Build the ultimate pc

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-09-26 04:43am

Rules.

1. Only technology available for sale in market can be uses.

2. It cant be as expensive as a mainframe.

3. State other hardware such as monitors, optional devices like cable modems.

So what specs have you come up with for the ultimate PC ?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 08:35am

Okey, lets do it easy.

Nforce4 motherboard (not sure of brand)- can I use it if its coming out in a week or 2?
AMD Athlon FX-55 (same, a few weeks), if not Athlon FX-53
Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra Extream SLIh (I can dream

)
Creative Audigy 2 ZS 7.1
Raptor 74GB
2 DiamondMaxIII 300GB in RAID 1
Plextor 712UF DVD burner 12X
DVD-rom generic
520W Antec TruePower
Thermeltake case
30I apple Cinema LCD
DSP-300 USB headphones

Is that enough for ya?

EDIT: taken off the 2nd Raptor in RAID 0 and changed the DiamonMax RAID state to 1 since there is NO preformance benefit.

EDIT 2: changed the GPU to an SLI, just because!

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-26 10:10am

ArsTechnica's God Box is a good one.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 11:11am

phongn wrote:ArsTechnica's God Box is a good one.

Does the 16GB of RAM really help? and the Opteron's?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-26 11:14am

There is no such thing as too much RAM and multiprocessing is always good.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 11:29am

phongn wrote:There is no such thing as too much RAM and multiprocessing is always good.

However, could a PC actully effectivly use that much RAM?

Also, then shouldn't a pair of FX-55's or duel Xeon's (with the hyper threading) be better?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-09-26 11:47am

I believe the FXes are Opteron 1XXes using non-ECC memory, so you can't use them with SUMA. And AMD is teh better

[note I have never owned AMD hardware].

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2004-09-26 12:47pm

IUnknown wrote:Rules.

1. Only technology available for sale in market can be uses.

2. It cant be as expensive as a mainframe.

3. State other hardware such as monitors, optional devices like cable modems.

So what specs have you come up with for the ultimate PC ?

Build that thing the army has.

You know, the 1,500 dual G5 supercomputer cluster? 3,000 G5 processors?

For the ultimate PC, I would get something with two PCIe slots. In them, I would put TWO Geforce 6800GT's (the GT takes up one slot, unlike the Ultra which takes two), and hook them together with SLI and overclock them both to the Ultra's level (I know several people running 6800GT's overclocked beyond the Ultra). Perferably a Dual Xeon or Dual Opteron, with at least 4 GB of RAM if you're gonna spend this much money

Now with DUAL 6800GT's overclocked beyond the Ultra, you will get nearly double the performance of an X800 or 6800 Ultra. You will have the ultimate in graphics power. Plus the Opteron or Xeon doesn't have bad processing itself

You'll need Winblows XP PRO, since Home doesn't support SMP.

This would SMASH the so-called "God Box", since you'd have the same processors as them but ALSO have much faster graphics power.

Definitely get a SATA hard drive, and TWO Apple 23" monitors (that's right, Apple. Apple's monitors have slightly higher refresh rates than most (but not all) flatscreens, are pretty dang big, and are color-calibrated out of the box- but they're a couple hundred more than the average flatscreen of their size. If price is no object...plus you can plug the two together and it'd look awesome!), possibly THREE or FOUR if you can use them with the dual graphics cards

Unfortunately, there are no PC graphics cards with Dual Link DVI, so you can't use that beautiful 30" monitor.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-26 12:48pm

Ace Pace wrote:However, could a PC actully effectivly use that much RAM?

When using a 64-bit OS w/ 64-bit applications, yes.

Also, then shouldn't a pair of FX-55's or duel Xeon's (with the hyper threading) be better?

The Opteron is built more for SMP/NUMA operations with a greater number of hypertransport links. Dual SMT is nice, but the Operton is a stronger core.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 01:04pm

The problem is the requirments were on market parts, there are still no SLI capable motherboards except the Nforce4-SLI but thats not due for a few months.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-09-26 01:14pm

What about these? http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ps ... kstations/

Who needs x86 compatibility, eh?

For x86 compatible, yeah, what the others said.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-09-26 01:15pm

Ace Pace wrote:The problem is the requirments were on market parts, there are still no SLI capable motherboards except the Nforce4-SLI but thats not due for a few months.

Didn't VIA just release one?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 01:24pm

Pu-239 wrote:Didn't VIA just release one?

VIA just released a PCI-E board, though a SLI board seems to be in the plans.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chips ... es/k8t890/[/url]

Laird · Post by **Laird** » 2004-09-26 02:03pm

I'm honestly suprised people aren't having like 10+ monitor displays and using like $30,000+ LCD projectors for each monitor etc...

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2004-09-26 02:19pm

Can't you just put them in any PCIe motherboard and use NVidia's special SLI connector?

Or does the motherboard ALSO need SLI (meaning you need a more expensive motherboard) as well?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 02:19pm

Laird wrote:I'm honestly suprised people aren't having like 10+ monitor displays and using like $30,000+ LCD projectors for each monitor etc...

I'm trying not to go over the top completly, also, no current card can support more then 3 monitors.

