Windows Vista Gaming PC with Radeon HD 3870

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Crazy that Crysis is almost 20 years old but still looks very nice even for todays standards.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yeah, but you'll have to use more recent video cards to play it properly :)

[@FlakerGamer]

I have 16y no 20y

[@Pidalin]

It just shows how today games are terrible and badly optimized. Crysis literally look the same as some worse looking today games, but you need at least some RTX3060 to at least start it somehow, it's ridiculous.

[@RandomBSOD]

I really enjoy your videos, but this one was a bit better than what you usually make, NICE !!! 👍 (that nostalgia is also kicking in, ..... may be time to un-dust my good'ol q9550 and gtx 460) 😅

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thank you :) You can make an epic dual-boot XP - Vista PC!

[@RandomBSOD]

I actually followed your advise and began my dual boot journey (using GAG).... But then it got me thinking... Have you ever gamed on WinFLP ?? That would make it for a very interesting OS comparison vs. XP 🤔

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Like! 7:00 the visual improvements in DX10 are minimal compared to DX9 but the frame rate is 2.5x lower than in DX9. Clearly DX9 is the way to go.

[@MidnightGeek99]

That's right, although to be honest, Hellgate London was a great mess, so it's not that reprezentative for the DX9 vs DX 10 battle.

[@Pidalin]

yeah, that's why many people stayed on XP for so long time, they just wanted prevent games from running in DX10 mode 😀

[@chazbotic]

this is a great video, really :) a lot of the games for most people with DX9 and DX10 render paths will not notice much difference. the options (and the game must be developed for it) are typically in particles and lighting effects. DX10 in theory should have a better "Fire" effect in far cry 2 and perform better when rendering spreading fire and lots of smoke particles. DX9 doesn't handle dense particle effects very well (see CSGO smoke...). for the FEAR sudden drop in GPU utilization, the JupiterEX engine has a bug related to an outdated DirectInput library file. you can probably find an updated one and put it into the directory to replace the game's original image to make the fix. JupiterEX (and the Jupiter engine in general) is known to have this sort of issue and similar fix for another game might help too. Gotham City Impostors had a similar crippling issue until patched. GDDR4 was so rare to find in a video card and never was around long enough to really be as widespread as the cheaper GDDR3 or the more performant and power efficient (and later on much faster) GDDR5. an interesting DX10 comparison might be comparing GDDR3 vs GDDR4 on the 2600 XT if you can find that for cheap since it was available with both memory technologies.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks! I've fixed the FEAR issue, I did not copy the dxinput.dll at first because I've used the CD version of FEAR, in my mind that version did not have such problems... GDDR4 is the bigger brother of DDR2 on video cards :)

[@G1NZOU]

Vista on a Q6600 was the first ever PC I built, before that we had an XP machine with a Pentium 4 as a family PC that could play a few games, but not loads, Oblivion was probably the most graphically intensive game it was capable of. I built mine to play Crysis so I saved up for fairly good parts.

[@h.b_h.b]

Great job. Windows Vista was Microsoft's testing ground. Some games worked best with a clean system, others with service pack 2, and others were developed for service pack 1. This system was the work of a mad scientist/programmer.

[@MidnightGeek99]

In my mind, Vista SP2 was just the little brother of Windows 7 :)

[@Stermy57HW]

I was a teenager when DX10 OS and hardware came out and that period was terrible. Like you noticed: performance side was awful even on good or high end hardware but honestly games gameplay were even worst. I can make exceptions for few title but most of them were console porting with terrible controls and dumb gameplay.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yeah, console porting ruinned things for a good period of time, things are more streamlined now, but in the late 2000s...horrible.

[@rons6633]

Love your videos and humor! Still have my Vista disk lol

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks! Keep the disc safe, in 50 years you'll make a fortune :))

[@Mini-z1994]

Also the bug in fear 1 is the direct input fps bug.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Are you sure? Was that bug also when using the DVD version?

[@Mini-z1994]

@@MidnightGeek99 Yeah this is related too some USB peripherals regardless of game version or operating system even. It's a simple fix just adding a dinput8 DLL into the game directory gog & pc gaming wiki has it there as a fix.

[@rtmclean484]

I remember the early direct x10 period and the strange performance issues it would bring up. I always thought DX10 games looked very muddy or something as well! preferred the bright dx9 look. Another fun video btw keep up the good work!

