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Gamers, Upgrade your Systems
jbischof writes "Looking to upgrade your aging PC? Ace's Hardware has a new upgrade guide tailored specifically to gamers. The data shows exactly which upgrades - processor, motherboard, gfx card, or combination of the three - will give the best performance boost on all the latest and most popular games (according to their recent poll)."
OK, so I'm only vaguely impressed with Ace's gaming system... Seems to me like they're splitting hairs over upgrades of off-the-shelf equipment. Here's my question for all of you slashdotters:
Given the above article, and the premise that slashdotters have a wider range of experience than Ace, what would be the ideal configuration for a stereo-video enabled gaming system? Say I want something that can run Stereo-Quake or Stereo-Descent... Also assume that cost isn't really a factor (wish that were true, but I'm just pipe dreaming here...).
Besides the CPU and motherboard, there's also things like monitors (stereo projection monitors?), controllers (throttles, immersion gloves, goggles), stereo audio systems (THX?), and even room design. What would slashdotters put together with a beefy $50K to $100K budget, eh? Assume that the project is to put together the ultimate stereo-Quake VR simulator, and that you have access to the code of the game...
I've noticed most of the hardware freaks spend 99% of their time posting benchmarks in forums, and rarely play anything.
They run 3DMarks and try to outdo (outspend) each other. But they cant tell you how to get past the 3rd boss of $GAME because they havent played it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Except there never was any such card. To the best of my knowledge, anyway. This would be fine except they mention this imaginary product twice. Perhaps they mean a GTS, GTS Pro, MX, or Geforce 3 Ti 200?
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
It's a troll. Amsterdam Vallon is an interesting troll poster - in this discussion there's the above seemingly pro-linux comment, and another down below that's pro-gamecube (and thus approximately opposed to linux gaming). This is the typical pattern.
It's a neat social experiment because usually one troll will get modded up while another gets modded down. And that initial modding changes the nature of conversation in the whole thread. It's like a coin toss.
It's also a good way to combine trolling with karma whoring, because if you post at +1 you can only be modded down twice, but you can be modded up four times. If you post at +2 you lose that benefit, but you still break even so once you're at 50 karma who cares.
Tip of the hat from a fellow troll.
Actually, the life-span of consoles is about five years. And even when no one makes new games for those older consoles, the games all still work (baring damage to the console or the media).
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I've scrimped up engouh money for one of the now cheapish 23" HD Cinema displays (1920x1200 of rock-steady pixel lovin') from Apple. Unfortunately, I'll have to upgrade my ATI AIW Radeon because it puts out a max of 1280x1024 to DVI. I'll need a DVI->ADC converter to drive the monitor, which runs about $100. I now have VERY cach little left for the video card.
Can anyone suggest a video card with good Linux support, able to put out DVI at the above res, and able to scale DVD video to that size? I don't ever use 3d, so performance is less of an issue. Price and linux support are tho. I notice apple's website suggests that the HD display hates matrox, loves ATI or nvidia. Any idea why?
Best of all woudl be if you actually have such a setup running, and can confirm it works
Actually, the article has a suprising (at least for me) conclusion: strategy / RPG games may benifit by upgrading your video card (they're really starting to take advantage of that stuff) whereas first person shooters require more CPU (due to increased AI). The FPS games used were Battlefield 1942 and Ghost Recon.
This is fairly contrary to what I've heard in the past, which was always the opposite.
Windows will still write to the pagefile even if you have RAM to spare.
For example, my machine with 512 meg of RAM has an OS footprint of about 89 meg with XP installed. That leaves me with over 400 meg of physical RAM free. But when I run a game that uses up 100 meg of that RAM, 60 meg ends up in the page file. There's no good reason for it to do so that I know of, but it happens anyway. I almost never hit the limit of my physical RAM but I'm still stuck with that page file and the thrashing that goes with it.
I've found that turning it off in Windows performance settings can get a temporary boost but long before I hit the ceiling I start getting "low on memory" errors. If the OS would utilize the RAM to its full potential first, I'd be much happier. Otherwise why do I have 512 meg in my machine?
I chimed in on another gaming-related theme a little while back to ask Why... and how... these guys justify spending so much money on what I consider to be only marginally superior systems.
I'm all for the purist who wants absolute quality, however. The audiophile who dumps $3000 on their system does not puzzle me, because for those people, the listening provides such great enjoyment that they feel the expense is worth it. That's cool. You could say the same thing about gaming computers, I suppose, but the crucial difference: these fanboys don't know what quality is, they just know specs, by and large. Hell, most of these clowns keep quoting stuff like 'games that run at 60 frames per second' without knowing that their fucking TV only shows them 30.