Projectors also...no thanks, too big for me, the PC I specified was what my dream specs are.

Laird · Post by **Laird** » 2004-09-26 02:37pm

Ace Pace wrote:
Laird wrote:I'm honestly suprised people aren't having like 10+ monitor displays and using like $30,000+ LCD projectors for each monitor etc...
I'm trying not to go over the top completly, also, no current card can support more then 3 monitors.

Projectors also...no thanks, too big for me, the PC I specified was what my dream specs are.

True but Win2k supports upto 10 monitors, so just get a bunch of the dual headed/tri-headed vid cards and your ready to go.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 02:41pm

Praxis wrote:Can't you just put them in any PCIe motherboard and use NVidia's special SLI connector?

Or does the motherboard ALSO need SLI (meaning you need a more expensive motherboard) as well?

No, you need a SLI-capable motherboard, as far as I know that means splitting up the 16X slot into a 16X\8X slot and a 8X slot for the second card.

You ALSO need Nvidia's SLI connector, but thats seperate.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2004-09-26 03:14pm

You people are all concentrating on a uber-PC without thinking about capabilities and what a fast machine would add. The OP mentions anything up to the cost of a mainframe (which are really the most expensive computers these days at millions of dollars a piece), so given those price constaints, I'd want something that could actually do something that a standard desktop couldn't.

Given this, I'd go for something like this. Systems similar to these run some of the most demanding realtime custom 3D applications (like the realtime 3D Planetarium). If I had one of these, all I'd need is someone to custom design me a game for it and I'd be happier then a pig in shit.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-09-26 03:16pm

The Kernel wrote:You people are all concentrating on a uber-PC without thinking about capabilities and what a fast machine would add. The OP mentions anything up to the cost of a mainframe (which are really the most expensive computers these days at millions of dollars a piece), so given those price constaints, I'd want something that could actually do something that a standard desktop couldn't.

Given this, I'd go for something like this. Systems similar to these run some of the most demanding realtime custom 3D applications (like the realtime 3D Planetarium). If I had one of these, all I'd need is someone to custom design me a game for it and I'd be happier then a pig in shit.

The question is, is it practical? if you have to re-write everything to run on it, I wouldn't think so.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2004-09-26 03:22pm

Ace Pace wrote: The question is, is it practical? if you have to re-write everything to run on it, I wouldn't think so.

Of course it's not practical. No one outside of highly specialized industrial projects use these systems, but if you had the money to purchase it you could probably afford to do some work on it.

In my case if such a machine was given to me, I'd start a company exploring alternate game design options (virtual reality, alternate I/O, etc), stuff that has been a long time in the coming, but no one has bothered to try and make practical. The I/O changes are particularly important; we are still using the same technology controllers for our game consoles from the 70's with very few changes, despite enormous leaps in console capabilities.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2004-09-26 04:55pm

The audio portion on the ArsTechnica's God Box needs a lot of work.

Run the digital outputs from a DAL CardDeluxe soundcard to a Wadia 27ix DAC, then feed the balanced outputs to a Kevin Gilmore Blue Hawaii to power a pair of Stax Omega II Headphones. The soundcard is the weak link so if I can think of a better one I'll use it. Or if electrostatic headphones aren't your thing, go with the Grado RS-1 or PS-1 Pro with a modified ASL 1003 tube amp.

Fun thing is the Wadia 27ix DAC will cost more than the rest of the computer and everything else put together.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-26 06:01pm

The Kernel wrote:Given this, I'd go for something like this. Systems similar to these run some of the most demanding realtime custom 3D applications (like the realtime 3D Planetarium). If I had one of these, all I'd need is someone to custom design me a game for it and I'd be happier then a pig in shit.

You just want SGI's uber bandwidth designs

aerius wrote:The audio portion on the ArsTechnica's God Box needs a lot of work.

Then lurk on Ars's A/V forum and wait until next time they ask for suggestions

Laird wrote:True but Win2k supports upto 10 monitors, so just get a bunch of the dual headed/tri-headed vid cards and your ready to go.

Some of Ars' posters have 9-display machines mostly for stock market analysts in a 3x3 configuration

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-09-26 06:39pm

aerius wrote:The audio portion on the ArsTechnica's God Box needs a lot of work.

Run the digital outputs from a DAL CardDeluxe soundcard to a Wadia 27ix DAC, then feed the balanced outputs to a Kevin Gilmore Blue Hawaii to power a pair of Stax Omega II Headphones. The soundcard is the weak link so if I can think of a better one I'll use it. Or if electrostatic headphones aren't your thing, go with the Grado RS-1 or PS-1 Pro with a modified ASL 1003 tube amp.

Fun thing is the Wadia 27ix DAC will cost more than the rest of the computer and everything else put together.

Bah. Sound is unimportant. I'm using an ISA SB16 on Linux.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-09-26 06:55pm

True but Win2k supports upto 10 monitors, so just get a bunch of the dual headed/tri-headed vid cards and your ready to go.

How many monitors does X with Xinerama support? Anyway, if you need more, you probably could run several X servers simulataneously.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Build the ultimate pc

Build the ultimate pc

Re: Build the ultimate pc