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thank you! Yeah, performance is not great, but some games deserve to be played on DX10, Crysis for example.

[@Pidalin]

I call it the "unreal look" because first game which looked that plastic, weird and I would say even ugly was Bioshock running on unreal engine. For example sea in first minutes of game was really ugly already in 2007, even FarCry 1 has much better water.

[@Pidalin]

THE BUBBLES! I noticed that 32bit Vista acts very differently than 64bit Vista, I had a lot of problems with 32bit version, bu 64bit runs totaly fine and stable on my C2Q setup. I for example had problems with DX10 games in 32bit Vista, while in 64bit, everything works fine. I think for the best compatibility (some games can't be even installed on 64bit OS) it's the best put Win 7 32bit there on C2D era computer or have XP installed on second HDD fore games which didn't work well even in Win 7. BTW, look at how Crysis looked like in 2007 and it was possible to play it on Pentium 4 with some 256MB GPU like 7600GT. Today games want 8 or even more GB VRAM and 6+ core CPUs, you need GPU for 1000 eur, your computer eats like 700W and games don't look THAT better than 2007 Crysis, I am really sad because of that, everything went wrong after like 2015, optimalisation pretty much doesn't exist now. I never actually played Crysis in DX10, I have to fix it. But I remember another problem and it was the case even later with DX11 - in DX10, mouse felt more delayed than in DX9 with the same FPS, I am noticing this for a long time, modern games have terrible input lag even when you have 60 FPS, I need like 120 FPS in modern games to get rid of that input lag feeling. How is it possible that old games didn't have such crazy input lag even in low FPS? I remember one of the first DX11 games (Stalker COP) and it was unplayable for me in DX11 because of input lag, I think DX12 made it slightly better, but still not good as in old DX9 games, I would say Vulcan games feel better. 12:08 - You are playing on ATI card, what do you expect? Those GPUs literally didn't work at all with some versions of drivers, but I am not saying nvidia was better back in the day. 😀 I built my first good computer in 2008, it was C2D E8200 + 9800GTX and it was totaly superior with XP and later with Win 7, I had no problems, everything worked perfectly.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Is there any reason for using VIsta 32-bit? ATI were ok :)

[@Netbug]

14:51 Yeah, STALKER is in my top 5 games of all time. I liked FEAR as well, although 2 was even better. 3 was terrible though... different developer. Monolith also made Condemned: Criminal Origins which is also great. 15:19 Haha, when you mentioned Starforce it only reinforced my suspicions. Another great video, thanks!

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thank you! Never finished STALKER, it's on my "Top 10 games that I need to play for longer"

[@Pidalin]

@@MidnightGeek99 You love or hate STALKER, there is nothing between that. It's that game which is so bugged, but you still have to play that and trying to somehow bypass buggy parts and quests to not trigger bug, it was something like Bethesda games, but even better. 😀

[@RaPtOr9600]

Q6600 + HD3870 same combo i used for years later upgrade to HD4850. Battlefield bad company 2 was game of choice on that machine. But Borderlands 1, Bioshock 1, COD4, Dead Space , Mass Effect, Oblivion all played very well. But no Vista oh no, stayed far far away from Vista

[@MidnightGeek99]

:)) Vista, scaring geeks since 2007!

[@RaPtOr9600]

​@@MidnightGeek99 Thanks for pinup, hell yes still gives me chills to think about it. But will not lie Aero was cool :) And some kind of prestige amount geeks, back in days. Until we quickly figure out that XP is King.

[@MidnightGeek99]

There are a lot of people now that use XP and 7, no one is using Vista, that OS is cursed!

[@AndreiNeacsu]

Not being able to control the fan speed on ATI > X700 is usually due to flashed a different BIOS from another model of the same chip. I did this many times, but saved the original BIOS and returned to it. Find the right one on the Techpowerup GPU BIOS database. This was the case even on newer cards that I flashed, like RX Vega, RX 550, RX 570, RX 580 and RX 6600. Back in the day, I had an HD3850 where I created the same problem. On the second issue: FPS dropping and not recovering, I suspect that the GPU reached a higher temperature and could not spin the fans faster (problem above ^), then entered a lower power state as a means of protection. Locking the fanspeed at 25% would have this effect after using the card with an uncapped FPS.

