[plug] dual-boot "gamers" machine h/w suggestions please?

[Adam Hewitt]

On 06/12/2006, at 5:13 PM, Denis Brown wrote:

> Dear PLUG list members,
>
> A bit out of my depth with this one not being a game player :-(
>
> Looking for recommendations for commercially built and supported,  
> preferably brand-name desktop hardware capable of good gaming  
> graphics performance.   Will dual-boot Lin / Win.
>
> My stock-in-trade is IBM but unless we went totally high-end,  
> Intellistation, blah blah blah they don't seem to be in the hunt  
> performance wise, and then the price hurts :-)   My next thought  
> was HP, something like the dc7600 with a decent graphics card a la  
> items that have been mentioned here from time to time.
>
> Background:
> An Important Person (tm) in my work environment seeks  
> recommendations from yours truly regards a suitable PC for his  
> teenage son for games playing.
>
> The lad has all the jargon and while I can find my way around PCs  
> and work stations, spec 'em, build 'em, etc I want to make a sane  
> recommendation that is not going to leave the lad high and dry,  
> bankrupt nor occupy my time down the track because "you told him to  
> buy these bits and bolt them together..."   Hence commercial and  
> brand-name.
>
> To keep this on topic, lad wants to do Computer Science in Uni so  
> he'll be capable of some self-help and has expressed an interest in  
> using Linux on such hardware.
>
> Principle questions relate to chipset performance for a given CPU,  
> memory, hdd transfer rate, clock speed, etc I imagine.   This is  
> where I think IBM tends to tread on the cautious side so in general  
> their mobos are less punchy that some of the specs I've read.
<SNIP>

What is the budget for said machine? If you are considering brand  
name machines then I am guessing it must be reasonable.

I spec'd up a dream machine a little while back that came out at  
about $6.5k. This machine was a little overboard for the average  
gamer (it included a full water cooling setup for example), but there  
are some things that you *really* need if you want the machine to  
play new release games *now*, let alone games in 3,6 or 12 months  
down the track.

Firstly the graphics card. Obviously if he is wanting to use Linux on  
this machine then it will need to be nVidia due to the lack of decent  
ATI drivers. 512MB of graphics memory is a minimum, preferably 1GB. I  
speced 2x7950's for my machine, which was before the 8800 was released.

Secondly is power supply and case. You can no longer get away with  
using cheap power supplies for gaming machines. All the newer  
graphics cards require 24V input (2 HDD molar plugs...or whatever  
they're called), so you need to make sure that the power supply A)  
has enough power (600W being a minimum now I would say) and B) that  
the 12V Rails never fluctuate. I spec'ed up the 800W Super Flower  
(can't remember exactly what it was now). As for the case you need to  
make sure that it provides adequate cooling as the amount of heat  
generated by a "games" machine is incredible....Antec make really  
good cases.

Third is the motherboard. I would recommend going with the nForce590  
or nForce 570 based boards, as opposed to the nForce4 boards that  
were recommended by others, however I am not sure about the linux  
compatibility for those boards.

The rest of the machine in my opinion is not as important.

Get RAM made from a reputable company, but low latency RAM is only  
useful for overclocking which shouldn't be necessary for a while.

Hard drives it doesn't really matter, I spec'ed 10K RPM SATAII drives  
for mine, but that was for a dream machine it is not *really* needed.

The onboard sound should be fine for a while, but eventually you  
should concider getting a sound card with a processor on board. The  
reason for this is obvious...removing sound processing from the CPU  
leaves more processing power for the game itself.

Sorry for the late reply, but as I can't afford to purchase any of  
the above components I like to dream and thought I should add my 2c.

Cheers,

Adam.