Wuzzup,, ( I have not said that since 2000 but its cool again..somehow.. )

Ok so i put together a ''Retro Rig''. I wanted to run Windows XP Pro SP2 [sp3 sucks and is much slower imho] again.

Specs ;

-Athlon II X4 651K running at stock 3ghz [i had to install another fan basicly right on top of the stock cooler cuz this old 117watt cpu runs way too hot for the stock cooler.]
-4GB Of corsair ddr 1600 2x2gb
-Kingston 128 Gb SSD drive that works with XP Pro SP2 [the version i use]
-Sapphire HD 7950 3GB running perfectly on 950mhz/1270mhz [overclocked]
-other standard hard drives
-Asus 1600x900 monitor [honestly i like low-res better than high-res bullshits since hi res is pretty overwhelming at time hint 4K/8K..etc.. even 1080p isn't for me anymore..nope. low res all the way;]
-800Watt corsair power supply
-other fans
-dvd burner
-nice audio system [obviously the most important part]

anyway back to my original question how many cores can XP utilize? Can it use all 4 cores? If it can I want to upgrade to FX 8370 or something..8 cores on xp lol?

 

You look very old indeed, but these days we have things like google, there much better than altavista.
It can actually find things. Check it out

 

ouch!1 that burned me bro.. xD

 

after a bit of googling i did find that if i want the ultimate xp rig than the i5-3570K is the best option for price/performance. most apps for xp were created for single and dual core use so the higher the clock on those two cores the better basically. essentially games from that era do not utilize more than 2 cores... with some exceptions but yup, google is my friend all right.

 

which daw and version you will run

 

i have FL5, FL9, CUBASE SX 3, acid 5, soundforge 8.0, wavelab 5.01a installed..etc.. im not really using this pc [yes im typing on it with firefox 52 ESR] as a main music making pc anymore though..these programs aren't that good compared to modern software lets face reality.. usually if i do compose something now its on my windows 10 laptop. but its nice to have the old pc setup working again with faster hardware, programs and old project files to re visit every now and then. It is the exact same xp pc i used from 2003-2014 but now with faster hardware. back in those days if you can believe it i only had an athlon 64 3400+ single core 2.4ghz. And I did make good music with it... i want to say less is more but its not about that its about living in the moment..more or less.. it really doesn't matter what hardware you use. that i can say from experience. i could use almost anything and make something interesting sounding if i'm feeling the vibe.

 

If you need a quite fast XP SP3 Pro Corporate Edition (incl. fix), I can help you out. But I only have it in 32Bit.
Still using it for old games in a virtual machine and the most recent version of FL Studio (20.7.2) still works like a charm.
Also the old Cubase 5 and WaveLab 6 by Team AiR do their Job.

Btw. using XP in a virtual machine is the best thing you can do.
You need just one PC and you can define how much memory and how many cores it uses from your current system.
As I heard, XP Pro supports 4 cores & up to 2 CPU's. Memorywise it just can handle 3GB in the 32Bit version but that should be
enough for old software.

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2020

Thanks man, but I've come to the conclusion that SP2 runs the best on my setup..i tried sp3 but ended up rolling back to sp2 because it kills the life of the OS in my opinion. SP3 was from 2008, SP2 was from 2004.. 2004 was a way better time period than 2008.. in 2008 lots of stuff started to suck already [if you understand what i'm talking about]. 2004 was a DREAM compared to 2020..lol

 

easter egg;; this is the last version of ccleaner you can use on sp2

 

Lol, what an interesting post. Why do you think this way bro? I'd really like to hear your philosophy on all this.

(Btw, I still have an SP3 machine, and it's much smoother than the CD XP + SP2 upgrade I once had.)

 

Yeah its just the way I am lol.. don't mind me.. but yeah i find sp2 a bit ''lighter on resources'' etc.. not too mention i like that its from 2004.. i usually find sp2 faster and more responsive than sp3 on any computer i try it on. But different machines will give different results I'm sure.. SP3 can be fast if its ''fresh installed'' with one of those modern updated versions but my machine is the same install since 2003 just ''repaired'' MANY TIMES LOL. ;]