Slashdot Mirror
Building the Ultimate Gaming Desktop
Alan writes "FiringSquad has just posted my Ultimate Gaming Desktop system building guide in which we take a no-budget but don't-waste-money approach. We even use an Athlon FX-57 in here. This is in fact only day one of a five-day series that will total over 32,000 words..." From the article: "Today's games aren't multithreaded. So, when designing a gaming system only one CPU core is needed. Therefore, the fastest individual core is going to be what's important for having the fastest frame rates and the fastest benchmarks. In real-life, when you're playing a game, your CPU still needs to spend time managing memory, the swap file, all while keeping your real-time anti-virus file scanner and firewall active. Everyone claims to run a clean system, but how many of us have been dropped out of a LAN game because we received an instant message?"
I run a pretty stripped system. Not even IM loads at startup (which defeats the presence aspects of IM, but oh well).
The game itself would only run on one core, that is true. But there are lots of other OS and background processes also going on all the time. Wouldn't a dual-core system allow all those other extraneous processes to run on one core while the game gets another whole core to itself? I mean, that's how dual CPU machines tend to work, tell me if I'm wrong and dual-core systems are somehow different.
Even if it is as I would suspect, that doesn't necessarily mean that the dual core would be faster. If the single core has more power on its own than is lost to background processes then there is really never going to be a reason to get the dual core until the game is programmed for it explicity.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I put one of those brand-new 486-DX2s in my computer, and boy does my computer run warcraft 2 fast! I mean, the only way to make the thing any better is to upgrade the ram from 28 megs to 32, but I'm not that rich!
Today's games aren't multithreaded. So, when designing a gaming system only one CPU core is needed. [...] In real-life, when you're playing a game, your CPU still needs to spend time managing memory, the swap file, all while keeping your real-time anti-virus file scanner and firewall active
Right, which is why multi-core or SMP machines are good for gamers: the extra work is running on the other core|CPU.
Trolling is a art,
And implementing RAID-0 isn't wasting money for gaming? C'mon, now, does gaming really cause so much disk I/O that a RAID-0 will make a difference? Sounds like this guy could have built a pretty decent gaming machine for a lot less.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
First of all, AMD is making a profit on that fancy Athlon chip you're going to want to stick in your PC. Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a loss, and Nintendo has a pretty low price tag usually. This means greater value to the customer. This article about the Athlon 64 FX-57 posted on Slashdot earlier, and some of the reviews along with it, suggest that while you're playing 30% more for a top of the line CPU, you're only getting single digit increase in performance in some cases.
Console games are also designed for a hardware that will undergo minimal changes at worst. PC performance will increase dramatically over a relatively short period of time. First of all, this means that you don't have to worry about your console being out of date. The games made for it five years from now will still run on it perfectly fine. This is not very true with PCs, which have a somewhat shorter shelf-life. They're still viable, but they won't run the newest Doom or UT very well. Additionally, with a console you know that the software you buy for it will run at acceptible frame rates now, and not in 18 months when the hardware manages to catch up.
Graphically speaking, consoles will never be able to live up to what the latest and greaest PC can manage, but at their release time, consoles are about graphically on par with most computers. PCs also have the advantage of being for flexible in terms of what they can do. I can do a lot more on a PC (rant on /.) than I can do on a console. However, recently a lot of people have been working on getting Linux to run on consoles, so the advantages of a PC aren't as pronounced in this area any longer. However, on the whole, it's easier to do things related to the internet, word processing, etc. on a PC.
PCs and consoles generally do different types of games well. PCs are more favorable for FPS, RTS, and MMORPG games. Consoles are better for party games, multiplayer games (in the case where you don't have multipler computers and a LAN), and other situations like this. However, because the next generation consoles will be including HDs, USB ports, and other things that make them similar to a computer, consoles could be just as capable of having games like Warcraft 3 and EQ.
Essentially, consoles are becoming more and more like computers every generation. Some, like Nintendo, aren't following this approach as closely as Sony and Microsoft, but the overall trend seems to be in this direction. Yet because they are still consoles they have the simple advantage of "you insert the game and it plays." No installing, worrying if the hardware is good enough, or if you have other necessary things to get the game to run. Additionally, I've never seen a console give me a blue screen of death.
