If that's using the XP Mode app created for Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate, there were some issues I'd encountered due to the limited video support for applications within the app.  Seems like a real hassle with little reward IMHO.

Win 8 Pro + Build in Hyper-V is my choice. Had too many crashes with Virtualbox in the past...

Thanks for the heads up, Doc, I have bookmarked the linked page for future reference and have downloaded the relevant file from MS to try out when I'm on my main rig with Win 8.1 Pro... currently on my lil laptop with Win 8 standard.

In fact, if this works out okay on my main rig - running XP purely for gaming in virtual mode - I can then dedicate the XP box I've been rebuilding to run Ubuntu, Robolinux and other Linux distros.

I read an article some while back regarding this and the solution was to assign more memory to the virtual machine to accomodate more graphics intensive files, like games, ect.  Apparently, many users were assigning just the recommended memory of 192mb, which was not enough to run graphics intensive applications or games.   I never tried this out in Win 7 so I cannot say if this entirely correct or not.

Yes, I think that is the way I will try to run this, having had some crashes using Virtualbox in the past.  It may have been improved upon since I last tried it, but I'd prefer it if Win 8.1 can run it natively... saves having to install additional software.