Building A High-End Gaming Workstation

Alan writes "What's the best platform for playing games *and* doing work? That's the very question FiringSquad tries to answer in the sequel to last year's short but popular workstation building article. This time, they've went with a "no-budget, but don't waste money" approach. There are a dozen products reviewed in the article, some never before reviewed on the 'net, and this time, there's no system building detail left untouched. Discussed are AC line conditioners, 2D graphics performance, and more. This more than 12,000 word article is the most detailed article ever in its genre. "

Comments

Windows, hands down.

[Randolpho]

Best platform for games, hands down, and you can do just as much work with it as you can on any other platform.

I like to dual-boot some random linux distro for when I need good old-fashioned CLI goodness that I can't get from DOS, but I mostly stay on Windows.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[ClioCJS]

If you need to reboot to linux for good ol CLI goodness, you may want to try using JPSoft's 4NT, a superior (think zsh vs sh) command line for Windows boxes. I'm pretty sure it can do just about everything any unix command line can do, once you gather a few supporting utilities (ie grep).

Re:Windows, hands down.

[smd4985]

no doubt, mSindows is the best PC platform to get your gaming on and is also probably your best bet for a workstation too. i'm in the market for a Linux box though, probably a Athlon 64 with RH9. i've just come to realize that i hate relying on closed-source software - you just don't know what the software is doing with the myriad of data you store, and i don't trust windows to keep it secure either....

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mostly stay on Windows.

And you admit this on Slashdot? You are brave. ;)

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Gaming Workstation?

Is anyone else stuck buy the self-cancelling nature of this description?

Laugh time!

I guess if you are going to strech the idea of a workstation this far, then you can probably call a Windows computer a workstation with a straight face.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[azzy]

> I like to dual-boot some random linux distro for when I need good old-fashioned CLI goodness that I can't get from DOS, but I mostly stay on Windows.

So when you're on windows.. and you want to perform some sort of command line task on it, you boot into linux? What windows task requires you booting into linux to perform it?

I can't imagine one.. but then I don't use windows much.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Bluelive]

Try cygwin, Especially when loopbacking to openssh, youll get the cli/unix while never leaving windows.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[larry bagina]

ok, you don't trust what closed source software might do with your data. Fair enough.

Are you really going to look through (and understand) every line of code in RH9? After all, trojans, bugs, and dubious "features" have been found in Open Source software. And will you recompile every utility, or use the binaries red hat gives you? How do you know they weren't altered in some way? The GNU ftp server was compromised earlier this year. shit does happen. Disgruntled employees do things. Open Source by itself doesn't solve your distrust problems.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[the_2nd_coming]

no...Windows XP Media Center Edition is the best system for Gaming, and PVR, and DVD writing, and....

Re:Windows, hands down.

[BigGerman]

Easy - WorkStation is where the work stops.
Just like Bus Station or Train Station.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Ianoo]

Don't worry about this guy, based on his posting history he's the worst kind of FUD-spreading Microsoft apologist.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget your tinfoil hat.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, did I miss something? Where is the FUD in this post? You do know that FUD stands for "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt"? You're spreading FUD about this person ... why?

Re:Windows, hands down.

[0x0d0a]

Best platform for games, hands down, and you can do just as much work with it as you can on any other platform.

[sigh] An ever-so-true comment. Well, the state of Linux gaming is slowly being improved from a global standpoint (though the setback of having Loki go under definitely sucked).

Re:Windows, hands down.

[RevMike]

Easy - WorkStation is where the work stops.
Just like Bus Station or Train Station.

So a space station is where space stops? :)

Re:Windows, hands down.

[brarrr]

gaming workstation? isn't that an oxymoron?

I suppose it fits with "windows productivity"

good luck though.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[molarmass192]

The referenced article never brings the OS into question. The "platform" is the hardware in this context. To get back offtopic, I think it depends on what criteria you use to qualify the "best" OS for gaming. If variety of games is the main criteria, then Linux fails by a wide margin. Granted, there's WINE and WineX but I've used 'em, they're ugly kludges and you can really tell in the experience. However, if pure performance in FPS is the main criteria, then Linux wins. The fact that you can tune and optimize Linux for a given task means it can always be made to outperform Windows given identical hardware.

Even though I'm a Linux user, I'll be the first to admit that if gaming is a primary objective for your setup, then you should only consider Linux if you're going to be dual booting and playing games under Windows. As a side note, I do play games, primarily UT23K and RTCW-ET, and they scream under Linux but since I don't dual boot, I'm also locked out of other games I would like to play like C&C Generals. In the meanwhile, I anxiously await the next major time sink coming to Linux, Doom 3!!!

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are incapable of productivity even using windows, you are most definitely in need of some very basic computer lessons taught in middle school. Thank you.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[RevMike]

Are you really going to look through (and understand) every line of code in RH9? ... Open Source by itself doesn't solve your distrust problems.

Very true - Open Source does NOT guarantee security. Using closed source, however, means that you have to trust the entity producing the software. Open Source means that the software can be independantly audited.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Merk]

Sure, If you head towards Earth from Remulak 7, the Space Station is the last "stop" before you enter the atmosphere.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Theatetus]

What windows task requires you booting into linux to perform it?

Just about anything involving file manipulation by regular expressions. I know that there is Cygwin and I know there's even a grep/sed/awk implementation for plain old Win32, but in my experience these are buggy, and their differences from the [U|(Li)]n[i|u]x versions, while small, are very annoying at least to me.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Digital11]

Ya know, you make yourself look pretty stupid when you use a TLA and obviously have no clue as to its definition. FYI, the Slashdot editors and most of the SlashBots(TM) are the ones that do the FUD-spreading, and more often than not unecessarily. Based on reading your post history you're nothing but a Johnny-Come-Lately open source zealot who is doing it just because you think its cool and really don't even understand your cause.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[_xeno_]

I basically do the same thing you do, but if you really need some CLI goodness in Windows, simply use Cygwin. All the Linux goodies you'd need for your Windows system, and you can play games too.

And for the person who called the above FUD, read the journal entry. It lists a whole lot of reasons why Windows offers a better desktop experience than Linux and at the bottom has some suggestions on how to improve the Linux experience - although the journal entry is now over six months old.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[smackjer]

I think the word you're looking for is OXYMORON.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[SethJohnson]

That dude is talking out his ass when he says he boots into linux when he needs 'CL goodness that DOS can't provide". He was just trying to temper his pro-windows rant by claiming to use Linux. As anyone who uses Linux and windows to any great extent knows, the cool command line tools that originated in Linux have all been ported to windows... you just have to install them seperately. Because their usefulness wasn't conceived in Redmond, they don't come bundled with Windows.

This guy is a 100% point-and-clicker. He percieves that others prefer a CL environment and wants people to think he's hip to the CL. But to use Linux just for a CL, well, that's about like sitting in your car in the driveway to listen to the radio. You can listen to the stereo in your house just the same. And it's silly to just sit in your driveway listening to the radio when you could be driving around.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even *read* the article? This is hardware we're talking about, not software.

Or were you too desperate to get your comment in that you don't have time to make it relevant, and just wanted to warm your hands on the soft glow of recognition it brings you?

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Randolpho]

You're right; I'm a 100% point-n-clicker. I rarely feel the need for a CLI. And yes, most of the time, DOS does what I need it to do.

There are times when I need to use linux, mostly for cross-platform testing, so I dual-boot. I openly admit that it's rare that I need switch.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[faaaz]

"Best platform for games, hands down"

My choice would be PS2. I enjoy playing console games sitting in my couch, and preferably together with some friends. There's Q3 and Enemy Territory for Linux when I need my FPS fix or online play.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

beside the peer review. most open source software have signitures and checksums that go a little more into making sure the sofware is legit and as intended. of couse stuff happens. i even think his parnoia is a little extream. but generally speaking there are more checks involved with the open sorce stuff.

not to say that closed source software doesn't have these checks. it is hard to find out if it has been comprimised or if there is even reason to wonder about it . remeber apple had a virus in the verry cd that updated (or installed) it own os. closed source seems to be little more laxed ion this deparrtment unless something has bitten them.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Anonymous Coward]

how about the biggest oxymoron ever marketed. "microsoft works".

Re:Windows, hands down.

[be-fan]

Actually, you can't. It wins for games, yes, but its development tools are trash. I have to maintain cross platform software, and my Windows configuration is my biggest headache. For example, path handling sucks. If you install something to "Program Files/OmniORB" you have to add that add that to your path. Same thing for library and binary paths. In Linux, it installs to /usr, and you don't have to fuss at all. Don't even get me started on the NT shell. Cygwin is okay, but there is a very perceptible delay launching simple commands like 'ls' and 'cd'. Also, the inability to resize the Cygwin window however you want drives me *insane*.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[133t f001]

All other things aside, configurability of the GUI, direct manipulation of data, the ability/benifit of tweaking the source code for one's specific hadware and software needs.

The size of the library and the "relative" ease of installation of the games "out there" mean that for the forseeable future, I will by buiding my game boxes with Windoze.

For my day-to-day work, you will find me on a Linux (currently RH9) or BSD (FreeBSD 4.0) box until I can afford to order my dream Apple machine.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[codeguy007]

Because their usefulness wasn't conceived in Redmond, they don't come bundled with Windows.


How many ways is this statement wrong? Were Doublespace, Defrag, Checkdisk conceived in Redmond? How about a file manager or the modern desktop? Microsoft has a history of stealing other people's code a putting into windows.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[Dick Faze]

Or goto redhat and get Cygwin, where you can really run zsh, ksh, etc, and X-windows with KDE. It all runs great under recent windows versions and interacts with the local filesystem in a cool, logical way.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[jo42]

And best off all, it has a "Format C:" command!!!

Re:Windows, hands down.

[jjhlk]

I can't get UT2K3 to work under linux. Something about my ATI drivers (which aren't developed by ATI apparantly) not supporting the Savage texture something. The irony is that I bought UT2K3 after I just switched to linux so I'd have a game to play. I heard that UT2K3 had a native client so I bought it. Back to Windows...

Now I've accepted that I'll be running Windows 2000 forever. Linux, though, is on my pentium which serves as a router and security learning platform.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[jjhlk]

I was flipping through my dad's Windows 2000 book once and noticed that it is possible to run ls under windows. You need to turn on some component, and I don't know about the speed, but it's there (probably not linux ls, a version that came on a cd with the book...).

Re:Windows, hands down.

[SethJohnson]

Sed, awk, and grep are the tools I was thinking of. I didn't mean that Microsoft hasn't incorporated other concepts from the computer industry.

In terms of things that would attract people to the CLI of Linux, it's stuff like diff and the afformentioned tools that bare installs of windows is missing. You can install them yourself. Microsoft is very unlikely to start including these tools in DOS, I could see them rewrting the tools from scratch, though, and calling them something different.

Sorry to rail on the original poster in my previous comment. He's probably a good guy and I was in a poor mood earlier today.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[molarmass192]

Yeah, I've got an nVIDIA card. To parallel your experince, I bought an ATI card last year for another PC I have, a Radeon 9000 if I remember correctly, it was cheap anyhow, $100 or so. I played around with ATI's then nascent Linux drivers and finally just gave up trying to get RTCW to work reliably on it, returned it, and bought another nVIDIA based card. To use an often heard quip to describe the experience: worst driver ever! Anyhow, it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever consider buying another ATI card.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[ClioCJS]

Well, I would say that is great if you are already established under unix. But if not, I would say a native solution is better than an emulated one.

Re:Windows, hands down.

[azzy]

So you actually boot into linux to do windows file manipulation?

Why?

[MacBrave]

I take all of these system building articles with a grain of salt, especially when it picks specific video cards, processors etc.

Most people usually don't have the $ for the 'latest and greatest' hardware. And by the time they can afford the lastest whiz-bang video card, it's already outdated.

Re:Why?

[0x0d0a]

Most people usually don't have the $ for the 'latest and greatest' hardware. And by the time they can afford the lastest whiz-bang video card, it's already outdated.

I agree. Don't buy bleeding edge hardware *or* software. Software that's been out 18 months or more hasn't gotten worse in quality, and it's a whole lot cheaper to run and more reliable (from bugfixes). Sometimes expansion packs start getting bundled.

Re:Why?

[aflat362]

And by the time they can afford the lastest whiz-bang video card, it's already outdated

If you can buy the top of the line video accellerator its not outdated. Its the top of the line video accellerator for a while. Then a new one comes out. Guess what - your video accellerator can still play all the current games. It is by no means "outdated".

If you buy a brand new 500 dollar Radeon 9800 today you can expect it to play the current library of games. You can also expect it to play every single game that comes out for the next three years or so to their full graphical potential (save for a few extra FPS). You can also expect it to be passable for another three years or so after that.

I'd estimate that the life-span of a graphics card is close to that of a video game console. You could get every new console that comes out every couple years to be cutting edge Or you could get a new one every 5-6 years or so to stay somewhat relavent in the gaming world.

Re:Why?

[microTodd]

A bigger problem, of course, is that if an article mentions specific makes and models, then within 2 months the article is completely useless.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

on the bright side. usually when the next big thing is release it is in the same ballpark price range as the one you wanted. then the one you wanted drops to the next lower price cat agory.

so it would be easier to either upgrade or purchase for less and spend the extra cash on a couple of game titles to test it out with.

on the other hand. looking into the future (or a lack of it) a litle. i jumped out and bought the gforce 4 ti4200 then i reaslized it woud suport dx9. so maybe you rite about having to rethink the choice in hardware. 500 bucks to just want to buy another video card less than 2 years down the road.

Re:Why?

[rhizome]

You sound like my dad! It's always the best time to buy new hardware, and it's always the worst time to buy hardware. Big whoop. We all know about the grain of salt. The grain of salt is not a protected sekrit.

Sure, while few people might buy everything on the list, it's more of an snapshot overview for people like me who might be piecemeal upgrading. Don't be such a party pooper, some people actually like to know what's really on the cutting edge and what just has a box that makes it look like the cutting edge.

Re:Why?

[Bai jie]

Why do I keep hearing this crap about hardware being "outdated" in 6 months?

I bought an Thunderbird 1.4Ghz machine with a GeForce 2 about 3 years ago and the only upgrade I made since then was buying a Geforce 3 about 18 months ago and my machine still runs all the latest games just fine. The only reason I bought the GF3 was to replace the Voodoo 2 card in my wife's computer so she could play Warcraft 3. Both of us are running 2-3 year old computers and still have nothing to complain about. So who cares if your computer doesn't have the newest whiz-bang video card, buy one that is 1 or 2 generations old for $200 (US) bucks less and play your favorite games anyway.

Re:Why?

[Zzootnik]

Quite True...
I bought a top-of-the-line-at-the-time Geforce2 GTS card for a buit more money than I wanted to shell out...Along with my brand spanking new dual P3 800 system. And Guess what---I'm still using it and still getting decent performance at decent resolutions.

Now for the 2 caveats...
1) I was given a game that looked interesting (Birthday present). Unreal2. Looked pretty good, but WOW...somewhere around 10 FPS just isn't very playable. And it made me re-install a win partition for a short while just to try it. That didn't last long...Gave it to a friend with a brand new Athlon XP 2000/GeforceFX and it ran just fine. He's happy, and I can still happily play around with UT2003. (Yes that runs great in linux!)
2) SOON...I'm probably not going to have much choice but to upgrade...Doom is nearing...And I highly doubt my once mighty, but now feeble-in-comparison station is going to be able to cut THAT mustard...
But then I oughtta be good for another few years! And I'll still have this dual p3 to crunch things off in the corner or to use as a server, or to use as another game terminal for local lan-gaming...
I'm pretty happy with the life I've squeezed outta this box...

Most high-end games suck

[Brahmastra]

I wouldn't invest in a high-end gaming stations because most high-end games seem to suck. They're all about graphics, but the game-play sucks ass. They are not as enjoyable as a lot of old games like the original quake. Any in-expensive system works great for the old games.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Randolpho]

I dunno... some high-end games need a high-end system. I very much enjoy Simcity 4, but it crawls to a halt relatively quickly on my pissant P3/867Mhz/384Mb/i810 system.

