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Windows XP: new Z68/Z77 rig in 2017


Tomcat76

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Perfect if you wish to go

Z77 MOBO +32GB ddr3 ram from corsair with heatsink + i7 3770k + nvdia gtx 960  (why old 750) + 256GB ssd. 

Choose a good quality smps . It is very important other wise fry mobo like I did with my msi Z170. 

Corsair smps are good enough.  Evga is also great. 

A good case with plenty of cooling is very essential but most peeps doesn't care regards of that.

 

Regards of 4tb hdd I can make two 2tb partition using 3tb plus unlocker.  

dencorso  it is better you invest on X99 but x79 is better compatible with xp.

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Z77 has unusable intel USB 3.0. The Z68 board I suggested has supported for XP ASMedia controllers and known-good drivers available, besides being less expensive for the same overall performance, albeit somewhat less easy to find on eBay (but not that much).

10 minutes ago, Dibya said:

dencorso  it is better you invest on X99 but x79 is better compatible with xp.

No, it's not. It has unusable intel USB 3.0, too. Until the ReactOS driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of it.
 

BTW, did you ever notice you can edit your posts and that successive posts (= bumping) by the same user are frowned upon at MSFN? :unsure:

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1 hour ago, Tomcat76 said:

But I didn't know you could go over 2.2TB with MBR (albeit limited to native 4K drives).  You mentioned "4TB"; is that the maximum MBR can handle or were you referencing my 4TB drives?

Basically the 32 bit limitation is in the number of sectors that can be stored in a MBR style partition table "slot".

Set aside the CHS part (and Partition ID and Active status) there are two LBA fields, "Sectors Before" and "Sectors in partition" or "Size in Sectors", each being 32 bit, thus with values from 0 to 2^32-1=4294967295, the limit is the "Sectors in Partition".

If you have a device which exposes 512 bytes sector the largest possible accessible partition is 4,294,967,295*512=2,199,023,255,040 bytes, i.e. the (infamous) 2.2 Tb.

If the device exposes 4096 bytes sector the largest possible accessible partition becomes 8 times that, 4,294,967,295*4,096=17,592,186,040,320, i.e. around 17.5 Tb (much more than any existing disk) the related topic is here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/

The "over 2.2TB limit, maxing out at 4 TB in practice" was related to using a particular partitioning pattern on 512 bytes/sector devices, the thesis is here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/?tab=comments#comment-1135913

it has been confirmed as working on Windows 7 32 bit MBR by Tripredacus, starting from here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/?do=findComment&comment=1142727

until here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/?do=findComment&comment=1143244

and later tested thoroughfully, this is enough to prove that the theory is sound and works, but later some issues prevented Tripredacus from replicating the behaviour on XP (and there could be possibly some other roadblocks on XP, but not related to the 32 bit size of the LBA MBR entries).

 

@dencorso

There are no such things as a xMx or xGx disk on the market, the M or the G uniquely depends on the "style" with which you partition the thingy.

A 3xB (which is at the same time a 3MB and a 3GB depending on the style that you use) is *any* "native" 4Kb sector disk larger than 2.2 TB, I believe they exist alright, but I'll check and let you know.

jaclaz
 

 

Edited by jaclaz
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8 minutes ago, dencorso said:

Z77 has unusable intel USB 3.0. The Z68 board I suggested has supported for XP ASMedia controllers and known-good drivers available, besides being less expensive for the same overall performance, albeit somewhat less easy to find on eBay (but not that much).

No, it's not. It has unusable intel USB 3.0, too. Until the ReactOS driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of it.
 

BTW, did you ever notice you can edit your posts and that successive posts (= bumping) by the same user are frowned upon at MSFN? :unsure:

Well easily you can go to bios in Z77/Z170 /X79 then change xhci controller to 3rd party then it will become Asmedia or Renesas or via  (what ever is provided by your manufacturer ). A thread in hwbot forum is dedicated to all about this xhci and xp.

