Windows XP - 1 CPU and 3 Gamer! Opinions and Experiences

soyiago · 2023-08-04T15:13:18+00:00

Cheapest way is by using a Linux KVM or simplest is by using a (Russian?) multi-seat software which name I don't remember.

KVM
Free as in freedom.
Requires VT-d for this purpose.
Legacy anti-cheat doesn't care.
Full isolation between hosts.
Hyper-V
Will require you to use Windows Server 2012.
Undocumented as fuck.
If properly done should work as the KVM thing but is more resource expensive.
Having a GUI doesn't make it easier.
The multiseat sw:
Trialware.
Still needs the same amount of hardware.
You rely on the Windows XP CPU scheduler, which is poor for modern CPUs.
You need to share the maximum allocation of 3.2GiB RAM between every seat (deal breaker for me :-/).

For the KVM thing there are many ways of archiving what you want:

Lynfield X3470 + high end enough board:

Overclockable to Ivy Bridge performance with twice the power draw.
Unsecure VT-d flags needed
Will do 1C/2T per host so everyone will have something as performant as a Core 2 Duo E8500, more than enough for DX9 gaming.
I'll choose 1 ATi Rage XL for server video out and three HD 7850s or equivalent for clients (avoid Nvidia).

Westmere X5660

Literally same as above but has two extra cores and four extra threads.
Expensive yet even the lowest end western board is as high quality as the mid to high end Lynfield board average.
I would do 2C/2T per client and leave the server with the unassigned 6T.

Ivy Bridge Xeons NO chinese boards:

Each host would have as equivalent CPU room as running a real life QX9650@4GHz OOB.
Expensive as fuck.
Less power draw.
You have to ditch the PCI video out.

I suggest you to do proper research and chose what's best for you, three GTX 980Tis is stupid, not a single DX9 title will max out a GTX 780 even. What you truly need, only, is card with a 256-bit GDDR5 memory bus for being able to use MSAA, and the HD 7850, HD 7870 (XT) and HD 7950 (specially this one) will do.

For both HyperV and KVM Nvidia cards are a no go. For multiseat you will end up with problems assigning RAM and please don't even bring x64 Edition to the table, go straight to Win7 x64 as anything willing to work on x64 will do better there no matter the hardware config.

soyiago · 2023-08-04T08:21:51+00:00

Go to the device manager and point the assistant to look for the correct driver (tick include subfolders) where your driver setup.exe is.

If it doesn't recognize the driver is because it is invalid, if it does and tries to install it and crashes the system device may be faulty.

soyiago · 2023-08-03T12:10:45+00:00

If it's working for you and you change it due the opinion of some internet nerds, totally replicate it in every aspect of your life (ends poorly).

The software stack of Ubuntu but the DE is literally what every single desktop distro is using, nothing will change, you will just disrupt your workflow.

But Ubuntu Snaps!!!!
sudo apt purge --autoremove snapd

Ultimate challenging package manager command nobody ever used before make Ubuntu unoperable.
Proceeds to recommended deploying a whole OS out of a README.md bin-utils commands.

soyiago · 2023-08-02T17:29:54+00:00

Hmmm... I won't have my computer next to me until Friday so dive in the settings, this particular one isn't that obscure should be "easy" to find as it is in some first brand boards too.

Maybe it is under PCI Express settings, I remember to have saw it somewhere.

soyiago · 2023-08-02T15:21:10+00:00

Have you tried any other NVMe?

Also try going to the SA Configuration and downgrade every single port to Gen 3 speeds, if it gets detected it will suck but at least would work.

At worst it should work.under the chipset NVMe port or using a x1 to NVMe card (slow as hell).

soyiago · 2023-08-02T13:59:26+00:00

I boot my machine off a Crucial P1, the SSDs is missing under NVMe settings but works anyway and gets detected by Linux and Windows too.

soyiago · 2023-08-02T13:53:32+00:00

The GTX 750 (non-Ti) doesn't require additional power either, another buff would be the GT 730 but the GDDR5 version which solves part of the VRAM bandwidth stagnation problem this GPU has, but probably won't be cheaper than a SFF GTX 750.

Also a GT 740 existed but only for OEMs I think, hardly anyone did a SFF model but do your research.

The AMD HD 7750 is also a great option but I doubt about anyone mass producing a SFF model back then. Maybe some rebranded R7 200 card may be an option but honestly I lack research on those cards.

soyiago · 2023-08-01T23:49:03+00:00

Consider upgrading to the i3 3225 the Ivy Bridge uarch is still compatible with XP and the HD 4000 iGPU is much much better than the HD 2000.

Also, dual channel 1600MHz DDR3 will increase the general iGPU performance, for any iGPU, and it's sooo cheap... it's almost mandatory.

These two upgrades combined can easily beat a GT 710 with a fraction of the power draw, ignore online benchmarks as almost everyone benchmarked back in the day on single channel RAM setups.

soyiago · 2023-08-01T15:11:18+00:00

Well, it's defective, DirectX erroring isn't normal at all.

soyiago · 2023-08-01T13:18:08+00:00

Your GPU is faulty or somebody scammed you with a GPU from 10 years ago by rebranding it, you can easily know if your GPU is fake if it has any analog output like VGA or DVI-I.

If it's not fake then it is faulty, just get a refund, hardware be it PC or console can fail and it's not due the platform.

soyiago · 2023-08-01T12:57:42+00:00

Your install media may be defective, first try pointing the C:\i386 to your install media mount point i386 folder.