I agree though, that the vast majority of "high-end" games suck ass.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Yawgm8th]

Don't forget counterstrike. You can play CS on the crapiest machine or the most up to date machine and it will still be fun. At one lan party there was a kid playing it on a comp built out of scrap parts in software mode with a ball mouse and he had the highest score. And it's pretty much free so everyone can play it!

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Bendebecker]

I agree. I have more fun playing old SNES games written ten years ago than I do any pc games released this year.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

That's if you accept the premise that CS if fun to begin with...

Re:Most high-end games suck

[wickedj]

Actually, in Counter-Strike (and various half-life mods) it's better to have your settings at the lowest possible than it is to have them higher. Your aim is incredibly more accurate at 640x480 than at 1024x768. Also, with all the antialiasing and anistropic filtering off, smoke grenades and various other "card killer" features have no effect.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[cK-Gunslinger]

Interestingly enough, everyone seems to think that the "golden era of gaming" was whatever era they starting playing games in. That was when "graphics didn't matter, it was all about the game play." Ask kids that today, and they will tell you that "Game X (from 3 years ago) was 'all about the game play.'"

Do you think any game company today could make a profit or even stay afloat if they made SNES-level games today? While I agree that a lot of newer games are mostly fluff, let's not sweep the entire market under the rug in favor of Double Dragon and Rad Racer.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[i.r.id10t]

Yeah, but classic quake is even better at 1600x1200 and 100+ frames/sec in GL mode!

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Bendebecker]

Actually, I had my gaming start with the atari 2600. But I still consider the few short years of the SNES the golden age of gaming - the point where graphics, gameplay, music, and all the other aspects balanced perfectly. I like pc games too but for awhile now (and the last year in particular) my interest in what the latest big hits are has dropped to almost zero. The only good games I've seen lately have been console games like Kindgom Hearts. The pc market is full of second rate crap.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[thebagel]

Halo. The PC version of Halo, IMO, is quite possibly the best game I've played for a LONG time. And don't give me the crap about it not working properly on your computer: you can't crank the options all the way up and expect it to work like a charm. And Half-Life 2 is going to be *awesome*. But Kingdom Hearts was cool... Sadly, the market today tends to take advantage of the upgrade cycle PC gamers tend to fall into. It seems like every game that comes out requires the latest-and-greatest; something that can't happen with console games (closed platform). Just my 2...or 3...cents.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[cK-Gunslinger]

I do agree that a certain higher level of creativity seems to have emerged in the SNES days. Perhaps all the great NES coders were working on getting around the limitations of an 8-bit system when a 16-bit system arrived, so that they could pour all their work into a system that could add some graphical goodness.

Also, don't forget that the PC game market is so make-or-break to developers today (do to the almost insane expectations of users who want everything to be shiny and big-budget-looking), that they have little incentive to take a risk. That's why you see so much derivative crap.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Trurl's Machine]

I wouldn't invest in a high-end gaming stations because most high-end games seem to suck. They're all about graphics, but the game-play sucks ass

I understand your need to troll, sir, and well - count me as your "catch" for today. But I will still name some titles that in my opinion obliterate your thesis: "Deux Ex", "Max Payne", "Return To Castle Wolfenstein", "Medal Of Honor", "Red Faction", the whole "Tomb Raider" series.

And no, I'm not just a kiddo who started gaming. My private "golden era" were the purely text-based adventure games published by the famous Level 9 company. I doubt, sir, if you are mature enough to even know the genre.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats the i810's fault. Whack even a GeForce 2 or ATi 9200 in there and it'll solve that problem for you.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[ZipR]

Ahhh Level 9. Great stuff. I used to order the games on cassette from the UK for my Atari 8Bit. I loved the Snowball/Return to Eden/Worm in Time trilogy. They really packed a lot of great stuff into very limiting hardware.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Kethinov]

Actually, I had my gaming start with the atari 2600. But I still consider the few short years of the SNES the golden age of gaming - the point where graphics, gameplay, music, and all the other aspects balanced perfectly.

I'll second this. I started with Atari and I still consider the SNES the all around best game platform that ever existed. The most good games on a single console were there. Truly the golden age. ZSNES keeps it alive for me even today. I've never stopped playing SNES. Gotta get my FF4/5/6, Secret of Mana, Super Metroid, etc in at least once every 6 months.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[demaria]

"Do you think any game company today could make a profit or even stay afloat if they made SNES-level games today?"

Nintendo has been re-releasing many of their SNES games for the gameboy advance, and making a lot of money off of it.

I'd love to play a new sprite based, 2D game again. I'm playing FF6 right now, and am really enjoying it despite its age. With the memory space available nowadays these games could have larger environment, more characters, more music and a bunch of good dialog. Unfortunately every game reviewer would probably blast the game for not looking or sounding 'pretty' as compared to games that are half prerendered cutscenes. But it'd be fun damnit.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[cK-Gunslinger]

Unfortunately every game reviewer would probably blast the game for not looking or sounding 'pretty' as compared to games that are half prerendered cutscenes. But it'd be fun damnit.

Bingo. I think you hit a valid point there.

[Gaming Industry]
Fun? This is a business, dammit! If you don't have features X, Y, and Z, then you can't compete. And after we code X, Y, and partially implement Z, then we're out of money and don't have time to code "Fun" into the game. Oh well, maybe we can implement "Fun" in a 145MB patch next year. After, of course, the 178MB "Actually Playable" patch is out.
[/Gaming Industry]

Re:Most high-end games suck

[kanotspell]

Next year:
1. Remove Quake
2. Insert current "high end game"
3. Repeat

Re:Most high-end games suck

[tshak]

Ya, I heard that Half Life 2 was going to suck.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Yawgm8th]

obviously you missed my point. Halflife doesn't require a cd to play so all you need is the iso file and deamon toolz or a friend with a cd burner, or a copy of the game and then you give the copy back to the friend. It is very free, and there are hacks to get invalid cd keys for lans. The only place you would have to play is for online.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'm running SimCity fine on half that machine - but with an original GeForce256. Ditch the i810, you know it makes sense...

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Kurin]

Or you could pay the developer for the work they've done, assface. Half-Life: Blue Shift is $10 at most places like Circuit City. Get someone else's copy of HL and use that CD key on it. The Blue Shift key is a regular HL key. And that's if you need more keys for more computers. You should at least buy the original game, however. If you haven't had Half-Life since it came out in 1998 then you're a tool anyway.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think any game company today could make a profit or even stay afloat if they made SNES-level games today?

Yes, I do.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Randolpho]

If it's an i810, you know it's on the motherboard, and no AGP slot. I could maybe get a PCI version of the GeForce2, but what would be the point? It'd be as slow as the i810.

But you caught my point. It needs a high-end video card to run smoothly. Some games just need a higher end system to run properly.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[aflat362]

wouldn't invest in a high-end gaming stations because most high-end games seem to suck. They're all about graphics, but the game-play sucks ass. They are not as enjoyable as a lot of old games like the original quake. Any in-expensive system works great for the old games.

Dude, most games suck. There were about a thousand 8-bit NES games and maybe 20 or so were good. Did you ever play X-Men for NES, or Xenophobe? Horrible, horrible games.

Same story with any gaming platform. True, a lot of games on new platforms place too much emphasis on graphics and not enough on sound but that's why god invented gamespot.com and other sites so you can go and read reviews to find out what games are actually worth playing.

Here's a few recent games that I thought did not suck:

• Microsoft's Rise of Nations
• Counter-Strike
• Zelda on GC
• Sly Cooper on PS2
• Medal of Honor series
• Jedi Outcast
• Halo on Xbox
• The list could go on and on . . .

Re:Most high-end games suck

[SlamMan]

For the record, almost every one of those (not sure about Deus Ex, which was a fun game. Loved the mechanics of how the upgrades worked. ) is on the Xbox.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Your right, you can get any game to work for free but cs is a LOT easier. I know we also tried battlefield 1942 at our lan parties but it never works out. Somebody will have a slightly different version and can't join the game.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Do you have the latest SC4 patch applied? SC4 used to run almost unplayably slow on some of my larger (pop ~100k) cities. System is Athlon 1200, 384MB ram, geforce 2 GTS 64 vram. Once they released a patch though it ran MUCH faster.

But I also agree with the other posters... ditch the i810...

Re:Most high-end games suck

[be-fan]

Hm, I started gaming in the early-NES era, but I still thing that the best period in gaming was late SNES (some early PSX). There just don't make games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, FF2/3, etc, today. Saturn also had some really fun stuff.

Of course, I still think there are a lot of pretty good console games these days. PC games suck, but PC games have always sucked, with the exception of some first-person shooters (BF1942, HalfLife, Call of Duty).

Re:Most high-end games suck

[crayiii]

For me it was Donkey Kong Country that made me decide I never needed to buy another game.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I started playing Pong as my first game, and there are just as many good games today as there were in the 80s. A good BF42 game is just as enjoyable (if more intense) than the "classic" games of yesteryear, such as Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, netrek, Ultima IV, etc.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[windex82]

What about those of use who have bought the game twice but lost/scrached up the cd? Id like to play half-life again, but im not about to buy it for a third time.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Randolpho]

You know, I haven't checked for a patch in a while. Perhaps I'll do that, thanks. :)

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Anonymous Coward]

The PCI Geforce would be much faster than the i810 -- AGP makes far less difference than you think.

Re:Most high-end games suck

[Zzootnik]

Geesh, man...Your system should run it just fine...With ONE exception...That icky i810 graphics.
If your system even HAS an AGP slot, GET A DECENT VIDEOCARD. Heck- even a bottom shelf Best buy Nvidia card..They're going for under a hundred bucks. Trust me---You'll immediately notice the difference. i810 really sucks that bad for games.

Wow 12,000 words

[stratjakt]

thats long!

What is this, high school?

These articles make me laugh. Please, all you "computer experts", go out and buy the most expensive, cutting edge hardware you can find. You absolutely need to spend $5000 to play video games, don't doubt the marketin^H^H^H detailed articles validity.

These folks are the ones who piss away their money, so folks like me can get useless and obsolete hardware, like the terribly out-of-date Radeon 9700, for cheap cheap cheap.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[danila]

Yes, from reading the article it looks like the problem most people face is not which component provides the best price-quality ratio, but which component is the most expensive and how I can justify wasting 2 times more money than needed on that.

I am sure more people would find an article useful if it was written from a somewhat realistic viewpoint. He says "I'm paying careful attention not to waste any money either" in the beginning of the article. But if spending $40 on an "incredibly well-built USB aluminum knob that acts like a super scroll wheel" with "a pulsing blue LED light at the base of the unit" is not wasting money, I don't know what is.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but he says that it was necessary given the speakers he chose. :) He also says at the very beginning that the whole point is to decide for yourself which corners to cut.

He even points out how the faster system is even faster in Office!

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[t0qer]

These folks are the ones who piss away their money, so folks like me can get useless and obsolete hardware, like the terribly out-of-date Radeon 9700, for cheap cheap cheap.


I look at it a little differently...

A few YEARS back, I got myself a P4 1.4, latest gforce2gts, scsi 160 and an 18 gig drive.

The SCSI drive is dead, replaced by cheaper but higher capacity IDE's. The rest of the system is still intact.

The only game I really play alot is CS, so for me this system suits my needs just fine. In a few months or so, doom3 will be out, will I rush out and get a cheapo 9700 so I can get my FPS fix for the game?

No! Absolutely not! Here's why..

I want a system that won't be out of date for what I want it to do. 2 years ago it was CS, and my system has lasted pretty well. Now it's doom3. Sure I could just get that cheapo AGP 9700, but you gotta remember, next year is when we toss out AGP for PCI express.

Say hello new mobo/cpu/vidcard combo (possibly ram, since Rambus seems like a dead choice now) because now AGP is obsolete.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Hey now!

If you tweak it a bit you could make it a very cool spinner for classic games like Tempest ;)

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[David Kennedy]

I would agree ... but I bought one of those aluminium knobs, and regard it as some of the best money I spent on my machine!

It's a useability godsend for certain things. I really miss it when I'm in work. Besides, against the other hojillion dollars they spend on this setup, $40 looks like a bargain.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[Jameth]

"But if spending $40 on an 'incredibly well-built USB aluminum knob that acts like a super scroll wheel' with 'a pulsing blue LED light at the base of the unit' is not wasting money, I don't know what is."

I'll go with, "I don't know what is." You have no clue. The useability gain from a quality mouse is of as much value as a couple hundred mhz on your CPU, easy. The only reason people ignore the peripherals is because they are stupid. If you care more about speed than ease of use, your going to have an uncomfortable experience every time you use your computer.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[danila]

I agree that peripherals are important, almost as important as the display. Personally I use wireless keyboard and mouse and find it really useful (although the mouse is relatively crappy and would suck balls if not for the fact that it's cordless and optical). But
1) For $40 I can set up a whole computer that would be great for a lot of cool if a bit old games. :)
2) This is (especially with a pulsing blue LED) a good illustration of the overall attitude of the article - buy lots of shiny expensive things.

The author decided to get a single relatively small hard-drive. Yeah, it's 10,000 RPM, but it's just 70Gb. That means less than 30 games can be installed at the same time, even assuming zero movies or music stored there. He advises to do regular backups, but he doesn't seem to be capable of realising how easy would be backing everything up on cheap 80Gb 5400 harddrive.

If I understand correctly, he suggests using stereo speakers, not 4.1 or 5.1 or even 7.1. Yeah, a high-end gaming workstation with only two speakers. Lame!..
And then there is all that dual-processor nonsense. He speaks about reliability, but there isn't even a cheap UPS.

He goes for style and for mythical uber-performance. That's the common attitude among audiophiles - buy gold connectors and other crap $$$. That's utter idiocy if you just want to play a nice game of Half-Life 2 or something. And he doesn't even talk about how many FPS he got with that uber-cool setup.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[spronk]

"These folks are the ones who piss away their money, so folks like me can get useless and obsolete hardware, like the terribly out-of-date Radeon 9700, for cheap cheap cheap." Ever stop to think that for a lot of people 5k for a machine isn't a lot of money? You can laugh and point fingers all you want but it just comes across as ignorance / jealousy.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[Jameth]

"Personally I use wireless keyboard and mouse and find it really useful (although the mouse is relatively crappy and would suck balls if not for the fact that it's cordless and optical)"

How heavy are those? The only reason I always shun cordless mice is that they are bulky and heavy due to needing batteries, but I haven't checked on them recently.

"For $40 I can set up a whole computer that would be great for a lot of cool if a bit old games."

No doubt, but that was not the focus of the article. It was intended to be a high-end scientific/graphical workstation and a high-end gaming station.

"This is (especially with a pulsing blue LED) a good illustration of the overall attitude of the article - buy lots of shiny expensive things."

Although it may not be very obvious, blue LEDs are often well worth it. Red it much harsher on the eyes and can be very irritating in dark rooms. In particular, I recommend getting really dim LEDs, and expecially avoiding ultra-brights. Even in good lighting, it's damn simple to tell if a light is on, and then it won't be annoying in a dimly lit area.

"The author decided to get a single relatively small hard-drive. Yeah, it's 10,000 RPM, but it's just 70Gb. That means less than 30 games can be installed at the same time, even assuming zero movies or music stored there. He advises to do regular backups, but he doesn't seem to be capable of realising how easy would be backing everything up on cheap 80Gb 5400 harddrive."

If I recall correctly, he actually got a 7200 RPM drive. He is waiting for the 10,000 RPM drive. The issue with a larger 10,000 RPM drive is that larger drives have more platters, causing there to be more heat. Spinning faster also causes more heat. For this reason, very large and very fast drives burn out faster. This was one reason, at least last year when I bought a computer, to go for a mid-size Maxtor. At the time, Maxtors had the highest data density, so it would have less platters. As such, my hard-drive runs really cool and I have less worries about it burning out.

"If I understand correctly, he suggests using stereo speakers, not 4.1 or 5.1 or even 7.1. Yeah, a high-end gaming workstation with only two speakers. Lame!.."

He was building his own system, and did not have a physical layout capable of surround. Obviously, surround would be worthwhile otherwise, but he was building where it simply could not be done.

