I have no idea why people don't want lga 775 parts. The compatibility is immense. being able to run DOS all the way through to Windows 10 is crazy.

LGA775 just refuses to die. Core 2 Quad systems paired with an SSD, 8GB of RAM and a decent video card can still make for a good basic daily driver. One of the best platforms Intel has ever made IMO.

Crazy to think how dependent modern CPUs are on their internal cache, that disabling it cuts a 667 MHz system down to the performance level of a 286/386 from the 1980s.

A socket 775 system running a 386 game properly is a testament to the x86 retrocompatibility.

Phil, you're a tresure for the community! While everybody gets obssessed with period-correct parts which are super expensive, you're always showing us different ways to play MS-DOS games with all sorts of hardware at very reasonable prices. Thanks for keeping up the website with tools and for all your video content. You are an example to be followed in the retro gaming circles. I have learned a lot about DOS gaming and hardware tips from you. Thank you SO MUCH for your work!

Great video as always Phil! I remember buying that C-Media card brand new in box in my local computer store back in 2003 for €14.99! Its great to see that these cards are still being made!

Great stuff. I built a nice high end 775 Windows XP after watching your previous videos Phil. Only cost me about 40 euros in total - E8400, Abit IP35 Pro, 4GB Corsair Dominator and GTX 285. Runs like a dream.

I love this! I like to think after watching your channel there is no excuse not to get into retro gaming with so many interesting hardware options.

Wow Core 2 Duo for DOS and a board that uses PCI Express instead of AGP? That's insane! If LGA 775 become more expensive, we can place the blame to Phil. =) Nice video!

The core 2 duo or quad fell out of favor a bit more recently for a very simple reason imo, it was still pretty reasonable to use as a daily or even for a lot of modern games. Sure the instructions set or lack thereof became an increasing issue. So naturally what was used for modern stuff till quite recently isn´t really looked at for "dos gaming" purposes as it is probably considered to new. Had a c2q 6600 clocked at 3.2ghz for years, was an amazing pc and held up damn well. In regards to old games, i really stopped worrying so much about using older hardware and building a retro pc for that very purpose. Dosbox came a long way and if you add roland 32 emulators you are probably good to go for the vast majority of games on your overpowered daily machine. Still loved to work with old hardware, and would still do but i would lie if i had the time. And just buying retro hardware to then have it sit in a shelf is a bit of a waste, like hoarding cars.

Wing Commander on my buddy's Amiga was the first PC game that blew me away and I have been gaming on PC ever since! Fun video and way to find a use for those parts that would otherwise be e-waste.

I have SO MANY 775s from the old computer store I used to work at... now I'm gonna start these 😊😅

This is a very good alternative for people who are just getting into the hobby. Retro parts are carrying such a crazy premium now that it's hard to find good deals, glad I bought all my stuff some time back whilst it was still reasonable!

Very nice! Brings back fond memories from my childhood. Thank you!!

LGA775 is the most underrated platform for the widest range of usability (and with that, the Radeon x600 or x700 is the most underrated graphics card for Windows 98 specifically), and Intel 4th Gen is the most underrated platform for XP or a hybrid XP/7 or XP/10 system.

It's good that in 2023 we can now get motherboards and DOS working properly. Took them long enough right? Those DOS utilities are beyond anything people in the DOS era would have thought of. I detect correct sound here too, I feel like I'm a little kid at my cousin's house. Another note, there is nothing wrong with using DOSbox for certain things, if your retro hardware build doesn't do everything you wanted to.

Great video and great software. Thank you Phil.

*Phil, good sir! LGA775 still rules!* I have a wonderful P4 AGP Build for 98SE (ASRock 775i65G), another Q6600 AGP/PCIe build for XP (ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA), and the top end QX9650 for Win7 gaming (ASUS P5Q Pro). All Socket 775. I also have two spare, good as new LGA775 Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo boards that take DDR2 or DDR3 in storage. The venerable Abit VP6 PIII duallie, the stellar MSI Pro266TD Tualatin duallie, and, pending new caps, an Abit VH6T for single Tualatin overclocking, my fastest PIII machine. My HP150 Touchscreen can also game. Modern gaming is on my Z390, and at the wife's office on a Xeon-based Z97 mini-ITX I adore. There you have it, my full confession as a HW hoarder (aka "enthusiast").

