What are the possibilities of the Intel HD 4600 iGPU on my i5-4590?

Since you got an Ivy Bridge CPU with the Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics you are in luck for some fun retro XP gaming!

You could install XP SP3 on your laptop and run some DirectX 9.0c games on it and get pretty decent results. I tried a few games from early to mid 2000 and they seem to handle very well on it. The Intel HD 4000 is the last and final IGPU that Intel has provided XP and Vista drivers. Anything above this model such as the Intel HD 4200 you will have to use Windows 7 and higher.

As for the Intel HD 4600, even though it is more powerful than the HD 4000, the fact that they removed XP and Vista driver support just makes it a waste since most of the games that run on Windows 7 need the power of a beefier discrete graphics card. It probably won't be till the Intel HD 7000 or Intel HD 8000 series before you'll find a worthy enough IGPU to run your games on that aren't about a decade old.

Before you begin installing XP you'll need to write down from your computer's Device Manager the Audio device such as a Realtek model, the Wired and Wireless Network card models, and most importantly the Intel Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller specific to your motherboard. Try and locate all the XP drivers for all these components. You'll need the correct SATA AHCI driver for the F6 stage to install a third party driver during the Windows Setup. A traditional install will require an internal or external USB 1.44MB floppy drive with the copied SATA AHCI drivers downloaded from the Intel website onto the root drive of the floppy disk A:. If you don't have a floppy drive you could bypass this by slipstreaming the SATA AHCI drivers using nLite onto a copy of the XP CD stored in a hard drive folder. Then burn this folder onto a CD and boot from it.

Here is a Youtube video file that demonstrates the F6 process when using a floppy drive to install the SATA AHCI drivers. Without the correct SATA AHCI drivers you will get a Blue screen and white letters with the error code STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oDT40ewh90

Once you've installed XP SP3 successfully, the first driver I would install is the Intel HD 4000 Graphics driver. Then follow up with installing the XP audio driver for your sound device. You can also install the HDMI audio driver for the Intel HD 4000 if you plan on using HDMI for your video and audio output. The wired and wireless network driver installations are optional if you plan on using the internet or a network. If not, I would not install these and your computer will be more secure since the devices are not functional inside the OS without the drivers installed. You can now play your XP legacy games on your Intel HD 4000 equipped laptop. Some games may require an installation of DirectX 9.0c if you didn't install SP3. I would advise installing a slipstreamed version of XP SP3 if you are using a hard drive with over 120GB in capacity or risk data corruption. A 128GB SSD hard drive might be the capacity limit using XP with no service packs installed.

Now you can enjoy legacy XP gaming on your integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics on your laptop.

If you plan on using this as a dual boot setup you will need to restore your Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 boot loader or else you will only boot to XP.

Here is a fix for this situation:
https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/tips-and-tricks/recovering-windows-bootloader/

I have used the Intel HD 4000 to run XP SP3 and do some old school DirectX 9.0c gaming with no problems.

Good luck.:lol:

No problem. I'd keep that laptop around if you ever decide to try installing XP on it.

I use the i5-2500K and i5-3570K and they both run XP games on it no problem. I just wish Intel had programmed the HDCP into the XP driver so I could use my Blu-ray player instead of using Vista to do it.

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call XP a downgrade. In some ways it feels like an upgrade. It runs super fast even on 1GB of RAM and with 4GB even better. Any excess memory you can use it as a large ramdrive. You could setup a dual OS boot if you wanted to have XP and Window 8.1 running on the same system. XP would perform smoother and quicker too using less resources. An installation of XP SP3 uses only 1.6GB when fully installed. Windows 8.1 uses about 20GB. I tested XP SP3 vs Vista SP2 and XP seemed way more responsive using Crysis 1 as the test subject. The fact that it is a clean OS installation free of bloatware and smaller footprint would make it run amazingly fast.

Although I can't see using an Intel HD 4000 on Windows 8.1 being that great for games. I would think most of the newer games made for Windows 8.1 are more graphic intensive and would slow to a crawl on anything higher than low settings.

If you check out www.gog.com or some old steam games there are plenty that run under XP just fine.

But honestly the games you've listed are way to too new for it because they were released during the time of Vista and Windows 7. I'd use a discrete graphics card to play those games on. The games that would run fine on the Intel HD 4000 would probably be in early 2001-2004 and that's stretching it a bit. The closest equivalent to a discrete graphics card performance would be a HD 6450. It maybe just a little more powerful. I know the HD 3000 was just about equal to it and sometimes it felt a little more sluggish when playing Blu-ray movies.

As for the PS2 ouch. I thought you said PS3 but I read it wrong.

I still got my PS2 still sealed in the box. I plan to open it one day to play half a dozen PS2 games that are still sealed. I bought it because my PS3 FAT boy missed the PS2 backward compatibility cut off model.

My PS3 FAT never suffered any YLOD or RLOD. It did suffer a laser light of death. One day playing a Blu-ray it started stuttering and the picture jammed. I reset it and it couldn't read any discs. I thought it was a goner but I gave it a shot and bought a replacement laser on eBay for under $20 and fixed it myself and it works just like it did brand new. I never really played any PS3 games on it mainly Blu-ray.

But during that time period I had figured how to play my Blu-rays on XP and used only about 35 Watts total.