Their few advantages in z77

*better memory controller 

*advance pcie v3 gen 2 slot (though only one but reasonable performance while used with gfx card)

*bios to handle nvme drives (Toshiba ocz has driver for xp)

*msata support 

If these are not required  go for z68

 

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2 hours ago, Dibya said:

Well easily you can go to bios in Z77/Z170 /X79 then change xhci controller to 3rd party then it will become Asmedia or Renesas or via  (what ever is provided by your manufacturer ). A thread in hwbot forum is dedicated to all about this xhci and xp.

Link? :angel

3 hours ago, jaclaz said:

There are no such things as a xMx or xGx disk on the market, the M or the G uniquely depends on the "style" with which you partition the thingy.

A 3xB (which is at the same time a 3MB and a 3GB depending on the style that you use) is *any* "native" 4Kb sector disk larger than 2.2 TB, I believe they exist alright, but I'll check and let you know.

Of course. But from maybe the '90s, all manufacturers use to send out HDDs prepartitioned into one single partition and preformatted. So, in case any manufacturer did sell a 3MB, it would mean at least a transverse support for it, even if that manufaturer never documented it. Else it is an undocumented fact found by the users, like so many others we know of. 

Later edit:
I found this report "The brave new world of 4Kn hard disks [...]". Is there anything newer and more reassuring?

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2 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't consider the H61 that much of an upgrade compared to the P55 I have now.  The others are used on mATX boards (at least with Asus).

what relations bw matx, asus, p55 and h61??? what bad with this mobo, for sample?

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61DES3/index.asp

2 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

In fact, I want to move over to XP 64-bit completely if the programs I use allow me to.

good idea. i use xp x64 appox 3 year, and found no big problems, except impossibility using 16 programs (not only dos, but also win 3 based).

also xp x64 support gpt.

Edited by MERCURY127
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@jaclaz: thanks for the info.
 

11 hours ago, MERCURY127 said:

what relations bw matx, asus, p55 and h61??? what bad with this mobo, for sample?

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61DES3/index.asp

Sorry, I meant H55, not P55.  I didn't say there was anything wrong with H61, just that the upgrade level isn't that big with H55>H61 as it is with H55>Z68.  The H61 you linked to has PCIe 2.0, doesn't have USB 3.0, there are 3 usable PCIe ports and 2 SATAIII 6Gbps ports, exactly like on my P7H55 board.  The Asus P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 has PCIe 3.0, has USB 3.0 (including front panel), 4 usable PCIe ports (if installing a dual slot graphics card) and 4 SATAIII 6Gbps ports.  I suppose I can get away with PCIe 2.0, but I would like to have the rest.
 

2 hours ago, Dibya said:

I read about this in another thread on MSFN.  Do I understand correctly if I read that only one USB 3.0 port on the motherboard will be usable, and that a USB hub is required to split it across multiple USB devices?  I wouldn't call that a fix, but I don't want to get into semantics.  I haven't used a USB hub in well over 15 years (even the internal 5.25" floppy drive stayed in much longer), but if people can live with it... great.
 

12 hours ago, Dibya said:

Their few advantages in z77

*better memory controller 

*advance pcie v3 gen 2 slot (though only one but reasonable performance while used with gfx card)

*bios to handle nvme drives (Toshiba ocz has driver for xp)

*msata support 

If these are not required  go for z68

"Better" is usually better, but I think it's over the top for me.  I'd also prefer to use a VelociRaptor over a SATA/mSATA/NVMe on Windows XP.  Too lazy to trim... ::scratches-beard::  :cool:

Edited by Tomcat76
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On 9/29/2017 at 9:06 AM, dencorso said:

Well, now that we've beaten the poor dead horse into beef tartar, let me give one more unrelated sugestion:
@Tomcat76: give the machine a smallish, fast SSD (a 120GB OCZ Vertex, or any other SATA III OCZ from before takeover by Toshiba would be great, but do avoid the older Octane series) for OSes and one bigger HDD (I suggest a WD2002FAEX or any WDX *FAEX, which is the last 512-byte sectored series from WDC and was findable new/used on eBay till quite recently) for data, and you're all set, IMHO.

