OpenGL 2.1 or higher for Windows XP

Question

For a game I need OpenGL 2.1 or higher, but I want it to run on my good old Win XP box with an ATI Radeon 9200SE graphics card. It currently seems to have OpenGL 1.3.1008 WinXP Release and graphics driver version 6.14.10.6542 installed.

Searching for OpenGL 2.1 to download only resulted in several downloads of version 1.1 for Windows 95.

Do I need a separate OpenGL installation/upgrade or has it to be included into my graphic card driver? Where can I get it?

Solution 1

Do I need a separate OpenGL installation/upgrade or has it to be included into my graphic card driver? Where can I get it?

OpenGL can't be "upgraded", and it must be included with your graphics driver. OpenGL exposes GPU hardware capabilities to the operating system. If your GPU hardware were more capable, it could support later revisions of OpenGL on Windows XP with a newer AMD Catalyst device driver package. But your hardware is at least 6 or 7 years too old to support that.

Now, emulation of any revision of OpenGL on the CPU is possible. However, the reason that GPUs exist is that they can compute graphics operations much faster than a CPU of the same generation. For any game, whether it's simple 2D or not, my rule of thumb is, you can run its 3d renderer in software with a high-end CPU from 10 years in the future. So for an OpenGL 2.1 game, it would've had to have been released no earlier than July 2006 (since that's when OpenGL 2.1 itself was finalized), meaning we could start to see playable framerates (30 - 60 fps) when rendered in software with an optimized OpenGL 2.1 implementation on a current-gen CPU.

Of course, on current-gen Intel and AMD CPUs, we almost always have an on-die GPU that's more than capable of running an OpenGL 2.1 game, anyway, so...

Indeed, the mesa3d project maintains such an optimized software renderer as part of its project, but support for Windows is an afterthought, and building it is a bear. Additionally, they don't guarantee good performance or even correct behavior unless your CPU has SSE2 and SSSE3 and SSE4.1. A CPU contemporaneous with a motherboard with an AGP slot (something like a Pentium 4, yeah?) may have SSE2, but probably not the others.

Unless you have a high-end, modern CPU from the past 3-4 years, like a Core i7 3770K or better, you're not going to be able to emulate OpenGL 2.1 in software at a playable framerate. Not even for a very old game. Given that your CPU is probably as ancient as your GPU, you're completely out of luck. That GPU is completely "fixed-function" and does not support user-submitted code. OpenGL 2.1 runs almost any arbitrary operations on the GPU when submitted as a fragment shader. You can buy an ARM System on Chip for $1 with a GPU 1000x better than that RV280.

You're better off upgrading.

Solution 2

This is an old card from 2003 build around the RV280 GPU.Searching on this GPU we find that it supports OpenGL 1.4. That means no hardware support for OpenGL 2.1.

You either need a new card, or you need to emulate this in software. Emulating can work but will be very slow, making it a poor choice for gaming.

Comments

[Ramhound]

OpenGL support is entirely left up to hardware and driver support. You first have to determine if your hardware supports it.

[SnakeDoc]

It may be time for both hardware and OS upgrades ;P

[Byte Commander]

@SnakeDoc Not really, as that's not my main machine but the one I keep to save all my old games from death by incompatibility with newer systems. I don't use it any more except to enjoy some old classics! :D It's totally offline too, so no risk from that side either.

[SnakeDoc]

Well, in that case, although I hate to suggest it, maybe an XP VM running on a newer OS with newer hardware would do the trick. VM's usually aren't the thing you want to use for gaming, but if you must keep XP and want to play newerish games, maybe the best option. -- As an aside, have you tried running the game on a newer system but in XP compatibility mode? (right-click the game.exe --> Properties --> Compatibility: XP --> now run the program).

[Byte Commander]

@SnakeDoc To be honest, XP was the last Windows OS I really liked. I prefer Ubuntu nowadays.

[SnakeDoc]

I'm a Fedora guy myself ;-P

[Byte Commander]

Thanks, although it's bad news... Anyway, I'd love to at least try the emulation you suggested, as it's just a not very exhaustive 2D game. Can you tell me where to get such an emulator or for what exactly to search? Will it be always on or just run manually when needed?

[ganesh]

I never used any of them and I have no XP box to test with, so I am reluctant to point at any. However feel free to google around.

[Byte Commander]

@allquixotic Now that sounds really depressing... Well, then I guess I have to install that game on my normal machine instead of my "old games reservation" ;) I hoped I could keep work and games apart, but the game is too good to do without it...

[James T]

@ByteCommander Out of curiosity, what game are you so desperate to play?

[Byte Commander]

@JamesTrotter I discovered OpenClonk on Ubuntu, but it does not optimally work together with my graphic card there, so I tried if I could play it on my other computer. It's nothing special, but I just like it. ;D