[@MidnightGeek99]

I guess that in this case was because of some logitech peripherals...the temp was ok, as seen in the MSI Afterburner overlay :)

[@Netbug]

Optical drives not working... yeah, what's the deal with that? I never had any issues with them pre-Windows XP and then all of a sudden I was buying one every few months. None of mine lasted more than a year and I bought them all new. Several were high end. I have well over a dozen broken optical drives, all of which were lightly used. The only internal ones that do anything at all are the BD-ROM drives but they won't read Blu-ray, only CD and DVD. Curiously, my external USB ones work fine. I do wonder if it was due to Starforce DRM, because I always had a Starforce protected game (LOMAC) installed during those years. Abandoning optical media was one of the best moments for me. That said, inserting my first CD into my 56X drive back in the Windows 95 days was something special. It was Apache for DOS.

[@MidnightGeek99]

I've bought a brand new DVD-RW...it works like a charm :D

[@Pidalin]

DVD drivers had only 2 states - it will fail in few months and it will last forever. I also had a lot of them which were problematical, but now I use some of them made between 2003 and 2005 and work fine. My worst experience was DVD burner mady by Lite-On from 2007, that was really pain, half of burned DVD were not readable after 1 year and it was reading only some DVDs, ti was really unrealiable drive. I would say that DVD drives after some year are much better, I have a lot of them bought after like 2015 in different computers and all of them work fine. I also have 3 blu-ray drives around me and again, it works fine.

[@agdgdgwngo]

I gotta say a Vista rig never occured to me before, I have bad memories of trying to play games on vista with my crappy Celeron laptop. Then again I do remember running it on my desktop and it being quite adaquate at some stage. I've got a GTX 260 in my XP rig, if I manage tro find more RAM and maybe a Phenom x6 I'll think about installing Vista 64 on it.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Phenom X6 and GTX 260 scream XP and Vista dual-boot.

[@foch3]

It wasn't until the HD48XX that I returned to the Radeon. HD38XX wasn't even designed to be a halo product. it was a cut down version of the HD2900, Hence it's the RV670. It's an R600 with a simpler memory bus.

[@MidnightGeek99]

It should be a little stonger than the HD 2900 XT, but cheaper, cooler and less power hungry.

[@Mini-z1994]

Huh i remember reading it supported direct x 10 fine, if not 10.1, maybe that was some custom made patch too get 10,1 & 10 in windows xp. I know Vista does DX11 at the most so something like a HD 5770 could be put into this system just fine.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Stalker: Call of Pripyat supports DX 10. To tell you a secret...I was sad because of this build, and then I've built a Vista PC with an i5 2400 and GTX 275...I'm installing stuff on it right now :D

[@Mini-z1994]

@@MidnightGeek99 It's fun with overpowered builds for the purpose, that also lets you set your own fps limiters too keep temperatures & powerdraw down, via rivatuner server statistics or nvidia inspector, config files for the games etc... Less wear & tear on the hardware as well.

[@MidnightGeek99]

@@Mini-z1994 That's right!

[@Netbug]

I skipped Vista, running XP X64 until Windows 7 released. I did try it out but the gaming performance in demanding games was much worse. This was early in its release though.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Upgraded to Vista, then got back to XP, then moved to 7 Preview, and the rest is history.

[@johnk7134]

Try a nvidia GPU, i remember having vista in my 939 X2 with 7800 GTX playing WoW...good days!!

[@MidnightGeek99]

I might, but I have a lot of computers with Nvidia, I wanted ATI this time.

[@johnk7134]

@@MidnightGeek99 Yeah sure, just to check the issues with the fps..maybe is the ATI driver

[@mystique886]

12:30 Wait...How does Most Wanted looks so colorful?! Is it because of the ATI graphics card? 🤔Usually the PC version looks kinda faded and has a ugly yellow filter.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Although ATI cards are more colorful, I think in this case is because I've removed the "Visual Treatment" filter, that ugly yellow filter.

[@2007tantrum]

Very nice build, but yes…it’s not powerful enough for DX10 SM 4.0 gaming. I was planning to build i7 870 , 4 gig and GTX 285 for Vista. This was available just before 7 lunched. But a lot of my retro pc pal’s said that it also could not be powerful enough

[@MidnightGeek99]

I have an i5 2400 and GTX 275, the system should be powerful enough for Vista, but if you want to play like a champ, you should get something above, maybe a GTX 5xx series.

