Thoughts 22 Jun 2007 12:15 pm
One Game
Some time back I built a computer for a friend. At the time the hardware chosen was as fast as anything on the market.
Since the machine was designed around one particular game, it’s name became “One Game.”
When the machine was first built, it would run Oblivion totally maxed out.
Now, some of the modules currently available are capable of bringing this machine to it’s knees, unless some of the settings are reset to less than max.
In about 6 months I should be building him another, this time it looks like it will be designed for another game that will be even more graphics intensive.
The timeline on this next project is still up in the air, it is more dependent on the time of the game’s final release and not so dependent on budget.
The machine I currently envision will have dual AMD Athlon FX-74 processors, 8 gig of high-end memory, 2 Western Digital Raptor Hds, and 2 of Nvidia’s fastest gaming cards. This will undoubtedly require some form of liquid cooling, for both the cpus and the video cards, and a power supply of at least 700 to 800 watts and this may well limit what else can be on that house circuit.
At the rate the hardware power requirements are going, for the machine after this, we’ll have to build a small nuclear power station in his backyard.
I suspect that this whole project will change once the primary game is released, the final specs are known, performance tests have been run, and a budget is set.
As is, the project should run a bit over $4k and be the fastest game machine available, but it will be aimed at one or perhaps two games and tweaked accordingly.
The trouble with any specialty machine is that it will do one thing better than anything else in it’s class, but it will not be the top performer in all other applications.
Still, given the projected hardware selection, it won’t be a slow, no matter what is thrown at it.
Any hardware selection will be based on the abilities of the game to utilize the features. If the game or games in question are unable to take advantage of multiple cpus or sli then the extra expense would be wasted and the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Choosing all the right parts, and working out the bugs, was the fun part of the last project.
It took less than 48hrs to get it patched, stable and ready for it’s maiden run.
I foresee many headaches with this new design, because a great deal of the project will be cutting edge, and those things never work without a lot of tweaking, research, lost sleep, head pounding, frustration, coffee, and Excedrin.
I would wager it will take at least 3, probably 5, days to get everything patched and working well enough to do the first install of the game. –Yes, I said first install.
I’m looking forward to it.