This is amazing Phil awesome video keep up the great work love it 😁😁😁

I love your benchmark pack. Thanks for putting it together for all of us.

Hey Phil, there are some really interesting CPUs for 775 available. The Celeron 400 series, codename Conroe-L. They are native single core processors (the last native ones that Intel produced) with up to 2.2GHz and only use up to 35W and are available for pennies.

Phil, Gotta say your content is absolutely on point, Awesome!

Forgot to say thanks phil, for another great video. Thanks for time and effort and info 👍

Oooh another video! ❤ Awesome with a Core2Duo project, I'm planning out my Core2Duo for this weekend as I just received a graphics card of the exact same type I used so many years ago, so now I can build an exact copy of my system I had before for Windows XP. Have a great weekend Phil and sleep well as I'm sure you're heading off to sleep in a short while 😋 (from posting this video that is)

Another hit on the nail Phil, very cool alternative. I put together a similar build (same MB as you) as an "ultimate" Win98 Machine (Core E8600, Nvidia 7950GT, SB Audigy). You just expanded the idea of booting it into DOS 7.1 (with the Super Easy PIF you provide on your site). I will try to use DOS on it like you demonstrated, with a Solo 1 and the 8738. Worth mentioning, there is a similar board from ASUS (P5KPL 1600) that has some extra features (like 3 PCI slots) and offers a little bit more flexibility if desired. I bought both 2 years ago, for same price (each US$ 30) and some Core cpus (E4xxx, E6xxx and E8xxx - US$10-15 each). Worth mentioning folks going this way need to setup SATA as legacy/compatibility mode on BIOS. And last, try that Quadro FX1300 (PCIE) of yours on this motherboard (the one you tried on a video a couple of months ago), I got mine working on this motherboard without hitches. Thanks!

Big fan of cpuspd 🎉 You can set up a batch file to scroll through the various options then record a topbench result for the iteration. This helps profiling your bios config and I found this helped me dial in compatibility on a few picky games

Recently upgraded my secondary office-tasks machine from Core2Duo/2Gb RAM/Built-In Intel Graphics to Core2Quad/4Gb RAM/nVidia 8800GT 512 Mb. Now it runs perfectly under Win7 32bit. FullHD KZfaq - no problems anymore (previously there was not enough memory and CPU power to run FHD KZfaq smoothly). I'm sure it is also able to run games from 2000-2010-s pretty well because it's a middle-end config of the age. And even today there are plenty of 2D/light 3D modern indy games perfectly playable on this setup.

Awesome as usually!

Great video and spot on. There are still lots of good buys to be had for socket 478 and socket 775 boards that do really well for XP and earlier builds. Socket 939 is still probably my favorite from this timeframe, but there is no doubt about the great value to be had with these lesser desirable socket boards for retro gaming. Thanks for the links too!

My daily PC still is LGA775 with E8500, GeForce 9800 and 4 Gigs and it is good enought for net surfing. Not fast, but works. Didn't cost anything and older games runs great. I use Linux, so no proplems with overly heavy windows.

...and here I was on the fence about passing along my Core2Duo parts because I have way too much stuff in general. I guess I'm going to hold on to it for now to avoid kicking myself in 10 years when all the current retro hardware dies and/or is unobtainable. My Auzentech X Meridian uses a CMedia audio chipset and I didn't realize it had such decent DOS compatibility. I've only tried that card in Windows Vista, 7 and 10. (Most feature-complete support was in Vista) I'm going to have to dust those parts off now and tinker. Thanks!

This is the exact motherboard that was in my moms pc from 2009 until 2019 when i gave her a newer ivy bridge system with an SSD and 16GB of ram.

