capable running Win XP without a problem.
I have recently built 2 Windows XP PCs, one for me and one for my daughter. We are having so much fun playing some older games together connected together for LAN play. Windows XP is just an all around fun OS and the games of that era are in my opinion better than most new releases.
Awesome 😎
@@philscomputerlab
Disabling hyperthreading is stupid advice. Even for windows XP. Id tech 3, id tech 4, and Crysis all can use multithreading and thats well within the era. Just learn how to use a thread scheduling tool like process lasso. ITS FREE.
Patrick Star 😂
love your videos.
I purchased a z440 3 months ago. Xeon 2960 v4, 32Gb RAM. NVME in a PCIE adapter, esxi installed, vsphere nested, works excellently as a home lab. Although they are kinda retro, they still pack a punch. Thing is, im running out of room to keep all my stuff. The z440 is silient enough to have it in our bedroom, thankfully.
Yes the silence really surprised me, I expected server level noise, but it's whisper quiet.
lol @flowerpot, thumbs up for the original PREY.
😁
I use one of the Z440s as my main computer. I upgraded the ram to 64gb, added a 1TB ssd on an HP ZTurbo card, and an RTX 2060 Super and it's been great. Put it all together for just under $400 and couldn't be happier.
are you running out of health?🤣🤣🤣
I'm going to put an NVME in mine when I figure out the bios stuff. 👍
I was going through parts that were destined to be e-waste such as i3 2120, i5 2400 and have been very impressed with the performance in xp... I like that a lot of the motherboards I found also had regular PCI. Was very happy I saved them from being trashed!
I did the same thing, i refine gold for people from ewaste and jewellery, so over the years everytime i got old collectable pc gear that i knew was special i kept it .. and now im looking for guys in australia to give it too.. i sent a i5 2400 to a twitch streaming playing games with viewers, that had the i3 2120 and his game was low fps because he was gaming and streaming on the 2120 but making do with it, so i asked if he had a po box to send gifts too and i sent him the upgrade cpu .. he gained like 40 fps in game while streaming pubg live, with a gtx1060.. on Windows 10.. so yeah these old i3 and i5s are pretty dam good even in 2023, ive been giving anything i5 or i7 thats 3rd gen or newer to kids in my area with no PC's and telling there parents they can have the whole computer for free, but the mum or dad needs to buy the a gpu so its usable and i usually go on marketplace and show them a 2nd hand gpu thats say a old gtx1070 or 2070 for under $200au and tell there mum or dad they need to buy that at minimum so its a complete usable pc that will last till after they finish high school, knowing full well im giving them a gaming pc and making sure there parent atleast buys them a good gpu .... to be honest, for me and you we can build a period correct xp system thats way overpowered for the task, for our home xp system... we might aswell just give the systems with i5 or i7 from 1st gen to 5th gen away for free to kids and teens who we know dont have a pc at home, that stuff is still great for modern gaming and there school stuff still... if your in my position with rooms of hoarded pc gear and old collectables saved from years of ewaste refining.. give the usable stuff away to kids man, on my street theres this housing commission family with 2 kids that are little ferals always in the street, so i asked there mum if they have a computer and she said no they use her ipad for online stuff, and i said i have 2 spare computers they can have so they have a real pc each and they dont have to share , so i gave the older one a 3rd gen i5 3400 with a gtx1050, and i gave the toddler a 1st gen i5 750 with a gt 730 garbage gpu but it plays minecraft and roblox and the sims good, and he can play fortnight with low settings so for a 4 or 5 yr old hes over the moon, and his brother whos about 12 never has an annoying little bro wanting to use his pc, and can play pretty much any game at 1080p i only tested pubg because thats the only gpu intense game i have but we got average 125 fps at 1080p med to high settings in pubg before the game optimisation last year.. so yeah man, dont overlook how powerfull those i3 and i5s can be, and powerfull doesnt mean mhz or ghz in multiple cores and threads...
Powerfull, is how much an i5 changes the life of a 10 to 16 yr old thats desperate and knows that the persin who gave him this power also gave his toddler brother an i3 so he doesnt feel left out and he isnt bugging his big bro to use his personal pc.... do it, you sound from your comment like you have alot of stuff stored like me from ewaste businesses... if you do, do it, change a familys life because you can.... im sorry i went on, but i felt that if your an ewaste guy like me, you know what im saying, and half the stuff we got sitting around really is way out of some kids or teens or single parents price range especially if there mum or dads on a dole or pension or housing commission.. the first time i gave pcs away i gave 3 to a family with 2 toddlers and one boy whos 11 the toddlers just got old dual core pcs from an old office building with a generic hp gpu each that comes in an office hp poo poo pc, but is amazing to a 2 and 3 yr old for kids youtube and paint and roblox and minecraft, and the 11 yr old we know will wish he can play games with friends online so he got my old gen1 i5 750 and a gtx1050 that my daughter took out of her pc because she bought a stupid gpu shaped like hello kitty that suits her stupid 14 yr old style but it was actually a good rx something so win win, she paid for her own cat shaped rx 580 and gave me the gtx1050 cos i said i use a gtx1050ti oc in my rig and she said well now you have 2, and i said actually im giving it away to the kid down the road, and she said cool tell him to add my steam (online gamers hub) lol... do it, you wont regret it, even if you spend a few bucks here and there to make sure a kid gets a gpu thats usable its so worth it, kids lose their minds, like actually lose their minds and freak out, panic , dance, one kid screamed and ran down the street screaming only to return 1 minute later with his friend who has a pc too he wanted show they can both play now not one at a time.. and 2 different times a kid cried because he was embarrassed a stranger from down the street was helping him with stuff he needed and wanted, that was the only strange reaction ive had but i think he mightve had a much rougher life than i realised, and told him its not really that special but i do want him to keep it and use it.. and the other kid that cried was crying because i think he had no dad ever so he was overwhelmed and about 7yr old and he acted frightened by me, that was weird but his mum just made him watch me set it up in his room so he knew how to turn it on and all that and i just said yeah mate, theres no catch or trick, its your computer to use for you, you can just keep it forever and put anything you want on it, he was confused, i was confused, but i knew he was glad he had a pc after i left... every other kid is just ecstatic to find out there getting a pc, and usually dance around crazy happy when i say yeah mate you get this sweet pc but your little brother or sister gets the other pc in my car if you help me set itvup for them, they realise they arent just the kid with the pc now, there the kid with there own pc now and thats a big thing for kids to know your sibling's have their own pc and dont want yours ever... bigg..
Come on, youve read all this, you realise that actually yes you can give away about 20 pcs at the moment if you found 8 more gpu's to go with them, so yes start giving away the 12 with gpu's and if any teens you give a pc too are over 16 give them a pc with no gpu but a great 6 core i7 or 6 core ryzen , and say hey this pc is op, it just needs a graphics card and tell there parent its a good pc they need to buy him or her a gpu thats $300 plus on there bday or xmas or go halves with them in one asap, but make sure the parents understand your not joking they need to buy the $300 minimum gpu to get them through till there in there 20s... parents never believe they need a gpu.... but they do.. ..
Now go do it.. make a family or 2 on your street with young kids year..
My current build for a local 10 yr old girl im building one for next..