"And then there is all that dual-processor nonsense. He speaks about reliability, but there isn't even a cheap UPS."

Yes, a UPS is needed. How is that related to dual processors? If those were separate comments, then the dual processors are absolutely needed because it is intended to double as a workstation.

"He goes for style and for mythical uber-performance. That's the common attitude among audiophiles - buy gold connectors and other crap $$$. That's utter idiocy if you just want to play a nice game of Half-Life 2 or something."

Those little things really add up, and he was also setting up a workstation. Often, technically perfect quality is essential there. This wasn't a recommendation for a PC if you 'just want to play a nice game of Half-Life 2.' If that is all you want, don't go for a high-end gaming workstation.

"And he doesn't even talk about how many FPS he got with that uber-cool setup."

It mentioned at the end that benchmarks were covered in part two, as it is a two-part article. Check for FPS when that comes out.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[shayne321]

Say hello new mobo/cpu/vidcard combo (possibly ram, since Rambus seems like a dead choice now) because now AGP is obsolete.

Not only that, but according to anandtech, BTX will be taking over case/mobo/power supply architecture during 2004. Better get a new case and PS too.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[danila]

How heavy are those? The only reason I always shun cordless mice is that they are bulky and heavy due to needing batteries, but I haven't checked on them recently.
Not really heavy. I can't give you the weight, but they are very comfortable. If you have a good (for mouse) table or a large enough mouse pad, or a thin pad that you can move the mouse away from, you don't need to lift the mouse that often (a cordless mouse would work comfortably anywhere, because cords don't get in the way). The best thing is that as opposed to wired mouse and keyboard, you can easily take them with you and move to another table, to your lap, etc. You can't really lift wired keyboard and mouse because they are attached to the case. :) In the past I used USB and PS/2 extention cords to be able to get in the bed for playing some quests or watching movies, but with wireless it's much easier.

Although it may not be very obvious, blue LEDs are often well worth it. Red it much harsher on the eyes and can be very irritating in dark rooms. In particular, I recommend getting really dim LEDs, and expecially avoiding ultra-brights. Even in good lighting, it's damn simple to tell if a light is on, and then it won't be annoying in a dimly lit area.
Well, the question is - why would you need that damn LED in the first place! :) To tell you that you have new e-mail or what the volume is, as the author suggests? :))) I have almost all LEDs covered anyway. :) I mean, I can usually tell whether the monitor or computer are on without a LED. ;)

As for harddrives, I personally have 3 Samsungs (80,7200+80,5400+120,7200) without extra cooling (although two of them are turned off by Windows after 1 hour of inactivity). But even when they work all the time, they are not too hot. The thing is, there aren't many operations that require fast drive access. Especially not in gaming. IMHO 5400 HDDs are perfectly fine even for the most demanding users.

He was building his own system, and did not have a physical layout capable of surround. Obviously, surround would be worthwhile otherwise, but he was building where it simply could not be done.
You mean, he didn't have a dedicated gaming area in his house? Does he live in the basement with his parents? :) You just need two small tables for the rear speakers if it's not possible to fix them on the walls...

Yes, a UPS is needed. How is that related to dual processors? If those were separate comments, then the dual processors are absolutely needed because it is intended to double as a workstation.
Well, my point is that his system is nonsensical and not balanced at all. If "it was intended to be a high-end scientific... workstation", UPS is not just needed, it is absolutely necessary. To ignore it is to acknowledge his incompetence.

Those little things really add up, and he was also setting up a workstation. Often, technically perfect quality is essential there. This wasn't a recommendation for a PC if you 'just want to play a nice game of Half-Life 2.' If that is all you want, don't go for a high-end gaming workstation.
Not 'just want to play a nice game of Half-Life 2.' HL2 will be quite demanding 3D game. He says he wants to "enjoy [his] games on the weekend". The $1B question: how relevant are those USB audiophilic "things" to enjoying a game of Half-Life 2 (or whatever he plays). The one and only thing you really need is a good subwoofer. This is not classical music, really. :) I mean, it's called high-end gaming workstation, certainly playing games is an important function for it. Setting aside the fact that 90% of the article is completely irrelevant to gaming, even the parts about sound and video are not really interesting. The obvious answer is to get the most expensive ATI and Creative (he gets some uber-brand instead) cards.

And BTW, I am not sure he spoke about the display, did he? If not, that's another glaring omission. All in all, that's a crappy article and an irrelevant story submission.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[gnu-generation-one]

"Personally I use wireless keyboard and mouse and find it really useful"

Heh. Mind if I park outside your house with a modified wireless-keyboard receiver unit and a large aerial? You don't type passwords on that thing do you?

Seriously, actually. We're looking at the wireless keyboards for work, and my initial reaction was "we'll never pass a security audit if we have those".

Do they have any redeeming features? 4-inch range? directional aerial? encryption? (yeah right!) Is there anything to stop your keyboard becoming a transmitting keylogger for anyone in the neighbourhood to receive?

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[danila]

4-inch range?
More like four meters. Of course, for uber-sensitive military-grade antenna this is not a limit.

directional aerial?
Nope.

encryption? (yeah right!) Is there anything to stop your keyboard becoming a transmitting keylogger for anyone in the neighbourhood to receive?
Yes, there is encription. I don't know how secure it is or what algorithm is used, but there is a secure mode. You are shown a 16-digit code on the screen, you type it on the keyboard, press OK and it uses this key to encrypt all transmissions. I don't know if snooping on the keyboard while the key is transmitted compromises security, if Logitech engineers have done their job, it doesn't (public key encription can be used).

After a bit of searching, I found a link to a description of Logitech security technologies for cordless devices. Logitech claims it is the only company making cordless keyboards secure from even professional eavesdropping equipment.

So may be you can use these babies in your company. So far I am satisfied with my cordless setup. I bought the cheapest combo (@~$60) and I am not completely comfortable with the keyboard (I liked old-school keyboards more and have used them for years) and the mouse is not as accurate as I would like it to be (a wired Logitech mouse I used before was better), but these are minor annoyances and are more than compensated with additional mobility and lack of wires. And another model might have solved these problems all together.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[Swanktastic]

Yes, from reading the article it looks like the problem most people face is not which component provides the best price-quality ratio, but which component is the most expensive and how I can justify wasting 2 times more money than needed on that. I am sure more people would find an article useful if it was written from a somewhat realistic viewpoint

I've read a zillion of these type of articles and I'm pretty sure that none of them are intended as a step-by-step on why to build "this particular machine." I imagine about 5 people in the world actually go out and try to duplicate this rig. The article serves different purposes:

1) Evaluation of individual components. Some people out there might not spend $10K on a rig, but they might go out and buy the gold-plated CPU cooler. Another guy might like the speakers, or whatever... If you like top of the line parts, you might be interested in seeing how it contributes to a top of the line machine. IE I'm spending $100 on a CPU cooler I want to feel good about my purchase.

2) People enjoy reading about things they actually can't afford. If not for this simple fact, there wouldn't be many sports car magazines. About 2 people in the world can afford some of the cars that are written about, but a lot of people like to read about them.

3) Writing yet another article about building yet-another-beige-box doesn't attract readers. Journalists need to get people's attention. This article got linked up good. It should be some indication that the author succeeded even though some out there may be all about the non-exciting, very practical world of white bread.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] is not wasting money, I don't know what is.

How about spending money in a AC line conditionar that does absolutely nothing that the PSU doesn't do

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[gnu-generation-one]

"Yes, there is encription. I don't know how secure it is or what algorithm is used, but there is a secure mode. You are shown a 16-digit code on the screen, you type it on the keyboard, press OK and it uses this key to encrypt all transmissions."

Any evidence that this isn't the equivalent of "XOR with 'logitech-rules'" encryption? I'd be surprised if the keyboard had enough computing power to implement key-exchange protocols and public-key encryption.

After all, people advise you not to use WEP encryption, and that's fantastically more powerful than anything you're likely to find on a keyboard.

Re:Wow 12,000 words

[danila]

1) Logitech claims their keyboards have strong encryption
2) Chances of anyone eavesdropping on me are virtually zero
3) The computer is on the 8th floor of a residential building. The reception range is about 4 meters. Good luck to anyone trying to get close enough.

That said, these keyboards might not be an ideal solution to everyone. If you want to buy 100+ of them for the company, ask Logitech about specific encryption details or get a couple of them and try snooping on them. As for the computing power, you only need to encrypt a few chars per second. The cheapest, lowest-power consuming and smallest processor would suffice.

No way

[bigjnsa500]

Why spend a few thousand dollars on a gaming computer that will be obsolete in a year? Just plunk down $99-$250 for a gaming console. No more whirling of 15 case fans and sucking of A/C power like an SUV.

Whatever happened to having things small and quiet?

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't know how this obsolete in a year business got started. Yes, next year there will be new better hardware out there.

That does not make what you pay top dollar today worthless tomorrow. Guess what, you'll still be able to do everything really fast and still be able to play games that come out. You just won't be able to match benchmarks put out by the latest and greatest.

You don't have to plunk down thousands for a gaming machine either.

Just trying to dispel some scary myths about spending money on PC's.

Re:No way

[bigjnsa500]

Personally, I wait a year for the *new* stuff to drop in price. I don't need a 3.06 ghz Xeon when my present 1.3 ghz laptop does things pretty fast. I will never understand why people need the bestest, fastest hardware when all their doing is trying to load Office quicker.

Re:No way

[10Ghz]

Why spend a few thousand dollars on a gaming computer that will be obsolete in a year? Just plunk down $99-$250 for a gaming console.

Are there any flight-sims on consoles? How about strategy-games? FPS with controls that match keyboard/mouse-combo? No? that's what I thought.

Consoles are OK for some types of games, but they absolutely suck for some others. PC's excel at some genres are are at least OK in the rest.

Re:No way

[10Ghz]

I will never understand why people need the bestest, fastest hardware when all their doing is trying to load Office quicker.

because some of us are doing stuff other than "loading Office quicker"?

Re:No way

[nicky_d]

> Are there any flight-sims on consoles? How about
> strategy-games? FPS with controls that match
> keyboard/mouse-combo? No?

Yes! Well, granted you're not going to get a really in-depth flight-sim on a console without some kind of dedicated controller (the Steel Batallion one for the Xbox could probably be reused in a flight-sim quite effectively) or a radical rethink of the control system... but then how much does a qwerty keyboard resemble the controls of a flight deck? Anyhow, Pikmin has demonstrated that RTS games can be converted to home consoles (some refining remains, to be sure) and if you're after turn-based strategy, the GBA is the way to go at the moment. FPS controls that match keyboard/mouse... well, that's a matter of design, largely. You lose pinpoint accuracy and high speed, but you gain analogue controls for view AND movement, and analogue face-buttons. The gameplay changes, certainly, but not necessarily for the worse.

The things I do miss about PC gaming are the mod scene and access to in-depth level builders, and I'm considering getting a new Windows machine so I can get back into all that. It was nice to see a level builder in the Timesplitters games, for example, but you're not going to get the from-scrath limitless possibilities that something like UnrealEd offers. And since it's been a couple of years since I was active in that area, I dare say today's processors will go like the proverbial rockets compared to my last experience...

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on! Finally, someone with a spot of sense and half a brain. Gaming rigs are nothing but a waste of money, you WILL FEEL STUPID about 6 months after building / buying one. Get a console, get on with it.

Re:No way

[*weasel]

just to throw in my opinion here:

fps controls for consoles are absolutely fine.
i play unreal championchip on xbl and i play ut2k3 on my PC. there's very little difference.
yes, it takes time to get the hang of. but so does circlestrafing with wasd. and all the action games have sensitivity settings for the analog sticks that bring the speed and accuracy up to the same level.

yeah, a mouse is more precise. but when i'm playing on a 50" hdtv, relative precision is easily comparable.

furthermore, one huge advantage is that on the consoles, interfaces are forced to become streamlined. you can't simply expect a user to bind a dozen or more keys just to be able to pick teams or switch models.

as for mods and such - i'm hoping the xbox HD and xbl get used more for the custom content route in the future. downloadable content is pretty sweet - it'd be great to get mods or community made maps via the same mechanisms. i could literally play ghost recon just about forever if there was a map editor with shareable maps.

of course, the heavy duty sims will never be primarily sold on the consoles - its simply a contradiction in markets for the most part. though custom controllers can do anything you like on your pc, only better. there's a keyboard add-on for the xbox already (for PSO) and a ridiculous 100+ key mech sim (gimmicky, but existant). even classic PC-style RPGs and massmogs are moving to consoles.

the lines are going to continue to blur between which games are where (excepting hardcore sims), and the price/performance of consoles is bar-none the greatest in game hardware. i mean, this generation of consoles are playing top of the line games 3 years after their introduction. what top of the line PC 3 years ago is going to be able to play HL2?

then there's the added benefits of the xbl broadband only multiplayer, and the more cheat-resistant qualities of consoles vs pcs in regards to network gaming. cheat-free is a -huge- benefit for multiplayer gaming that you will not see on the pc side. it easily makes up for the analog control learning curve by itself.
(and console games aren't constantly patched and buggy).

Re:No way

[Kethinov]

Why spend a few thousand dollars on a gaming computer that will be obsolete in a year? Just plunk down $99-$250 for a gaming console. No more whirling of 15 case fans and sucking of A/C power like an SUV.

What a marvelous troll. Try this on for size, sir. When I buy, yes buy, my console games, I go to great lengths to rip the data onto my hard drive then play them using an emulator. Why? Becuase I'd rather play my console games on the PC than on the console. Here's what I can do on the PC that I can't do with the console:

1. I can map my own controls any way I want.
2. I can save my game any time I want and thus reload it at any point during the gameplay.
3. I can pause it at any time. Especially useful for when something extremely urgent in that place called "real life" comes and you're in the middle one of those spectacular FX scenes in a game such as FF9. Just hit escape in EPSXE and it's paused. Can't do that on the real playstation.

So, sir, computers are the future of gaming whether you choose to accept it or not.

Re:No way

[homer_ca]

Gaming rigs are not a waste of money. The only marginal cost of a gaming PC over a business PC is the video card and game controllers. So you spend $150 more for a midrange video card (or $400 for top of the line, but you could justifiably call that a waste of money) and you get a fast PC that you could use for work too. On the CPU side, you might feel stupid for buying a $500 CPU that drops to $200 in less than a year, but that's it. The cases, power supplies and motherboards have pretty stable price points, and with all those components, quality costs more.

Re:No way

[angle_slam]

Who says you need to spend a few thousand dollars. $1000 will buy you a XP 2500+ system with 512 MB Ram and a midrange video card (Radeon 9600). If you don't like building systems yourself. Falcon Northwest will sell you one for $995 (although it has "only" an XP 2200+ processor). Such a systems should be able to run Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at decent (though not spectacular) framerates, provided that both games actually get released.

Re:No way

[10Ghz]

Anyhow, Pikmin has demonstrated that RTS games can be converted to home consoles and if you're after turn-based strategy, the GBA is the way to go

I was thinking more along the lines of Steel Panthers, Civilization III, War in Russia, Europa Universalis, Combat Mission etc. etc.... Those are turn-based (although Combat Mission with a twist) and I don't think they would be playable on a GBA.

You lose pinpoint accuracy and high speed, but you gain analogue controls

You can hae analog controls on PC as well. The reason why they aren't that popular is because people prefer mouse/keyboard.

Re:No way

[nicky_d]

Well, of the games you mention, I've only played Civ3 (which is wonderful). No reason that couldn't be ported to, say, Xbox - with some control tweaks. The biggest burden for the console user there, I'd say, would be display resolution. But it could surely be done - the original Civ made it onto the Snes, so the GBA is feasible, with the same display caveat. I'd rather play it on a PC, of course - no argument there.

But, of course, these titles don't appear on consoles, primarily - I assume - because they just wouldn't sell, which in the game industry is probably the most dominant factor of all.

