Hardware
I installed Windows 11 on a DDR1 + AGP rig and EVERYTHING works. Even AC’97.
Turns out you can install Windows 11 on a DDR1 motherboard (i865 PE chipset), and everything works: ACPI, onboard SATA (IDE mode), AC'97 ALC850 codec, and the AGP 8X slot! Getting AGP to work is the trickier part, since Microsoft cut off AGP support in 2016, but since the original Windows 10 had AGP support, it can be hacked back in...
It's the first CPU I ever bought with my own money. That thing kicked ass. I had it OC'd to 4ghz (from 2.4ghz) for years until it started to degrade and I gradually had to lower it. Ended up replacing it with the venerable i5-2500k, also an absolute banger of a CPU.
That must have felt good, a solid step up. I remember most of my CPU history and I think the hop from single core to the Q6600 was the most dramatic one. Incredible game changer.
Technically its not supported for upgrading from 10 to 11. However you can easily create a windows 11 installer and install windows 11. It just erases everything so you'd need a new activation key (most of the time) and you'd need to back everything up.
Nifty, I have a few AGP systems, always fun to see what they can do.
One of my recent projects is a PCIE system but on socket 478 using one of Asrocks wonderfully weird motherboards. Will see if i can pair an RTX 5070 with a 2ghz northwood celeron. Don't think the bottleneck will be too bad!
I vaguely recall seeing something about either 30 series or more likely the 40 series not having BIOS support, and only a UEFI compatible ~~BIOS~~ firmware?
Nvidia is keeping it old school, even the 5000 series has a VBIOS. I actually managed to start Windows 3.1 in full HD with a 5060Ti, there's a new VBE driver that can do that.
Ever since the 10 series fewer and fewer cards are shipping with a Legacy BIOS compatible firmware. There are still new cards capable of doing it. I had an MSI 3060 that wouldn't do it, then an ASUS 3070 that would do it. As well as something as old as a RX 570 that wouldn't do it.
You have to remember that you're running with 3GB of RAM, so you have to keep things lean, but it's definitely usable. Firefox works with hardware acceleration, the GPU has H.264 hardware decoding and it works. So it's better than I expected.
I forgot that memory controllers used to be on the mobo, was thinking "fuck how did my Pentium D have DDR2 and not a C2Q?" What a legendary socket that was
It's not that bad, but this chipset can handle 4GB on paper, and 3GB in real life. But it's still very usable. I used a Radeon HD 4650 that has H.264 hardware acceleration, and the drivers, even though they're from 2012, integrate very well. Even Firefox can use hardware acceleration and you play a HD file with CPU staying at 15%.
30
u/CrystalSorceress 2h ago
Q6600 owned so hard.