Best parts for standard XP gaming PC?

[Mantis128]

So after years of being a console only guy I want to get into PC gaming, mainly old PC gaming. I want to get my hands on a good Windows XP machine.
What I'm looking for
Windows XP 32 bit
2 Gig of ram
2-3 GHz
Video card capable of outputting 640x480P perfectly through VGA but also able to output higher resolutions up to say 720P.
That should be enough to run games like Half Life, Elder Scrolls III and my favorite Windows game Touhou EOTSD right?

Also are there any other decent to good shmups on Windows XP?

[orange808]

Why Windows XP? I keep an Athlon Windows 98 machine with a 3dfx card to handle older games, but I don't see much advantage in choosing XP.

Windows 98 also supports booting into DOS. You will have to use a "go slow" program to slow it down, but it is much more compatible than Dosbox.

What games demand XP--versus using Windows 7?

[Guspaz]

Yeah, not many games out there that run fine on Windows XP but not newer versions. Half-Life, for example, runs fine on a modern PC running Windows 10 64-bit, or even a Mac if you want.

Windows 98 could be useful for retro gaming, though.

[orange808]

To finish answering the retro PC gaming rig question:

-Get a nice CRT monitor. A multisync monitor is best. You don't want lag and support for resolutions below 640x480 is very handy.

-Get a motherboard with a serial port. You don't want USB input lag.

-Get a nice Gravis pad and a Thrustmaster.

-Get a legacy mouse and keyboard. USB is slow.

- Athlon processor (1 ghz preferred)
This was the original slot A design. Easy to install. Try to get the 1ghz model, but anything above 700mhz will do.

- Slot A ATX motherboard
Up to you. I like Gigabyte boards. Choose one with a serial port.

- Voodoo 3 2000, 3000, or 3500 AGP
Forget about pokey 32 bit color Nvidia designs. Frames per second was king. Do not bottleneck your rig with a PCI card.

- 128mb of RAM
Windows 98 is finicky about ram. Go with 128mb SDRAM. Do not install mismatching memory modules. (For instance, a 32mb in one slot and a 64mb in another slot.)

- Sound Blaster Live!
Don't bother with the daughterboard. Just get the base card.

- 7800rpm hard drive
You have options here, but I recommend an IDE UDMA ATA 7800rpm hard drive.

- DVD ROM
Get a IDE DVD ROM drive. Almost anything will do.

Edit: Don't forget the 3.5" floppy drive. Boot disks are handy for DOS.

[Ed Oscuro]

Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind's hardware requirements shouldn't be underestimated, and there are some really worthwhile community graphics features worth looking into as well (and that's even before you look at adding user content like custom character models).

If you do go the XP route, you'd want 4GB of RAM as it supports that. I think video card memory mirroring + some other reserved uses will take a chunk out of that, while there's no arbitrary bugs related to memory usage as on 98.

For what it's worth, any old secondhand PC you can find should be good enough really, and new PCs supported XP until fairly recently. However I would second looking for a modern machine for compatible programs, and Win98 or so for much older stuff.

I also think that the PCEM emulator is giving people decent results for a wide range of software including Windows 98 era stuff (like Mechwarrior II).

[leonk]

A year ago I build a machine for '80s DOS to '90s Windows gaming. My specs:

AMD K6-3 500 (can slow down to 386 speed for old Sierra games)
256mb ram
500gb drive (force to 100gb for pc to see it)
DOS 7/win98se dual boot so partition can be bigger than 2gb
AWE64 gold sound card
real MPU401 Hardware midi card
Roland SC-55 midi
Roland MT-32 midi
Voodoo 3dfx 3000 pci video
one of those usb key floppy drive emulators

Now if I only had the time to setup the software

[leonk]

Now if I can only find a reasonably prices Gravis Ultrasound. ;(

Back in 1994 I ran a GUS support BBS in Toronto. A lightning strike killed the BBS and my beloved GUS.