The PS3 FAT used like 115 Watts and it got pretty hot too. The only cool thing about the PS3 was you could play movies in double speed with the audio.

I never updated the Rom above v3.15 because if you did you lost the option to install "OTHER OS".

The other reason I resorted to the PC to play Blu-ray was because newer Blu-ray movies needed you to update the AACS keys and the only way you could do that on a PS3 was to update the Firmware. No way was I updating it above v3.15.

Also, I remember when I first got it brand new, if you left a PS3 game or Blu-ray in the drive and turned it on it would auto play it. One revision I updated to possibly after v2.70 altered that and it stopped auto playing the disc I left in the PS3. That was a major beef with the firmware updates since you couldn't revert back.

What's the point of waiting for the PS3 to boot up and then clicking the play button?

Anyhow, last Black Friday I bought 3 of those so called PS3 slims. And yes I agree the sliding door and the quality seems cheap. I think they did a better job with the PS2 slims. The only good thing about the PS3 slims are they use less wattage and are a cooler running the PS3 FATs.

I think they were $200 each so I might end up selling them or just using them for multiplayer since PS3 online play is FREE!


As for the Intel HD 4000, some great games I did manage to play was Crysis 1 on low settings.
Another old shooter based on the Quake 3 engine was an underrated game called Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. You can still download the demo online. Battlefield 2 should work. Fallout 1, Starcraft 1, Half-Life 2, Fear, Battlefield 1942, and Unreal Tournament.

For games that might run on Windows 8.1? Hard to say. I think maybe Crysis 1 64 bit, Fallout 3, World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, and Grand Theft Auto IV. I think most of these aren't too intensive and can get by on low settings. Most of these Vista games should work on Windows 8.1 with some compatibility tweaking.

Not all of the newer games are great. Sure they might have some extra flash eye candy like Transformers 4. But some really good games have a great story and replayability. I know there are some www.gog.com games that support Windows 7 which Windows 8.1 should be backward compatible and they are starting to release new games soon and their own online gaming network GOG Galaxy in the future.


If you are looking for a great graphics card that can do XP, Vista, 7, and 8 and haven't bought anything yet the best bang for the buck performance low wattage pick for a rear single slot GTX 750 is the Asus GTX750-PHOC-1GD5. This is first graphics card from nVidia that caught my eye. I loved the Sapphire Ultimates from AMD but the GTX 750 is the best performance to wattage efficient card I've seen in a long while. The last card I almost went for was the HD 7750 but it was missing the video connectors I wanted and the GTX 750 is double the performance and equal wattage so now I have no reason to get it. This should perform even better than two HD 7750 using CrossfireX.

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GTX750PHOC1GD5/

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1034240-REG/asus_gtx750_phoc_1gd5_geforce_gtx750_oc_1gd5.html
$125 Tax Free and Free Shipping from New York

The Asus GTX750-PHOC-1GD5 is the only video card I could locate that has the old legacy VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI all on a single rear slot bracket unlike most other brands that use up two rear brackets. This makes this a prime card to try and turn into a passive card.


The only other better performer is the EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Superclocked
http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-3753-KR

Sells for $150 usually but I found this site marking it down to $130 if you buy right away.
http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=94331&promoid=1286&gclid=CJ-pgOHJ2L8CFUcV7AodcSYAFQ

This is also a great card but my only beef is I hate adapters that stick out the back and the DVI-D to VGA adapter is just something I'd rather not have jutting out the back when I use VGA. But those who want a taste of G-sync might choose this card.

It uses two rear slots and the vents allow dust, bugs, and pet fur to go in and I can't have that stuff in my passive system.



What is going into your new build?

Do you already have a good discrete graphics card? What are you using now?

That is a fine build

Looks like a nice build.

I got an AsRock running in mine as well.

That Intel® HD Graphics 4600 probably will do good in Windows 8.1.

Great video connector options for the integrated.

The only thing you might want updated instead of the DVD drive is a Blu-ray internal drive. I got one on sale for about $65. If you want more versatility like being about to use it on a laptop or desktop, the Samsung USB 2.0 External Slim Portable Blu-ray Writer Model SE-506BB/TSBD is a good pick.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AT1ET9796
$100

I got the same SSD but the 830 Series.

One Rosewill case that I did like was that THOR V2. It's huge but it looked well made.
http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/rosewill_thor_v2_review,1.html

One of the contenders for my graphic cards picks was a MSI GAMING N750 TF 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 750 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card.

It looks just like yours. If I remember correctly this model had the best cooling. But my need to try to make it a single slot passive forced it out of contention. I think this was my best pick for a dual slot rear setup.

I don't think it is necessary to update any driver for a DVD drive to operate in Windows and you should be fine with the built-in DVD default driver if the manufacturer doesn't have an up to date driver yet for you to install on Windows 8.1.

Sometimes you can update the firmware if it fixes a hardware issue that you discovered.

But I always go by the if it isn't broken don't fix it mentality.

In fact, I've never downloaded any driver for any of my optical CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drives in order to get it to work.

The only exception is the Blu-ray drive under XP. You need the UDF v2.5 driver to read the contents on Blu-ray discs unless you are using a 3rd party program that can decode it for you.

Anything Vista and higher comes with a UDF reader driver so it is irrelevant to your situation.