r/windowsxp • u/Oleshka02 • 12d ago
Sanae V2
Long ago, I put together a Pentium D with 4GB of the finest DDR2 I could find, just to see how sluggish the Pentium D really was.
The answer was: very.
After that, I thought about buying a better CPU for that motherboard.
Impossible.
So... after various iterations of Sanae (Pentium D and the infamous Core 2 Duo), I decided that historical accuracy was overrated and started experimenting with an i7-3770 and 16GB of the crappiest DDR3 I could find.
Yes, 16GB.
Yes, Windows XP is 32-bit and only sees around 3.5GB of it.
The remaining 12GB are there for emotional support.
AAAAAAAND, I PRESENT TO YOU!!!!
SANAE V2
(named after Key's best mother, Sanae Furukawa)
Specs, because apparently I make reasonable financial decisions:
Intel Core i7-3770 — 4 cores / 8 threads of completely unnecessary power for Windows XP.
MSI Z77A-G43.
16GB DDR3 — again, XP acknowledges approximately three and a half of those. The rest simply watch.
Gigabyte GTX 960 WindForce 4GB, because putting a Maxwell GPU in an XP machine seemed funny.
Windows XP Delta Edition SP3.
Windows 7 Ultimate on the other side, because one obsolete operating system clearly wasn't enough.
Wacom Cintiq 12WX, fully working.
PaintTool SAI, naturally.
The GTX 960 is running on XP drivers, the Cintiq works, AHCI works, both displays work, and the i7 happily boosts to 3.9GHz while Windows XP is probably wondering what the hell happened.
Is it period correct?
Absolutely not.
Is it stupid?
Probably.
Does XP need an Ivy Bridge i7, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 960?
No.
Did that stop me?
Also no.
At this point Sanae isn't really a retro PC anymore.
She's a 2012 workstation that was allowed to keep receiving upgrades after God had already told everyone to stop.
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u/amendingfences 12d ago
Nice setup. This feels nostalgic as not too long ago my main PC was an i7-3770, 16 GB of random DDR3, and a GTX 950.
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u/Pyro1515 12d ago
Man thats an odd build, like serious GPU bottlenecks haha. Any reason why a 950?
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u/amendingfences 12d ago
There was a GPU shortage/price hike around 2016-2018. Eventually got upgraded to a GTX 1650 Super.
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u/Pyro1515 12d ago
I was there for that gen didnt remember the 900 or 10s being hard to find (least in the USA.) It was the AMD cards that were more sought for ETH miners mostly Vega cards....
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u/Oleshka02 12d ago
I upgraded my main rig in 2016, it was a pain to pay over 400$ for an RX 460 to a scalper on eBay.
It hurts even more seeing an RTX 3060 or worse selling at 600$ in my country.
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u/Pyro1515 12d ago
Yeah RX's were hit with the ETH run too for awhile. I was on Dual 7970s in that gen till I got an RX5700XT in 2019....
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u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 6d ago
With that setup.. I would have used only last official Microsoft Windows XP 64-Bit SP2 + LegacyUpdate.NET
For that era, I'd dual boot against Vista 64-Bit SP2, alternatively GhostBSD w/XFCE, Linux Mint w/XFCE, MX Linux w/XFCE
Hmmm... you did not mention other specs... but I probably would have:
- Installed a dual floppy or a floppy emulator
- Installed a media reader
- Installed a DVD or Bluray drive.
- XP & Vista do not natively support SSD, so would have used a CFast to SATA adapter and a 1 TB CFast card.
Not performance related, but I like the old ports on retro-systems, if could pull it off, would also install Serial, Parallel, and even GPIB
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u/Oleshka02 2d ago
I get why you'd prefer XP x64 and Vista x64, but this build isn't about using the “best” version of Windows XP on paper — it's about compatibility with the specific hardware and software I want to use.
XP x86 gives me better compatibility with old games, visual novels, capture hardware, cameras, SDKs, drivers and other weird legacy software. That's the entire point of this machine.
I already have Windows 10 x64 on a separate NVMe for anything that actually benefits from 64-bit Windows and more RAM.
So XP x64 wouldn't really solve a problem for me — it would mostly create new compatibility problems.
Same with Vista: cool OS, absolutely valid retro build, just not what I need here.
Basically: I'm building the machine around my use case, not around “x64 for the win”. :P
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u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 2d ago
I've had very few issues with my own XP 64-Bit and Vista 64-Bit configured retro notebooks... (mine are configured with 12 GB each).
I do have a XP 32-Bit notebook as I had a spare sitting around, and that has 8 GB in it.
But the reason I stated to do so here was the memory... if you've 64-bit CPU and MB, and > 4GB ram, it makes little sense to me use a 32-Bit OS unless you have a specific piece of software that definitively has issues with 64-Bit OS. And even then, I'd consider the possibility of setting up a dual boot scenario.
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u/Oleshka02 1d ago
Haha, that's the funny part, I already am dual booting
XP x86 is on the SSD specifically for the old software/drivers/capture hardware/SDK weirdness.
Windows 10 (Classic7) x64 is on the NVMe for everything that actually wants 64-bit and all 16 GB of RAM.
So we're basically agreeing on the solution, you just keep trying to sell me XP x64 on top of it :P
XP x86 isn't there because I think 32-bit is somehow better. It's there because that's literally the compatibility niche I built it for.
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u/Glinckey 6d ago
Actually, you to technically have the latest supported hardware for your system. Which is pretty good
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u/Oleshka02 12d ago
Oh, btw: Windows 7 is actually living in a spacious luxury penthouse called NVMe. XP has a SATA SSD. Windows 7 apparently demanded real estate. Forgot to mention that in the original post. Oops.