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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 And by the time they can afford the lastest whiz-bang video card, it's already outdated.
(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
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.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
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.
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.
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.