With controllers, yes, there are some nice options for the PC - including console pad adapters - but the difference is that console controllers are standardised. When you know that everyone playing your game is going to have a Dual Shock (or equivalent), you can approach the control system with more confidence, and tie it more effectively to the gameplay. Not that everyone does, by a long shot, but when it works - as in Halo, Sons of Liberty, or Mario Sunshine - it works beautifully. You know every player will have analogue face buttons, so you can make button sensitivity a core part of the game - something I can't imagine you could ever do on a PC. I guess a good example - albeit a niche title - is Shake It Bravoes / Mad Maestro on PS2, where button sensitivity accounts for half the gameplay dynamic. On the other hand, there are clearly times when the knowledge that every play has a full keyboard and a mouse is similarly liberating...

In the end, I suppose, it's all good. We should really just be thankful we have the choices we do...

Re:No way

[nicky_d]

I agree that XBL and content download are great additions to console gaming (and Ghost Recon is great fun), but I don't see consoles ever approaching the community content level of PCs - the manufacturers won't allow it, because a poorly made game map that crashes an Xbox, say, is going to shatter the no-maintenance, plug-and-play appeal that consoles are founded on. The two main options, as I see them, are to impose a QA regime on released levels and maps, which will be a major bottleneck, or restrict the level building capacity as in the Timesplitters series, which greatly restricts the kind of content users can create. In addition to that, console manufacturers rely on software sales and licences for profit, so they won't want you getting two years of extended modded play out of Unreal Tournament (say) for free; more likely they'll throw out the occasional free map to keep your interest up, and then start releasing commercial expansions; I understand a few companies are sizing up paid downloads via Xbox Live, for example. Nothing wrong with that per se - if the quality's good enough, I'll gladly pay. But the level of community contribution regularly seen on the PC would stifle such a scheme pretty quickly, IMO. It's a shame... but, as you say, we do get cheat-free, consistent level playing fields, which is great... swings and roundabouts...

The perfect oxymoron...

[pVoid]

a gaming workstation.

Re:The perfect oxymoron...

[MrHanky]

Yes, but "A working PlayStation" isn't a good theme for a 12,000 word article.

Re:The perfect oxymoron...

[flacco]

a gaming workstation.

hey, i'm on linux - i'd settle for a working gamestation.

Re:The perfect oxymoron...

[Anonymous Coward]

your sig:
you're missing: gay, black

A high-end gaming workstation?

[jvervloet]

The Xbox of course! (If you install a decent operating system)

What's the point?

[Gandhian_Rage]

As practically everything is getting faster and faster, it seems that getting the brand new, *more expensive* technology is absolutely silly since most of that potential is redundant and hardly ever used. I have a 1.1 ghz AMD t-bird and a pentium 2 ghz. I can't even tell the difference between the two while playing quake. I wonder how much an ego comes into play here. I know a lot of friends that get the biggest and the best just for bragging rights, but what they don't know is that I'm bragging about the money I saved while buying something slightly older.

Re:What's the point?

[truenoir]

Well, first off, the video card could be very influential in that. Second, try playing something that, you know, came out after the 1.1 Tbird. Betcha you'd see a difference between the two playing UT2k3 or Halo. Or does your philosophy of buying older stuff apply to software as well? ;) I know I saw a difference going from a PIII 866 to a P4 2Ghz. Sure, paying out the nose to have the absolute fastest is silly...but decent stuff isn't *that* expensive (for instance, ~$90 for a Barton 2500+). If you wouldn't exploit the potential of a new CPU, great, don't buy one. There are others of us though that manage to find a use for the power. No ego involved.

Hard Disk

[rf0]

Nice article covering lots of little tech bits. However I would of thought that better performace might of been got from RAID-0 stripping of the disks or at least setup the swap and system on differenet disks to minimize the load

Rus

Re:Hard Disk

[Chewie]

Well, I would have thought that any performance benefit they might have gotten from RAID 0 would have been offset by the threat of a single disk failure trashing everything.

Re:Hard Disk

[Malc]

I hope you're not proposing using RAID-0 by itself?

Re:Hard Disk

[rf0]

For absoluate performance yes. However I realise that you really need raid 1+0 for redundancy. I'm not saying its sensible but it will run fast. Of course it might crash faster

Rus

Re:Hard Disk

[Chewie]

Well, my Tourette's-afflicted friend, the issue is that as you add drives to an array, the odds of one failing goes up. If you have an array of disks with a 100-day MTBF (just for example) with 3 drives, the odds are now three times greater that a single drive will fail. That's the issue. Also, recovering data from a single dead drive isn't so hard, since it's not chopped up all over several disks.

Now, if you don't mind rebuilding the system everytime a drive fails, that's your prerogative. However, if I was making the investment in a RAID controller and extra drives, I'd actually like to use the "Redundant" part of that acronym.

So, here's a thought. Howzaboot *you* shut the fuck up and come back when you understand what mommy and daddy are talking about, cupcake?

Re:Hard Disk

[Anonymous Coward]

that should be modded up funny :)

not everyone values what's on their hard drives. so data loss isn't always a big deal. backup only valuable data, the rest can be reinstalled.

Re:Hard Disk

[DaEMoN128]

Why not use raid 3? It would be completely hardware based, still get striping and you get parity. Covered on all accounts. I know 1+0 is common, but do any controllers do both simultaniously? That would also require atleast 4 drives. Raid 3 will do it in 3 drives (2 for data, 1 for parity) or just say screw it and go with raid 5. I know raid 5 ide cards exixt out there. Is there any advantage of Raid 1+0 over 5? It seems like it would be faster, but wouldnt the heat / processor overhead even the playing fields?

Re:Hard Disk

[*weasel]

yeah, i thought the same thing about this time last year, when RAID controllers started hitting just about every mobo in my price range. so i researched it a bit and most benchmarks i've seen have shown 0 to negative performance changes when using striping.

only very large file transfers manage a benefit, on the order of several hundred meg. and thankfully i can still count on one hand, the number of games and situations where i need to squeeze another second or two out of a 200+ mB file transfer.

given of course, this is all based on data from consumer level raid controllers.

gaming is fundamentally lots of relatively small data operations, mostly 'random' in nature, with very few linear loads (startup and 'map' loading being the exceptions) or writes (savegames, screenshots). even big maps/zones/etc don't break 50mB very often.

you'd be better off spending the money on a fast HD if you want performance. (not just RPMs, do your research and watch cache size and cache speed).

me, i decided to wait to upgrade again. sure my 1ghz is showing its age - but none of the games coming out is gettin my wallet itchy. anything that looks half-decent and won't run on my machine (hl2, doom3) is headed for my (much cheaper, much more stable, much longer-lived) xbox.

Re:Hard Disk

[troc]

You can always partition your drives and then RAID the partitions, oh........ wait a minute........

erm

That would be RAIP a redundant array of illogical partitions.

Troc.

Re:Hard Disk

[kayen_telva]

dude, you rock
mod parent up "insightful"
and chewie can blow me u arrogant prick
ever heard of usb hard drives for backup ??
moron

Re:Hard Disk

[Chewie]

That's right. I'm in junior high! You forgot one thing, though: 3y3'm 4150 4 1337 h4x0r! 3y3 w!11 0wNz0r j00r b0x0r5! w00t! 411 ph34r kormoc 4nd h!5 455-r34m!ng 7001 0f d00m!

Whatever, amateur.

Re:Hard Disk

[swordgeek]

Man, did you forget your meds today?

A few rebuttals to your comments here.

Recovering data from a partially failed disk is doable. Recovering data from a totally failed disk is not, unless you're willing to pay the nice folks at a data recovery service lots of money. Recovering data from a stripeset with a failed disk is more in the latter category than the former. RAID does affect how hard it is to recover data.

Hardware RAID controllers are wonderful, and they buy you roughly nothing for RAID0. Without parity, there's no need for the caching that a RAID controller has, and the overhead of maintaining a stripe volume is miniscule--roughly 2%.

MTBF is a remarkably vague number for hard drives, because the standard deviation is so wide. It's also measured in a very specific manner, which bears little resemblance to the real world. Practically speaking, you're typically going to get between three and five years out of a hard drive before it starts to error out.

Now if you're actually backing stuff up, then by all means--use RAID0. Blow a hundred bucks on a RAID controller that's not being used, if it makes you happy. But please try to relax a bit, and not spit bile at people just for pointing out that RAID0 decreases a system's reliability.

Re:Hard Disk

[Khaki_Dockers]

unless the benchmarks I've seen are wrong, you better add the rider 'and make gosh darn diddley sure you aren't using some )*&)*( "INTEGRATED" ATA RAID, or some barely modified ATA controller. the differance between a promise fast trak, (a promise ata100 controller that's gotten a new firmware) and a supertrak, with cache, and an asic is the differance between JBOD, and a striping configuration with benefits like higher throughput and lower proc usage. also 'you nitwits always griping about how raid 0 is dangerous should all take a long walk off a short pier' 1 HDD is rated tor 10K hours MTBF. take 2 HDDs, and you need both of them working flawlessly to boot every morning, and the same to store your pirated muzack, then you no longer have that MTBF. with 2 drives that each have a 50% chance of not reaching 10K, suddenly, to reach 10K, there are 4 outcomes, and only 1 will leave you a happy camper with your cheesecake pics of that studly elvish feller in the LOTR

Re:Hard Disk

[Malc]

At work we run RAID-5 on Ultra-160 for our DB servers. The performance is good enough and the cost is more reasonable. I wouldn't touch RAID-0 on a workstation without some form of redundancy (parity or mirroring), in which case the cost is unnecessary for most people's performance requirements.

RAID-5 doesn't always perform as well, but it uses three smaller disks to get the capacity that RAID-1+0 would need four larger disks for. Also consider that smaller disks are often better value for money. I.e. for a 300GB IDE array, you would need 4x300GB for RAID 1+0 (4x$320=$1280) or 3x150GB for RAID 5 (3x$140=$420). All Maxtor drives. In the latter case the drives are 160GB with 6MB more cache. Is the price really worth it for dubious performance advantages?

its not hardware, its skill

[Numeric]

(this was back in 1999)
nothing like getting owned in counter strike, by my clanmate on a dialup with a crappy video card, while i was on a cable connection with a gf2.

Re:its not hardware, its skill

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterstrike?

Most likely means he was cheating.

Or you sucked _really_ bad.

Up next...

[cr@ckwhore]

Up next, "How to build a server (with no budget and things like anti-DOS capabilities)".

Re:Up next...

[martinthebrit]

To be more up-to-date now, shouldn't that be anti-Windows capabilities?

What about budget systems?

[darkstar949]

Interesting artical, but what about the rest of the population that does not have the kinda surplus money that can blown on hardware for a state-of-the-art gaming system that will be outdated in six months. What kind of hardware is nessecary for a good low-end gaming system that the average twenty-something paying off student loans can afford? Also, what are the best recomendations for hardware that might be a bit higher-end, but will still be useful for a long time?

Re:What about budget systems?

[gekkotron]

Try Sharky's Extreme.
They do a monthly guide to building a value gaming rig.

If you've got more cash to blow, they also do a high-end guide.

Re:What about budget systems?

[dizzyPhoenix]

Look up similar articles dated 1-2-3 years back.

Re:What about budget systems?

[richie2000]

Low-end gaming system:

AMD Duron 1300 or slowest/cheapest Athlon you can find

Any cheap Socket-A mobo with AC97 sound and LAN onboard, like the ECS K7S6a or Epox KH8a+

A nice quiet harddrive - cue the Seagate 40GB Barracuda

Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2 - large slow CPU fan that's almost totally silent

Any noname nvidia Geforce 4MX board with 64 megs. Most of them have passive cooling = no fan

256MB DDRAM

Use your old monitor or get a new 17" CRT, they'd be practically free if it weren't for shipping and handling.

Add a floppy, CD-ROM and some cables in a Q-Tec smileycase, a Trekker mouse and a noname keyboard and you have a complete, brand new machine for peanuts

This box runs CS perfectly and even bf1942 in a reasonable screensize. No weird drivers either which means very good Linux support. I have built maybe 20 of these for customers, both office and home use. It's dead quiet, too. It has just the one fan in the PSU and the ones Q-Tec use are reasonably silent.
And everything's upgradeable. Need more RAM? Just add some more when you have the money. Disk? Put it in. Faster graphics? Swap the old one out. Better sound? Get an SB Audigy 2 Player and disable the AC97.

Re:What about budget systems?

[MtViewGuy]

You're almost there, but a couple of things:

1. AMD Athlon XP CPU's are so cheap nowadays you might as well get a 2000+ to 2400+ CPU.

2. Forget about using a GeForce MX400 board. You're better off getting the boards that use the ATI Radeon 9000/9000 Pro chipset (I'd would rather splurge a little for a board that uses the ATI Radeon 9600 chipset, if only to play games that use DirectX 9.0 reasonably fast).

3. You really want 512 MB of system RAM, especially if you're running the latest games. Most of the newest games are major system hogs.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably a bit too minimalistic if you want something with longevity. Don't be cheap on all of the parts, CS is running off of a 5 year old engine and so saying it runs that well doesn't say too much. BF1942 has also been out for a while. Get yourself at least a 2 gHZ processor, 512 megs of ram, and just stick with onboard video until one the next killer game comes out (for me, HL2 or Doom3). Then buy the best video card you can for about 175 bucks.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Fweeky]

Avoid the Durons, even on budget systems. Even an XP1900 will be significantly faster, and won't cost much more.

Careful when suggesting "Any" motherboard; again, the better boards don't cost a whole lot more (and often are one of the cheapest when you're looking at popular tried-and-tested stuff), but you'll be glad for the extra stability and support. You won't go wrong with Epox, though :)

HD wise, 80-120G is about the best price/size wise, and won't cost a lot more than 40G. 80G is still a single platter, so won't be any louder than 40G.

nVidia aren't a great choice for the low (any?) end; look at the ATI R9X00 series. They're typically cheaper, faster, and also come with sensible cooling arrangements.

512MB won't cost a lot more, but will greatly benefit games and multitasking.

Why get a CD-ROM when a DVD-ROM costs so little extra?

Case wise, I always aim for one with 3.5" bays in front of the intake fanbay. Even without a fan there, HD's appreciate the extra room and being around where cool air comes in.

Oh, and soundwise, I wouldn't touch Creative with a very long stick. The hardware tends to hog the PCI bus and the drivers aren't exactly the best you'll find. Try a SonicXplosion or so.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would opt for an Athlon XP. My fastest CPU right now is a Duron 1.1 GHz, but I'm going to upgrade to one of the 266 FSB Athlon XP's (Thoroughbred core) because they are cheap and probably produce less heat than my Duron which has a Thunderbird core.

Re:What about budget systems?

[oyvindmo]

ArsTechnica has a periodically updated System Guide which may be of interest to you:

http://arstechnica.com/guide/system/

Re:What about budget systems?

[joib]

I recently bought a radeon 9200, and I'm quite happy with it. No fan, open source drivers for Linux, good picture quality and it was quite cheap too.

It's about 3x faster than my old geforce 2mx (1980 vs. 650 FPS in glxgears, if that measures anything significant).

Re:What about budget systems?

[Have Blue]

Don't get a GF4MX for gaming in the future. If you want your box to last through the Source and Doom 3 engines, get a card with hardware shader support, even if it's the previous generation it'll be better than the 4MX.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Forget about using a GeForce MX400 board. You're better off getting the boards that use the ATI Radeon 9000/9000 Pro chipset (I'd would rather splurge a little for a board that uses the ATI Radeon 9600 chipset, if only to play games that use DirectX 9.0 reasonably fast)."

Yes. I've a GF4 MX400 in my current box. Had it for aeons now, got it back when a real GF4 was still upwards of $300. Frankly, it handles everything I've encountered.

However, that won't last. Definately look for the new low-end of the video card market, something that supports DX9.

Re:What about budget systems?

[ameoba]

Talk about out of touch... Yes, this is possibly the cheapest rig you can toss together, but for only a few dollars more you can get -far- more performance.

Duron's (200 (100x2)FSB) are dead, pick up at least a 266(133x2)FSB Athlon XP, if not the 333 or 400; when you're dealing with clock multipliers that are over 10x, FSB is a -major- bottleneck, and DDR prices are pretty constant up to PC3000.

