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

[Timothy White]

> 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.

I've no idea about this. I just know that nForce4 usually is rock
solid in Linux compatability, has Native SATA, etc etc, which things
like Via often lack. Seeing as I've fallen behind in the gaming world
(other than yesterday, when I discovered sauerbraten, or cube 2, and
as last time I played Cube, I was on dialup, I finally got a chance
for online playing, and co-op editing!).

>
> 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.

Standard RAM is fine. Tests have shown that "low latency" etc etc and
other words they throw around for gaming, makes no difference.
Obviously, a reputable company is a good idea.

>
> 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.

lol. Honestly, with SATA performance at it's current state, who needs
10K RPM for games? Also, that's a noisy drive! Normal SATA will be
fine, steer away from IDE drives now days, as I can certainly say SATA
speed is much better (even compared to a brand new IDE drive)

>
> 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.

I'd agree with all of this. I can think of some "brand name" laptops
that can't do anything while playing music, or using it's winmodem
(effectively the same thing). Then again, a decent desktop board
shouldn't have issues, but a dedicated board will give you more
hardware channels. (For example, I have 2 hardware channels on my
Nvidia CK80. The second is hw:0,2 and is the S/PDIF, so obviously is
no use unless I have 2 sound systems. I'd love a board with 2 hardware
channels mixed into the same output. So much for 8 channel audio, if I
can't make the most of it!) Anyway, a second hardware channel means
you can easily play games, with your OWN music playing in the
background!

>
> 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.

Ah, it's nice to dream :p

Tim
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