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What are good examples of Windows Vista/7 era laptops that can run XP?

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computerdude92

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It turns out collecting used laptops is the best affordable option for me regarding retro gaming. I remember my dad had a WinVista HP Dv6000 laptop with an AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU and it ran great when downgraded to XP, but he wasn't a gamer.

I know I need at least 128MB of video ram because my most demanding XP game I have is Bully: Scholarship edition. I am religiously an AMD person, (except for approx early 2000's Intel systems and older) so that means I only want Vista/7 laptops with AMD CPUs. I also really want a quiet gaming experience and I want my laptops to be models with good cooling and without much fan noise.

I am ok with modest gaming performance, but the GPUs in the laptops also need to be strong enough to play 720p and 1080p video files.

Thanks for any recommendations.
 
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I would look for laptops with Nvidia 600/700 (760M is a solid option, even plays GTAV) series gpus. Most should work well with XP, minus maybe sound drivers. So make sure to check the laptop audio chipset for audio drivers. Also something cheaper, be AMD A8 based machines.
 
The Nvidia Geforce 600 and 700 series GPUs were based on the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectures and were released in the 2012-2014 time frame.

I don't recommend running them on Windows XP because they have too much video memory. Since Windows XP doesn't support PAE (without ugly hacks), the total system address space is 4 GB. This means that the GPU video memory will eat into the system memory map, and significantly reduce the amount of system memory available.

An example would be is if you have 4 GB of RAM installed, and a GPU with 2 GB of RAM, worst case is that your system RAM is reduced to 2 GB to make room in the address space for the video memory. Since there are other devices in the memory map, it can get worse than that.
 
There are patches that allow up to 64gb ( Hear the 128gb patch is unstable), I dont see too much an issue...I run the 8gb patch on a Dell laptop with no issues so far, your mileage may vary.


As far as unused memory, it can still be used as virtual memory, and can even throw the pagefile on it.
 
twolazy said:
There are patches that allow up to 64gb ( Hear the 128gb patch is unstable), I dont see too much an issue...I run the 8gb patch on a Dell laptop with no issues so far, your mileage may vary.
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The PAE patch requires modifying core system files, the NT kernel specifically. Windows does not like this, and will constantly fight you with system file integrity warnings. It also has limitations that no single process can use over 2/3 GB of RAM or 4 GB if the application is large address aware. I've tried several of the PAE hacks and none of them were stable.

I recommend if you want to run Windows XP with large amounts of memory, just run Windows Server 2003 Enterprise if you want to run in 32 bit. Or if you don't mind 64 bit, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. It's basically Windows Server 2003 x64 with an XP UI slapped on. I used it for over a decade with minimal issues, the only thing you really lose is 16 bit app compatibility because x64 can't "Thunk" into 16 bit mode. There's no point in running 16 bit apps on XP anyway since direct calls to hardware aren't supported. DosBox-X provides a far better experience, and can emulate ancient hardware.

twolazy said:
As far as unused memory, it can still be used as virtual memory, and can even throw the pagefile on it.
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Unmappable memory on vanilla XP? That's lost, there's no way to use it. With the PAE hack, you're still limited to 2/3/4 GB chunks.
 
I collect tons of old laptops, but the vast majority and Intel based (just a couple K6 model if I remember correctly).

Anything Vista/7 era would be widescreen and most XP games are not?
 
Unknown_K said:
I collect tons of old laptops, but the vast majority and Intel based (just a couple K6 model if I remember correctly).

Anything Vista/7 era would be widescreen and most XP games are not?
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I think there are a lot of 14" laptops out there of Vista era which have core 2 duo processors and semi decent integrated cpus? Would assume that these can cope with XP gaming....
 
Have you thought about using W7-32 bits? It still can run 16-bit programs and games just like XP but also has other advantages like being able to handle newer hardware.
 
Brian Todd said:
I think there are a lot of 14" laptops out there of Vista era which have core 2 duo processors and semi decent integrated cpus? Would assume that these can cope with XP gaming....
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Yes, there were plenty of power user/gaming oriented laptops of the day. The problem is that it was the worst era for laptops.

That era was smack dab in the middle of the ROHS solder changeover and laptops were having extremely high failure rates from failing BGA chips. Additionally, you had Nvidia's 8x00M/9x00M GPUs, or their workstation equivalents, Quadro NVS that had defective chip carriers and bond wires to the BGA pads on the ASIC. Once those failed, there was no fixing them, and there are basically no replacements today. Apple snapped up the lions share for their recall programs, and anything that still works today is going to have a short life before it will die.
 
I have a Compaq K6-2 I got at VCF Midwest for 20 bux. Pretty fun little machines, but I wouldn't want to use XP on it. Sadly only thing dead is the cdrom (battery still holds a 20-30 min charge!). To replace it, have to take the entire machine apart, motherboard out and everything. What a crappy design.
 
The Dell XPS M1710 would be a good candidate if it weren't for the Intel CPU. I was using one up til 2016. They have a great display other than the fact it is a little dim.
Had an Asus laptop from that era, looks like I sold it in 2014. Turion 64 CPU. I can't find the model, but here are some pics of it! Unfortunately, I took the pics in low-res to post on Craigslist...
 

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Video memory doesn't compete with system RAM in the memory map. The video driver accesses the card through a 256MB window. You can have 3GB RAM and 2GB VRAM under 32-bit Windows no problem. With that being said, few if any games that run on XP need 2GB of VRAM.

If you want a cheap AMD system that only has to be good enough to handle most XP games then one of those early gen APUs with integrated Radeon gfx (5000/6000 series) might fit the bill. Or look for something a bit older that has a discrete GPU.
 
bakemono said:
Video memory doesn't compete with system RAM in the memory map. The video driver accesses the card through a 256MB window. You can have 3GB RAM and 2GB VRAM under 32-bit Windows no problem. With that being said, few if any games that run on XP need 2GB of VRAM.
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It most definitely does, or Windows wouldn't automatically mask out system memory to make room in the memory map for video memory. Video memory doesn't employ bank switching for access, it's a contiguous block of address space.

If you have 3 GB of system RAM and 2 GB of video memory, Windows is going to set 1 GB of system memory as reserved and unusable to fit the 2 GB into the 32 bit address space. If it can't do that, you're going to start losing video memory as well. There are other memory mapped devices in the x86 address space, so it's going to be even lower than that.
 
Video memory and Windows memory are 2 different things. You can use a 4GB GPU in 32 bit windows and still have usable RAM.

Windows makes all address allocation under 4GB or drivers would not work. So, a 4GB GPU might need to allocate 512MB of the 4GB main RAM for what it's doing leaving you with max of 3.5GB if nothing else is installed. If you want to run 2 cards in SLI then that's another 512MB taken up, etc. I look at it as a window to getting data chunks to the GPU and not a store of all the data in the GPU VRAM.
 
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