While a PC will always be able to deliver jaw dropping graphics, a console produces a more simplified gaming experience and at a much more reasonable price. Eventually, the only real advantage that the PC has, will amount to nothing when developers cannot figure out how to get the graphics to look any better or get them into a higher resolution.
This is my personal opinion, so take it how you will. For the record, no I don't hate PC gaming (I don't play as many PC games as I do console games, but I do still enjoy playing games like Starcraft, Civilization, and others on a PC.) so don't write me off as a hater. I'm just stating my views and hoping to inspire some intelligent discussion.
Firingsquad imposes word requirements on your articles? I remember having to write 2,000 word essays in junior high. 32,000? That must suck.
Today's games aren't multithreaded.
Wrong.
All threads these days are multithreaded.
Not all are optimized to use multiprocessors. Hyperthreading, etc.
But every single game made today is using more than one thread. In my own quick and dirty games, I have one for graphics, one for collision detection/motion, one for input, one for network data in, one for network data out. That makes 5 in a highly simplistic game. Most games have far, far more.
Tepp
I don't know why firingsquad decided to cheese out and recommend an LCD, it's as important as the rest of the stuff they're suggesting they would buy.
IMO, LCD monitors have come a long way but they are not quite where they should be to be able to handle high motion video(games) and color reproduction. I would've suggested a high quality 19-21" CRT for the ultimate gaming rig.
After posting an ask slashdot about gaming LCD monitors, I took a plunge and bought one. I took my 17" DVI Samsung 710T back after realizing the flaws with the technology while trying it out for a days straight. It may look great in the store but give it a solid night of gaming / computing and you'll see all kinds of shit go wrong on the screen.
Overall the rig is downright fast. But there are a few things that are kinda iffy. Why would you choose a Zalman CNPS7000B AlCu when Thermalright makes a much better suited product in the XP-120. The extra $20 would go way further than the next bad choice where they opted for a Plextor PX-716SA when a better performing product can be had in the NEC ND-3540A for about a third the price. Although it doesn't make much of a difference, why even install a floppy? I have lived without one for two years now. The choice of hard drives is iffy in the performance situation but the Hitachis are a good drive. Lastly to those saying that dual core should've been chosen just look at the benches from the FX-57 product launch. The extra 400mhz over the fastest dual cores gives a pretty healty performance boost in gaming. Since this is a top-notch gaming rig, the FX is the only real choice.
I just saved the HTML of this page (not bookmarked: I actually saved the actual HTML, so I can be sure I can open it up later), and I have just copied it to a CD, put it in a case, and tucked it away in my drawer. I will be opening this up sometime in 2015 (ten years from now) and I will post, most humorously, at 2005's "ultimate gaming machine." I remember purchasing the fastest computer around in june 1997: A Pentium II 266mHz machine. That thing blazed so fast. I wonder how this machine will stack up in a decade (check my site in 2015 if you're curious!)
ArsTechnica
I use the hot rod spec whenever I am looking for a new mobo. The rest I just shop around for on a part by part basis, paying close attention to price breaks on video cards.
More music, fewer hits
FiringSquad has just posted my Ultimate Gaming Desktop system building guide in which we take a no-budget but don't-waste-money approach.
Tap the brakes here. No budget, but not wasting money? Hey, if you want the mythical Ultimate Gaming System, then you're going to be wasting money because you can. Hence, the usage of the word "Ultimate".
That's like saying that a Mercedes-Benz doesn't need those window wipers on the headlights. Sure it doesn't, but having it makes it "Ultimate". Ultimate Home Theater designs have those stupid 6 gauge gold-plated Monster cables that are totally overkill, but having them makes it "Ultimate".
Sorry, this article is far from Ultimate. Come back when your no-budget is truly no-budget. Write me an article that really has the Ultimate Gaming Rig.
