Motherboard drivers & CPU support

[chenw]

Hey all,

Apart from the well known case of Kaby Lake CPUs not having drivers for Win 7 and 8.1, I was wondering, in the general scheme of things, would having drivers for a particular motherboard for a particular OS, and a CPU for the said motherboard, equate to the same OS supporting that CPU?

I am thinking about building a 32-bit Windows XP system to run games with really old installers (only 32 bit OS support 16 bit applications), and so far I am coming up with using an Athlon X4 845 CPU with an Asus A67M-Plus motherboard, which does have XP 32 bit drivers (strangely, not XP 64 bit).

A quick google-fu search did come up with someone running XP on X4 845, but he failed to mention the exact mobo, and A67M-Plus is one of the 3 motherboards left that's being sold here. The other two being MSI A68HM Grenade and Asrock A68M-ITX R2.0 (the Asrock one being my preference, but also most expensive).

Anyone tried something similar recently?

 

[Simplyfun]

Hey all,

Apart from the well known case of Kaby Lake CPUs not having drivers for Win 7 and 8.1, I was wondering, in the general scheme of things, would having drivers for a particular motherboard for a particular OS, and a CPU for the said motherboard, equate to the same OS supporting that CPU?

I am thinking about building a 32-bit Windows XP system to run games with really old installers (only 32 bit OS support 16 bit applications), and so far I am coming up with using an Athlon X4 845 CPU with an Asus A67M-Plus motherboard, which does have XP 32 bit drivers (strangely, not XP 64 bit).

A quick google-fu search did come up with someone running XP on X4 845, but he failed to mention the exact mobo, and A67M-Plus is one of the 3 motherboards left that's being sold here. The other two being MSI A68HM Grenade and Asrock A68M-ITX R2.0 (the Asrock one being my preference, but also most expensive).

Anyone tried something similar recently?

Well, I just installed a Windows 7 32 bit installation to support a piece of medical hardware that had only XP drivers (that Windows 7 32bit was more than happy to make work). The device also comes with a DOS based (16 bit) app that worked just dandy under Win 7 32, so maybe that's an option.

 

[chenw]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. My experience with backwards compatibility on Win 7 had been spotty in some places, hence the want for leapfrogging directly to XP, but that had been 64 bit win 7, not 32.

Can't hurt anyway, I already have a pretty old machine I can try, it's the form factor I want changed (ITX case as opposed to mid tower) for keeps though.

 

[Simplyfun]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. My experience with backwards compatibility on Win 7 had been spotty in some places, hence the want for leapfrogging directly to XP, but that had been 64 bit win 7, not 32.

Can't hurt anyway, I already have a pretty old machine I can try, it's the form factor I want changed (ITX case as opposed to mid tower) for keeps though.

In my hurry to relate my experience, I somehow ignored your question... "would having drivers for a particular motherboard for a particular OS, and a CPU for the said motherboard, equate to the same OS supporting that CPU"

Yes it would, that CPU runs under XP just fine, the current restriction on WIndows 7 for Ryzen and later Intel CPU's is artificial by MS to force you off Windows 7. Their call.

 

[chenw]

Ah ok, somehow I took it as Intel/AMD not supplying the proper drivers to Win 7, rather than MS being the ones preventing Win 7 being run on it.

 

[Simplyfun]

Ah ok, somehow I took it as Intel/AMD not supplying the proper drivers to Win 7, rather than MS being the ones preventing Win 7 being run on it.

The BS is real, Intel or AMD could easily have made chip set drivers and CPU support for Windows 7. There are threads here on this of course.

Most XP drivers for hard to find hardware install until 32 bit Windows 7. Most software will run if you take your time with compatibility mode, though there are exceptions that violate inherent security rules in Win 7, most can be worked around by running the software as Administrator. If all that fails and it's not graphically intense, run it in a VM.

 

[chenw]

I tried VM but so far absolutely zero games I have tried to run actually worked in the said VM. They are definitely not graphically intensive, hence the want to build an XP machine. I have officially given up on using VMs in general. Though I admit I hadn't tried to use a Linux VM and running Wine in that.

The machine I plan to build is relatively simple, and only requires enough drivers for it to run (X4 845/A68M/probably 750ti 1GB). Right now it's more of a curiosity than anything else, since I didn't expect any hardware that are still being sold these days to still have XP support (guess I should thank AMD for that), and I wanted to use this opportunity to have a machine that can run multiple versions of OS to keep legacy games alive. Windows 10 has been a bit better than Win 7 in this regard at least though.