Ive got a purple pc case with a i5 3400 and an aftermarket air cooler with purple leds, 16g of ddr3, an old 500gb ssd as a bootdrive with storage for her favourite games, and a 1tb hdd for her mass storage, a cd rom drive, and ive removed the old usb from the front of the case and swapped it for a usb3 multiport with 3 usb's instead of the one slow old usb port.. so i havent spent a cent yet on her one it was just a build from my piles, and all i need to find out now is if her dad is going to buy her a $180 gpu? I recomended at minimum for her? Or if i need to find her a usable one myself?... but most parents have actually been so happy i built there kids stuff just to be nice that they have actually most of them bought a gpu that was better than i recomended at minimum , a few just couldnt but i had good ones, and some kids are so young they dont need a gpu at all to play roblox or paint, or watch youtube.. there the toddlers with distraction PC's to keep them not left out and off there older siblings pcs anyway...
Now get too it.. and reply with what systems your giving away, because you can too.
Yeah it's such a waste to trash those. I mean we can even play some AAA titles on those.
But the story is leasing PC contracts, trash every 3 years in millions of offices and personnel costs, upgrades to 8 GB RAM and SSD cost more than just buying new PCs.
Good for us, getting good stuff for cheap ofc.
Also keep an eye out when Win 10 support ends in 2025, the next i7-7xxx will be "useless" in most offices and also home PCs, as most people don't have the knowledge to upgrade PCs. I mean even Win 11 will run on those if using Ventoy, Rufus or manual fixes. 16 GB DDR3 RAM is very cheap and a good Samsung/SanDisk SSD makes sense. Just don't buy cheap SSD.
I have a Z440 I picked up. NOS. 10 years old but brand new in box. Was sitting in some warehouse. Installed a conventional PS and a 2080ti. Upgraded the ram to 128. Tried a 14 core CPU ($20 US). Switch back to the more gamer friendly CPU.
It's a fantastic machine. I've done years of programming on a similar machine back in the day. It's still plenty powerful with the right CPU.
Had to fab a bracket to mount the PS. HP decided they didn't want people installing a conventional PS.
I have Win11 and visual studio on it now.
Yeah several machines have BTX PSU or similar instead of ATX.
Well, how did we use CAD on 500-700 MHz Pentium III with HDDs back then?
This CPU will last for 10 more years AAA games and 20 years retro games.
I think since 15 years or so CPUs are fast enough, only need to upgrade SSD, RAM, GPU every 5-10 years.
@@sebastianebert4295 Yeah CPU performance has kinda plateaued.
The computer I first made money with as a programmer was a 286. These day a little raspberry Pi W for $35 is more powerful than those machines.
Great to see some love for the original 2006 version of Prey, utterly criminal that you can't obtain it digitally anymore.
It is really not obtainable anymore? except for yarr?
@@AntiGrieferGames Another method would be to procure a used physical copy for either PC or Xbox 360, but if we're talking strictly about a digital download copy, then yes, the method you're hinting at is the only way.
@Rymante you can't even get it on physical copy. My original disk doesn't work any more as there is digital DRM on it that does online check. Their servers are not active any more. The only way to play it is on console. I have it on PS3.
@@Rymante hmm. Actually, just tried my disk again and it seems to work. Maybe I was thinking of another game that didn't work?
@@RetroPcCupboard Phew!
You shocked me briefly, thought you called the Z440 old. I am still using it daily, but with a Xeon 8c16t, 128GB DDR4 RAM, pure PCIe SSD and an Geforce 3060. Mine was bought in 2019 (so pretty late in their servicelive, but it runs like a charm! Use it for gaming and everything else.
Is that one having PCIe Gen. 4 or 3?
I thought about an RX A2000 6/12 GB, 3050, 3060 or 3070 lately, but my Dell PCs have PCIe Gen. 3 only, it would be like 20 % slower.
Sadly the 1650, 1050 and similar cards now cost more than new.
Yeah even with i5/7-2/3xxx, 16 GB RAM and SSD you can do things quite fast nowadays, even running Win 10 on a daily base.
I still run it on my 850 EVO, which is more than 7 y/o I think, migrated from 4200+, 5200+, C2D E6300/6600, two different E8400 and now i5-3570, which is still fast.
Sometimes I'm wondering how fast it is. 16 GB RAM and SSD make such a difference. My GPU is only GT 1030 GDDR5, but I like it ultra low power, retro gaming at like 20-40 watts CPU+GPU. Well, not for Win XP sadly. The 1030 would be perfect for XP, if it would run. A tad bit slower than 750 only, but 30 W TDP, even passively cooled.
With 128 GB RAM I'd set up a nice Proxmox 8 environment.
For gaming I think 16 GB is enough, maybe 32 or more for flight sims running 150 nm view distance and 4-16 k res.
Well, I saw some Canadian people on yt tested a cheap AMD RX 6400 with HL2 on a cheap 1000 bucks 8K TV. The HL2 menu had glitches @8K, but in game in ran perfectly fine w/o any patch, they ran it with 8K@300 FPS on this cheap card, which never had an ad to promote 8K, lol. Interestingly the details are impressive, very sharp also, w/o even using FSAA. Think about the details PS1/2 emus can give with multi res using the same unpatched games.
Sony made a huge 16K ultrawide screen some years ago.We'll see when it's ready for the masses in like 20-40 " for 1000 bucks or less. Maybe in 5-10 years.
At least 8K is pretty cheap nowadays and may be good for 320x240 CRT game emulation (while 4K isn't enough for showing the mask and sub pixels details yet).
This is exactly my cup of tea! Loved every second of this! 😃
So, greetings Phil...07:57 BUT Can it run Crysis..YES...It can... Nice review..Keep it going...
I love Max Payne, great video!
Excellent. Your resource links are always a nice bonus. I just bought a Z440, with an E5-1650v4 and 32gb Quad Channel RAM. With an RX580 or a GTX1660ti it's a great, balanced system and so well built. I'm experimenting with the IOT version of Windows 10 - so far so good.
I had so much fun playing Max Payne. My brother and I built a PC back in 2000/2001. We bought a Voodoo 3 PCI card. A friend of ours bought the 5500 AGP. He didn't know his motherboard didn't have an AGP slot. Our motherboard did have an AGP slot. So, we gave him $50, or something like that, and swapped cards. Unreal was also awesome on that card. We had a lot of fun building it too.
Max Payne looks fantastic despite its age.
Also, this finally gave me an idea of what to do with a P4 HT I've had lying around for years.
You know theres a letter missing from the pentium4 HT right? its the letter O, in a nutshell they are called pentium4 HOT
They make great space heaters in winter.
I had one, P4 HT 3200 MHz. It's mainboard died after 5 years of use. Idle wattage of tower was 120 watts.
After that I decided to use lowest power PCs I can build. Now gaming with CPU+GPU 20-40 watts, idling at like 10-15 watts, 32 " TV 40 watts (gaming incl. monitor needs less than the P4 idling, lol).
I remember playing on hot summer evenings when days had like 30-35 °C, the P4 PC heated up the room so much you felt the difference after just 30 mins and couldn't play for more than 2 hours.
But when some stupid European Green Parties forbid burning oil / coal and maybe even wood in 2026+ or so (while we import more expensive green labeled atomic and coal energy and the whole rest of the world uses atomic, oil and coal, which makes this decision useless), some Europeans need to heat with AC power in winter again. Then an old P4 actually would make sense again (in winter only).