No-name mobo with AC97? Can you say "Snap - crackle - pop"? At the same price point, you could at least suggest a first-gen nForce board, getting better performance -and- better sound.

A copper heatsink? Please. For a low end rig, Al ones are going to work just fine; you should have no problem picking up something with a slow & silent 80mm or 92mm fan for under $10; I doubt you'll find any Cu parts for under $20.

"Any noname nvidia Geforce 4MX"? There's 2 things wrong with this: First, GF4mx boards can be SDR or DDR and dif't speeds, this is important to performance (not so much to price); secondly - the low-end Radeon 9x00 line (9000, 9100, 9200) are going to significantly outperform the GeForce at the same price-point. The only reason I'd go with an nVidia card is for their Linux support.

Only 256MB of RAM? At the price it's running right now, 512MB is painless enough to buy, and, considering that you'll likely be running win2k or XP on a gaming rig, is well worth the extra $40.

Of course, we're still pinching pennies here, check out this article for a slightly more optimized reccomendation.

Re:What about budget systems?

[joib]

The only reason I'd go with an nVidia card is for their Linux support.


Hrm. I recently switched from a geforce 2mx to a radeon 9200. I chose the radeon instead of a geforce in part because of the Linux support. :-)

The point here being that open source drivers are available for the radeon, while for nvidia you have to use their proprietary binary only driver.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you have OSS drivers for the Radeon, but if you're buying a high-end card & want to get the full power (not just speed, but nice things like dual-head support) of it, you're not getting that without the proprietary binary drivers. ATI's drivers have a big performance hit for Linux compared to windows, where the nVidia ones are occassionally reported to be -faster- (with things that are on both platforms, such as Q3A) than the same setup under windows.

Re:What about budget systems?

[mduell]

Here's what I'm building for $1000.

Shuttle SN45G $275.00 NewEgg
AMD XP2600+ Barton $99.00 NewEgg
Crucial 2x512MB PC3200 $179.98 Crucial
Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM 8MB $134.00 NewEgg
Lite-On 4x4x DVD+R/RW $102.99 NewEgg
Sapphire Radeon 9800 128MB $167.00 NewEgg
MSI TV@nywhere $55.00 GameVE
Total $1,012.97

Not bad for a gaming box that will last a few years. Upgrade to 8x4x DVD+R/RW for $60 more.

Re:What about budget systems?

[richie2000]

but for only a few dollars more you can get -far- more performance.

It's just few dollars here and a few dollars there and pretty soon, it's added up to Real Money (TM). While I agree with you in principle, we were talking real low cost here. Student loans, remember?

Several of the suggestions I made were coloured by my local market, I recently got hold of a 10-pack of Duron 1300s for under $30 a piece and 8 refurbed Epox mobos for $10. Same thing with old GeForce2 or 4MX cards - they're almost free. The ATI 9x-series I have seen so far have been almost twice the price and with a loud fan.

The Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2 runs me just a shade over $10 USD, BTW. It's really good value for money. On the RAM, we're not going to leave Office running in the background while playing bf1942 anyway. If you want to use VMWare instead of multi-booting between Windows Fisher-Price and Gentoo, then yes, then you'll need to shell out for the 512MB.

The box I proposed comes out at around $200 in local, Swedish prices which tend to be higher than in the US. Student loan budget? Absolutely. High performance gaming rig? Not really. Good enough for most students? I think so. YMWV.

Re:What about budget systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh... you never mentioned getting half the hardware are fire-sale prices.

Why's that?

[ceeam]

An old one:

Train stops at train-station,
Bus stops at bus-stations,
Work stops .....

Print Friendly (All on one page)

[g00set]

Print Friendly

Re:Print Friendly (All on one page)

[Anonymous Coward]

So did Sir Haxalot get a new UID?

Article is already Slashdotted, but lemme guess...

[Maul]

Step 1: Buy really expensive components.

Step 2: Put them together.

Step 3: l33t box that gets 1,000 FPS in Quake 3. Not surprisingly, this box will also run just about every other Windows app there is well.

Cost of exact same system next year: $500.00

high end workstation?

[racerx509]

Am I the only one who sees the paradox in this story title? It says high end gaming workstation for fscks sakes! Why not just high end gamestation. I swear, this is worst than extra jumbo shrimp.

Re:high end workstation?

[shadowxtc]

Most people read what comes after the title before judging it. You probably are alone out there.

Re:high end workstation?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

This is slashdot. He's not alone, he' in the majority.

Re:high end workstation?

[mcheu]

I don't see a paradox. Oxymoron, yes. Paradox, no.

Re:high end workstation?

[spronk]

Lots of folk use their computer for more than one thing *gasp*.

small and quiet: No way

[lanswitch]

I love my big 19" 2-scsi 2-ide disks noise-producing box (and the other smaller and quieter boxes in my room). It's common knowledge these days: size does matter.

By the way, if you into small, you should change your name.

Next on their list:

[Beatbyte]

A Gaming Web-Server Station Survive the Slashdot Effect 'omatic.

nope, don't want it

[Anonymous Coward]

for gaming i still play an ancient Nintendo64...

i use my computer for creating & editing documents, a little bit of graphics editing, communication via email & IM (and yes- all in Linux)...

computers are not good gaming platforms, i don't care what the market would like people to believe (they just want to sell you something)...

Building a High-End WHAT?!?

[reiggin]

"Gaming Workstation".... Does anyone else think that this is oxymoronic?

Re:Building a High-End WHAT?!?

[T-Kir]

I hear you, but then I thought of Penny Arcade, or any other decent game reviewer.

Re:Building a High-End WHAT?!?

[friedmud]

Not for me. This is exactly where I sit right now. I'm in college and don't have so much cash to spend and I need to do both development and gaming - and I need to do it on one machine.

This review is exactly what I have been doing lately. I am thinking about getting a dual opteron (probably just opteron 242's though - like I said not much cash) because I can play games on it - AND do development (I do a lot of compiling and dual CPUs would help out a lot).

Not too mention that I do all of my development in Linux so I would run an AMD64 build - and get even greater speed improvements.

I'd like to say thanks to firingsquad. This article is both relevant and well done (well, 3/4 of it is - I got hit by the slashdot effect ;-)

Derek

Each to their own...

[puregen1us]

Use a tool designed for the job.
An Xbox for gaming. 130

A cheap desktop for everything else 500 :
internet/email/netty thing, IM doesn't need power.
Office
Web Design
Perl/Java/C/whatever

None of the above need lots of computing power.

630

Beats any 1000+ machine for work and games.
and you can do both at once... leave the compiles running and watch them while you play Splinter Cell.

Re:Each to their own...

[OS24Ever]

So in other words, buy an eMac & a ?

Re:Each to their own...

[angle_slam]

Depends on the games you want to play. Any RTS fan (and many FPS fans) would never play their favorite games on a console.

High performance gaming workstation needs...

[dirgotronix]

I'm confused as to the components of this system. Exactly how does a matrix-orbital lcd make your games run faster?

Oh wait, it's just for looks. So, basically this isn't about performance, it's about who'se got the largest computer testicles.

Yea, that's right, I'll own you with my duron 900 with no 3d accell in software mode, onboard S3, baby.

I've never owned top of the line hardware, nor do I plan to. My most advanced system is a duron 950 with a gig of ram and a 3dfx voodoo5 5500. I use it for photoshop and MAME. And you know what? It cost me all of $500 in components when I built it.

Re:High performance gaming workstation needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

>My most advanced system is a duron 950 with a gig of ram and a 3dfx voodoo5 5500. I use it for photoshop and MAME.

Bah, that's nothing compared to my most advanced system which is a Celeron 700 with 384MB of RAM and a Matrox G400. I use it for Opera7, MAME and Diablo II LOD (I want a WindForce and an OHM rune damnit).

Re:High performance gaming workstation needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of power-lusers! I'm whistling down my acoustic coupler to post this, and I'll be breaking out the abacus later to play me some winmine.

Best for gaming AND doing work?

[neuroklinik]

A Mac and a PlayStation 2.

Re:Best for gaming AND doing work?

[LocalHero]

Ohh, wait, then i cancel my 500$ pc workstation that i order and order a 1000$ mac and a 200$ playstation?!?!?

Ohh, wait i have to have something as fast as the pc so i need a 2000$ mac that i have to wait 4 month to get

Have i missed any logic here? Ah, oki it was a joke :). now i get it

Re:Best for gaming AND doing work?

[bill_mcgonigle]

A Mac and a PlayStation 2.

You're probably right - how did you get modded down?

Re:Best for gaming AND doing work?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Ohh, wait i have to have something as fast as the pc so i need a 2000$ mac that i have to wait 4 month to get

Sure, clock speed is everything.

NOT!

Why do you think AMD is advertising their CPUs as "Athlon XP 2500+" while it actually runs at 1800?

Same goes for the G4 and the G5. And it's SO different, you can't even compare (same as trying to compare a 8051 with a 68HC11)

Re:Best for gaming AND doing work?

[LocalHero]

Yes i know!!!
For example. If you show me how much mac you can get for 1000$ i show you how much pc you can get for 500$.. Then we compare it. Ok?

Thats what it's all about. Otherways you could always say that mac or pc is nothing agains a giant supercomputer. Im talking price/performace here on avrage systems.

And i dont think that G5 is the most superior CPU out there. All tests that show that are from apple.com. I found some that says that G5 isnt faster than an amd athlon xp 2000+.. But that depends on what you are benchmarking and that is another story

Gaming System Suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok if you don't want to spend the bucks for the latest and greatest system, you should try and get close to it.

The most important parts for a good gaming system are
Hard disk - I know SCSI is expensive so get a drive that does at least 7200rpm
Graphics card is next, get a OEM version of one of the later Nvidia chipsets and you save a boat load of money and still have good performance, you should get at least 128MB of RAM on the video card
CPU speed doesn't have to be the latest one out, right now your best bet is to get at least a 2.4GHz with a 800MHz front side bus, that way you will have hyperthreading and the operating system will see 1 physical processor and say that you have 2 CPU's
System Memory should be at least 1 GB nowadays @ PC133 MHz

Go on Ebay to compare prices, if you can afford a brand name - get a Dell Dimension XPS or an AlienWare Area 51 system.

Hope this post helps instead of the non-topic posts about big gaping vagina holes

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[0x0d0a]

> Hard disk - I know SCSI is expensive so get a drive that does at least 7200rpm

Why on earth do you consider a high speed hard drive important? Games are one of the few things that generally *don't* hit the hard drive while running.

Get a regular ol' hard drive (granted, it's hard to *find* 5400 RPM anymore, though I tend to prefer 'em for the sound levels and the lack of heat.).

Get at least 512MB of RAM to avoid paging instead.

Graphics card is next, get a OEM version of one of the later Nvidia chipsets and you save a boat load of money and still have good performance, you should get at least 128MB of RAM on the video card

Here I agree with you.

CPU speed doesn't have to be the latest one out, right now your best bet is to get at least a 2.4GHz with a 800MHz front side bus, that way you will have hyperthreading and the operating system will see 1 physical processor and say that you have 2 CPU's

2.4GHz AMD or Intel? Bit of a difference.

System Memory should be at least 1 GB nowadays @ PC133 MHz

I disagree -- I think half of this is acceptable. memory is quite easy to upgrade, and it's cheaper the longer you wait. If you're extremely adverse to upgrading RAM, then perhaps buying all now is a good idea.

Things that I consider important that the poster didn't:

* Decent set of headphones, unless you're hooking your computer to your nice stereo system. Headphones are *far* cheaper (I'd say roughly order-of-magnitude) for equivalent quality than speakers. They also give a better stereo effect. Aim for at least $80, and listen to 'em. You will lose some bass, unfortunately, which a lot of people like -- but if you live in a college dorm or play games at night, you aren't going to be able to shake the neighborhood anyway.

* Consider a CRT. LCDs are insanely popular right now, but have a lower refresh rate, look more jagged (due to their nice, sharp pixels) on things that aren't supposed to look jagged (like edges of objects), don't have as intense colors, aren't as bright, and cost more. LCDs *are* nicer for reading text, though.

* Consider a gamepad and/or joystick (for emulation). If you'll have friends playing, get a couple. The majority of PC games focus on the mouse/keyboard, but not all, and for games that can be played with these, it's awfully pleasant to do so.

* If you like FPSes, get a mouse with at least four buttons.

* Dual processors, lights, case mods, fancy sound cards, luxury input devices, wireless keyboards, etc are a waste of money. If you want 'em, fine, but there's no point in getting swept up in the "I'm spending $n, so I might as well spend $n+m" syndrome.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[Chitlenz]

1. Hard Disk speed is important! Take a deep breath, and think about how long it takes to load all the 4 layer textures you use playing modern games. Those do NOT store completely in RAM and have to be loaded dynamically. I have celebrated the wide adoption of 10k rpm SATA since it came available, as it removes the 'stutter' of turning corners when you use high res textures and anti-aliasing in 3d.

2. Older Nvidia cards are NOT Dx9 compliant, which will limit their long-term viability. Contrary to the tone of the post, high end gamers are not generally fools and are more up to date on hardware purchases than most folk. Theres a *reason* why the ATI 9800pro is heavily purchased. I know this because I benchmark my purchases to make sure I get the intended result, not from idle speculation...

3. AMD processors have a long history of problems with certain game vendors, most notably Sony/Verant. I personally use an AMD procesor, and love them, but the Intel and AMD architecture are not 100% interchangable, and unless the maker of your favorite game allows for that, your milage may vary.

4. 1GB of ram is WAY too small to cache all the textures of the newer games. WAY WAY too small. Ask Tim Sweeny why he's so hot on 64-bit architecture, and you'll find it's mostly the RAM ceiling.

5. Headphones get uncomfortable after awhile to me. I went with the klipsch promedia system and have enjoyed it for over 3 years now. This is coming from a trance DJ who has 2 seperate sets of Professional quality studio 'phones to try as well.

6. Under 20ms refresh LCDs *OWN* CRTs for both brightness and color representation. If ur seein jaggies, it prolly because you bought an nvidia card... (see above).

Performance is absolutely relative to the end user. If all you play is Tetris, whatever is fine. This article presumes ur aiming for the UT2003 or War3 quality games, and would want to have Hl2 and Doom3 run well on it. I personally am attracted to the mmorpgs like everquest that require spending a LOT of time (12 hrs at at ime sometimes) with your gear, so to me, the 5k I've dumped into my rig is worth it. That said, I absolutely read up on the various chipsets (the Nivdia Nforce3 MB chipset seems to be hot right now) and video card chipsets (ATI for the time being) and try to combine and benchmark all of it to assure that I feel as immersed as possible in the games I play. For me, TV is just boring, so as my primary form of entertainment the investment is worth it.

-chitlenz

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[LX.onesizebigger]

While we're on the topic of monitors, did anyone notice the one used in their setup?

Call me picky, but I find it slightly, mildly, completely insane to spend big bucks on the kickassest system you can afford and then hook what looks to me like a plain vanilla monitor (I looked around the article to see if I could find any comments on it, but a horribly slow server and broken up article means I didn't RTwholeFA.) Not to shit on Iiyama (which I believe that is), but there are a few better options, and I'll have to agree with you on the TFT issue. In fact, I love the 15" 1400x1050 screen on my Asus L3800C notebook so much, I don't even find a use for an external monitor.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[ameoba]

CPU speed doesn't have to be the latest one out, right now your best bet is to get at least a 2.4GHz with a 800MHz front side bus, that way you will have hyperthreading and the operating system will see 1 physical processor and say that you have 2 CPU's

2.4GHz AMD or Intel? Bit of a difference.

You were doing so well and then you say something stupid like this. Please show me an AthlonXP with a (stock) 800MHz FSB and Hyperthreading. In the AMD world, your best bet is to go with the XP2500+ (Barton) which is the low end of the 400MHz FSB parts.

Granted, we're really talking about the same 200MHz signal, just that one is a quad-speed and the other is only double, but the end result is some -major- differences in memory bandwidth.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is coming from a trance DJ who has 2 seperate sets of Professional quality studio 'phones to try as well.

