Getting a Radeon R9 380 card to work with Windows XP

[Nathan Last]

Hi, I'm a little new here so please excuse my ignorance. I have a custom desktop PC running Windows 7 and I recently decided I would try and install XP in a dual boot scenario. Yes, I know, XP is basically useless in 2016 but I'd like to be able to play certain retro games without dealing with the modern OS bugs. The motherboard drivers installed fine, and everything seems to work, except for the graphics driver. Try as I might, I could not force the windows 7 driver to work on xp. I tried manually installing the driver, installing it using the device manager, and even modifying certain .msi files to remove the "os is not supported" popup. Nothing has worked. Increasing the resolution to my native monitor resolution fixes the ugly UI problem, but 3D elements don't render correctly and when I move desktop windows they glitch out and stutter. My question is, does anyone know if there is a way to manually install a graphics driver by moving files around from the installer CD to the hard drive, (or really any other way to get this to work)? Thanks!

OS: Windows XP Professional x32
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon R9 380 Windforce 2GB

 

[bazz2004]

Don't overlook using a virtual OS in say VMware Player. You can then install XP on current hardware and sidestep all the dual boot and driver issues. If you save a copy of your virtual XP install you are able to reinstall it very quickly if it corrupts. Basically you run XP like a program within Windows 10 (or W7 if you prefer). Problems with XP can't mess up your Host OS and there are no worries about dual boot. You'll find plenty on the forum about using a virtual OS.

 

[Nathan Last]

Don't overlook using a virtual OS in say VMware Player. You can then install XP on current hardware and sidestep all the dual boot and driver issues. If you save a copy of your virtual XP install you are able to reinstall it very quickly if it corrupts. Basically you run XP like a program within Windows 10 (or W7 if you prefer). Problems with XP can't mess up your Host OS and there are no worries about dual boot. You'll find plenty on the forum about using a virtual OS.

I thought about using Windows XP Mode, which is a free feature on windows 7 pro, my main OS, but it doesn't support 3D effects, neither does Oracle Virtualbox. About VMware Player, do you know if 3D effects will work out of the box on the guest OS, or will I still need to find and install my driver? Thanks.

 

[bazz2004]

I think that the answer is yes but I am not using XP to play games. I put in a search and there were relevant articles coming up.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=3d+graphics+in+xp+vmware+player

VMWare also have a forum where you can get expert assistance.