That after leasing PC's now is quite nice but ~ 10 years ago there was on aftermarket a lot of specialy made for oems custom solution like arrangement in case, fancy shape of motherboard, fancy power supply and conector, no agp/pcie slot, etc, so you can't use standard ATX parts and vice versa.
Wow! I am glad I clicked on this video :)
It just so happens I have a Zotac GT 640! So I have put that back into my Haswell i5 Machine and installed XP but made a mistake.
Make sure (as Phil does in this video) you set your CPU Cores to 1 BEFORE you install Windows XP or XP will not boot if you do it after the installation.
That's interesting.
There must be a registry fix I think.
It reminds me of Windows 10 not booting, if BIOS is being reset from AHCI to IDE or other way, before you change the registry value for it.
Which cause several old PCs with flat RTC batteries or some bugs changing BIOS values even with good battery to not boot Windows 10 even, because many BIOS reset to IDE mode, my Dell 780 with flat battery decides to reset to RAID mode even.
But yeah, most games in XP won't need more than 1 core. My P4 HT had 2 soft cores back then. I played Crysis Maximum Edition on it, but never felt that 2 soft cores made a difference...5 % speed difference, if even. I didn't have problems with AMD 4200+, 5200+, but I don't remember if I still used XP or 8. I installed 8 since 2012 I think it was. In 2008 my P4 mainboard died, then I had an AMD XP 2800+ before the 4200+.
Some weeks ago I read that XP has problems with either 3+ or 4+ cores sometimes, not starting up.
GTA 4 seems to be an XP game which actually can make use of 3 or even 4 cores.
Gotta love Windows XP builds and the flexibility when it comes to what parts you can use makes it even more appealing. Really awesome video Phil, keep enjoying playing those great games, I have to say Prey for sure deserves to be on GOG.
I have a Retro Sleeper PC with XP Professional 32. Old gray case from 1998 with a bit of RGB inside, i5 3570, 4 GB DDR3 1600 in dual channel mode and GeForce GTX 780 and SB XFI PCI.
Prey can be found on myabandonware, which I believe is a legal grey area. Still, from what I've seen, they share only software that can't be purchased anywhere. If a game enters any store again, it gets removed.
'Max Pain' is AWESOMME, diving through a doorway in bullet-time guns Blazing was soooo much fun :)
I use an AMD FX 8350 on an asus m5a99fx pro rev 2.0 motherboard and a radeon hd7970 for windows xp, it absolutely flies. running at 5ghz
Nice!
Great video. I would love a future video with focus on EAX sound. History, and how it compares with the sound in modern solutions :-).
EAX was downright amazing, I don't known if modern audio has ever truly equalled what the best of EAX could do. Vista threw Creative Labs for a loop that they never fully recovered from.
I just put together an XP machine with a Dell Optiplex and happen to sell it. I was surprised, just wanted to see if there was interest.
Max Payne 1 and 2 were awesome! I'm actually going to try it out on Xemu when I get time. Hopefully today.
I tend to stay mostly period-correct - or close - for my retro computers. My most powerful XP gaming machine is an Athlon 64 X2 with 2GB RAM, Radeon X1900 and Audigy2 ZS. It's perfectly adequate for period gaming. Even runs Crysis at around 42fps.
I had the 4200+, later 5200+. Great CPUs, always loved Cool'n'Quiet, 800 MHz efficient clock. Loved the huge Freezer 64 Pro cooler, which still works on my Athlon II x2 260, AM2 socket. I could go with x6 or even Phenom or my i5/i7, but for XP it's not needed.
Crysis Maximum, Doom III, GTA 4, Mafia 2, Godfather 2 I think are some of the latest CPU hogging XP games, but everything before those run w/o any issues, f.e. Farcry, NFS HP2/U/U2/MW and 95 % which we played back then.
Crysis Maximum I played since P4 HT 3200, ATI 9800 SE, 30-ish FPS in 2007-2008. RIP ASUS P4P 800 SE, 52 °C indoor temps, P4 72 °C with restarts in hot summer nights. After that I decided to use power efficient PCs with also low power GPU only.
I also have the Audigy 2 ZS, great card for up to EAX 4, not 5. Jedi Outcast and Academy were a blast. I now spotted Elite Force also.
Those games alone with EAX hardware make me wanna use Win XP again.
I dislike most new games, tbh., because I don't like the forced blur and alpha blend effects, pseudo HDR colors and such.
Like 70-90 % of all games I have run on XP and older. I play more new indie games than new AAA titles on Win 10, tbh. Games like Trine 1-5, which reminds me of Lost Vikings 1-2 on SNES (LV2 on DOS/Win has the blocky new graphics, but on SNES it's the old pixelated one).
As I didn't keep the older slower PCs, my oldest towers are C2D E8400 and Athlon II x2 260 now. But those I'll keep for sure.
Well, it's still in the up to 2014 EOL XP era, but long after my P4 HT 3200 and AMD XP 2800+ 2004-2008 times. My GPU now is a GTX 645 OEM or just my older ATI HD 4550, ATI HD 2600 Pro. A bit newer also, but low end, so it fits good for a low power system.
I loved the ATI HD 4550 in my 4200+, 5200+. I also expect like 30-50 FPS on those. Maybe limiting the res, using Process Lasso Pro, limiting CPU cores in BIOS.
Nice job you did Phil. Keep up the good work. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
Greetings back to the Netherlands 😊
This is excellent advise. You can also purchase Off-Lease Dell Laptops and Workstations for a really good price. I bought a Core-I5 Dell Optiplex for under $500 and I have been using it as a Plex server for the last 3 years. The best part of going with a Small Form Factor system is the are very power efficient, easy to upgrade and don't take up a lot of space.
Yes you are spot on!
You meant 50 bucks not 500. Yeah i5/7 2/3/4 are really cheap nowadays, even with 16 GB DDR3 RAM, sometimes even SSD for under 100 bucks complete.
As you mentioned Plex. I only used Kodi so far, but that reminds me of Batocera Linux, including Kodi also.
Btw., RetroBat for Windows is a spin-off of Batocera Linux (once renamed from RecalBox Remix, which was like RecalBox, but with newest packages) and RecalBox.
I think Plex and Jellyfin is better for having a server-based database, but I never used such yet.
My thoughts for such SFF/DT systems are to use for HTPC and Proxmox.
The only downsides are low profile slots, less slots and on newer ones the PCIe x16 slots don't allow to insert dual slot GPUs or such with big heatsinks and ofc. 50 W PCIe limits and low PSU.
But f.e. for a low end Win 10 PC the GT 1030 GDDR5 is perfect. Or older 750 ofc., when limited to 50 W it's a bit slower, but for XP gaming more than enough I think.
I'd limit FPS to 60 anyways to save heat production and energy waste. On my PC I once played Anno 1800 even with 30 FPS lock using MSI Afterburner. For such games 30 FPS 1080 res look better than thought. W/o lock it was 40-70 FPS, but unstable having hickups. 30 FPS stable looks better. Other games with like 50-80 FPS unstable also look better with stable 60 FPS locked on this 30 W GPU and 77 W CPU, which Dell limits to 65 W. HWiNFO64, Argus Monitor Mini and Remote Sensor using Android show CPU-z and Cinebench renders the 77 watts i5-3570 CPU up to 66 watts. Temps are very low even on 100 % load never hitting 70 °C, casual gaming at 30-50 °C, fans are perfectly designed on those SFF/DT cases. I think the 65 W limit also makes it possible to more often use the boost frequencies, which indeed makes the CPU a bit faster.