I love socket 775 Pentium 4 (own a Pentium D 541) for late win98/ early XP gaming. Paired with a Radeon 9800XT and a SB live 5.1 it's a powerhouse. I often mess and mix to play older games as well, and love it. Board is an msi neo3-f. Also have a couple voodoo 2 evilking than I sometimes plug in, using SLI for glide games. A lot of fun! The use case in this video was one I envisioned before buying and building, but shifted gears later, as I came into a little surplus in budget I could use. Good times

I had 775 for a really long time, it is still used as a primary computer by ma parents. I replaced the E6550 with Xeon E5450 which is equal to Q9650. You can watch youtube without problems, system is working for it's age very well.

I have 3 775 PCs, running win10, win7 and XP. Great bits of kit.

Great video, Phil! Very impressive that you were able to adjust the system speed so well on such a new platform. It’s really amazing how cheap LGA775 stuff is right now. Will definitely look into that CMedia chip too - sounds great. Thanks!

Happy Friday Phil! I still love the socket 775 platform and still build retro machines that triple boot 98/ME, XP, and Win7 in some cases. I’m not too big on DOS gaming because DOSBox works pretty well for DOS games I like to play.

Linking from PC to PC with a MIDI cable is a way to get efficeint usage from a soundcard discovered to be useful like that because it means it can be shared via multiple computers, and even sometimes a breadboard _(even with some glue logic depending upon the other electronics used on it)_ with multiplexers can expand it at low cost whilst learning what makes it tick. So even if one computer has a lack lustre soundcard, as long as it has the MIDI connector, there is potential (or a USB to MIDI conversion cable). Such game ports and MIDI ports can trigger robotics or be for a control surface (open sound control or joysticks, gamepads etc.) or modding a beer-fridge light with RGB so it resembles "christmas tree lights" come "fast and furious" cars underlighting, and activation of a tune selected depending on the party theme _(Halloween, Chrimbo, or maybe the anniversary of the first time you ever snagged your trouser pocket on a door handle whilst stepping in lego and other such fond memories for which we are eternally grateful for being sent as a challenge thereby filling up our otherwise grey lives)._ As for LGA775 motherboards, some are bound to become candidates for LibreBoot (a good project worth noting). My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.

Very resourceful video, thank you!

In the beginning we thought the celeron was slow, then along came the atom

I LOVE the premise of this video!

Phil, thank you providing a cost saving alternative to buying vintage, period accurate parts!

For the past few years I have really enjoyed playing my old dos games with dosbox. I have spent some time setting up DBGL and using dosbox ece my experience has been amazing. With the ability to quickly dial in speed and sound settings and being able to easily capture the game play from the same machine makes it handy. I can also zip my entire DBGL directory and copy it across to any of my machines. I still play dos games on my older machines like my pentium2 and pentium3 machines because of the authentic sound quality from my old ISA sound cards like the ess audiodrive es1868f or the awe64 but I really find myself in DBGL more because of the simplicity and features it offers. I also think that using such newer hardware and having to adjust all those settings and running tools like cpuspeed in dos is just very time consuming and then having to change all those settings back to run windows would be a total headache. For me I came into dos games around the tail end of the era, so speed sensitive games I'm not really nostalgic for. My elementary school had an old game called digger installed on most of the computers in the classroom. I went and tracked down that game and found out it was speed sensitive but someone back in the early 2000's made a new version that fixed that issue.

I have really fond memories of my Pentium Dual Core E5400. It served me well for almost a decade until it decided to kick the bucket in 2019. I got it running Windows XP and later Windows 7. LGA 775 is an undesirable platform? Nonsense, it gets the job done more than well enough for Win XP and 7 games, DOS compatibility is just the icing on the cake. Have a good one, Phil!

i am still using a Core2Quad Q9400 on my socket 775 asus P5QC motherboard, slapped 8GB of DDR3 ram in there, a GTX760 from Palit, overclocked the cpu to 3,2 Ghz and i use it as my daily driver for Linux mint and windows 10. works well enough.

Just rambling, I really love your new hair cut.

Nice video as always Phil! Related to the sound, we can found the *CMI8738* chip in *Sweex 5.1 PCI* and *Guillemot Muse DVD* soundcards. Maybe someone has them stored there 🙂🙂🙂 Cheers!