You say you're a trance DJ, and you expect anyone to lend you any credibility on sound quality? Puhleeze.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

When you listen to music that is one step above your washing machine, it begins to fuck with your head.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[Atmchicago]

For the 2.4ghz - no Athlon has a 800mhz FSB, so you know what he's talking about.

And for the headphones - I can't hear in my right ear, you insensitive clod!

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

LCD sucks nm what.
GDD speed is only important in loading the level, not while playing. 1GB is more than enough for texture storage (more like around 256MiB is more than enough). Your other point are somewhat correct.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[0x0d0a]

Hard Disk speed is important! Take a deep breath, and think about how long it takes to load all the 4 layer textures you use playing modern games. Those do NOT store completely in RAM and have to be loaded dynamically.

That's ridiculous. Your system is paging, or the game engine you're using is rather poorly written.

A system with a gig of memory easily has space for the OS, working space for the game, and enough room to store a full CD worth of textures. Most games I know of ship on CDs, and it's unusual for a game to take up more than three CDs. As a general rule of thumb, most of the space in a modern game is devoted to FMV. Audio data comes in second. Finally, it's quite rare for a game to be using *all* the textures in the game anywhere near each other.

Last of all, game designers are not stupid. If they're trickle-loading levels, they allow for a pretty healthy margin of safety. You don't wait until the first time you need a texture for the current frame to start loading it. You are not going to be in a deathmatch and have the game suddenly decide that it needs a texture, because that game is going to have been playtested and testers are going to have complained about something like this.

Finally, the best speedup you can possibly see is cutting such a delay in perhaps half. If you're hitting the disk at all, you're going to have a noticeable delay. Throw that same money at RAM. It's a much better investment.

2. Older Nvidia cards are NOT Dx9 compliant, which will limit their long-term viability.

Apparently we have a different meaning of "long-term viability". No existing video card is going to be a fancy card three years from now. Furthermore, OGL and DX are designed to make it awfully easy to gracefully degrade if the hardware doesn't handle a favorite feature. Furthermore, game developers design around what hardware exists, not around what the APIs can support. I remember when Matrox sold the first cards with hardware environmental bump-mapping support. There were a tiny handful of games that supported it. Sure, the API was out there, but nobody was interested in blowing time on a feature that most people wouldn't get the most out of.

I know this because I benchmark my purchases to make sure I get the intended result, not from idle speculation...

Let me guess. You use a dedicated benchmarking program, *not* an actual game. 3dmarkwhatever. And yes, it's designed to very carefully exercise the entire feature set of the API. This is *not* what actual games do.

AMD processors have a long history of problems with certain game vendors, most notably Sony/Verant

The primary issue with AMD has been supporting chipset problems with hardware, not with the CPUs themselves.

1GB of ram is WAY too small to cache all the textures of the newer games. WAY WAY too small. Ask Tim Sweeny why he's so hot on 64-bit architecture, and you'll find it's mostly the RAM ceiling.

Sweeny's an optimistic guy. With the most influential chip vendor pushing 32 bit hardware to consumers, with existing 64 bit hardware inducing a 32-bit performance hit, and with zero existing installed base, Tim can require a 64 bit architecture for his next game if he wants. Of course, it'll flop in the market, but he's welcome to do so. Apparently he's forgotten how (not) smoothly the transition to 32 bits went. Remember that for prices to come down and a product to take off as a non-luxury item, it has to sell to businesses and to a lesser degree, to Joe Sixpack home users (remember the fate of Aureal, who forgot that).

Headphones get uncomfortable after awhile to me.

Fair enough.

I went with the klipsch promedia system and have enjoyed it for over 3 years now. This is coming from a trance DJ who has 2 seperate sets of Professional quality studio 'phones to try as well.

(A) You're a DJ and you use computer speakers instead of stereo speakers?

(

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[0x0d0a]

[shrug] I did skip over the rest when I saw the 2.4 GHz line.

Re:Gaming System Suggestions

[taboo959]

" Decent set of headphones, unless you're hooking your computer to your nice stereo system. Headphones are *far* cheaper (I'd say roughly order-of-magnitude) for equivalent quality than speakers. They also give a better stereo effect. Aim for at least $80, and listen to 'em. You will lose some bass, unfortunately, which a lot of people like -- but if you live in a college dorm or play games at night, you aren't going to be able to shake the neighborhood anyway"
Yep....totally agree here........in fact, if I may make a suggestion...... a good set of sealed headphones may make a huge difference as well. Not only won't they wake the neighbors, they won't even wake the cat in your lap. And they, by nature, tend to be a bit bassy. I've found the Sennheiser HD280Pro or HD212Pro to be a nice, inexpensive choice............. $99 or $50 from headphone.com.

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Ars Technica System guide

[Alien54]

the Ars technica system guide is not a bad place to start for a lot of folks. They have several suggested custom system systems, at different budget levels, including the money no object "god box".

of course, with multi panel screens, and other pricey toys, etc. it is possible to go slightly bonkers.

Re:Ars Technica System guide

[GatorMan]

I'm also a fan of the SharkyExtreme monthly Value and High-End gaming system guides. You get both ends of the spectrum every month.

An excuse

[Bendebecker]

How much of this 'you have to buy the latest greatest hardware' crap is just an excuse to cover bad code? What if the only reason we need all this hardware is becuase a bunch of people can't write effecient game code?

Re:An excuse

[CerebusUS]

Actually, I think the 3D FPS realm is one of the last places in commercial software where they ARE tweaking the code trying to eke out every little perfomrance gain they can. some of those engines are lovingly handcracfted.

That said, I always get a kick out of people who get the latest whiz bang graphics accelerator and then turn off all the special features when they go online to play.

Re:An excuse

[FatSean]

Oh yeah...brilliant. You know, Open Source software is free because nobody is going to pay for it. Amen SHerlock!

Re:An excuse

[Bendebecker]

wtf? Where did I say anything about Opensource and free software? All I said is what if the quiality of the code is bad. What are you, an M$ employee? You immediatley go bezerk and start flaming Open Source topics everytime someone questions someone elses code quality?

Re:An excuse

[prozac79]

I wouldn't poke fingers at game developers. They are some of the brightest programmers out there. They know how to tweak code to get every last drop of performance they can. A lot of them know every trick in the book when it comes to getting code to perform in an optimal way.

The issue with games requiring the latest and greatest hardware is that the consumer is never satisfied with the results of real-time rendering. A game can always look better with more polygons or another render pass. Of course, more polygons and more render passes require more memory and speed. So a game will not let available resources remain unused if those resources could be used to make the game experience look better (of course, no hardware or coding can cover up a game that just isn't fun to play). Perhaps in the future the hardware will be available were game developers can create games that are "real-looking enough" and can throttle back on the amount of resources they need to consume. But until that day comes, a game will always benefit from better hardware.

Get a time lag discount.

[Futurepower(R)]

Just wait 5 years and you will be able to buy any fancy system used for $250.

Re:Get a time lag discount.

[Bendebecker]

Forget five years, my computer is only 3 years old and I can already get one twice as good for only $500!

My take on "gaming workstations"

[Glock27]

All the people screaming that "gaming workstations are an oxymoron" are really missing some important points.

• Game developers need to test on their development boxes.
• Today's development box is tomorrow's mainstream gaming box (this may not be true of dual Opteron workstations for awhile;).
• Games are the some of the most intensive non-pro apps out there and it's silly for the fastest hardware not to do both.

One other point that the author missed: the new dual G5 PowerMac is also a very nice candidate (especially with the 9800 Pro). The authors have declined to provide pricing for anything AFAIK, but I'm pretty sure the Mac will come in less expensive for similar features - and it runs MacOS X among many other advantages. :-)

A whole lot of the free software the author is enjoying on Linux also runs on MacOS X. There is way more commercial software and games for MacOS X than for Linux (less than for Windows, but then you'd have to run...Windows). The G5s should be ideally suited to scientific computing with the Altivec vector instruction set. The only nit with the G5s is not supporting ECC memory. Apple should do that, as an option.

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[PainKilleR-CE]

One other point that the author missed: the new dual G5 PowerMac is also a very nice candidate (especially with the 9800 Pro). The authors have declined to provide pricing for anything AFAIK, but I'm pretty sure the Mac will come in less expensive for similar features - and it runs MacOS X among many other advantages. :-)

Probably because they wanted to be able to play the majority of commercial computer games. Roughly 5% of commercial games run on Mac OS or Linux, and even the best-selling games don't usually make the transition (Half-Life, for instance, one of the top 3 best-selling PC games of all time and one of the top 20 games (including consoles)).

On the other hand, any time I've tried to price out a Mac with equivalent RAM/hard drive space to what I already have and a fairly current processor, it's come out over $1000 above what I'm willing to spend. That doesn't mean it's necessarily any more expensive than the x86 side, but I can simply upgrade what I need on the x86 rather than buy a whole new computer (I've never bought an entire PC all at once, even my first one was bought as parts over 6 months' time). The exception to the pricing issue was with laptops, where, at least the last time I looked, the Apple notebooks were fairly competetive in pricing with x86 notebooks.

That being said, I doubt that most knowledgable readers will agree with everything in the article. Most people have individual preferences that can run counter to the article, and there're few right or wrong answers to some of the choices made. In other cases, monetary concerns can make some choices easier than others (like 1 vs. 2 CPUs and 512MB RAM vs. XGBs of RAM). Not to mention little things like Corsair RAM vs. generic, where the cost difference is in the realm of 2-4x for arguable benefits.

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you asshats STFU with the ECC bullsh*t? If Apple required ECC memory in the G5, everyone would be blasting them for forcing users to use expensive, "non-standard" components.

There is NO reason a consumer desktop/workstation needs ECC memory -- Servers, yes; but the G5 is a friggin' desktop!

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[Glock27]

Will you asshats STFU with the ECC bullsh*t? If Apple required ECC memory in the G5, everyone would be blasting them for forcing users to use expensive, "non-standard" components.

I guess you aren't capable of comprehending the difference between "option" and "required". Many PC motherboards support both registered and unregistered and non/ECC memory. Understand now?

There is NO reason a consumer desktop/workstation needs ECC memory -- Servers, yes; but the G5 is a friggin' desktop!

Uh, "consumer workstation" is much closer to an oxymoron than "gaming workstation". Workstations are for professional use, doing mission-critical things like designing buildings. Would you rather have your engineer use a computer with definitely reliable memory, or memory that has some finite chance (most likely fairly low) of having an undetected flipped bit (read: incorrect number) in the data somewhere? It's very inconvenient and expensive when those buildings just fall down after you build them - even if it only happens once in a while. This explains why all the major workstation (not just server) manufacturers use ECC memory in their machines.

The very minor cost increase and speed hit associated with ECC is nothing by comparison. ;-)

I hope this cleared things up.

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[Animats]

Game developers need to test on their development boxes.

Real game developers have a PC plugged into a development box for the XBox/PS2/GameCube, with other boxes like performance analyzers plugged into that, and about three monitors.

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[betat]

The thing is, if this is going to be for gaming or developing games, Macs aren't really that good a choice. Just take a look at the wide selection of games for Macs.

"Breakout, Super Breakout,...photoshop..."

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[normal_guy]

I would assume that mission-critical applications like building the world's tallest buildings would rely on their own built-and-proven underlying consistency checker, instead of esoteric physical HD and RAM error checking. AutoCAD doesn't assume that the data is correct just because it comes off of the HD, it runs checksums. If this needs to be done in SW already, why reduce speed by 1-2ns per bit for the sake of unused redundancy?

Re:My take on "gaming workstations"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it might prevent your program from crashing. Furthermore, it doesn't add much cost to the system, nor does it slow it down in any real measurable way.

Finally, if you are going to pay top dollar for a professional workstation, you should get all the features that competitors like Dell offer.

Will any of these run Empire?

[spidergoat2]

If I can't run the low tech games I like, these systems are useless. Rogue lives!

Re:Will any of these run Empire?

[0x0d0a]

Try Tales Of Middle Earth and Zangband if you like rogue.

Best Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a nice computer, and I'll find out for you!

Re:Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Couldn't resist.

Try.

Re:do you really think

[mo^]

what else do you expect me to do all day on a government helpdesk... i can tech support lamers with my brain closed and read chunky /. links as I go.

Overclock everything in your system

[Anonymous Coward]

I overclock everything in my system and it's water cooled and immersed in oil. It looks cool with all the case lights I installed too. I sealed my harddrive up in silicone and stuck it in the oil too. I thought the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive would still work under all the oil, but they didn't. I hacked my power supply to put a extra volt out on 3.3 and 5V to make it run better as well. Basically you need to get a lot of oil and a water cooler for every chip on the motherboard, video card, ethernet card, etc. that's in your system. Also I have three big fans blowing over the oil container 24/7 just to make sure. So, get the best stuff and overclock it and put it in oil and bump up the voltage a bit.

Re:Overclock everything in your system

[Bendebecker]

Oh yeah, well I have my enitre motherboard sitting in liquid nitrogen and my cpu covered in solid hydrogen. I thought my cd player would work well but I needed a better bus so I replaced the wires with supercooled (thanks to my liquid helium cooling system) pure silver wire, the only superconductor I could buy. And to make it run better I built my own nuclear reactor to power it so its up from 3.3 volts to now working at 1.21 gigawatts, not to mention I purchased an lcd screen the size of a thousand football fields and plan on launching it into space so that I can watch stuff on it. Yep, Quake at 1 million fps here I come! So get the best stuff and cover it with material from the core of Jupiter and bump up the voltage to the power of a small scale nuclear detonation.

Save yourself the hassle...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and buy one?

I can see the attraction of building your own, but I simply don't have enough time to research and build one at the moment, so I bought a bit fat Dell. Now while this might not have the latest x GPU, y front-side memory bus or z CPU architecture, I guarantee that the differences are so small between a gaming optimised system and an off-the-shelf system that it will run pretty much any game I buy. The downside is that I'll probably need to upgrade a couple of months earlier, but hey, that's the price you pay...

Re:Save yourself the hassle...

[Kref1]

Or you could do it yourself and save 20-50% of the cost of your big dell. If you dont have the knowledge, time, or desire to build one, its fine to go buy one, just be prepared to pay for it. I build myself a good quality computer a couple of months ago, cost me around 700 or I could have gone to best buy and bought one with similar specs for around 1400. Personally, i enjoyed building it and definatly enjoyed my extra 700$.

Re:Save yourself the hassle...

[Violet Null]

Yeah, yeah. IHBT. IHL. IWHAND. You don't build it to get the speed machine; you do it for the price.

Eg: my latest computer, I bought piecemeal; ended up with an Asus Nforce2 (400 Mhz FSB) motherboard, 2500+ Mhz Athlon Barton (actually speed: 1833 Mhz), 120 GB HD, 1 gig of 400 Mhz RAM, and a 256 MB GeforceFX card. Along with everything else new but a monitor, and it came in at just over $600.

I did some research, but not an extensive amount -- certainly not anything at the Tom's Hardware level.

Pricing something similar at Dell (2400 Mhz Pentium 4, only a 128 MB GeforceFX) comes out to $1258, after the $100 coupon. Granted, the Intel motherboard has a 800 Mhz FSB, but I'm sure that you couldn't tell a difference between using the two computers. Except that the Dell solution is a 200% price increase.

Re:Save yourself the hassle...

[angle_slam]

Agreed that it is cheaper. But, it takes time. Some may find it "fun" but others just want to open the box and use the computer. Oh, and you're price doesn't include OS or monitor, while the Dell's price does. The Dell also probably includes some software (MS Works, etc.), which you don't include. Of course, if you already have a monitor and OS, or plan to use free (beer) software, paying for it again is a waste of money, but you're not making a fair comparison if you don't include them. Your system would still cheaper, but not $600 cheaper, only about $200 cheper.

Re:Save yourself the hassle...

[Violet Null]

Some notes:

Dell price does not include monitor.

Dell price does include Windows XP (Home, not Professional), because there's no way to not buy Windows XP from Dell. So, yeah, that's $100 there.

As for the productivity software, to get that price, I selected the crappiest (read: cheapest) of the possible options, which is the WordPerfect Family Pack, for $60.

That's $160 worth of questionable stuff, and it still leaves dell at slightly under $1100.