I didn't try undervolting yet. I's not needed yet, lol. It should make the PC faster even, ofc.
I once undervolted a C2D E8400 Dell 780 MT with it's big 12 cm fan, which resulted in 37 °C idle temp showing up instead of 42 °C. Well, CPU diode of that CPU doesn'T show values below 37 °C, so it may be lower even. On an i5/7 it also should save some 1-2 watts while idling and maybe 5-10 watts while gaming or so, having faster 100 % performance also, because the 65 W limit is the same, but needing less watts for the same performance means it's faster. You could virtually get those 77 watts out of the CPU this way.
I wasn't able to undervolt the GPU yet. MSI Afterburner seems to underclock only, not undervolt. 0.75 V is the minimum I see here, retro gaming runs at like 0.8 V mostly, max. 30 watts GPU load I have at I believe 1.2 V, if not limiting it.
I'd like to see less than 12 W idling GPU ofc. Retro games like NFS HP2 run at like 15 W GPU @ 60 FPS 1080p here, which is quite low, but 12 W idling is high in my opinion.
I didn't play on Intel HD 4000 yet, but for an HTPC this would be enough ofc.
What I saw in Windows 10 is, the GT 1030 is not able to de-interlace and instead shows a vertical line in some videos no matter which Kodi and Nvidia options I set.
In forums I read that GPU manufacturers from Nvidia at least weren't able to fix it since 2015+ GPUs or so. I haven't verified that with own tests.
People wrote use Intel HD instead for video playback.
Will test it with Batocera or LibreELEC or just Linux live and the same Nvidia GT 1030 GDDR5.
On my i5 laptop with Intel HD 4000 and Raspberry Pi 2 with Videocore IV I don't have that vertical tearing line in videos and also H.265 play fine with software more there.
AV1 is a problem, needs new GPUs. I saw it on youtube since some weeks. You should use h264ify and disable it, if it helps. There's no AV1 option, but h264ify next or similar has an option for VP8/9 also.
The i5-3570 + GT 1030 GDDR5 game at 20-40 watts only, CPU package is idling at 5 watts, GPU sadly at 12 watts, some other GPUs idle at 5-6 watts. Thought about an AMD RX 6400, which then would idle at 5-6 watts, but is only twice as fast and expensive just for a little boost. I'm not sure about those new GPUs and non EFI boot. And my PCIe is Gen. 3 not 4, will be 20 % slower also. So +100 % * 0.8 maximum for 50 instead of 30 W TDP for 160 bucks extra...I said no.
For this money you can buy 2-3 of those SFF PCs with 8-16 GB RAM each.
I'll wait a bit for a faster entry level GPU and will not pay 160 bucks for it, lol.
I mean my old ATI HD 4550 cost 38 bucks new, the GT 1030 GDDR5 was 74 bucks new. Both passively cooled, so even more expensive than standard models.
Fast GPUs cost 300-500 bucks back then. Now entry GPUs cost 150 and fast ones 2,500.
But I think the times for new cheap entry level GPUs are gone since China bans, the flu and China's own faulty lockdown restrictions. Many ships didn't leave harbors for weeks and months, trucks didn't arrive at harbors. Well, in long-terms this raised prizes worldwide, so China won in a certain way.
I purchased this pc without a video card for 50 dollars. It came with a 512 m.2, 512 ssd and 32gb of memory. I upgraded the cpu to the Intel Xeon E5-1650 3.6ghz for 15 and a 980ti for 50 bucks. This thing is pretty darn good, for what I paid for it. But I will say this. I hate that bios though. First time owning a workstation, and that bios took me a while to get use too.
Still rocking my Z620, watching this video on it, upgraded processors last year to e5-2667's, the Z6xx's are the way to go, more power, more room and will last forever!
I picked up an HP Z400 for free from work. I replaced the 4c/8t Zeon with a 6c/12t Zeon and added a GTX 1660 ti. A pretty good low-mid Win 10 gamer. I have 24gig of ECC ddr3 ram 1800 ghz running in triple channel.
Nice! Literally just got one of these about 3 weeks ago. Put a Xeon E5-2699 v3 in there, 18 cores 36 threads, and what a beast it is! Waiting on my Tesla P4 to come in with its dual NVENC, and the ol' girl will be a happy lil' Unraid Camper.
I once saw that beast of a CPU with 1.5 TB RAM and 1 or 2 Tesla M6000 installed when it was new. RAM test at boot took some mins or so. Sadly it was too expensive to be able to test it, so it directly was shipped to the customer after anything was installed w/o that we could use it.
Super happy to see more gameplay! Prey is such a great - and often forgotten - game! Max Payne is a great game that I have not touched since its original release. It was very nice to see it here too. I would love to see a full teardown of this machine. This kind of proprietary PCs are often put together in interesting ways. Their cases have all sorts of latches, air ducts and little things that regular homebuilt PCs almost never do. Thanks for yet another great video, Phil!
These machines are very proprietary! Not difficult to take apart, but very hard to do a case transplant, likely not possible. Very easy to work with though!
Friends ask me why I bother when “Windows 10 can play all this stuff.” UGH. Just, leave me be and let me enjoy my old box. Thank you Phil for this project!
Exactly!! We know the truth 😜
One of my favourite games from years ago was the original colin mcrae DIRT game, have installed it on alot of systems from win 7 , 10,11 and have never had it run like it should, spent hours fiddling with graphics settings, applying different patches etc, nothing worked , even though , hardware wise, it ahould easily run ... It would stutter and frame rate would fluctuate from frozen to 100s fps so it was unplayable, had an old fx6300 xp system and installed the other day and it runs perfectly, numerous games dont run properly on newer os.....
@@nix123ism I confirm it, Dirt and some other games do not work in Win 7, 10, 11. That's why I started collecting old PC parts.
My SandyBridge E is still going strong as a server and game streaming host for the kids. When I replace it with a quiet mini pc I think I might repurpose it as an XP machine. PS2 keyboard and 4:3 LCD? Yeaaah!
The Z440 was a great pc.
PREY. Wow.
I still have the original dvd.
The walking upside down is a real head spin.
Have fun with that.
Stay safe.
Mon
the last sound card I bought for the Windows XP and Vista system was the X-Fi Xtreme Music card which had onboard RAM and was considered the more premium model compared to XtremeGamer (non-Fatal1ty) card and was a notch below the Titanium model. I still have it but am using an up to date Audigy RX card (could've went higher but I don't know how long I will use discrete sound cards in future builds).
Any sound card is better than onboard sound. Tho I have to say that since HDMI I use less sound cards in my Win 10 build now.
The question is what's true hardware EAX 4/5/HD running in XP and how does it compare to Linux using OpenAL or other methods or ALChemy in Win Vista and newer.
I read about audio cracks and other glitches using ALChemy at least.
But hopefully OpenAL will be better in the future.
I hope game devs will bring back the quality of A3D and EAX, because 5.1 is just not the same w/o effects on each single sound source.
@@sebastianebert4295 I agree discrete soundcards are better than all onboard audio but the premium boards have pretty good sound cards in their own right (I wish we'd get more that have actual audio processors onboard as I remember Sound Blaster and Aureal being included on a few motherboards and nVidia's Soundstorm was quite nice) but sadly things are moving more towards headsets only and USB powered ones at that. More people are opting for external sound processors than card expansions but there are still trade-offs.