Hey man! I swear I love your videos. If your creator studio showing you high watch hours, that'd be me! haha! I watch videos over and over. I wanna see you making a gaming pc with gt 210 and pairing it with some dual core to play games like GTA SA and stuff, haha! Maybe on some 4:3 monitor, maybe CRT?

Sheesh Phil! Keep making videos like this and I'm never going to be able clear out the junk in my parts closet. ;)

This board was everywhere back then. Almost every office/home PCs I know at that time came with this board and a conroe pentium dual core processor like E2160.

The cmi8738 has a very decent sb16 compatibility actually, i have worked on os x ppc drivers for it and it's surprising how clever their implementation is, it's also pretty decent for opl3 music, the major downside is the dac really, since you are stuck with the one built into the dsp and that's not that decent, also for filtering that not that great on lots of cards using that chip, they are quite a bit noisy, but since it also features toshlink/spdif it might also be paired with a better dac and solve those issues, you should also be able to use the digital out with the sb16 emulation or the opl3 if you get the right drivers for it.

Impressive that something as modern as a C2D can run at 286 speed. I have several 775 motherboards at this point even NOS but I have even more AM2 and AM3 motherboards. I’ve stopped collecting since a year ago because I already have way more than I have cases and power supplies to build them. Apart from a few very specific motherboards and CPUs P4, Athlon 64 and C2D stuff is still very cheap and easy to come by here. Some are even giving them for free. I’ve gifted and been gifted a few old motherboards. It’s nice to save them from being destroyed and I like it if they get put to use.

Nice video. I want those parts😂. I enjoy this hobby

nice video again phil, thanks. i want them parts! and here im sitting and playing around with two 775 mbs going between xp 64 and win 10 64 and even a little gtx 960 in sli.

Everytime I see someone run WC1 on "modern" hardware I am taken back to that electronics/record store in '91 where they had WC running on a 386 in demo loop... it attracted quite the audience and ALL of us probably knew that Amiga was dead and PC was the way to go.

The LGA 755 Platform was amazing!

In the place where I live, p4 lga 775 costs 1 USDish / 1 AUDish

I have one of the last boards from Intel that even has uefi and enough PCI slots (that's why I bought it back then). It even has speedstep and the core voltage can be lowered via windows, which many other boards cannot do. Only the energy efficiency is not so nice compared to my I7-gen2. The I7machine needs about 50% less, with 4 cores + hypertreating. But with the new tools from the vogon site, you can actually continue to use the computer for old software. Especially since my motherboard has only been running for 6 months. Thanks for the tip with the soundcard.

The 775 was always a good platform and I have a ton of that stuff for that in my storage, I have an open test rig which I can play around with when I feel like it, testing different CPUs and overclock or even underclock stuff. amazing what this platform can do with some tweaks

Good Lord 😮 happy I kept all my CAD PCs since 1987 and added some components from electronicBay over the years. Okay, my focus always has been on professional CAD Workstations and Servers, also PA-RISC and Sparc, but I got sucficiant PC in my stock suitable for retro gaming and retro business applications. 😁 Fun and quite a challenge to refurbish all that stuff without using modern workarounds. 😥 Downgrading more modern components is a possibility, but it is very uncool 😜

LGA 775 is a Great Platform.I use them for Modded 771 Xeons Great Performance for the Money Thanks for the Video.

Another great video

I have a bunch of LGA 775 motherboards. Now, with Phil's video broadcasted, this stock doubled its value. :)

I'm still using a Core 2 Quad with 8 GB of RAM and an older GPU. I mostly use it for office, web browsing, and emulation. Works fine with Windows 10. It isn't even running at full potential considering I'm pretty sure newer 775 boards at least have PCIe 2 and SATA 3

Nice work

It's really cool to see that LGA775 is still very much alive in here, I am a huge fan of the platform - especially on a desktop if you can upgrade to a Core 2 Quad CPU with 8GB RAM. Even if such a machine struggles to run modern Windows, it will run any Linux distro perfectly happily as a daily driver and for retro gaming in WINE and DOSBox.