I mean, 90% of the people in 1st-world nations cannot discern the difference between Windows and Mac. They cannot see it. Physically cannot see it. Does anyone seriously think that these people look at the side-by-side displays of the GC, PS2 and XBOX in Toys'r'us and proclaim the XBOX as the hands-down winner? No damn way. *i* can barely tell the difference, and I am a graphic designer. Sure, I know to look for antialiased edges, poly counts, etc. but the average gamer dude just wants to know if the latest NFL roster is included.
I also echo your other comment on older games. I still plunk in WipeOut XL on my PS2 and it's a blast.
I admire the PC Gaming Afficionado's tenacity, but I'd rather spend the extra $500-1000 on, oh, say, another 10-20 quality games.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Perhaps someone needs to make a Linux for Gamers distribution. Include all the free games, all the demo games, and make it stupid easy. Include a stupid easy email client and Mozilla ... and XMMS. It needs nothing else. Sell the idea to people like Blizzard, Sierra, and EA. It could be like console systems, with upgradable hardware. It could have software that checks for driver updates for their hardware, and has an overclocker app.
Shit, you could even do the hardware route. I bet AlienWare would pick it up if it were good enough. They're doing the MS Media Center thing as it is.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
With the possible exception of the last point, yes, all of this is possible with a PC.
controllers There are some great dual-shock clones available, such as the Thrustmaster FireStorm Dual Power, the Logitech RumblePad, and the Gravis Eliminator AfterShock. Plug in as many as you like, depending on game support.
living room A modest gaming system can fit in an attractive micro ATX case. Flex ATX is pushing it, unless you can find a motherboard with a decent 3D chip.
screen Get a video card with TV out. At 640x480, you'll be able to crank up the detail, anti aliasing, and anisotropic filtering. Of course, you always have the option of higher resolution with HDTV, monitor, LCD projector, etc.
noise You can build a quiet PC, so long as you don't use fire-breathing parts like a GeForce FX. If you don't want to build, it can be difficult to tell how loud a store-bought system will be.
no keyboard Well, I see the lack of keyboard as the biggest weakness of consoles. I suppose you could map some macros with the game-pad drivers to launch your favorite games.
Clearly, a console is a more efficient way to get couch-potato gaming. If you don't have a decent PC to start with, it's also cheaper. I just love the depth and breadth of PC games. Grand Theft Auto and Madden are great, but I can't give up WarCraft, NASCAR Racing, Falcon, and first-person shooters.
I upgrade when my family starts bitching about how slow their second-hand computers are. They get the old for cheap, and I get a decent hand at paying for the new.
... and too many hard drives to plug in at once, dammit! All in my lovely aluminum Lian-Li PC-65.
My dad says "The slowest part of this computer is me. Can you upgrade me instead?"
Surprisingly, this works out about the same. P1 133 to P2 350 to P3 1000 to a shiny new P4 2400 just two days ago! I tried to find the perfect Asus board (Always Asus! Always!) for an AMD this time, but I'm too damned picky....I wanted the new 533 bus speed and some 333 ram. I was also so disgusted with my Creative Audigy MP3 and its many driver issues that I wanted a built in sound card just to get rid of the headache.
Asus p4s533-E
P4 2.4 533
512MB of PC2700 DDR Ram (there's room to grow!)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (highly recommended!)
I named it "Thor".
Tell me about it. I have 640MB RAM, and Windoze still grinds away at the swap file all the time.
I've completely disabled virtual memory on a few Winboxes, and the performance (and often stability) increase is astounding! We have a P2/400 hooked up to the home theatre for DivX, MP3, etc. It used to play DivX horribly slow off the network, stuttering, skipping, and freezing all over the place. We found out it was buffering it in swap... turned off virtual memory, BANG, played without missing a frame.
Unfortunately, a number of apps and games seem to be designed to specifically use VM, and won't work with it turned off, so I always end up having to turn it back on.
Conspiracy to convince people they need ever faster machines? Who knows.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I'm still disappointed to see a lack of comparisons between SDRAM and DDR. I have an XP1800 on KT133a and really don't want to have to change the motherboard, RAM etc. If I drop a faster video card on it (currently running a o/ced GF3 ti200), will it go to waste? If I drop a faster CPU on it, will it starve for bandwidth?