These days the difference between the "OMG WOWWW" top-end gaming machine and the low-mid level one that mere mortals can acquire for $1500 or less is pretty slim. I'm at the point where I just decide how much I want to spend on the machine and build whatever I can for that price. I won't spend over $150 for a video card anymore, so I just get the best one in that range. Unless it's a generational difference or missing some key feature, the low-mid range part does everything the high end one will do (maybe video cards are the exception here). But my motherboard cost like $90 or something new, and it was among the top rated ones at the time, and had integrated sound, 1394, usb 1/2 and some other stuff. I saved like $200 by getting an Athlon 3200 instead of 3400 or whatever it was at the time... The performance difference there is negligible in daily use, even in high-end games.
As we progress it just seems like the concept of the "OMG LOOK AT THIS UBER COMPUTAR I BUILT WITHOUT REGARD TO PRICE" becomes meaningless since you can build one that's 90% as good for 50% of the price in many cases.
rooooar
4000 US$ for a gaming machine? No thanks. I really, really like my machines fast and well built, but I rather spend the the remaining 3000 dollars on some improvements on my home entertainment, a nice luxury weekend with my girlfriend in Wanaka and buy a couple of bottles of Single Malt, Central Otago Pinot Noir and pack of East Timor Fair Trade Coffee.
There you have it...
Today's games aren't multithreaded. So, when designing a gaming system only one CPU core is needed.
What is this, DOS? Any given system is going to have other processes running. You can either have them running on the same CPU as the game, slowing it down, or you can shift them to another CPU.
From the article:
"The obvious question is how many gamers actually encode MPEG-2 while playing games on a day to day basis? It's an easy answer: none."
Wrong. I do it. Yep. I do. Or encode to divx.
I find that with hyperthreading this is quite doable on a modern system without much impact. If you are running the background process in low priority I don't notice slowdown.
Sure the encode will take a little longer, but my experience has been that it still gets finished pretty quickly.
Maybe I'm nuts, but what else am I going to do while waiting for an encode to complete?
(obvious answers include:
go outside!
get a life!
spend time with other human beings!
etc.)
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Hmmm "2.8GHz on a 90nm chip, SSE3 enabled" for... $1031!!
:) On stock retail cooling too, absolutely beautiful..
My Venice 3000+ runs at 2.8GHz on a 90nm chip, SSE3 enabled for....$147.
You do the math. Thanks AMD!
And of course, this machine is how much more powerful than a P2 400 mhz?
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/2005_eternal_b attle_day2/
"Your whole argument relies on some made up numbers. What if the other background processes took 50 units of work per second, then suddenly the dual core processor has the advantage."
:)
That's the _whole_ point: they don't take much. All this dual-core hype is based on the lie that there are some massively CPU-intenside background processes that leave your game starving for its own dedicated CPU.
Well, here's what you can do. Turn off SETI, IM, and generally all the things you would realistically turned off if you wanted the maximum frames-per-second in a game. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL. Let it stabilize for a few seconds, then look at your CPU usage. Those are your Windows background processes at work.
There's no made up number there. You don't have to believe my numbers. You can read the actual numbers for your own system, yourself.
_If_ you were to see some 50% CPU usage when idle, yeah, _then_ you need a second CPU badly. But here's the fun part: I see 0% on mine.
So getting a second CPU to run all that 0%, and thus reduce the game CPU's load by a whole 0%... well, I hope you can understand why some of us are less than thrilled by that idea
Windows background processes take less time than you think. What Windows does have, though, is a lot of _synchronous_ stuff going, i.e., where your application must wait for the results anyway. I.e., moving that to another CPU wouldn't do you one bit of good.
E.g., when your game is taking ages at the loading screen, because some AV program scans every byte loaded, that's one such synchronous thing. Each call to load a block _must_ wait until that block is scanned and loaded. Whether that's happening on CPU 1 or CPU 2 is irrelevant. Your game gets to wait exactly the same time in both cases.