I use a C2D E8400 with 3 GHz and 1Gb DDR 2 800 Dual Channel Ram as Windows 98 SE High End machine. It has a GeForce 7900 GT with 256 MB and 2 voodoo 2 sli cards connected via a pcie to pci bridge with its own power supply. Works flawlessly. However, if I install the two Voodoo 2 cards directly on the board in the PCI slots, the PC freezes. The G31 chipset probably doesn't like SLI in the PCI bus. I use an SB 128 PCI as the sound card, unfortunately many PCI sound cards tend to stutter under Win98 in newer systems. The DOS sound also works, even if it's not the best. With many other PCI cards, the DOS sound no longer works on newer boards (no SB16 link)

I love the 775 stuff, it's what I learned to tinker with pc's on. I had no idea you could make a core 2 this slow.

I bought a few huge boxes of scrap end of 2022 and found in it over a dozen working 775 boards, some just needed a cap replaced or something, others just worked. They have been wandering back and forth through my workshop with me developing and discarding several ideas what to do with them. Cheap Linux machines, sell the parts, nothing really made sense. Just a few weeks ago I decided to build 8 of them up into a set of Windows XP PC's that I can just wheel out of the storage for a nice small LAN-party. Maybe I'll just turn the rest into DOS machines then...

love the old 775 boards i have still got 2 i have lots of old stuff up hear in the Philippines also back in Adelaide to

i must be lucky to have gotten a PII 400 with an AWE64 for less than 15usd

I was reading about the Radeon HD6k series getting a Vulkan driver for Linux earlier today and was wondering how well Core 2 can go with DOS and even Win9x, then that night I see you've uploaded this. In theory with the right hardware (eg. HD6k + older PCI GPU, onboard HD audio + old PCI DOS compatible sound card, etc) and a lot of work it'd be entirely possible to make a PC that can natively boot DOS, Win98SE, WinXP and up-to-date Linux (ie. Proton + DXVK/VKD3D = Compatibility with a lot of even modern titles) to be able to natively run most PC games and programs from a ~45 year timespan on the single PC.

The c-media chipsets were found on the auzentech soundcards, and they were mega expensive, beating any creative card

Again, Wing Commander had a 16:10 aspect ratio! Like a lot of DOS games of this era. ^ I would buy a Thin Client with SoundBlaster support, I've watched your video and I check once in a while since.

I have a dozen 775 board. I had trouble getting sound working on these. I don't recall if I tried the Santa Cruz... but the Solo-1, Yamaha and Vortex were not working well for me. You may have inspire me to try again across the cards I have.

I've done a few nice retro builds with socket 775 boards and Celeron processor 420 1.6GHz running Windows 98SE 256MB DDR2 RAM. I haven't attempted a DOS build from one tho but I think I will give it a go.

I still have my P5PKL SE with an E8400 and 4GB of dual RAM collecting dust, it can be used as daily driver with Windows 10 LTSC, 775 was very capable, miss those days.

The Core 2 Duo series are still so versatile being able to do DOS gaming to even running the some of the most modern Linux distros like Manjaro GNOME for basic daily task, as long as you have a good SSD, 8GB RAM, and a 1/2 decent GPU.

"a one man's trash is another's treasure"

Aopen boards are awesome.

Even with an original pc with a sound blaster from that time, it's a bit fiddly to get the dos games to run with sound. Sometimes one doesn't work at all and sometimes a game just works with different irq/dma addresses than I set ^_^ nice video!👍

Lga 775 is such a fun socket. There are just sooo many options lol

used to love wing commander on my amiga! and wings? happy days!

i find lots of Socket 775 stuff in thrift shops as a result i own allot stuff from that era, might be fun to setup one with DOS

The perfect solution is use this board with SBemu, no additional sound card needed. 😜

While my first computer growing up was a Slot 1 machine, I cut my teeth learning about computers on LGA 775. So I'm equally nostalgic for that late Windows XP era hardware.