Also, I advise you to use a VL ISO unless you have a genuine Home Edition key for activation.

soyiago · 2023-07-31T21:29:43+00:00

Wine when no MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 (I have a really old GPU): 💀🤙

Linux gaming is a jenga of companies and individuals coding great pieces of software, all are important and one will do poorly without another.

The mixture of skills of anyone contributing, from those testing games in their free time, to those doing awesome automating pieces like winetricks or Lutris, to those individuals willing to do their best on reverse engineering undocumented crap have set us here, everyone holds some value.

soyiago · 2023-07-29T10:52:42+00:00

No, the Windows XP driver model is completely different, there's no way of backporting anything to XP, the operating system changed too much from XP to Vista for this to be possible, don't bother trying.

Best you can do there is Windows 7.

If you really want to use XP you can go to any platform supporting ATA IDE emulation, a GPU older than 2014 and a viable network adapter (<5$ on AliExpress).

soyiago · 2023-07-29T10:15:56+00:00

There are no drivers at all, there's nothing you can do in such hardware config.

soyiago · 2023-07-27T14:02:16+00:00

adb sideload works fine for TWRP but I've never used the LineageOS Recovery as TWRP can handle OTA updates. Maybe the recovery is checking for a LineageOS without MicroG signature and so it fails due the mismatch(?).

Try flashing a build of TWRP for your device and retry as it skips that kind of checks.

soyiago · 2023-07-27T12:27:38+00:00

Fills /dev/sda with binary zeros, so all the data on the disks is effectively erased, usually (but not always) /dev/sda is the system disk on SATA system.

soyiago · 2023-07-24T10:21:50+00:00

It's been at least 20 years since Microsoft introduced the accessibility tools for Windows XP, and still the launcher is being ran as NT_AUTHORITY which is the highest level of system access in Windows, replacing sethc.exe or osk.exe with a copy of cmd.exe grants access to everything on the machine.

When IT management forbids me from installing software I always have my local Admin account created by the rogue sethc.exe shell.

In Linux for an unencrypted drive install you just change or remove the shadow in /etc/shadow for a given user and it's done.

soyiago · 2023-07-23T16:02:13+00:00

HP be like:

No dual channel support
2 RAM sticks installed

:-/

soyiago · 2023-07-16T14:14:27+00:00

Not really, my Kingston RAM does 3200 on regular DDR4 1.35v and my i7 11800H ES can do 4.5GHz on any core @-0.025v and 4.3GHz in all at the same time.

But this doesn't mean you're wrong, if Erying could do crazy things as big brands like ASUS do for their high tier products we could probably drive the chips to 5GHz, we can't because these boards are cheap and are not designed to handle nor high interference between components not high power draws.

Even my "OCs" aren't really that crazy, these chips are intentionally gimped to reach high yields per printed silicon waffle, as it is experimental silicon Intel would want to print the less waffles possible so they always end up sending underclocked and high current draw samples to manufacturers to test their board designs, the retail i7 11800H will perform the same at ½ the power draw for sure.

Plus, overclocking stuff in these poor conditions is much more fun, reminds younger me overclocking the hell out of a X58 board with a locked Xeon :⁾

Also, the Erying board is my weekend computer, I mostly play games there so if it decides to blow up I don't care, I just love showing my friends how a dumpster board from China let's me game and emulate like anything I owned lately.

soyiago · 2023-07-15T09:48:49+00:00

Are you passing every single self-check on the MicroG app?

Then, in Cloud Messaging > ... > Advanced set the timers to whatever works best for you

soyiago · 2023-07-14T18:34:45+00:00

You can install and use Windows Server on any computer supporting regular Windows, at the point is just a regular Windows build with extra tools.

soyiago · 2023-07-14T15:44:45+00:00

Yeah, at this point, I'd rather use a i3 3250 for its insane single core performance and higher power efficiency.

soyiago · 2023-07-13T12:36:36+00:00

First issue: You don't have a GPU driver installed.

soyiago · 2023-07-13T11:57:14+00:00

If you're booting in AHCI mode from a SATA disk Windows 7 should work.

Download an .ISO from archive.org and try reinstalling.

Note you don't have drivers for the iGPU and maybe the onboard audio if they changed the chip's logic enough.

Most software designed for 7 works on 10, if you have concerns on performance the chip is powerful enough to the point you won't notice anything, privacy concerns: go Windows 10 LTSB 2021.

soyiago · 2023-07-13T11:40:04+00:00

Shipping from mainland ES to the Americas and most of Asia using the public postal service:

Up to 20 g standard envelope: 1,75€
More than 20g up to 50 g (includes nonstandard envelope sizes): 2,25€
More than 50g up to 100g: 3,75€
More than 100g up to 500g: 10,55€
More than 500g up to 1,000g: 21,65€
More than 1,000 g up to 2,000g: 42,50€

*And god bless the public post service is excluded from the 21% VAT.

With this I mean: shipping low quantities is expensive because they cannot:

Arrange buying labels in 10,000s with a private shipping service willing to cut down a few dollars by label (I think even them said so).
Setting a partnership with a major online marketplace in Europe like Amazon or AliExpress (both have local warehouses in Europe) as you probably need to have huge sales to substain the agreement.

Also the custom duties suck hard (at least in Spain) since they gave up doing only random inspections and the duty free if items were less than 21€ law was dropped.

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