So far we've only polished the single hoof of the horse.  The pompous beef tartar with grey poupon will come later at the point when Intel finds a way to make it impossible to install XP onto it and so far Z270 works with XP while Z370 and Z470 I would say a good chance as well.

But if he needs a SSD any 120GB/128GB MAX would be suitable in laptop 2.5" form.

Same goes with 2TB laptop 2.5" hard drive.  Avoid those 3.5" drives as they draw more heat.  Plenty of 2TB 2.5" laptop hard drives around these days Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB.  Just pop the drive out of the enclosure and it has a regular SATA connector.

20 hours ago, dencorso said:

Because I can. I'm also considering setting up a X79/i7 4960X when I manage to get the parts at a decent price (up to now that processor's price, even used, can only be rightly described as obscene!). I'm no gamer, but I do serious math and image processing.

Yes clearly those old used parts have been run for who knows how long with probably a lot of heat built up over the years or clogged fans.  SATA ports begin failing so testing to make sure the used MB you bought holds up or ends up in a return war battle to get your money back.  Also for some reason most of this crap does end up costing more than you'd want to pay when you can have brand new unused technology that runs "faster and cooler" and probably cheaper than the risk you were betting on used older technology that could fail sooner than you'd want wasting time and money.

 

https://ark.intel.com/products/77779/Intel-Core-i7-4960X-Processor-Extreme-Edition-15M-Cache-up-to-4_00-GHz

(6 Cores / 12 Threads)

Passmark 13863

15 MB SmartCache

130 W TDP

 

https://ark.intel.com/products/65523/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

(4 Cores / 8 Threads)

Passmark 9543

8 MB SmartCache

77 W

9543 to 13863  (45% boost)

That wouldn't be worth the improvement you hope to gain from the i7-3770K.  What sort of math applications / image processing are you doing?  Even a i5-3570K seems beefy enough for most tasks I've seen.  You'll also have to invest in some major water cooling possibly given the high TDP.

 

Consider even the SkyLake i7-6700K (4 Cores / 8 Threads)

Passmark 11108

If you add 2 more cores found in the i7-8700K (6 Cores / 12 Threads) we can extrapolate a possible low end minimum benchmark improvement to 16662 potential score.

If you want to upgrade you should consider the AsRock Z370 Extreme4 MB and get the i7-8700K.

https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_70-GHz

(6 Cores / 12 Threads)

Passmark 16662 potential (about 75% boost over your i7-3770K)

12 MB SmartCache

95 W TDP

 

Or the more energy efficient version:

https://ark.intel.com/products/126686/Intel-Core-i7-8700-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_60-GHz

(6 Cores / 12 Threads)

Passmark 16221 potential (10814 x 1.5) adding two more cores based on i7-7700 with 4 Cores/8 Threads

(About 70% boost over your i7-3770K)

12 MB SmartCache

65 W TDP

 

So if you chose the i7-8700 vs i7-4960X

You're matching the Cores and Threads

Decreasing the TDP down to half from 130 to 65 Watts means a nice saving on the electric bill.

Passmark comparison would be better (13863 vs 16221 estimate)  So you're getting a 17.0% Boost in performance on top of it.

The Asmedia 3.1 USB ports can work in XP.  You have to transplant your working XP USB 2.0 system files to the system32 folder first since no eHCI ports exist on Z170 and later they won't be installed.  Use a HUB splitter and you can hook up 4 or more USB devices if necessary like USB mouse, USB keyboard from the single port.  If you need to connect more external USB devices use the USB 3.0 4 Port+ PCIe card off eBay for $10 or less to get around it.