[@2007tantrum]

@@MidnightGeek99 you right for sure, because because GF 8, 9 & 2xx series were powerful for shader model 3.0, and very slow for 4.0. So i5 Sandy Bridge will not help

[@MidnightGeek99]

Actually, the 2xx series (GTX 275, 280) is quite decent for SM 4.0!

[@federicocatelli8785]

Any difference with some more RAM?

[@2007tantrum]

@@federicocatelli8785 my opinion Vista doesn’t need more than 4 gig of ram

[@RetroAmateur1989]

I need to build me one. I got a P35 Platinum, an intel E8500 and a few ATi cards of the time.

[@MidnightGeek99]

The MSI P35 Platinum is a dream board for me :D

[@RetroAmateur1989]

@@MidnightGeek99 Funny thing is, I can't remember how I got it. It was....there. Same with the E8500.

[@MidnightGeek99]

@@RetroAmateur1989 I would love to have it...there :))

[@zhongyangli]

Good pick of subject ! I also want to build a worst-of-all-time pc based on windows vista. I had a socket 775 motherboard with a pentium d, the windows vista and the notorious radeon hd2900 series. But unfortunately all the hd2900pro I received were dead on arrival :(

[@MidnightGeek99]

The HD 2000 series was a BAD series...the tdp and temperatures were off the charts. You're better off using an X1900 Xtx.

[@zhongyangli]

@@MidnightGeek99 That's the worst pc of all time is about. Pick the worst OS, the worst CPU and the worst graphics chip in the same time. I do have x1900 series of cards and they work great. But dx10 compatible cards are mote appropriate for vista. Somehow the hd38xx series are almost identical tonthe hd2900 series, but with all the problems solved. I would prefer using a hd3870 for a vista retro gaming machine. Nice period correct build !

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yeah, the HD 3870 is a HD 2900 XT that deserves to be used!

[@dabombinablemi6188]

So much better than the Vista setup I've got...though the Radeon 9550 I now have did end up being targeted as an entry level Vista GPU (the drivers show it as the X1050). And I expect the WEI score to be higher with it than even an FX 5600XT or FX 5700LE.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Radeon 9550 for Vista...not that great :)

[@dabombinablemi6188]

​@@MidnightGeek99 Well it was Ati's attempt to upset the GF4 MX440 on the low end...so at least it can run Aero - and better than my fake FX 5500 and rev2.0 FX F5200.

[@MidnightGeek99]

@@dabombinablemi6188 Fake FX 5500? :)

[@dabombinablemi6188]

@@MidnightGeek99 It was an 128bit "FX 5500" at 230MHz with DDR 266 that was manufactured in 2015-2016...and uses the 150nm NV34 die with the area where FX 5200 would be scratched off, as opposed to NV34B which is 140nm and a visually different package that clocks higher and runs cooler. So I have a heavily underclocked FX 5500 that is actually an FX 5200 with a different BIOS and label (that has died while in storage), and a 128bit Leadtek WinFast A340 (with DDR 472) that actually uses NV34B despite the chip being labelled FX 5200 - making it a later FX card which I was not expecting.

[@MidnightGeek99]

FX 5200, 5500, 5600...yeah!

[@fear416]

What needs to be understood is that in 2007 20 FPS was still considered playable

[@MidnightGeek99]

Not really, 30 FPS was ok...until the 8800 series, which brought an incredible lift in performance...early 2000s 30 FPS, things changed late 2000s.

[@Pidalin]

@@MidnightGeek99 I finished Crysis on Celeron D 2.8 GHz with 7600GT AGP, yes, 20 FPS was "good enough" I was happy that game at least started on that computer. 😀 I think I did even some unofficial tweaks to make it faster and I also overclocked and it was somehow playable then with like 25-30 FPS.

[@N0zer0]

Yep, you had too high expectations. Back in 2007, nobody played games in 1600×1200. Most people still used 1024×768, a few went up to 1028×1024. Hardware and displays were not capable enough for 1600×1200 and FullHD.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks for the reality check. It was a strange period, the transition from SD to HD. Many reviewers tested the games even at 1920x1400...imagine playing Crysis at that resolution.

[@federicocatelli8785]

At least not on a single gpu

[@bigupbassline58]

hey i'm having some issues running most wanted 05 across all my PCs the game speed has issues where it slows down every few seconds and the frame rate also stutters a lot i installed the motion blur controller which reduced it a bit but it still doesn't run great is this just a bad PC port or is there something causing these performance issues?

