The Ultimate PC!

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-09-26 01:22pm

HL2 and D3 will require very powerful computers to run with all the bells and whistles. People have embraced AF and AA nowadays and it takes a lot to run them. Sure, D3 may only require a GF2 and a sub-1GHz computer, but to make it run at its full potential you need a lot more.

A lot of professional applications demand as much computing power as you can throw at them - the less time it takes to do something, the more productivity you have and thus the more money you can make (or save). CAD/CAM, 3D animation, Photoshop and other such things demand fast, powerful computers.

Clone Sergeant · Post by **Clone Sergeant** » 2003-09-26 01:34pm

Hotfoot wrote:Note how none of the links lead to the sites mentioned.

That immediately tips off the bullshit-meter. The fact that the articles are locally hosted screenshots and NOT links to the articles themselves reeks of bullshit on a massive scale.

Check the sites listed, and I bet you not one of them has the article that this site claims they have.

A little digging and.....

Forbes article: link

Inquirer.net: link

lukexcom · Post by **lukexcom** » 2003-09-26 02:03pm

greenmm wrote:Better question, too, is: why the hell would you even need that kind of computer?

I've just barely seen brand-new games coming that require 1 GHz CPU's as their minimum requirements. We're at a point where game requirements are far behind the mass-produced and commercially available systems. So why you would need such an ultra-high-end (it's not cutting-edge, it's walking-on-a-monomolecular-edge tech) system that costs as much as a new car, and whose capabilities probably won't even be able to be taken advantage of for 2-5 years?

Tell that to a flightsimmer and they'll beat you to a bloody pulp and then sacrifice whatever's left of your body to the "flight gods" for that.

Hell, NO system will run FS2004 at 16x12, 4x FSAA and 16x Ansio properly at 30fps while flying, say, Chicago, or NYC, with some gorgeous, 3d, volumetric cumulonimbus clouds around you. Hell, if you add a payware add-on like one of those fully-modeled airliners for $40 alone, where almost ALL of the buttons, flight computers, and gadgets are functioning, (and you gotta print a 200pg set of manual JUST to use the product properly) you're talking about 10-15 fps AT BEST in such a scenario.

Yes, we are a special breed of fanatics...

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-09-26 02:08pm

phongn wrote:Actually, the P4EE exists, but won't be out for awhile. With Vapochill cooling one might get a P4EE up to those speeds.

One group of nutters made a sample chip boot at 3.9GHz. But it was vastly unstable.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-09-26 02:44pm

....I wasn't even aware that anybody even yet made RAM that was stable around 533 DDR (and that's an odd speed, don't you think? You can't get a DDR533 speed since you're clock doubling).

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-09-26 02:54pm

No.. They got it stable at 3.6GHz with PC3500 SDRAM.

Remember the P4EE is just a Xeon MP with a stupidly high multiplier.

(To compare, in all the tests run bar one, it was beaten by an FX-51 at 2.2GHz)

L'inq

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-09-26 03:20pm

I know the P4EE is just a revalidated Xeon. I know that it's beaten by the FX51 in many tests, but the strength of the 2MB L3 will not be seen in most consumer applications, games included (or that pathetic test seen on the Inq).

For certain high-end applications that have large datasets, the L3 cache will be a big help.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-09-26 03:59pm

but the strength of the 2MB L3 will not be seen in most consumer applications, games included

No, it won't.

But it's being marketed as a consumer/enthusiast chip.

greenmm · Post by **greenmm** » 2003-09-26 05:24pm

phongn wrote:HL2 and D3 will require very powerful computers to run with all the bells and whistles. People have embraced AF and AA nowadays and it takes a lot to run them. Sure, D3 may only require a GF2 and a sub-1GHz computer, but to make it run at its full potential you need a lot more.

A lot of professional applications demand as much computing power as you can throw at them - the less time it takes to do something, the more productivity you have and thus the more money you can make (or save). CAD/CAM, 3D animation, Photoshop and other such things demand fast, powerful computers.

Well, duh. But are you really getting significant enough performance to justify the capital outlay?