E.g., if a computer is slow because it's swapping (e.g., your computer illiterate friend -- you know you have one by that description -- having 5 spyware programs and 5 applications open while gaming), that process just can't possibly proceed until the desired page is swapped in. If your game's (or any other application's) main thread wants to access location 31337, it can't possibly proceed until the value there has been fetched. Which means until that whole page is loaded from disk, if it was swapped out. Whether it's CPU 1 or CPU 2 handling the swapping, it still won't accelerate that one bit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, that would be good and fine, if it wasn't utterly false.
Let's take those in the paragraph you quote, because two are synchronous tasks, and one is a whole 0% to 1% CPU time.
1. The swap file. Do you understand how that works? It a process wants to read 1 byte from the memory location X, that process can't possibly proceed until that byte has been fetched. If that's in a page currently swapped out, it can't possibly proceed before it's finished loading back into RAM.
So offloading swap management solves... what? You wait for that page anyway, and wait exactly as much time anyway, because it's the HDD that's the bottleneck there. So offloading that to another CPU will bring exactly _zero_ benefit.
2. Your real time virus scanner. Another synchronous task: if your game is waiting (e.g., at a loading screen) for a block to be loaded and scanned by the real time AV scanner, that's it. That thread is stopped and waiting until the scanner is done with that block.
So, again, a second CPU will bring exactly _zero_ benefit there,
3. Your real time firewall. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, look at the CPU usage for that one. Oops it's at most 1%, most of the time less. Yeah, it sooo makes sense to buy a slower dual-CPU for that.
Here's just some simple maths: if you have a 2.8 GHz CPU and lose 1% of that to the firewall, it leaves you with some 2.77 GHz worth of power for your game. If you get a 2.4 GHz dual CPU so the second one can take care of the firewall, you're left with a 2.4 GHz CPU for your game. Ooops, so dualies are still a losing proposition after all.
So, no offense, all I see there is one aspect of why premature optimization (in this case, of hardware) based on false assumptions and lack of measurement is bad. That's just the problem: you end up dumping time and/or money and more often than not end up with something actually _slower_ than the straightforward solution. In this case you dump a bunch of cash on a l33t dual-core solution, based on false assumptions about what those processes do and how, and actually end up _slower_ than a cheaper one-core solution. Was it worth it?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
An even more obvious answer: go to sleep.
How much _are_ you encoding, that it can't possibly finish in the 16 hours a day when you're at work or sleeping, and it has to overlap your gaming time?
And more importantly, if you absolutely have to encode about a dozen movies to DivX per day, how on Earth do you have time to see all those _and_ have time left for gaming? Not a flame, I'm actually genuinely curious.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
3) I don't know about Windows firewalls. Never used one.
At least that's how I understand Windows. I have just one Windows machine (out of ~8 total) and that's just for gaming so my Windows user-side knowledge is a bit limited.
thanks!
Trolling is a art,
If you're performing a full HDD scan at the same time as playing a game, yes, that will benefit from a second CPU. Then again, since a major bottleneck there is the HDD, and as you've noticed the scan runs with low priority, hyperthreading would also be enough.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
and if so, how sentient is it? can i hook a few up at work and go home? or is the author just desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel for really stupid examples? whats the you say? another ULTIMATE GAMING PC article that is just a load of crap? how can this be?
You got the same processor I did, my friend. It runs at 1.8GHz, not 2.8GHz. (I realize you probably just did a typo)
17 inch LCD? Bow before my 21 inch CRT. CRT you get better refresh rates and less lag time.
1 gig of ram? Are you kidding me? Any true gamer has 2 gigs or more.
Standard fan cooling? When you say "ultimate" you need water cooling. It's not even that expensive or excessive.
I say wireless keyboards are excessive. You can save $90 by buying a standard no frills keyboard that gets the job done and is reliable. You can even spiffy it up with some electrical tape. Same with the MX700, you only need a 510 or 518.
Really... Spend $$$$ on TWO 6800's, yet no sound card, and more importantly, no speaker setup!! what the hell is the point of only going half way? Graphics mean nothing without a decent sound system.
I have a short attention span. I have two monitors. The idea of watching a tv episode while playing WoW appeals to me. Yes I used to have two computers on my desk, why do you ask?