[@MidnightGeek99]

I did not encounter any issues with Most Wanted, on any PC...there are other games that work on on your PC? Try running it with and without Vsync.

[@P9HL2BETA]

DX10 promised better performance compared to DX9 the same way DX12 promises better performance than DX11 :))

[@MidnightGeek99]

To be honest, DX12 really was an improvement over DX11...DX 10 and DX11 were not so good, that's why we have even today, games with DX9.

[@bojinglebells]

@@MidnightGeek99 I think DX11 was actually pretty good, and that DX10's failure was largely because it was tied to Vista's own failings and thus developers were less incentivized to put much effort into developing for it. DX11 launched with Win 7 in 2009 and was made available for Vista one week later and that was it for DX10. If DX10 had been made available for XP, I think there would have been a better chance to see it make a bigger impact before DX11 (granted, Vista sales/adoption would have been even worse)

[@NaufalFauzi]

Keep it up 🔥🔥🔥

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks!

[@DragosPirvu]

But what if you add the GPU in a case? Won't that make the system quieter? Mayhaps you could then run the GPU at 100% and not wake up the dead from their sleep. Lemme know, thanks.

[@MidnightGeek99]

"wake up the dead from their sleep" is a vague reference about Midnight, right? Trust me, you'll need a case made out of wood, to stop that crazy fan...and there are no cases made out of wood, in 2007.

[@DragosPirvu]

@@MidnightGeek99 Mayhaps you can build one yourself and test the noise levels at various fan speeds. A lumberjack vs. geek crossover episode sounds like fun

[@MidnightGeek99]

A lumbergeek...I like that!

[@Denny_1776]

Am I able to install a working web browser on vista? All I have on a fresh install is IE but it does not work

[@MidnightGeek99]

You will be able, but I don't think that tha latest versions of Firefox or Chrome will work. You can try Opera.

[@iSamYTBackup]

ati/amd drivers are known to be buggy all thw damn time no matter what era gpu it is

[@MidnightGeek99]

That's why most of my older computers have nvidia cards :)

[@aimanrulez7339]

Super Mario doing benchmarks

[@MidnightGeek99]

Tough times have befallen our beloved plumber!

[@reflectivejellyfish]

How does Crysis run on that??

[@MidnightGeek99]

Pretty well! Around 30-50 FPS at 1280x1024 medium settings, but around 15 FPS at 1600x1200 max settings.

[@Krisztian5HUN]

1:25 are u a..... ghost???

[@MidnightGeek99]

Just a kid with a video editor :)

[@Krisztian5HUN]

@@MidnightGeek99 :))

[@retrotechpinas3640]

Sorry but how in da heck is a 15% performance gain from cpu overclocking small? I'm a bit confused there. 😄 If there is a 15% gain from a basic OC then surely your card has more gpu performace left in the tank untapped due to cpu clockspeed bottleneck. There is a reasone why the wolfdales were favorites still for gaming during this period. Because of it 3ghz+ clockspeed and potential for 4ghz overclocking and two cause games at this period still can't fully utlize quad core processors. Besides, 25% oc on a Q6600? Those are rookie numbers geek. Get yourself a big ass air cooler slap it in there and go for at least 3.5. You got a decent board for overclocking. This era you are getting back into, these were the glory days of overclocking. It would be a crime not to dedicate a section for overclocking in your nostalgia vids.

[@MidnightGeek99]

I'm sorry you got confused :)) It's all about the context...with the OC I just wanted to see how much of a bottleneck is the CPU, and 15% in my case is not that big, go play a game at 37 FPS, then at 43 and tell me you if you see any differences :) I'm planning to keep all my components another 40 years at least, so I try to take care of them as best as I can, overvolting stuff too much or too long is a no no.

[@mariastevens6406]

Why Q6600 when you could have gotten a 6 or 7 series chipset, a 2nd or 3rd gen core i5, a gtx 960 or ati equivalent, 8 or 16gb ddr3 1600, and still be fully supported by XP and (ew) Vista?

[@MidnightGeek99]

Why use i5 and GTX 960? :) I wanted to build a period correct system.

[@mariastevens6406]

@@MidnightGeek99 aahh. Meh. Entertainment lol

[@MidnightGeek99]

@@mariastevens6406 :))