Problem isnt game dev, but WSAPI (Windows audio system in Vista and newer).
Microsoft cutt of support of Dsound (DX3D audio API) in Vista system.
So in XP dont use OpenAL, but Dsound 3D audio positional system build in DirextX. Native A3D/EAX.
In Alchemy is used Dsound wrapper with OpenAl API (instead of Direct Sound API)
OpenAl is used for direct comunication between wraper and audio HW and alow use all HW capabilities of audiochip (so not only Creative cards).
About Audio cracks - there is needed set right duration for audioefects.
Too long, or too short lead to audioglitches.
In Win 11 is dsound.dll library restricted by system, so Alchemy not work anymore.
Another xp era game that's really fun is Star Wars Battlefront 2 (now called Battlefront 2 classic to avoid confusion with the 2017 version.) It's a first/third person shooter that supports EAX, something I've never been able to try because I don't have a compatible sound card, and has a fun campaign and game modes against bots. The multiplayer was brought back officially in 2015 however it requires either steam or gog galaxy. The standalone installer from gog won't work with it. There are some 3rd party tools for custom servers that work on xp but they've been pretty inactive since the official multiplayer came back.
Yeah BF1+2 original (2004+2005 I think) are very good. Next to Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Elite Force 1-2, SWAT 3 TGOTY, SiN Gold, NOLF 1-2, SoF 1 Platinum, COD 1-2, CNC RA2+YR+MO (Mental Omega is quite new).
Yeah the new releases of the old game brought crossover gaming, but need those new online services.
There's old and new GOG versions. The one which brought crossover gaming deleted the old LAN stack sadly.
If you still have the old GOG installer it should work.
I've read some people wrote there's a fix, if not starting the game in MP mode: Inserting a microphone into the 3.5 mm jack. I didn't test it yet.
But I think the original CD game is better for true old LAN gaming.
Yeah that's true. Most people will just use online accounts nowadays. But for 1v1 Hamachi or really local LAN game, the old one works ofc.
Absolutely. Nothing more fun then building a Frankenstein machine and watching it come to life! But yeah, even playing C&C or Sin on it will be a blast.👍
SiN, NOLF, Project IGI all have graphics issues in the menu on Win 10, but are good to play in game like 90 % okay.
CNC RA2 YR crashes very often on Win 8 and/or 8.1 and I think also on early Win 10 17-19 sth., at least 1 time it crashed on newest Win 10 22H2.
Also having speed sensitive issues, sluggish micro stutterings while scrolling even with fixes.
But it never ever crashed on XP SP3 and runs fast w/o micro stutterings.
Yeah I like to use early dual cores or i5/7 for XP builds, being faster than my best time XP build with P4 3200 I had back then.
Maybe use an SSD if being impatient on intalls and copying stuff, but once installed it's not even needed, tbh.
If you only play games you won't even need defragmenting it or only once a year maybe.
Having laying around some silent quality Samsung Spinpoint 60/120 GB IDE HDDs from already used office PCs which never failed, but also newer bigger ones with SATA. Even the capacity will be enough for those old games. I remember that I had up to like 60 games installed at the same time on 30+120 GB IDE HDDs back then, ofc. having also music, some pics and vids, docs.
Max Payne was a great game, I played it back in 2001 on a pentium III 800 mhz toshiba laptop with a geforce 2 go ;)
Great review
Happy Friday Phil!
😊😁
Thank you Phil I just bought a gt640 gddr5 on ebay after watching this to replace the gt240 I was using in my xp box. It only had 512mb gddr5. My xp box uses a q9550 but after watching this I went out and ordered the same gpu you used in this video. Cheers mate.
I found a super cheap old CCTV security camera controller PC (just a small XP machine), threw a fresh install of XP on there, swapped the capture card for an old PCI GPU I had lying around (no AGP or PCIe slot), and it works well enough for retro games. It's super small, so I just have a monitor on top of it.
I'm just finishing building my XP machine. Hp P6 2302, Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality, GTX 750ti, 17" CRT monitor running at 1024x768 85Hz, 1Tb HDD. Thinking about installing additionally Windows 7 on it too.
That is a nice machine!
@@philscomputerlab Fairly easy build. Power supply does have enough juice to run all of it. Luckily my gtx 750 ti doesn’t need separate power connector. Also that tower pc was fairly cheap. Paid about £40 for it. GPU and soundcard were more expensive. Have to admit that this x-fi sounds great with my open back headphones(Philips Fidelio x2hr).
Awesome video Phil. My ultimate xp build is a i7 with a 660ti. It's ridiculous but best thing if you just want to play anything with reliability maxed out.
Which i7? Like a 1st gen 970? Or newer?
@@4kays160 can't remember exactly what it is off the top of head. Would be about 8 years old now. Was a bit of messing around to get xp to run on it
Pray & Pray: Deluxe Edition is 75% off on GOG right now. (10/11/23 British, 11/10/23 US)
I only use Win XP 32bit as 64bit has compatibility issues & always did. I’m considering an ATX compliant X99 motherboard based PC as you can build a PC like that with standard power supplies etc. but starting with a workstation like that can save you a bunch of money if you understand there can be issues with non-standard PSU’s/motherboards etc.
Great video, Phil, thanks.
The Prey (2017) game sold by GOG isn't the same as Prey (2006) which Phil was playing in this video. They share the same name, but are completely different and unrelated games.
Cheers Phil. I'm in Sydney and I bought an HP Z440 on eBay for $230 after a $20 discount for a first purchase in 2021. A few years ago I had a Dell Precision T5400. I learnt about the bullet proof nature of Xeon Workstations. The HP was basic with a E5 1620 V3, 16gb ram and a k2200 Quadro. The PSU is the 525watt version. I doubled the ram for $55 also on eBay. I hope to put an NVME in one day for something to do and upgrade to a E5 1650 V3. These cpu's are less than $30 on eBay. I don't game or do any demanding tasks. I just wanted bullet proof reliability. Cool video bro 👍
Yes they are awesome indeed 😊
Amazing to see that the x99 platform supports xp. I just picked up a x79 motherboard and a 2667v2. With the sacrificd of avx2, I wish i knew this before 😂 I am planing to use it with a 980ti as a Dual boot mashine with xp and win 10. I hope i will be able to use it as a modern mashine for a few years before having to build something new.
Yea it's not officially supported but I think what happened is large companies like Dell or HP wanted their machines to have some sort of XP support for some of their customers so that's how drivers got to projects like Snappy Driver Installer Origin somehow...
It's at the edge at 2014 EOL support ;)
That CPU will run for like 10 more years playing AAA games and like 20 years for retro games or when the caps fall apart ;)
Some years ago 8 GB RAM and SSD made the most difference for me. Now 16 GB RAM for Win 10 still runs fast.
HP is one of those brands where the consumer line is complete garbage but the business/workstation stuff is and always has been great. Almost like it should be two different companies entirely, same applies to their laptops where the ZBooks are great and built so differently to the consumer stuff that there's no resemblance.
Great video again.
I own some vintage workstation too. An HP Z600 with two CPUs, a Dell Precision T5810 mit a Broadwell Xeon and a GTX 1080 FE, two Dell Precision T3xxx. One of the T3xxx is a XP machine with a Core 2 Duo E8600 and Quadro with G80 or G90 GPU. The oldest one is a custom build workstation in a beautiful Chieftec case. It has 8GB of RAM, two Xeons (Irwindale).