Really I guess it boils down to what Doom3 needs to go properly, and whether or not I give a shit about PC gaming once it finally comes out. The price/performance of my PS2 looks pretty good right now.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
What hardware is supported 100% by the manufacturer for Linux. Building a gaming system is cool and all, but when you install Linux on it and find out you can't use TV-out or about half the features of your video card. It makes me feel like I've been ripped off.
I don't want to buy any more hardware unless I know I won't run into NDA/IP walls that restrict me from getting good drivers. My money is worth more than a useless hunk of silicon.
How do we build a Linux gaming system with analog video In and Out. Better yet I would like to build a small, possibly portable, video streaming box out of a cheap mini PC using Linux. I can totally customize the interface, but finding good quality supported hardware is a bitch and a half. The last thing I want to do is buy something, install Linux on it and find out the manufacturer is like Trident and doesn't want to release documentation for their ultra secret super technical dirt-cheap video card to the community.
Actually, what I'd like to see is when consoles get decent mouse/keyboard support. Then, no more boundaries. I can finally play WASD FPS and *Craft RTS on my console.
In fact, games are the only thing that prevent me from going Linux for my primary home desktop. Web surfing, office docs, email, CD burning, works great on Linux. No complaints. Ghost Recon? Oops, sorry.
Personally, as a Linux advocate I support the advancement of consoles. Because when a console can replace my PC as my game platform of choice (network, mouse, keyboard are the only missing components) then I can finally replace my Microsoft OS with Linux.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Unfortunately Microsoft knew this and created DirectX as a way to keep game makers from writing to the mac platform. At least thats what former MaximumPC editor Alex St. John said( Former marketer of directx from Microsoft). Microsoft began development during the multimedia crazy during the mid 90's. Apple was regarded as a superior multimedia platform and this scared Bill Gates. Later they marketed it as an alternative to OpenGL because OpenGL was too portable.
DirectX was even used in quake1 and quake2 even though the rendering was done in opengl. DirectX was used for displaying the already rendered graphics and for sound. You can find the dll's if have it installed.
Until alternatives mature expect more games to be leaving the mac and Linux and going to the Windows platform.
http://saveie6.com/
There are plenty of games available for the PC that are not available for any console. No matter what platform you use be it a console or a PC, you are going to find games exclusively for it and games that are unavailable for it.
The games that I like to play are available on the PC, and by and large PC only. Dark Age of Camelot, Civilization 3, Sim City 4 and UT 2003 are my current favourites. The first 3 are PC only and I would argue that UT 2003 is superior to it's X-box equivlant, Unreal Championship.
So for me a PC is my idea gaming machine since it has what I want to play, but also since I'm going to own one anyhow. Even if there was not a single game available, I'd still own a powerful PC for other thigns.
Now that's not to say that a PC is the best platform or right for everyone. There isn't a universally "best" gaming platform, it all depends on what it is that you want.
The problem I have is with console zealots that somehow feel threatened by PC gaming and lash out and declare PCs to be inferior or stupid or so on. No, they are a legitimate platform, with advantages and disadvantages, like any other. People just need to choose the platform or platforms that meet their needs (I know many people that play games on a PC and a console) and then be comfortable with that choice.
My rule is never pay more then $100 for a piece of hardware. Sure I live about a year behind but I dont seem to notice. Never ran across a game I couldn't play yet due to hardware being outdated.
And you've got four or more controllers plugged in to that PC?
:-) More realistically, I have three, though I've only ever used two at once.
Sure, USB. Try and plug 127 controllers into your console.
It's in your living room where you can all sit in comfort.
Err...no, PCs have better online support. No need to make friends walk over to your house to play.
It's plugged in to a screen bigger that 19".
Nope. Why would I want it to be? The resolution is much more important than the size. Heck, the other day I was playing a Dreamcast game from a projector to get a 20' tall image. Looked awful.
You have a bunch of friends who come over to play.
They don't *need* to, because they can play remotely.
Which, granted, is about fifteen feet away in a dorm...
The machine doesn't make more noise than the F1 car sounds coming from the stereo as you play.
My computer is much more quiet than the PS/2 my roommate has. That has a ridiculously loud drive, and you can hear the thing read. Last time I played on an Xbox, same thing was true. Dunno about the GC.
You don't keyboard or mouse to do anything.
Because you *cannot* use the keyboard or mouse. Which, for many types of games is a *huge* drawback. The mouse is *much* better than a controller for strategy games (real time or turn based). It's also much better for FPSes. The keyboard is essential for games that use more than the puny eight buttons or so on the gamepad (a proper Quake setup, a roguelike), anywhere you want to type text...
May we never see th