If I only get a x2 speed boost on my CAD or Photoshop rendering, but I have to pay x5 the cost to get it... is it cost-effective? Hell no. If I have to pay x3 the cost to get it? Hell no. x2 cost? Maybe... but only if I can afford the cost right now.

Same with games. I was able to recently purchase a 2 GHz processor with decent RAM, a decent onboard graphics chip, and a decent HD for $500. A topline with double the ram, double the video memory on an expansion card, and a HD 3 times as large would run me only $1000 to $1500. The strange thing, though, is... I not only exceed the minimums for such games as UT2004 (not even released yet) or FS2004 (450 Mhz CPU? Yeah, that's really stretching my value PC), I'm exceeding most if not all of their recommended minimums. And that's with a value PC. And that's assuming that I run out and buy the latest and greatest games as soon as they're released. I don't; I wait until I have the spare cash, and until I can get a better picture of how good a game really is, post-hype (i.e. pre-release, I would have said Black and White was a game I absolutely had to have; post-release, after seeing how buggy it was, I'm glad I didn't buy it).

As for HL2.... quoted from Planet Half-Life:

"While the new engine has all sorts of fancy features, it's still designed to scale and work on lower-end machines. Apparently a 700mhz processor and a video card capable of running DX6 is enough, although a 2ghz with a GeForce4 is recommended. Rumors about NVidia or ATI exclusivity are unfounded. "

I don't think I have anything to worry about with HL2 not running smoothly... and that's assuming I go out and buy it first thing. Again, that's with my 'value' AMD Athlon 2400+ desktop (actual speed 2 GHz). So why would I need a $7000-8000 PC to run a brand-new game that my 'value' PC can already run well, let alone all the older and 'less sophisticated' games that I play right now?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-09-26 07:17pm

greenmm wrote:If I only get a x2 speed boost on my CAD or Photoshop rendering, but I have to pay x5 the cost to get it... is it cost-effective? Hell no. If I have to pay x3 the cost to get it? Hell no. x2 cost? Maybe... but only if I can afford the cost right now.

But does 2X cost imply only 2X performance? Someone might double their cost by adding an enormous amount of RAM and fast I/O, but reap more than twice the performance. For example, 2GB of RAM versus 512MB might boost Photoshop performance far more than merely 2X. 2GB of RAM costs quite a bit more than 512MB, especially if you have to use 1GB DIMMs.

Or what if you're running databases? 2X performance might mean that your transactions are processing in real-time rather than queuing up and that may be worth more than 2X the cost.

Or what if you need a color-calibrated monitor? Those things are far more expensive than your average CRT (or even most LCDs). In this case, you don't get a performance benefit in terms of speed, but you benefit from more accurate color matching when printing.

I don't think I have anything to worry about with HL2 not running smoothly... and that's assuming I go out and buy it first thing. Again, that's with my 'value' AMD Athlon 2400+ desktop (actual speed 2 GHz). So why would I need a $7000-8000 PC to run a brand-new game that my 'value' PC can already run well, let alone all the older and 'less sophisticated' games that I play right now?

You don't need a $7-$8K machine to run HL2 or D3. I never argued that. I did argue that many want high-speed machines so that they can play games with all the graphics-enhancing options enabled. Your AXP 2400+ will not run HL2 @ 1600x1200 w/ 8x AA and 16x AF in the DirectX 9 rendering pathway. I'd seriously doubt that it would get reasonable framerates @ 1024x768 w/ the above options.

In this case, these are gaming wants, rather than professional needs which may be listed above.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-09-26 07:19pm

Vendetta wrote:
but the strength of the 2MB L3 will not be seen in most consumer applications, games included
No, it won't.

But it's being marketed as a consumer/enthusiast chip.

Oh, I know. Silly, but it's their shot across the bow against the Athlon64.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2003-09-27 03:43am

greenmm wrote:Better question, too, is: why the hell would you even need that kind of computer?

Numerical simulations mostly. You can easily push your RAM needs up into the multi-GB range when you try to do anything complicated, and more processor power is always good for such things.