Yeah, sure, for someone who doesn't know anything about computers and doesn't want to know, I wouldn't recommend they go out and do put one together. But for anyone who does have a clue, I can't imagine buying from Dell. Even if you're going to buy a full system, buying from a place like Tiger is cheaper. I'd only recommend Dell to someone who needs the 24/7 technical service, and has no other alternative for it.

Pissing away money

[TrekkieGod]

These folks are the ones who piss away their money, so folks like me can get useless and obsolete hardware, like the terribly out-of-date Radeon 9700, for cheap cheap cheap. Yeah, you're absolutely right. These folks piss away their money so that you can buy your old (and still good) hardware. Because guess what...if everybody waited for the price of the top of the line to come down, or if everybody waited until they needed faster hardware for their system, prices wouldn't come down as fast, and the 9700 would still be too expensive for you to buy (not to mention that development of faster hardware would slow down). Supply and demand, pal.

You should thank those people, not complain about them. If they have the money to spend, why shouldn't they? Good for you that you can save money and still get a great system.

Re:Pissing away money

[Chitlenz]

Bingo!

Plus with 30$ worth of cooling and a free d/l of tweak3d, that 9700 is a 9800 anyway...

-chitlenz

Re:Pissing away money

[Dausha]

if everybody waited for the price of the top of the line to come down, or if everybody waited until they needed faster hardware for their system, prices wouldn't come down as fast

But, prices would come down. That's the beauty of a free market. If I try to sell a widget for $100 and nobody buys it, then I'm going to lower the price to a level where the quantity demanded allows for optimal profit. Corporations do market studies to see what they can get away with.

Prices are high initially because they know that some people 'gotta have it' and will pay the premium to be ahead. Once those individuals have been tapped out, then the prices drop.

Re:Pissing away money

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but surely with $30 of cooling and Tweak3D, that 9800 is a 9900? :)

Re:Pissing away money

[Slime-dogg]

Most of the price on the high end cards is hyper-inflated anyways. I remember back when the original GeForce came out, it was listed at $199, or something like that. Now, $199 seems like a reasonable amount to plunk down on a gfx card.

The features offered by the newest $500 card compared to the features of the previous generation's really don't compare to the features that the original GeForce offered over the TNT2 or Rage3D. The price has risen to that extreme because there are suckers out there that are willing to pay that amount of money. I remember buying the original Radeon when it broke into the market for only $140. I thought that was expensive at the time.

If you go by the number of transistors in the chip, and the amount of instructions it supports, yada yada, you still don't have a good excuse. A decent AMD CPU will run you $110, which is an actual processor with the equivalent number of transistors, and way more supported instructions.

The price of high end gfx cards these days is rediculous.

Re:Pissing away money

[Anonymous Coward]

But, prices would come down. That's the beauty of a free market. If I try to sell a widget for $100 and nobody buys it, then I'm going to lower the price to a level where the quantity demanded allows for optimal profit.

if nobody buys it, you'll lower the prices to sell what you have on hand and STOP PRODUCING IT.

Prices are high initially because they know that some people 'gotta have it' and will pay the premium to be ahead. Once those individuals have been tapped out, then the prices drop

Prices are high initially to cover the costs of developing the technology. Once demand is high enough to cover these costs, the price comes down. You're obviously not an econ major.

Re:Pissing away money

[Dausha]

You're obviously not an econ major.

No, I'm just a highly paid technical consultant.

Misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Do "Gaming" and "Workstation" really go together? I mean, sitting down to your high-end "Gaming" station does not imply much "Work" will be done, does it? ;-)

Audience

[simong_oz]

no-budget, but don't waste money

Seriously, what percentage of even the gaming community (let's not even count joe average, mum & dad or corporate users) does this actually cover? Now disclude all the writers who work for gaming/hardware review sites and are just angling for a "demo" of the latest hardware and just how many are you left with? I'm sure there are exceptions, but come on, gimme a break ....

Re:Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point is to learn how the system design comes about. It's clearly listed in the first page of the article that the goal is not for readers to buy this system, but to understand what top-of-the-line is and where they want to spend less.

Alan

Re:Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a point in my life, when I had too much extra income. In fact since I paid for my room/board and tution with money from my summer job my entire paycheck was disposable.

At this point it was normal for my to upgrade to a top of the line systems every three or four months. Why? Well I had nothing else to spend the money on except drinking and I was still making decent money. I had no bills at all. I owned my car, I paid my insurance with my summer job, I got my phone and internet for free and there was not anything else to pay for. Yes I could have saved for a rainy day, but I'm was too young to worry about it. But when it comes down to it I know many people who have it the same way. Some of them where in the same situtation as me. Some of them had made a shitload of money in the dot-com boom and called it quits. Some of them made their money playing games.

In fact almost all of the people I knew who where involved in computer gaming at the time did the same. The only reason it stopped is games are not keeping up with the hardware anymore. That and there are not many new computer games worth playing anymore.

My current system is over two years old and it plays the latest games at the highest settings with no problems. However, two years ago I couldn't have said the same. But when I find a game that doesn't play on my current system well I will go drop a large chunk of money to get a new one because computer gaming is my hobby and I spend no more money then most people spend of their hobbies.

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One year behind the cycle

[Comatose51]

My trick to beating the price is to stay 1 year behind everyone else's upgrade cycle. By the time I upgrade, I can get a decent system for about $500 and play the best games from 1 year ago... which you would probably find the bargin bin with all the bugs worked out. Once you've exhausted the games, repeat.

Re:One year behind the cycle

[Lumpy]

well that's the funny part.

a geforce 3 and a copy of Unreal or Unreal tournament is just as fun as UT2003 on the best hardware you can get. the game is no more fun, no real difference (I MISS MY SNIPER RIFLE!)

the other "hot to play" games right now are no different... it's a run around and shoot everyone else. RTCW enemy territory is a bit different in that team play is more fun and you cant get some jerk running around arming himself to the teeth so he can do the suicide rambo running around with the trigger pulled all the time.

as soon as they give us some REAL innovation and reasons to buy the games, I'll think about it. until then all of it play's just nicely on my Geforce 4 and P-III 866 machine.

in fact, the last lan party I went to the #1 played game was Quake III with Half Life as the close second place.

why? more fun for everyone. (I love having a bag of bugs in HL and simply tossing them near spawn points :-)

MOD PARENT UP

[Dot.Com.CEO]

+5 funny!

Don't forget dual boot into windows..

[Anonymous Coward]

For all of the hypocrite Linux users who just can't do without the latest k00l gamez, even if it means supporting windows.

And no.. That you stole your copy of windows changes nothing.

Of course I don't know anyone like that. Really.

Please spare me the marketing fluff

[pariahdecss]

Many of these articles (including this one) read like they were written by the marketing departments for the respective hardware companies . . .including excerpts obviously taken directly from sales literature. I am finding it increasingly more difficult to trust any of these "independent" review sites . . .

Hi, my name is. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

And it's been 2 years and 8 months since I last played a brain-sucking video game or watched a television.

Things just keep on getting better since I took back my time! My head is much more clear. I read more and my thinking is sharper than ever before. I have a girlfriend now, my skin has cleared up, and I'm doing much better at work. I feel healthier and stronger than I have in years. I am engaged in more active, outdoor pursuits, and I've taken up the guitar. The amazing part is that I didn't set out to do any of these things; they all just came to me naturally as my free time opened up and my mind sought alternative outlets so that I wouldn't be bored. It's like how it was when I was a child and there were no video games. I couldn't have done any of this without such a supportive group to help me through the hard times. Thank you!

If only I could have back all those thousands and thousands of wasted hours. . .

-FL

Re:Hi, my name is. . .

[Bendebecker]

I bet you have since become an Internet addict...

Re:Hi, my name is. . .

[Rtsbasic]

Just think what a difference avoiding /. would make if thats what avoiding video games/television did to you! ;-)

Re:Hi, my name is. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

So, your skin cleared up and you have a girlfriend ?? GJ, I'm sure oxy10 had something to do with it, not stopping the video games and TV.

I have always had a girlfriend, played guitar, watched tv, played video games and did well at work. Perhaps you are just no good at multi-tasking, hygene or talking with the opposite sex ??

Re:Hi, my name is. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I, OTOH, just started drinking a lot and sleeping with prostititues.

YMMV.

Re:Hi, my name is. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were letting computer games rule your life so much that you needed a "support group" to stop then you are a loser with little self control. My hours gaming are NOT wasted any more than my hours hiking and fishing or spending time with my wife and kids or reading as I do frequently. All of this combines to make life a rich experience. Don't blame TV or games as you are the one at fault for your previous situation. You needed to get off the computer to get a girl friend? Come on, man, I love games and I've been married 20 years. Take responsibility for yourself and get a life. Do us all a favor and get off of that high horse and just sell your machine.

Two Separate Machines

[sabNetwork]

Okay, this is probably not the answer that you're looking for, but I would recommend getting one low-end, cheap work machine and one high-end gaming system.

It's just too distracting to have "Quake 3 Arena" on your Start menu next to "Microsoft Word" when you're supposed to be writing your TPS reports. The machine that I work on has only the bare necessities to work, and no distractions.

On that note, I have to recommend Windows or Mac OS X for your work machine. There is way too much temptation when I'm working on a UNIX box to spend hours hacking around. For the gaming box, maybe a dual boot of Windows and Linux will suffice, with WineX on the Linux partition.

Re:Two Separate Machines

[swordgeek]

Hmm. Take a step back for a second. Your recommendations are based on your weaknesses. Recommending Windows/MacOS because you can't help mucking about in a Unix/Linux environment isn't entirely applicable. (understandable, though :-)

At any rate, this wasn't a gaming/office machine that they were building, it was a gaming/workstation. In my world (and I believe the world of the article's authors), a workstation is a seriously robust, high-end, number-cruncher. If you need a workstation and want to play games, then build a workstation and it'll probably play games.

Re:Two Separate Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

That's you. I get more serious work done in a *NIX environment. I don't really consider OS X to be one. Sure, it has the underpinnings, but the interface is too distracting. My idea work computer runs Linux with W2k through VMWare. This is a good setup for web developers too, as it lets them use a machine similar to the web host, while allowing them to test on a machine similar to what the typical user will see.

Re:Two Separate Machines

[microTodd]

Good idea, but here's a better one.

1 machine optimized for gaming...i.e. high-end graphics card, lots of RAM.

1 machine for productivity...Mac

I personally can't wait for the day when console games are as good as PC games. Then I'll just get a MAC or Red Hat box for surfing/email.

Re:Two Separate Machines

[zaqattack911]

TPS reports?!? lol... did you get that from the movie Office Space ?

If you haven't seen it... I suggest you do.

you fucking prick

[Anonymous Coward]

way to kill a joke, asshole

This is informative?

[pr0ntab]

It's an opinion.

If all I cared about was Java games on Yahoo!, then, well...
Solaris is the best platform for games, and you can do just as much work with it as you can on any other platform.
No dual booting requried there! And scales to 128 CPUs without breaking a sweat.

Never mind that the article doesn't even venture into this territory. Tsk tsk.

Can I get an amen?

Re:This is informative?

[janbjurstrom]

Amen brother

Re:This is informative?

[Randolpho]

I call it a very well-crafted troll. I just hope the mods don't realize that and start modding me down. ;)

Folks, workstation != office PC

[swordgeek]

I think a lot of people are confused here. There are three basic types of desktop machines.

1) An office PC. Runs some office package, web browser, acrobat reader, etc. a P3/800MHz with a low-end graphics card is FINE for this.
2) A gaming machine. You all know what this is.
3) A workstation. This is NOT the office PC. This is a serious machine for serious work--CAD, 3D modelling, number crunching, etc.

The requirements for a workstation and a gaming machine are similar but not identical. A workstation may have slower graphics, but accurate. No fudging or edge-blending to make things look prettier (or run faster) at the expense of mathematically correct representation. A workstation also is likely to have multiple processors, since they can be fully used by most software packages one would be looking at.

You gotta know what to shoot for.

[pr0ntab]

1) Read article about whizbang rig.
2) Search forums about hardware that is equivalent to but slightly underclocked and sells for 1/2 as much
3) Ignore the $200 keyboard/mice recommended, LCD, silent DVD-ROMs, etc. and get unbranded Taiwanese OEM manufacturer's product line wherever possible.
4) Wait 4 weeks for shipping instead of going to retailers.
5) Assemble, overclock, pray, sacrifice old RAM sticks.
6) Enjoy near-equivalent machine for half to third price.
7) ???
8) Profit!

Honey! I shrunk the computer.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whatever happened to having things small and quiet?"

Small and quiet are still with us.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2 at home, and a normal workstation at work. Preferably with Solitaire removed.

Gaming is in direct opposition to working.

But, if you want to attempt to make us believe you're capable of actually doing work (right, right, I bet. You probably waste hours on Slashdot at work each day!)..

Windows box. Don't skimp on the basic components. Go with top of the line mobo, load the sucker up with RAM, think about a nice SCSI drive. And expect to upgrade your video card every three months. Your main consideration is the video card. That is what 'runs' games. The rest, you want high quality so you don't need to switch out the entire box every three months. (Video cards are expensive enough! ;))

'course, I expect the Slashdolts to whine about the Lunix!!!!1111. Please. Linux may be great for work, depending on your job description. It sucks the ass of CowboyNeal for gaming.

"BUT WE HAV TEH QUAKE3!!!!"

Please. Quake 3 is one game. As for the rest, I can count the number of high-quality Linux games/ports on one bloody hand. Windows is where gaming was, is, and will be for the forseeable future.

(Could always consider a dual boot, though. That certainly helps with regard to keeping gaming/working time seperate. ;))

Can't be done.

[jamehec]

When you're in fun mode, your productivity is shot. When you're in work mode, you can't play worth a dang. Technology can't change that.

What does your PHB care about most - your ability at your job, or your mad crazy DOOM II skills?

Re:Can't be done.

[Bendebecker]

Real gamers are always in fun mode! At work, at church, at social events. If you ain't thinking about Quake WHILE doing your girlfriend, you aren't hardcore!

Re:Can't be done.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ain't thinking about Quake WHILE doing your girlfriend, . . .