I usally use WD Raptors instead of SSD in very old machines. I like the full retro experiance.
Great video. I do wish to point out that you made one technical mistake. The 750ti is on Maxwell just like the 960. It runs the same drivers due to the core being maxwell.
You're right, there is just one year between them...
I kind of feel like from XP and beyond those games run pretty well on my modern system. But the older machines from Windows 98 and back are where I really love to build retro machines to experience them to their fullest!
I agree that 9x/DOS is more interesting, but there are still reasons to have something dedicated for XP.
A big one is native EAX hardware support, which was a thing in a surprising number of games like Battlefield 2, San Andreas, Halo and KotOR. Then there are all the games which don't support modern resolutions, as well as problems with disc DRM and high core counts etc.
You can work around a lot of it, but it's nice to have everything work natively. Of course some of us also just enjoy playing with old high end hardware, and the nice thing about XP is that most stuff is still pretty cheap.
Dang a 18 core/36t..
I was checking for fun that xeon vs a ryzen 7600 6 core/12t. Time really showed omg improvements. That 6 core totaly destroys it.
I'm Running an old Dell win xp pc with the GT635.. I wanted a GT640 but couldn't find one:( Both cards are the same but the 635 sadly has 64 bit memory. But its still good.
Yes the recent CPUs from Intel and AMD have cores that are so much stronger!
Yeah, I love my retro pc's but also my ryzen 7700(8 core/16t). Its amazing how fast it is for its price and only on 65W TDP@@philscomputerlab
This is funny because i just bought a z620 not long ago. Was so impressed by it that i bought another one, $300 a piece.
What a beautiful looking game!
Prey is great. Still got the disk somewhere 😊
For XP gaming I'm sticking mostly with C2D or C2Q. With these I had no problems in terms of having multiple cores. In my case only HT was a problem and with AMD CPUs like the Athlon 64 X2, even the AMD driver (Dual Core optimizer if I am remembering correctly) didn't help much in some games. UT99 with Intel Core 2 Duo -> no problems but with Athlon 64 X2 I had fps all over the place. The problem was that UT99 has its own CPU Speed detection routine, which sets a wrong speed with AMD multicores, so you had to set it manually via game start paramters.
Prey 2006 was at first also a game developed by 3DRealms but has gone nearly the same path as their Duke Nukem Forever. Announced in mid 90s, people left, starting from scratch multiple times... finally another developer took over.
I read that 3+ or 4+ cores are problematic sometimes.
Maybe also Process Lasso Pro can fix it for some games. For sure it can minimize micro stutterings, made my Win 10 x64 faster with X-Plane 10, but also Firefox, Chrome, WinRAR, 7z were like 20 % faster while just optimizing priorities and core affinities.
I haven't tried it yet, tbh.
GTA 4 is one game which indeed profits from 3-4 cores natively I read. One of the few XP games supporting multi core.
Maybe you disabled Speedstep in the Intel system? Because I often had that with BIOS standards on many C2D systems.
Or test set the CPU governor in Windows to performance with that game.
AMD CPUs go down to like 800 MHz, while the E8400 uses 2000-3000 MHz. This may be the reason UT99 thought the AMD CPU is too slow when idling.
I never played Prey yet, looks a bit like Portal vs. Doom III. Well, Portal was sold in 2007+. Who knows who copied the idea or maybe they even had one same dev.
Another great video Phil! And also glad you're enjoying the games too! After all, isn't that the goal? See ya next time!
That generation is more powerful than most people would think. It can dig into second gen Threadripper territory with a 2696 v3. Still very usable with the right workloads and scenarios!
Recently i got a broken 1366 mobo for free. I might give that a chance. I ordered a xeon w 3505 for it and 3 1gb sticks ddr3 after getting it running. Nice perspective in this video 👍
Oh this makes me want to grab my old 4770K / Z87 motherboard. I retired it in favor of a Ryzen CPU in 2019.
Lol, the 4770k is still good for modern games with a 3070ti lol.. lol its a legit beast man 😂, bro if youve retired a 4770k system, just buy a 2nd hand gpu like a 1080ti or rtx2070 , and do the right thing.. give it to a kid who cant afford a gaming pc, or a little cousin, or that broke kid down the street... do it man, for the price of a 2nd hand gpu, you can really change a kids life.. ❤❤❤❤ do it ❤❤❤❤
One way around soundcard height limitations would be to use an external USB audio DAC, most don't require drivers, or a Audio Interface from Edirol or the such.
Yes but then you don't get that sweet X-Fi EAX sound...
That's fair, I guess I've never experienced that, however I probably come at it from a music quality perspective first, games second.
@@mdrumt Yes for music absolutely go with an external DAC!
I love my z440 turned gaming pc I paid 6 dollars for a 2630v3, 30 for a mb, 90 for a 1660 and 30 for ram and I can play most games at 1440p cranked. Amazing machine
I love how the NVIDIA control panel for this XP retro build is the very same one you get on the latest 4090
I think all SB0880 cards have X-RAM. IIRC, the base model has 16MB while the Fatal1ty model has 64MB. If you press ~ to open the console in Doom 3, it should tell you how much X-RAM your card has.
Ok I'll check it out in future projects, thanks for the tip!
I have two Dell OEM SB880 pci express boards that I bought off ebay some years ago. I just now checked and they have a 128MB DDR memory chip on them. Dell part number: 0F333J which the internet tells me should be the X-Fi Titanium. What I can tell is you is that they work fantastic with WinXP. Fully compatible from the early EAX in the original retail Half Life to the EAX 4.0 like in the Doom3 engine games. No SB16 emulation nor any DOS support but that's not what that care is for :D
Very interesting review. I am in the research now for the second rig (my first is a pentium 3 with Win 98 and a Voodoo 3 3000) and the operation system I plan to use is Win XP. It never crossed my mind that you could use a workstation and downgrade it for that purpose. This path could be potentially interesting for me as well. I am not sure though if there are lots of these workstations out in the wild here in Austria. But I will look into the workstation market nonetheless. These machines seem to have some high-quality parts and playing old games on a workstation that was not built for that purpose also sounds rather cool. 😁
It would be very interesting if f.e. a C2D can make use of a PCI Voodoo 1, 2 or 3, combining both worlds.
As long as the PC is slow enough for the newer DOS games at least (not thinking of Wing Commander and such older ones, but Tomb Raider and newer ones).
Athlon II x2 and 4200+, 5200+ at least can go down to 800 MHz, while C2D stay at like 2/3 frequency like 2-3 GHz for the E8400.
So maybe running such at lowest freq. makes those useable for old Frankenstein rigs.
96 watts under load, that’s not too shabby.
at work we are recycling these machines whenever we come across them since they are too old to support the security requirements of the network, I would never have thought they would be decent XP machines since they're so new by comparison with NVME drives and UEFI BIOS (never checked to even see if they had legacy BIOS) :D
NVME I don't think will work with XP though...
The Z400s, 600s, and 800s are the lesser known machines for making decent gaming and editing rigs. You get multiple cores (and occasionally processor slots) and at least DDR3 memory. The only downsides wouldn't necessarily be the age of generation, but two, namely all memory is ECC which increases the cost, and HP didn't make it fully ATX pin compliant, meaning it is much more difficult to get a higher PSU in there, though there are people in the community attempting to do so.
Highly unsuspecting machine for XP compatibility due to how new it is. Would not at all be my first choice due to how much you have to gimp it, but fascinating that it works.
Also all these retail business computers have horrible bioses that are 75% locked
@@Synthematix It's actually far worse than that. My employer's previous IT manager built them a new infrastructure ~8 years ago on Dell hardware, which is all now way out of warranty & support. Can't do anything with it. Need a new motherboard? Good luck. Either they try to sell us a whole new machine, or we are forced to buy used. Need a new HDD? Might have to find one with specific firmware (in our case, we have a Dell/EMC SAN which requires otherwise off-the-shelf disks that requires special unobtainable firmware... to be fair, this doesn't affect workstations, but still....).
HP may not be as bad but I doubt it. I'm currently trying to get a budget for upgrades, which will use in-house builds to replace all this crap. Company is not big enough to afford the useless support contracts. Hardware always magically lasts at least a little past warranty/support, and if it's in any way proprietary, you're screwed.
Sorry to be a bit off-topic & rant but I get so frustrated with these companies when having to deal with them daily lol
@@ruthlessadmin I understand completely, because these companies dont want any customer returns due to end users screwing up the bioses, in turn renders these computers useless for 90% of people, that want a proper performing mainboard
Wait until you reach the multiple floor grenade spamming dudes level ... I have played all of Rune, went to Valhalla, awesome game.
Oh nice!
2690v2 with Noctua NH-D15. Asus Sabertooth X79, BCLK 114. 3,7 all core, 4,1 1 core boost. 24GB DDR3 2133 10-11-11-26 CR2. GTX980. Sound Blaster Live 5.1!. 2 SSD SATA 3. First with Windows XP, second with Windows 10. And second PC on LGA775 ASUS P5E3 DeLuxe, QX9650 4 GHz with Noctua NH-D14, GTX970, 16GB DDR3 1600 7-9-9-24 CR1, Sound Blaster Live 5.1!, 2 SSD SATA2 with Windows XP and 10.
Nice, what beasts! Noctua fan also?
@@philscomputerlab Not a fan. It’s just that these fans were the very first and most expensive in our region, which were heavily advertised. Since then I’ve only installed them. Habit. Although there are most likely better fans. When I made my retro computers, a prerequisite was the presence PCI slot for Sound Blaster Live 5.1! and official support Windows XP. The sound under XP drivers is the best.
@@slavasokolov1 Noctua is from my home country Austria 😊 Yes they are expensive but also very good.
@@philscomputerlab Austrian knives Glock78 are also good 👍And austrian youtube channel about knife Joe X 👍
Well this is fascinating, I wasn't aware that XP could work with chipset support on anything beyond Intel's 4th generation. That fast of a CPU would make for an interesting hybrid dual-boot XP/Vista or XP/7 machine.
Yes you are right! Lots of projects you could use such a machine for.
Just finished my XP/7 dual boot rig, it's brilliant. Z77 chipset, Core i5 3570K, 8 GB RAM, GTX 970, 1 TB SSD, X-Fi card. Initially I tried with a GTX 660, but it's not fully compatible with my daily driver 4K monitor. I'm limited in terms of space and didn't want to add another screen for the retro rig, so I upgraded to the 970. It really doesn't have the specs or the appearance of a retro machine, but it plays stuff made over a span of 15 years. Next I'll try some 3dfx games with nGlide on XP, that should extend compatibility even further.
Nvidia quadro k620 also a good option, and there is a unofficial driver that support xp.
My XP Rig: Dell Optiplex SFF 9020, I7-4770, MSI GTX750Ti Low Profile, Auzentech X-Fi Forte Low Profile, Sennheiser HD-25 DJ Headphones
"Für'n Garten reicht's" ;)
Wunderschön!
What the heck, I didn’t think that XP had drivers for the Haswell chipset.
I bought Prey on DVD, it’s a good game and I enjoyed playing it but I got so far into it and couldn’t figure out how to go any further. It was very frustrating.
Phil's with dinner....Not quite Phil's with breakfast but just as good.
😅
Man, this got me to revive old nettop with Atom CPU (Atom 230, 2GB SO-DIMM DDR2 800MHz and 480GB spare SSD to replace aging 320GB HDD) with Windows XP (booted from USB Optical Media without issues) including Snappy Drivers pack which I'm keeping on one 120GB SSD in caddy just in this cases. The only official driver which was installed was the Nvidia ION GPU driver.
Rocking this machine for old GTA games and NFS until Carbon which is also at 640x480 on an old 17 inch VGA monitor works flawlessly. HDMI to VGA adapter needed to be all working fine, even at 1280x1024px resolution of that old 17 inch almost 18 years old Asus monitor.
I currently use a Z420 for livestreaming, and I'm about to move up to a Z440 for that task. Granted, I livestream vintage computer repairs and not gaming, so a 10 year old workstation is just fine... and better than a desktop because of all the PCIe lanes available for capture cards. That and I have a GTX 970 (to be moving up to a 1060) so that I can use NVENC for video encoding, so the older generation processor isn't really an issue.
For streaming these machines are really nice. The PCIe lanes are all directly connected to the CPU, so you can load up the slots and everything is still smooth. The CPUs are especially suitable for encoding because of the many cores, although a modern Nvidia GPU maybe does it even better like the one you're using.
I have a z400 & I have it setup in a hexa-boot config from win2k - win10
I am using a GT 650 ti for my XP machine with a Core2Duo E8500.I will install an OEM sound card soon just to try the joystick/Flystick I have of wich I do not know if it works.
This gives me some ideas. I still have a Haswell motherboard with a CPU and RAM that I used to use. I do have a Pentium 4 with a 6800GT that I use for XP right now, but a more powerful system might be useful. Only thing for me is that the GPU I used with that Haswell system is a Kepler Titan. I still have it, but for compatibility reasons, I might need to get something with less VRAM. Will have to see.
I use the old pc from my dad for win xp. Its a amd phenom i think. Fast enough.
Yesterday i found out that many games are ok with win 10. I installed timeshock pinball. Works good and its from 1996. C&c generals needed a minor patch and was good for wide screen.
Someone gave me an old HP slimline s3300f the other day and downgraded it from Vista to XP.
Now its slowly becoming my retro Windows XP gaming rig, just gotta get a R7 250 since the GT430 i have in it is 1GB of VRAM on a 64 bit memory bus.
OK now I wanna build up an XP system!
G'day Phil,
While GOG games are W10 compatible & lots will even play on my Athlon 200GE PC using IGP I prefer playing my old games on my XP PC.
For those games my C2Q9650, G33M-S2, 4GB DDR2-800 combo in HP Pavilion t680a case is a Beast & mated to a 500W PSU allows me to swap out my Retro GPU Collection which includes a Gainward GTX460GS GLH, Zotac AMP! GTX560Ti, Quadro FX8200 (GTX285 4GB) plus my Gigabyte HD5770SOC, 260SOC, 275SOC (1.8GB), 460SOC, 470SOC, 560SOC, 560Ti SOC to give them all some love.
For CPU cooling in the HP Case I coverted a Coolermaster AIO to 92mm RAD & be quiet! Fan.
For my SOC collction I also have a 570SOC, 680SOC Windforce 5 but they are ridiculous for XP Era Games so just give them a run on my testbench with more modern games for some fun every now & then.
