Hope it goes good for you.

A note for future referrers to the thread, who might be on some small ITX platforms.... If you are stuck with a PCIe 1x, it appeared to me that for one board of that type I have, that it would not really be worth stepping past about GT440, HD4650, GT710 kinds of performance levels, as these would have it saturated and beginning to take 10% + off the top in demanding scenarios. Then I also doubt that DX12 performance will resemble any sense of the word performance, so probably not even worth a GT 1030 to check that box if going up beyond XP. A 4x slot may well give you the main chunk of the performance of cards discussed seriously so far in this thread though. 5 years from now or longer, different cards might be cheapest though, so if the cheap cards mentioned have gone away and the few that turn up are silly money, the "overpowered" ones for $20 will make more sense, if low profile, low power of course in context of thread.

Well I for instance have a few 8400 gs' I found new a few years ago. Initial testing showed these blew away the onboard video on my Supermicro lga 2066 workstation. IOW mpeg video was fine, or just a lot better then the Aspeed Rage XL monstrosity (yes computers in 2017-18 and perhaps beyond came with 2d graphic chips). They didn't come with low profile brackets. But those could be improvised. Was to find out these cards have Win2K driver's, which is pretty awesome. So pci-e slots for 2000/XP/??? isn't a deal breaker. Not that it's what you were saying. pci-e x2,4,8,16 cards will always work in a x1 slot, no?

I haven't tested these cards on anything but the SM yet.

There are these on eBay (Asus HD3450, fanless, supports XP/Vista):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394580044750

If there's room behind 1x slot you can cut the back off it, otherwise use a 1x riser. Some may need to have a jumper wire from an active pin to the right pin on 1x though if they don't implement it.

Not following you. Why a wire?

Because a wet noodle wouldn't conduct well enough and a dry noodle won't bend. There's a signal some cards don't bring out to the necessary position in the 1x slot, since it's repeated at 8x, so you might need to do this https://superuser.com/questions/279458/how-to … extension-cable

Edit: actually it's far easier to see what's up on the wikipedia page now, it's the prsnt signal, in green on the connector diagrams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

So neither whole wheat nor spinach pasta will work either?

Thanks for the link though. I may try pita bread or tortillas.

Successfully snatched a cheap Quadro K1200 too. So things are getting interesting...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-08-11, 16:42:

Successfully snatched a cheap Quadro K1200 too. So things are getting interesting...

Very interested to see how the W4100 (basically underclocked 7750 with 2GB of GDDR5) compares to the K620, K1200 and GTS 450 low profile. Would also love to see a W4300 (R7 260) thrown in too. Should be interesting to see how they compare in power\heat\noise vs. performance too.

I wonder if there is any difference in performance of XP-focused (roughly pre-2007) games using older or newer drivers for these cards as well. It looks like Nvidia released drivers for XP until July of 2016, so there should be a year or two of drivers that support Maxwell cards. It's possible that earlier ones work better with older games or have ever so slightly less driver overhead.

Just curious, is the Xeon X5670 system you're using low profile itself, or is it a bigger system that you're just using for testing?

Smallest computer that can run XP? How about one of those OQO handhelds? 😀

mscdex wrote on 2024-08-11, 21:26:

Smallest computer that can run XP? How about one of those OQO handhelds? 😀

Wow, I've never seen one of those before. Just looked them up and the specs are surprising for the size and age... but whew, the sale prices for these are high.

I don't think mobile devices ever really figured into this discussion previously, especially since it seems to have focused more on best performance\size ratio... but I would be surprised if there was another device running full-fat Windows XP (with fully functioning drivers) that was smaller than this.

I see someone recently sold a prototype\prerelease of their last unreleased model (with an Atom Z540 and an OLED screen!) for $1400. That's insane!

If you want a larger but still tiny XP machine with similar performance for like 2% of the price, buy a Netbook (Acer Aspire One, Asus EeePC, etc.). 😁

(Don't bother with 3D gaming though of course!)

I've had pretty good luck with this little: Zotac ZBOX

I've had both WinXP and Win7 on it without problems.

Makes a very good general purpose system, but it might not be great if
you plan to do a lot of gaming - it has a dual-core Celeron, and only
Intel HD graphics

Dave Dunfield - https://dunfield.themindfactory.com

That's a common issue with small PCs. Getting something with a reasonably fast CPU in a small form factor is not that difficult. Getting something with a reasonably fast GPU is. Getting something that has a reasonably fast CPU a reasonably fast CPU and room for a Sound Blaster for EAX, that's where you really have to compromise on size.