[Mantis128]

I chose XP because I figured it would be the best choice for stuff from 2001-2006 and good for 1997-2000 stuff.

I have considered just buying a second hand rig, but I figured it might be worn out, or loaded with something like old man porn.

[Ed Oscuro]

I was building a PC for retrogaming goodness I'd ditch the hard drive, and instead get a Compact Flash to IDE adapter (or something similar) and use a CF card as the hard drive.

As far as "worn out" concerns, yes, plenty of old machines from that era have longevity issues, particularly bad capacitors on the motherboard but other components can start to go as well, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

In my experience there's only a rare few games that absolutely require an OS older than Windows 10, but some games work on Windows 7 fine, others work on XP, some require 98, or straight DOS...XP is a bit of an obsolete monster these days and not really worth it. Besides, unless you have tons of old game discs lying about, you can probably do just fine buying games from GoG which work fine on newer systems. And many games, which seem not to work on new systems at first glance, have well-developed but obscure community support to make them work better - stuff like 3Dfx Glide to D3D wrappers, GUS emulation, whatever.

fwiw the GUS is overrated.

[Thomago]

My Win98/DOS-PC:

- AOpen motherboard
- Pentium III 1 GHz
- 512 MB RAM (more than 512 MB is where Win98 gets finnicky)
- NVIDIA Geforce 4800 Ti Se
- 80 GB Samsung HDD (7800 rpm, IDE of course)
- DVD drive (IDE)
- Floppy drive
- SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
- Gigabit Ethernet card (the Aopen board doesn't even have a LAN port)
- USB keyboard (as if USB wasn't fast enough...)
- Logitech MX518 USB mouse via USB-to-PS/2 adapter (otherwise games wouldn't recognize the mouse in DOS mode)
- MS sidewinder 3D Pro joystick

Everything in a decent case with a new 300 Watt power suppy (the old one went up in smoke one day).
Also I'd never again use a CRT monitor for DOS games. Can't stand that 60/70 Hz flicker any more.

And as far as Morrowind and Half-Life go... I wouldn't bother building an extra retro rig for these. They run perfectly on modern hardware and a PC that is able to run them better than any retro rig ever could will cost you less than $50 from eBay.

[CkRtech]

Also I'd never again use a CRT monitor for DOS games. Can't stand that 60/70 Hz flicker any more.

Sacrilege.

[ZellSF]

As always, I think getting a modern computer should be the first priority. It will play most old games in addition to most modern ones.

When you run into games that do not run optimally on a new computer, than you can start looking on what sort of computer you would need to play them optimally. Chances are that as mentioned, you will need to go back to Windows9x or native DOS and probably not Windows XP.

[Ed Oscuro]

Or SCUMMVM...that thing can play an absurdly large number of games, even Riven!

[Guspaz]

Myst is what I grew up on, rather than Riven, and that needs to be played on a mac for authenticity, what with the original version being made in HyperCard. If I wanted to play it on a modern computer, I'd use realMyst Masterpiece Edition 2.0

I really wish my parents hadn't thrown out my childhood Mac.

[gray117]

Just get about any affordable pc and install xp on it; it'll be fine.

2.8-3ghz dual or quad recomended. 8800 or better geforce. I'd get 4gb of ram, but 2 should be ok. That kind of thing could run crysis - not great by today's standards but should see you good to your cutoff date - was released around then.

Things only really get interesting/awkward when trying to get back to win98 or before compatibility.

[ahaddow]

For me, I'm quite happy with how GoG games run but don't like how games that don't support modern resolutions get blown up onto an LCD display. Is it out of the question to suggest just running GoG games on a laptop outputting to a CRT? I'm not sure if anything special would be required to get a modern-ish PC to output at older resolutions.
Since the OP is mostly looking to play games from the late 90s early 2000s, rather than old DOS stuff, this might be a good option to look into.