Always great to hear from you 😊 Have a great weekend.
Thx for these great tests!
Yeah those business class PCs are very robust and because of 2-3 years leasing contracts in millions of offices, Win 7 to 10 upgrade fails on many home PCs with clueless non IT personnel and now official Win 11 needs like TPM2, i7-8+ gen. and such, being sold for very cheap in millions.
I have 4 of those so far, after having used Asus, Gigabyte, Legend QDI and other mainboards with like 40+ DIY PCs (always migrated parts for 30+ years) and don't wanna have anything else like those business class PCs, if getting "new" stuff tbh. Ofc. I'll keep all the old stuff I haven't sorted out by now. But screwless design, easy access, good fan design makes Fujitsu, Compaq/HP, IBM/Lenovo, Dell and such a true blast. The only downside is maybe a weaker PSU with non workstation systems. But if you stay with up to 75 W GPUs, those are fine and also have very efficient PSU.
Some ideas:
- It would be interesting to know if the wall mounted power meter shows a difference in idling f.e. 1 vs. 4 cores.
Are the cores really shut down or just being ignored by the system?
- Process Lasso Pro ofc. is an option, if using more cores, but also for 1 core only to limit the priorities of all background processes, minimizing micro stutterings. It might help Crysis as it helps X-Plane 10, f.e.
- I think limiting the CPU to 1 core even gets you better latency, less IRQ hickups.
The Windows XP era also brought us some great sound apps for MIDI playing, which may not work with newer Windows versions and Win XP is having better IRQ timings anyways, compared to 8-11 at least (if not using Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Linux).
- Maybe GTA 4 is worth a try to activate 3-4 cores (one of the few XP capable games supporting it), but for most games we won't need it. I'm not sure if it supports EAX, never played it. But some people wrote it's one of the best version topping GTA V (which I only played once, but didn't enjoy as much as GTA III and VC back then...I'll check out the PSP versions LCS, VCS emulated).
- Check out the DX 10 alpha patch or what it was called for Crysis Maximum Edition. I remember having used it on my old P4 HT 3200 Prescott S478 back in 2007-2008, but with much older GPU PowerColor ATI Radeon 9800 SE 128 MB (DX 9c card).
Well, DX 10 was way slower than DX 9 (like DX 12 is compared to DX 11 on entry level GT 1030 or similar cards), but it worked in XP, seeing the water pearls is beautiful.
Now having both faster CPU and GPU, it would be worth a retry. It's been more than a decade since I played it. Crysis Maximum Edition was a blast with the 2 SP mode games.
- For older games like NFS HP2 I'd like to use dgVoodoo to crank up resolution, force MSAA (set up anything but Phong Shading and Mipmapping I think).
- I like to force limit FPS to 60 with MSI Afterburner and use RTSS to check CPU+GPU load with on the fly FPS caps switching and see how it looks, check the reported wattage, as long as the system reports it (my C2D E8400 didn't report the CPU wattage stats, but my i5-3570 is doing). Why limiting to native screen FPS? Because it limits power needs, heating up and gives more stable FPS in games like Crysis I think. Unless it looks bad having tearing or so.
I wanna use the C2D E8400 or Athlon II x2 260, because those are my full profile PCs I have several GPUs for, f.e. Nvidia 645 OEM, ATI HD 4550, ATI HD 2600 Pro, ATI HD 3850/70? (I won't use this beast, but a test would be nice).
- Raven Software is a very good company which made high quality games. I loved Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Next to Heretic, Hexen, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force 1. SoF 1 Platinum. Some of the games which defined EAX.
Wow some great tips in that comment, thank you!
Vampire the masquerade bloodlines is a good yarn also
My current XP rig is a first Gen i5 with a a 960 4gb. Loving the performance but your comment about compatibility has me worried. What games have issues with high vram? I also disable all but 1 core and that helps a LOT of games.
If you don't notice issues then don't stress. Quake 4 will show low res textures for example...
@@philscomputerlab haha too late, now I'm on vogons reading how I did everything wrong
@@Fahrenheit38 Haha! There is an expression I think. Something with paralysis / overthinking.. Seriously if the games you play all work, don't get hung up too much 😊
Analysis paralysis I think is the term 😊
@@philscomputerlab haha looking on ebay for a 1gig too stash just in case
I think I might go for Win 98 SE for a retro machine as that does native dos also.
Very interesting vid, thanks for this, and hi from a fellow Aussie.
I am curious, how are your feelings for XP vs 98 SE for a retro gaming PC? I have a TON of original CD games that I honestly miss.
"lets run sone bechmahks!" alright! i would have waited until after xp install and updates to turn off the cores, single cores were such dark days...
your retro machine is better than my pc :(((
Well the xeon v4 single thread might be slow compared to current cpus but when the price is compared there is no contest as I have z440 with 2690 v4, 128gb ram and 1660ti for less than 400€ and that 1660 ti was 100€ of that set. Running virtual machines is easy and memory is cheap and 14 cores @3.2ghz isn't too bad as most games are bottlenecked by that gpu @1080p
Good advive Phil you can make a great gaming pc for a decent price.
DELL, replace the E7200 models for Q9650
DDR 3 can still do Pro Gaming speeds, just do the RTX 4060 card !
im from australia as well so as i go to make my own XP PC your videos have been a MASSIVE help thanks so much mate, what specs do you suggest for something period correct?
Im in nsw australia, i have old PC's and pc parts ive saved as i used to getvpaid to scrap them, so i saved old stuff and collectible stuff..
Reply with what you are looking for mate, and if i have some stuff you need ill give it to you for free.. i have a lot of old pc stuff, so dont be shy to ask, if i have it and you need it, its yours.. ❤❤
Phill, suggest this man some stuff, so i can go see if i have any of the period correct stuff he wants or needs,, ❤
That's such an open ended question. Best to have at least a vague idea of what you're after?
@philscomputerlab hmm not too sure. I'd love something from 2007-2009 which I guess vista was already released by then so it's not fully period correct but alot of the games I own that work on XP are from this time. For CPU I already own an LGA 775 motherboard so I was thinking of going for something like an e8700. As for GPU I'm not sure how practical SLI or crossfire are but I'd love dual GPUs if viable. I've looked at snagging either a couple of HD 4870 or HD 5770 from radeon, as for nvidia, I'd live something from their geforce 200 series looks good
@4kays160 honestly not too sure, I was born just before vista was released and grew up with windows 7 and 10 so all my parts lists are off a little bit of information that may or may not be wrong
lol, using 2011-3 system for XP is good, but I prefer to disable HT and leave 1 core on something like 9900k.
Really great video Phil!!
about AHCI, why you don't use nLite and made a custom WinXP ISO with the AHCI drivers included?
I made a custom iso with all intel AHCI drivers and works everytime
For some reason, Max Payne looks diferent from my memories, I remember did play on a Voodoo2 and looked awesome at 800x600.
Max Payne AFAIK runs on Direct3D, I'm surprised it runs on a Voodoo 2! I'm using the Easy2Boot or similar projects usually, they have AHCI drivers integrated (likely the same pack as the ones floating around for nLite). Sometimes I go oldschool and use a USB floppy drive and load the AHCI driver by pressing F6. I simply ran out of time to figure it out for this one...
@@philscomputerlab The Funfact, the Voodoo GPUs works on Windows 10 and higher.