I know I do!

~~~

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

God Box = Dual G5

[caveat]

Well, really. I'm surprised Ars didn't at least mention, if you don't want windows, you can get a God Box off-the-shelf from apple. PCI-X, GHz FSB, SATA, dual procs in the same class (Ars uses 2x3GHz Xeons), dual flatpanels (and nicer, too :P), all the same bells and whistles PLUS 64-bit goodness...prebuilt for less (i could be wrong, i didn't spec them both out to check..)

Re:God Box = Dual G5

[Alien54]

I think they are about due for an update as it is....

Re:God Box = Dual G5

[DAldredge]

It's for a GAME BOX. That kind on rules out the Mac

Anyone hear or try these systems?

[NickV]

They seem kinda ridiculous, I don't even know if I believe that they really exist, but they have an option for a multigig ram drive just to store the OS (with nearly zero latency and 80GB/sec IO... yes GB) and a bunch of other stuff.

Their monitors look killer too...

Go-l

Re:Anyone hear or try these systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot a dot in your number : : it's 8.0GB/sec.

Re:Anyone hear or try these systems?

[Hast]

Looking at their site I'd say that considering the number of buzzwords and made up words (SuperBIOS, isn't that an oxymoron?) I'd be surprised if they're not already on "FuckedCompany.com".

Any company which not only has a slogan "Like no other" but also copyrights it as well as has a press release for when they made it up are in more trouble than the nameless company that Dilbert works for.

But do read the market speak for their workstation. It's quite funny.

I love how they break up articles nowadays.

[delus10n0]

Today we're

[Next Page]

going to build a

[Next Page]

High-End gaming

[Next Page]

PC using expensi--

[Next Page]

ve and in-expensive

[Next Page]

parts.

Re:I love how they break up articles nowadays.

[darkpurpleblob]

That's why you hit the Print button and read it all on one big long page.

pah

[Anonymous Coward]

I like mine really loud. I power my box with some gasoline and a car engine. I like hearing it rev when I'm playing my GPU/CPU intensive games. :) Of course, without a proper exhaust system I usually end up passing out and dying every half our or so. Pretty annoying...

Re:pah

[Anonymous Coward]

That reincarnation is a bitch, isn't it?

Re:They've went?!

[Daetrin]

English, it's a language. Check it out.

*laughs* I'm usually not much of a grammer-nazi, but that was such a blatant violation that i cringed when i first read it. They have went?!?

best stay away from NVIDIA for budget systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I wouldn't suggest getting a budget NVIDIA card at all. I recently upgraded from an MX 200 to an FX 5200, and was almost shocked by the the lack of difference. I was able to run Mutant Storm smoothly at 800x600 instead of 640x480, but that was about it. 1024x768 was out of question even with details turned down. Mind you, I didn't do any extensive benchmarking, and other parts of the setup (e.g. the game) might have been the limiting factor.

Needless to say, I gave the 60 card back the next day. One interesting thing about the FX 5200 cards is that their memory speed tends to be quite low. That of the tested card (with 128MB DDR RAM) was only 250MHz, while 400MHz is not uncommon.

So you have the money to buy extreme hardware...

[The_DoubleU]

So why are you trying to safe a few bugs here and a few bugs there. If you have the money to buy good hardware then just do it!
Don't mind the price, that's why you are getting paid for, to be able to buy a system like THIS ONE!
And if you really want to be bleeding edge then you need to have a good MONITOR too.

Bunch of dollar saving monkeys! Spend your dollors now!

Re:'of' nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

However I would of thought that better performace might of been got...

Jesus, if you actually think about what you've typed, it really doesn't make sense.

What you probably meant to say is "I would have thought...", which can be abbreviated by contraction to "I would've thought...", which, when pronounced, sounds similar to "I would of thought...", but the last, i.e., what you said, doesn't even express a thought.

I am embarrased for you.

Pissing away money-Penny wise, pound foolish.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because guess what...if everybody waited for the price of the top of the line to come down, or if everybody waited until they needed faster hardware for their system, prices wouldn't come down as fast, and the 9700 would still be too expensive for you to buy (not to mention that development of faster hardware would slow down). Supply and demand, pal."

No, the price would fall to the point that people felt the item was worth (RIAA, MPAA, etc). We see this effect the longer an item remains on the shelf (bargin bin). The rate is dependent on how desperate the company is to staying in business. People waiting generally accelerates this process, not slows it down.

As for new/better products? That can come about just as much through product differentiation (Think different), and competition amoungs many (Spread it around), as it will through people's "be different than everyone else".

A High-End Gaming Workstation

[Cynikal]

Groovy ... now all he needs is a High-End Webserver

The no-logic-used-here systems

[Anonymous Coward]

People who buy PCs because they are cheaper than the competition makes me laugh like its impossible.

Most of them, MOST, want to play games on their computer, only a very few are buying PCs for high-end 3D workstations or other type of intensive work. Most high-end computing is done on UNIX, Linux or OSX anyways where people seems to have understood that by paying less you get less not equivalent. The high-end PCs used for intensive work cost as much if not a shitload more than the competition to do the same work in the same amount of time.

That said, if you consider that you are saving money while you spend 1000$ on a computer to play game, consider that you will get a problematic computer that will need a lot of maintenance (how many PC zealot keep saying their computer is super stable but manage to tell you that they had to reformat their hard-drive twice "last year", but this year it will remain stable (like they have been saying for the last 10 year or so...)), that will need to be updated every year or once every 3 years, if you are the economic type, so you can play the newest buzzwords-compliant game adequately and patch each game for a average of 3 times before it runs as advertised. Now consider that, to get the latest and greatest, you will need to spend 5000$ on a PC worstation that will be good for 3 year anyways.

If you consider that 1000$ is cheap for a gaming box, or even worse 5000$, you are a moron, sorry no sweet words to place there, moron is the good expression.

Fact, if you buy one Gamecube, one Playstation2 and one Xbox it will cost you less than 1000$ AND you will be able to run Linux for all your stealin... [cough] networking needs and office work. Plus you will have access to A LOT more games, mostly bug free (except on the Xbox...), tested, that you will play with peripherals made to play games and with all setting carefully calibrated to run best on the machine you own, games released on those consolle won't require an upgrade to run adequately, the hardware won't need to be changed, the games are made within those specs, period.

So anyone telling you a PC is good for gaming is good for the mental institute or the incredible world of IT where people make you buy stuff that will never work so they can keep their jobs!

Pissing away money-Consumerism amok.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You should thank those people, not complain about them. If they have the money to spend, why shouldn't they? "

The word you're looking for is "consumerism". When properly exercise a nation prospers. When not, then you have bankruptcies, and consumer debt spiraling out of control. A nation that has the lowest savings rate of any. You have big, inefficient, SUV's prowling the roads. You have landfills overflowing (the latest and the greatest end up here), and air polluting. Let's not kid ourselves, but our quest for the latest and the greatest (something companies greatly encourage) has a price. Just because you have money, doesn't mean you should be "unwise" with it. Hopefully the silver lining in the present day economy is that more people will realize that, and we can leave the "consumer frenzy" behind us, and base ourselves on something more sensible.

It's a GAMING System...

[FatSean]

What are you gonna play on that baby-RISC machine?

Re:They've went?!

[Bendebecker]

"Verb", it's what you do (to make car sounds)!

Pissing away money

[Damek]

Man, if I could piss money...

But anyway, I imagine you just repeated his point, just in a different, even somewhat condescending, tone. While we're all thanking the people who spend so much on expensive, new stuff, so it becomes cheaper for the rest of us, let's not forget that most people buying those expensive things are buying on credit, which results in spiraling debt, which is only good for Banks, but really good for no one in the long term.

If everyone really only spent what they could afford, prices wouldn't come down so fast, but our economy might be healthier...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

All that wasted time...

[Hoi Polloi]

All that time you are wasting on reading, guitar, the outdoors, your girlfriend, you could've been racking up some awesome high scores or finding those rare artifacts!

So many wasted hours...

I'd be more impressed with

[CompWerks]

The best gaming system with the least amount of $ spent. Anyone can put together an impressive gaming machine with a huge budget, but I have always enjoyed the challenge of getting the best performance using the least amount of money.

Re:Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL! Mod parent up!

Buying online - 4 weeks?

[DrCode]

For the first time, I bought all the pieces for a new machine online, from Newegg. Shipping took three days.

It was a bit of decision for me, as I work less than .5 miles from Fryes. But aside from lower, prices, buying online had other advantages:

1. You can browse by Vendor. So for example, the DVD writer I bought is an NEC. The ones at Fryes are boxed under a variety of names, but you rarely can tell who manufactured them.

2. Most products have customer reviews, which can tell you quite a bit. For example, I avoided buying a (cheaper) KVM which had a few comments that mentioned degraded video quality. The one I bought was still only $39, and works flawlessly.

3. The web site entry has a lot more information than you can get at retailers. This is how I learned about the different grades of DDR RAM, and led me to get the PC2700. At Fryes, there's just a hard-to-read board with the prices.

4. And speaking of prices: You get decent prices online without having to deal with rebates.

Re:Buying online - 4 weeks?

[ameoba]

The downside to customer reviews at NewEgg (don't get me wrong, I love the place...) is that any fanboy with a NewEgg account can rate -anything-. Things like "I read the reviews and this sucks: 1 star" or "I got some bad kit made by this company 5yr ago - 1 star" are common.

Just the other day, I was looking at some high-end DDR memory and one of the reviews said "I got this a while back but the mobo was DOA, so when I RMAed I decided to get a dif't brand of DDR : 1 star"; WTF?

CPU choice, no Xeon?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that there is no discussion about the Xeon.

It's like the Opteron is the only multi-processor capabile x86 CPU or something.

A 3 Ghz Xeon is much less expensive than the 2 Ghz Opteron and the 3.2 Ghz Xeon is only slightly more. I wonder how the speeds compare? I know the Opteron is fast, but the Xeon has 1+ Ghz more clock speed which is quite a bit.

Re:CPU choice, no Xeon?!

[Anonymous Coward]

xeon would kick the shit out of that operton, no doubt and be cheaper

Yes, I do.

[FatSean]

Just about every crack about buggy closed-source software is followed by a claim that it would be better had it been done open source. I was just heading that off. Sorry if I made an incorrect assumption. So...how exactly do you know the quality of code is 'bad'?

Re:Yes, I do.

[Bendebecker]

I'm not saying it is, I'm just asking the question: what if the reason we need to buy all this super expensive insane hardware is becuase the code is shit? Has it occured to anyone that maybe the reason for all this insane hardware is not cuase its needed for performance itslef but that i it is needed to cover up ineffecienies in code? Not recommending any solutions or anything, just posing the question (though if I did, I would recommend better education with more emphasis on good code as opposed to just working code.)

Re:Article is already Slashdotted, but lemme guess

[pla]

I don't normally say this, but... Mod parent down!

Yes, the article suggests getting high-end parts, but justifies each decision in a way that even CompUSA-level techs could understand and adapt to their own needs.

The discussion of the memory types and banking implications for dual Opterons I found particularly informative. I might choose to go with slightly less expensive parts when I finally build such a system (when the Opterons come down a bit in price), but not knowing what the article describes could easily make a careless $50 savings in parts translate into a 50% reduction in performance (definitely not a worthwhile tradeoff).

Yes, PC hardware loses value rapidly. But a well-designed system can remain useful long after most people wouldn't even consider buying it based just on its specs. As an example, my own main desktop uses a dual PIII/933 with only a half gig of RAM. You might consider that barely even worth picking up off the curb if you saw someone throw such a machine away. I can assure you, though, that thanks to very careful choices made when building it, that it runs everything I want just fine (as you might guess, I don't care about Quake 3, but for anything but an all-glitter-no-substance FPS, It runs just fine).

Sadly enough, WRT my last paragraph, I think you may have meant exactly what I describe. However, you should perhaps refrain from slamming an article as meaningless until you read it.

KVM anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why have only 1 machine, when you can have 2? KVM anyone?

Oh, The Irony!

[Cheesewhiz]

I'm still enjoying the sheer irony of a term like "Gaming Workstation." Funny thing is, it's now a completely serious idea, where even 5 or 10 years ago it would have drawn snorting giggles from even the realm of Geekdom.

Back to work...gaming...

pricey

[edrugtrader]

i didn't even go with the high end speakers or audio card as i already have a studio setup, but here are the prices i got from pricewatch:

Zalman CNPS7000-AlCu x2 = ~$60 shipped
Opteron 246 CPU x2 = ~$1600
Tyan Thunder K8W = $500
Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL memory x8 (4GB) = $1272
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra = $379
Digital 37 GB Raptor 10,000 rpm S-ATA drive with FDB motors = $115
Optorite DD0203 DVD+/-RW Combo Drive = $110
SuperMicro SP450-RP power supply = $138
Monster Power PowerCenter PC1000 with Clean Power Stage 2 v2.0 = $150
SuperMicro 742i-450 Server Chassis = ~$250
Griffin PowerMate = $50
Matrix Orbital MX2 LCD panels, LCDC software = $100

total = $4,724

Re:pricey

[benzapp]

Wow. $1272 for just the memory???

I haven't spent that much on a whole machine in ten years...

yes, yes, yes and... yes.

[pr0ntab]

I was just mentioning that sometimes you have to wait if stuff if it is out of stock and is backordered, or maybe you ordered a part from a foreign website because it's not markted here, or you're having something heavy (like a case) shipped from Buttefuck, NM, etc.

But I too prefer to wait a few days, the experience is much more consistent. Selection is always much better.

But nothing beats the convienence of being able to cruise by (Microcenter, Fry's, etc.) and make a quick exchange in the heat of a system build.

You had me at "Hello"...

[Shadestalker]

...but you lost me at the first mention of a $99 keyboard. If "understand[ing] what you are doing and why" means being stupid with your money, please count me out.

I still use the old IBM keyboard I got at a computer show for $9 four years ago - you know, the ones you could just about hammer nails with and still use.

More suggestions I'd like to add

[Kashif Shaikh]

The whole point of upgrading your system, IMO, is ensuring you avoid the multi-upgrade effect. To upgrade your CPU, you need to upgrade to a new mainboard. The new mainboard also needs new RAM, because your 512MB 133Mhz SDRAMs won't work on DDR-based boards(almost all today). And, you might also need more power-juice, so you gotta upgrade to a nice 350W or 400W power-supply.

This is what I'm facing right now: To upgrade my Athlon 1.2Ghz /w A7V & 512MB SDRAM, I gotta upgrade ALL three components! That sucks!

So:

- Make sure you get a good motherboard that can expand memory and CPU readily. You don't want to buy a motherboard that can only house a 2.4 Ghz, but not the top-of-the line 3.5 Ghz. This protects your investment down the line when 3Ghz hits the sub $100 range(canadian) and you want to upgrade.

- Memory - get the best you can. DDR400, so that when you upgrade 1 year or 2 from today, the new mainboards can still work with DDR400.

Where's the Belkin Nostromo?????

[xferboy]

Gotta have one of these on gaming machine. People say you can use it for other stuff (graphics editing, or anything else that you could use a keyboard macro for).... I'll believe them. Actually had to use a keyboard the other day for BF1942.... that was tough. Think Geek Plug

How to Cripple a High-End gaming workstation...

[elFarto the 2nd]

...Install Windows XP.

elFarto

Hyperthreading!

[EnterpriseNCC-1701]

One thing one should get it they want a good system but not 2 CPUs in Hyperthreading. My computer has a 2.8GHz 800MHz FSB P4 w/ Hypterthreading, ATI Radeon 9800 pro, ABIT IC7-G Max 2 advance, 512 MB 400MHz DDR ram, 160 GB w/ 8MB cache buffer size 7200RPM maxtor HD, DVD/CD burner, DVD/CD player, 450 watt PS, TV tuner card, Lian LI PC65 Alliuminum case with window, neon blue light, wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse, 18/1" flat panal sony LCD monitor. Weeee! -Lauren.

Couldn't force myself to read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the best explanation of why.

If anyone put together a one page version for their own reference, and has the ability to mirror it, it would be greatly appreciated!

Gaming requirements similar to video processig

[benwaggoner]

Honestly, reading this article, it was a great fit for my "what's the fastest video compression workstation I can build that I can also play games on." Seemed to meet those needs quite nicely. I'm running a dual Athlon 2800+ MP system right now, but some next gen gear is PCI-X only, so it's getting near time to update.

One big issue in getting a real workstation from Dell or HP or whatever is that they tend to be configured with high end 3D and SCSI. I'm not doing 3D animation or running a database. I want good gamer 3D, wickedly fast 2D (for playing back HD video), and S-ATA RAID (video requires high bandwidth, but isn't very sensitive to latency). The SCSI premium is still way too high, especially compared to the nearly-as-good S-ATA.

So, I'm quite likely to be building a box quite similar to this, and found the article generally helpful. Honestly, if anything it was a little low end. The audio system (professional 7.1 channel) for testing HD and DVD content costs way more than the workstation will.

Re:Article is already Slashdotted, but lemme guess

[_|()|\|]

Cost of exact same system next year: $500.00

I doubt you'll be able to find a dual Opteron 246 system for $500 next year. This article was a lot better than the Linux Journal's annual ultimate Linux box article.

Lose Bass with headphones?

[ChrisMaple]

Headphones that achieve a good seal in/on/around the ear can be flat down to DC.

GBA = SNES

[Neuroelectronic]

Ahem, BS! just look at the success of the GBA!
This has SNES style graphics and the games are so much more fun then most newer 3d games. I'm pretty sure Nintendo is "staying afloat"

Re:GBA = SNES

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I know! Let's try to stay on the same fscking page here, OK? Yes, the GBA is successful with SNES-era games. But what if the GBA was the size of a VCR, had to be attached to the TV/monitor, and was billed as a current-gen console? Would it be successful?

You can't just go and change the entire basis of a comparison just to try and make a point. Didn't they have a debate team at your school?

Half-Life 2 is the point

[Neuroelectronic]

i guess you havn't seen it, if you got a cable modem i highly suggest you download the 600 meg video demo. Gaming will never be the same. get it here, gamespy free