Off-Topic: Looking for Hardware Recommendations

[Mark Phillips]

On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 18:34 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> Same note.  You can play many X-Box games on a windows machine, but you
> can not play most windows games on a counsel (unless you got a cool
> X-Box hack to load some acquired windows on it and make it a gamming
> machine)
> 
> I have a 3GHz duel core with 3.5 GB ram.  The video card has some memory
> onboard (64MB I think) and steals another 512MB from the system.  It
> plays Dungeon Lords, Bio-Shock, and Overlord quite easily so you could
> probably step down from their.  I am told from my WoW friends that 1GB
> of ram is the minimum but the sweet spot is around 2GB of ram.  

Wow (no pun intended....well maybe a little). She is playing WoW with
512 MB with no problems on the P4 with Windows XP Pro. What doesn't work
is Sims2 - it locks up after a few minutes. It lasts longer now that I
removed Norton and installed a different anti-virus program. I have
ordered another 512 MB to see if Sims2 will play. The other games are
Nancy Drew, which are not big system hogs. As you can see, we are not
high end gamers.....;-)

> A 2GHz
> to 2.5GHz processor should be fine but you need a fairly beefy video
> card with at good VPU, at least some basic 3D acceleration, and I would
> say a minimum of 64MB on board ram, preferably 128MB.  System barrowed
> memory is not that good.
> 
> As for processors in general...  A single 3GHz Duel core processor will
> perform ~60% better then a single core 3GHz processor for most
> applications written to efficiently utilize duel cores.  

OK...but what is the price jump for dual core versus single core? Since
I may not need it today, perhaps I should wait for the dual cores to
become less expensive. Who makes the best dual core desktops/towers?

> This is similar
> to the multiple physical processors, but you actually get much better
> performance out of multiple cores.  However there are diminishing
> returns.  A quad core will do about 40% better then a duel core and an 8
> core machine will do about 30% better then a quad core machine.  When
> given the choice I would rather get a duel core with a 1333MHz FSB then
> a quad core with an 800MHz FSB any day.  As for would you need it; for
> me, it is nice just because I run many applications at the same time.
> Some one with a CSE degree can probably tell how threaded it needs to be
> before you see performance increases but I am not that smart of the top
> of my head.  The big point is that a duel core 2.4GHz processor is
> cheaper to produce then a single core 3.8GHz, processor and thus is
> cheaper to sell, but you get very similar performance.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Matt
> Graham
> Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 4:31 PM
> To: Main PLUG discussion list
> Subject: Re: Off-Topic: Looking for Hardware Recommendations
> 
> After a long battle with technology, gm5729 wrote:
> > Honestly the best choice is to get a gaming platform/console and use
> > it.... cheaper and designed for games
> 
> I see you missed the OP's saying "one of my daughters likes to play
> WoW".  You 
> can't play WoW on a WiiXboxPS2 according to Blizzard, so that won't work
> for 
> the OP's needs.
> 
> Higher-end gaming was never my thing.  xmame, snes9x, epsxe, sdl-gnuboy,
> and 
> fceu = plenty to keep me amused.  If the games that everybody likes will
> run 
> OK on an older box with 2200MHz/512M/40G/reasonable graphics card (like
> the 
> OP said), then it's reasonable to spend $350 on that.  The graphics card
> spec 
> really depends on the exact games the users want.  To avoid hassles
> later, it 
> might be worth getting a card that's a little more powerful than you
> need 
> right now, since game updates may mean the GPU has to work harder.
> 
> Remotely managing a 'Doze machine from a Linux machine can be done
> reasonably 
> easily.  Turn on whatever 'Doze uses for desktop sharing, then use
> rdesktop 
> from the Linux side.  Or install TightVNC Server on the 'Doze machine
> and use 
> any VNC client from the Linux machine.  Remotely managing a Linux box
> from 
> a 'Doze box is easy; just use PuTTY or a VNC client.  HTH,
>