You could start with a cheap low end Coffee Lake Celeron first and wait 1.5-2 years for the 9th Generation i7-9700K which should be the ID of Cannonlake's high end CPU like your Ivy Bridge i7-3770K so you max it out in one final upgrade.  Most of the low end Celerons cost about $50 range and you can still get a lot of functionality on these.  There might even be quad core Coffee Lake Celerons since they bumped everything up 2 cores.

20 hours ago, dencorso said:

Z77 has unusable intel USB 3.0. The Z68 board I suggested has supported for XP ASMedia controllers and known-good drivers available, besides being less expensive for the same overall performance, albeit somewhat less easy to find on eBay (but not that much).

No, it's not. It has unusable intel USB 3.0, too. Until the ReactOS driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of it.

Dencorso I don't think you have ever used a Z77?  You are operating on a fallacy.  I have almost a dozen of these and Z77 Intel USB 3.0 ports work in XP.  They only operate at USB 2.0 speeds and aren't "dead" or "unusable".  The 3rd Party USB 3.0 like Asmedia also operate at USB 2.0 speeds.  You have to go to USB 3.0 PCIe cards to get between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 speeds in XP.  You can NOT get full USB 3.0s in XP as far as I have tested.  Even testing in Windows 7 USB 3.0 speeds are usually around 2 times to 2.5 times the speed of USB 2.0 in XP.  So in all cases you aren't missing much at all not having USB 3.0 speeds in XP.  If USB 3.0 speeds truly were 10 times as they claimed this would be a big issue.

I haven't tested these later chipsets but as long as the BIOS has xHCI Hand-Off for the Intel xHCI ports they should theoretically work and the Intel USB 3.0 ports should still function at USB 2.0 speeds in XP on Z87, Z97 and X79. and X99 according to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_X99

"One Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) controller and two Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) controllers are integrated into the X99 chipset, providing a total of up to 14 USB ports".

Skylake 100 Series and up is where Intel USB 3.0 Ports can be classified as "dead" in XP since eHCI was officially neutered.

 

Edited by 98SE
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3 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

The Asus P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 has PCIe 3.0, has USB 3.0 (including front panel), 4 usable PCIe ports (if installing a dual slot graphics card) and 4 SATAIII 6Gbps ports.  I suppose I can get away with PCIe 2.0, but I would like to have the rest.

u want use 4 ssd? really? no? then what reason find 4 sata3 6gbit?

want usb3? ok https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H67DE3/index.asp

want pcie3? any lga1155 can give u 16 lanes pcie3 with ib cpu.

so what reason find Z chipsets, if u not need OC?

i can say one pros on Z mobos - they usually have radiators on cpu mosfets. this very good, if u will use this machine long time.

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15 hours ago, dencorso said:

Link? :angel

Of course. But from maybe the '90s, all manufacturers use to send out HDDs prepartitioned into one single partition and preformatted. So, in case any manufacturer did sell a 3MB, it would mean at least a transverse support for it, even if that manufaturer never documented it. Else it is an undocumented fact found by the users, like so many others we know of. 

Later edit:
I found this report "The brave new world of 4Kn hard disks [...]". Is there anything newer and more reassuring?

I don't understand what you mean :w00t:.

It seems to me like a plain, nice :thumbup confirmation that XP 32 bit has no issues "in itself" with 4 k sectored disks,  and that the theory that up to 16 Tb is possible is perfectly sound, but that there may be issues with the controller (actually with the controller drivers) .

And you also found your 3xB disk make/model example!

About the pre-partitioning/pre-formatting, you can IMHO simply forget that any manufacture will EVER ship a 4k "native" disk drive with "MBR" style.

It's a long time that they all got on the 64 bit/UEFI/GPT bandwagon, and I suspect - given the fast turnover in the industry - that their junior (soon to become seniors) technicians either never heard of MBR or know about it just like - say -  we know that steam engines exist(ed) but never actually used one.

jaclaz

 

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3 hours ago, MERCURY127 said:

u want use 4 ssd? really? no? then what reason find 4 sata3 6gbit?

want usb3? ok https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H67DE3/index.asp

want pcie3? any lga1155 can give u 16 lanes pcie3 with ib cpu.

so what reason find Z chipsets, if u not need OC?

i can say one pros on Z mobos - they usually have radiators on cpu mosfets. this very good, if u will use this machine long time.

I found Z77/Z68 slightly faster than H61.

Their are many features.  You can do multi gpu stunts in Z series board.

Better build quality that let you run system for much more days.system surely will last long because he wishes to run the system for long as in future getting xp work will be a nightmare. 

Not to mention that you can use xmp at 2400mhz for your ram modules.

In future you can oc your processor because now a days application getting crazy for more clocks.

We should always think some future proof idea. 

 

Edited by Dibya
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1 hour ago, Dibya said:

I found Z77/Z68 slightly faster than H61.

i mean not only about h61, but all H/B/Q variants.  and there no diff in perf, other than def memory freq.

1 hour ago, Dibya said:

We should always think some future proof idea. 

lga1155  released in 2011 year.  ie 5-6 year old. what here future?

future - its 8+ cores, nmve msata, optane, pcie4, uefi, gpt... and sure dropping all legacy x86 (16 and possible 32 bits, mbr, bios, vga, vesa) on 2019-21 years.

myself have z68 mobo, and ib cpu. but i buy this in 2012-13, and then it was not fututre, but present...

i talk not, that Zxx is bad.  i talk, that there no big diifs bw chisets, if u have no interest on OC.

but IS diffs bw mobos. some costly mobo on Z have less features, tneh other low-cost mobo on H/B/Q.

and also remember, that Q chipsets have NATIVE pci, not via asmedia bridges... for some old pci card its critical.

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8 hours ago, 98SE said:

Dencorso I don't think you have ever used a Z77?  You are operating on a fallacy.  I have almost a dozen of these and Z77 Intel USB 3.0 ports work in XP.  They only operate at USB 2.0 speeds and aren't "dead" or "unusable".

You, not me, are operating on a fallacy. Of course the intel ports operate at USB 2.0 speeds and aren't "dead" or "unusable". That's what I said: they operate lamely. If they don't operate as USB 3.0, IMO, they're unusable (for what they were intended). Of course one can sort of run XP SP3 very lamely even on Z5xx or X5xx. But one can enjoy the full potential of, at most, the Cougar Point chipsets. As I said before, until the ReactOS xhci driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of using any later chipsets.

8 hours ago, 98SE said:

The 3rd Party USB 3.0 like Asmedia also operate at USB 2.0 speeds. 

No, they don't. The attached tests show they run much above USB 2.0 speeds.

 

 

2017 Pen Drive Performance Tests.pdf

2017 Pen Drive Performance Tests Xtra.pdf

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8 hours ago, 98SE said:

I haven't tested these later chipsets but as long as the BIOS has xHCI Hand-Off for the Intel xHCI ports they should theoretically work and the Intel USB 3.0 ports should still function at USB 2.0 speeds in XP on Z87, Z97 and X79. and X99 according to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_X99

Just wondering... Everyone keeps talking about USB 3.0, but what about the rest?  How do I know there are chipset drivers, sata drivers, onboard video drivers, etc. compatible with Windows XP if the board manufacturer won't list any?  For example:
ASRock Z97 Pro4
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer
 

7 hours ago, MERCURY127 said:

u want use 4 ssd? really? no? then what reason find 4 sata3 6gbit?

I know mechanical hard drives don't saturate the SATA3 ports, but reading and writing operations are still faster than when connected to SATA2 ports.  I have tested this myself, both with the onboard SATA2 ports of my P7H55 board, as well as with the HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X1 PCIe card with SATA2 ports.  My onboard SATA3 ports are faster.
 

7 hours ago, MERCURY127 said:

i can say one pros on Z mobos - they usually have radiators on cpu mosfets. this very good, if u will use this machine long time.

I will.  I don't plan to upgrade it again.  The board needs to be durable and be able to withstand 24/7 operation.

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