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-12, 01:17:

I've had pretty good luck with this little: Zotac ZBOX […]
Show full quote

I've had pretty good luck with this little: Zotac ZBOX

I've had both WinXP and Win7 on it without problems.

Makes a very good general purpose system, but it might not be great if
you plan to do a lot of gaming - it has a dual-core Celeron, and only
Intel HD graphics

Dave Dunfield - https://dunfield.themindfactory.com

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Since the Celeron 2957U has no boost and is only clocked at 1.4Ghz it is pretty limited, but just looking at some (probably inaccurate) synthetic benchmarks it might be somewhere around the performance of Conroe Core2 Duo (E6400, E6540 etc.).

The IGP is more of a wildcard though. I'm sure it is the bottom of the line GPU of the Haswell era, but being from 2013 it might have a surprisingly tolerable amount of power for XP-appropriate games. I see a couple of results for the 2957U in 3dmark 2006 here. The scores on there are extremely inconsistent though so it's hard to know what it actually compares to. Just a rough guess is somewhere in the realm of an E6400 running with something like a 7600GT to 8500GT.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-12, 04:01:

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Since the Celeron 2957U has no boost and is only clocked at 1.4Ghz it is pretty limited, but just looking at some (probably inaccurate) synthetic benchmarks it might be somewhere around the performance of Conroe Core2 Duo (E6400, E6540 etc.).

The IGP is more of a wildcard though. I'm sure it is the bottom of the line GPU of the Haswell era, but being from 2013 it might have a surprisingly tolerable amount of power for XP-appropriate games. I see a couple of results for the 2957U in 3dmark 2006 here. The scores on there are extremely inconsistent though so it's hard to know what it actually compares to. Just a rough guess is somewhere in the realm of an E6400 running with something like a 7600GT to 8500GT.

Possibly, I've not used it in quite a while, and I honestly don't recall what OS (if any) is currently installed.

I do know that I had XP on it at one point, but IIRC it might be Win7 now. Let me fire it up in the next day to two and I'll get back to you.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-12, 12:10:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-12, 04:01:

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Possibly, I've not used it in quite a while, and I honestly don't recall what OS (if any) is currently installed.
I do know that I had XP on it at one point, but IIRC it might be Win7 now. Let me fire it up in the next day to two and I'll get back to you.

Ok, I fired it up - It currently has Win7-32 on it , the driver DVD that came with it has only Win7 and Win8 drivers,
but I'm pretty sure I did have XP running on it at one point. Must have dug up appropriate drivers somewhere, but
I have no idea where that XP hard drive is now!

32-bit Win7 might be "close enough" to get an idea of performance, let me know where to get the benchmarks
you wanted me to run and I can do so. (It would be really helpful if said benchmarks can "just be run" without
having to "install" them - never want the "droppings" at lot of installed software leaves behind!

Btw: It does have a "Celeron 2957u at 1.4G" on it, don't know exactly which "Intel HD graphics" it has,
hardware_id in DeviceMAnaged is: VEN_8086\DEV_0A06

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-06-01, 08:18:

Acer Aspire Revo. Just bought 3 of them. 10euros a piece. Have XP and 7 drivers. Intel Atom 330 plus Nvidia Ion Geforce 9400. 2.5" 320GB HDD. So pretty good retro gaming machine. An they literarly fit on the palm of your hand. Love them.

Always been a fan of these little guys (another one of the few systems I bought new), I have "Aspire one - ZG5" which I *thought*
was the first edition (but Rev0 sounds earlier 😀 - this is a TINY 9" screen XP laptop - but definitely not a system suitable for gaming...

It has an Intel Atom N270 cpu, and Mobile Intel 945 express display chipset (at least it does have an external VGA connector).

It used to be the main thing I took when I traveled (very easy to pack) - now I use an "Aspire 1410" - very similar, a bit bigger
and much faster dual-core - still slips easily into the front pocket of my smallest suitcase.

But I still use the "Aspire one"s when I need a very portable/movable system and the Trs80-Model100 doesn't quite cut it
(been discussing those in another thread about retro activity).

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-12, 15:51:

Ok, I fired it up - It currently has Win7-32 on it , the driver DVD that came with it has only Win7 and Win8 drivers, but I'm […]
Show full quote

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-12, 12:10:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-12, 04:01:

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Possibly, I've not used it in quite a while, and I honestly don't recall what OS (if any) is currently installed.
I do know that I had XP on it at one point, but IIRC it might be Win7 now. Let me fire it up in the next day to two and I'll get back to you.

