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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. "
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 And by the time they can afford the lastest whiz-bang video card, it's already outdated.
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.
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folks are the ones who piss away their money, so folks like me can get useless and obsolete hardware, like the terribly out-of-date Radeon 9700, for cheap cheap cheap.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
(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.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
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
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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.
A Mac and a PlayStation 2.
- 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.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
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.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
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 . . .
Sure, If you head towards Earth from Remulak 7, the Space Station is the last "stop" before you enter the atmosphere.
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!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
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
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
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!
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.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.