I'm using that same board on my XP/7 retro system, it's the P5KPL-AM EPU version with 4 sATA ports (SSD+HDD+ODD+5.25" sATA HDD bay), the BIOS is modded to support a quad core XEON E5450 @ 3Ghz. I'm currently typing on another ASUS board with a XEON E5450, works fairly well for daily use too, no need for new CPUs since I only play retro games 🙂

huge fan of the 775 time.. they work great across several different operating systems..

When all you have are unwanted parts, call the professional retro nerd... And I thought having a unloved 3.0ghz Pentium 4 HT was crazy lol. Speaking of crazy, somehow the P4's motherboard has no bad caps. (I check the baord every few months in hopes of spotting a problematic cap before it goes poof) It's a Sony Viao VGC RB30 btw. I saved it from becoming e waste, unfortunately somebody walked off with the stock graphics card and the "media card" and I've made some config changes myself so it's no longer stock. I installed a ATI 3600 series graphics card a 3640 and a sound blaster Audigy se,maxed out the ram, I've also unplugged the built in card reader since it's not plug and play and I can find the sony drivers, disconnected the opticals (since you can't get to them the way I have the machine setup. Its facing a wall) and installed a 4 port usb 2.0 card

For a long time I was an AMD only person, but when the Core2 came out and Phenom was a joke compared to it, I went to an Asus P5K with C2D e2200. I stayed on the LGA775 for a number of upgrades. Went Asus P5Q-E Not long after with a C3Q Q9450 then later a Q9650 (which I was still using when I left Canada and moved to the US back in 2012, That Board and CPU are mounted on my wall in honour of its long service and happy memories in gaming.

What's great about the 775 is you are right no one wants it but on the plus side the cpu's are cheap as heck. Cmedia my old favourite goto when I couldn't get a sound blaster. Funny thing is I have a stockpile of 775 board and chips. I must have seen this coming lol. Great video Phil.

I have a Core 2 Duo E6750 lying around. What kind of retro PCs could I build? It was my daily driver from 2015-2018 or so. Kind of crazy considering that’s what I used with a traditional HDD.

I like to have them. P5k pro was really good one. Two graphics slots made me flash the bios of gpus...

I'm watching this on my daily driver Asus P5P43TD Socket 775 Q9550 w/ 8 Gb RAM. This year I upgraded the GPU to a Radeon 580 8 Gb RAM card. Still works great after 10 years! Steam is going to force me to use Windows 10 next year, as they are ending support for Win 7 this December.

I have an old Dell dimension with a 775 mobo, Core 2 extreme QX6700, GT8800, Sound blaster X-Fi. It's built like a tank! It smashes XP and earlier games. I got it for about £5 years ago with no hard drives, now has 2 x 250GB 10,000 RPM drives in raid 0. Did replace the PSU as it smelled really bad. It would have been probably 2-3 grand back in the day???? The CPU alone was pushing a grand IIRC.....Crazy. Just wish it had a better board and bios. But it scratches my XP itch.

My current DOS pc is a P3 on a board with an ISA slot actually(very important for sound compatibility). Works great, and in 9/10 cases it acts as something like a 486/66, as those are also way too fast for games that are CPU bound.

LGA775, from DOS to Win 10. Can't beat that compatibility. Should work fine on Win 98 as well with the onboard graphics. The clear advantage of this config, is the onboard graphics. Be sure to get the LGA775 with the Intel Chipset, which has the Intel GMA integrated Graphics running on the FSB bus, which is DOS compatible (sadly QPI or Ringbus is not, so more modern Intel HD graphics is not usable). I'm impressed that is is possible to actually slow down a C2D CPU this much to make it speed sensitive DOS game usable.

Best part of 775 is. You can install brand new CPU cooler with RGB or just pick whatever shape you want (478 is dead end). I had that same Motherboard, but after several times fail to install winXP. The PC just die. The power still run but nothing on screen. Now it just ended on garage.

That open a door for all the cheap Core2Duo laptops we can buy or get for free. If they have at least a VGA port and a DOS-compatible soundcard this would become almost the perfect retro PC. Can you test a laptop from this era? And maybe try some DOS game with USB soundcard if the internal audio cannot be used in DOS.

is it still possible to find the gotek with the miniusb connector? cant seem to find that, only with normal floppy connector