Ok, I fired it up - It currently has Win7-32 on it , the driver DVD that came with it has only Win7 and Win8 drivers,
but I'm pretty sure I did have XP running on it at one point. Must have dug up appropriate drivers somewhere, but
I have no idea where that XP hard drive is now!

32-bit Win7 might be "close enough" to get an idea of performance, let me know where to get the benchmarks
you wanted me to run and I can do so. (It would be really helpful if said benchmarks can "just be run" without
having to "install" them - never want the "droppings" at lot of installed software leaves behind!

Btw: It does have a "Celeron 2957u at 1.4G" on it, don't know exactly which "Intel HD graphics" it has,
hardware_id in DeviceMAnaged is: VEN_8086\DEV_0A06

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

You can download all of the old versions of 3DMark here : https://benchmarks.ul.com/legacy-benchmarks

More detailed specs of that Celeron can be found here as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I ... iP,_22_nm)

Intel didn't actually have model numbers for most of the lower end Intel HD Graphics models. The most you can really do to gauge their performance is look at the architecture (Haswell), the number of execution units (10 EUs) the "GPU Frequency" (200-1000Mhz... so a huge range depending on power and heat), and the TDP of the chip itself (15W).

Just as a comparison, the fairly common Bay-Trail Celerons of the same time period (found in tablets and other devices, often with passive cooling) have Intel HD Graphics from the Ivy Bridge era (generation before Haswell), they only have 4 EUs, the GPU clock is in the 300-800Mhz range and the whole chip (CPU and GPU) have to work within 4 Watts. So, even though all of these Celeron model numbers look similar, the 2957U is substantially faster than the Bay-Trail ones, especially with regard to the graphics. Still nowhere near as powerful as even a mid range laptop CPU of the time, but for playing games that were 7-12 years old in ~2013 they should do surprisingly well.

Dell Optiplex 780 SFF looks interesting. It's a tightly packed 775 system which also has PCI slot. While not the fastest Windows XP system, it can also be used for Windows 98 by pairing it with a low-profile Radeon X600/X700 card. As a plus - it has external 3.5 inch drive bay, which can be used for quick SDD swap. Cons: looks very cramped with not enough ventilation holes.

Full sized PCIe GPU is also possible with modding - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45gSWle9FfA

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-12, 04:01:

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Ok, so I downloaded:
3DMark05_v130_1901.exe (304m)
3DMark06_v121_installer.exe (613m)
3DMark2001SE.exe (42m)

I'm not familiar with this - I've not ran it before (so please bear with me)

These are huge and "Installers" - as I mentioned before I don't like randomly
installing things as most things tend to leve "droppings" when you uninstall
them...

I have one "Aspire one" that I don't really use, it was given to me by a
friend who had bought it at the same time/place I got my first - so it's the
exact same... he had given it to his kids later, and they spilled something on
the keyboard - so Esc F1 and ` don't work - It works perfectly well otherwise
and I keep it as "spares" in the event that one of my other ones dies.

Fortunately USB keyboard works. It's also got a pretty "fresh" install of
XP as I re-installed when I got it and haven't put much else on.

So I installed and ran the smallest: 2001SE

I've attached a screen-grab of the final result - funny, I ran it with the
options it showed when it started (didn't change anything) but it says
"The benchmark was not run using default settings."

Although I can see "details", I could not find a way to save them. There are
quite a few and I don't really want to capture, crop and save that many screens
- if there are ones in particular that you'd like to see, let me know.
- It looked good as it was running, sometimes FPS got to (or maybe above) 60,
a couple of times it got down to 20, but much of it was at 30+

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-14, 11:02:

Ok, so I downloaded: 3DMark05_v130_1901.exe (304m) 3DMark06_v121_installer.exe (613m) 3DMark2001SE.exe (42m) ... […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-12, 04:01:

Nice! Would you be able to run some old benchmarks like 3Dmark 2001SE, 2005 and 2006 on it? I would be curious to know what the results are with that since it is a mobile Haswell dual core with an IGP.

Ok, so I downloaded:
3DMark05_v130_1901.exe (304m)
3DMark06_v121_installer.exe (613m)
3DMark2001SE.exe (42m)
...

Sorry, wasn't paying attention - this was on the "Aspire one" not the ZBOX
- let me know what "details" you need to see and I'll do the same for the ZBOX (should be quite a bit better)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal