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The Power PC Thread [f*ck off consoles]



  Evo 5 RS
My mate has offered me this for £650-700. Quite tempted by it as I just cba to build my own at the moment. i7 2x GTX480's 1.5GB SLI 2x 500GB SATAII HDD's RAID0 ASUS P8P67 EVO 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1000w Corsair PSU Corsair 700D Case Samsung Blu-Ray drive 2 Watercooling loops!


I wouldn't pay that for that machine.
 
Old old tech, better off making your own for £700 imo.

Youll get an i5 3570k (or Haswell equiv), 7950, 8gb-16gb ram, 120gb ssd etc.

Won't be watercooled, but it'll be a damn sight newer than above.
 
  Monaro VXR
One of the best keyboards I've used. Would get one of these if I were upgrading my system.

K95 is out now as well, gets rid of the membrane macro and page up etc keys finally. Also think it looks nicer in the black. If I had not bought a STRIKE 7 and now be so used to having the extra functionality of its screen I would definitely be looking at the K95. House mate has one and it a bloody good keyboard.
 
  Evo 5 RS
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  MK4 Anni & MK5 Edt30
K95 is out now as well, gets rid of the membrane macro and page up etc keys finally. Also think it looks nicer in the black. If I had not bought a STRIKE 7 and now be so used to having the extra functionality of its screen I would definitely be looking at the K95. House mate has one and it a bloody good keyboard.

I did look at the K95 before buying the K70 as it's only a few quid more expensive. I don't have any need for the macro keys though and I have limited space on my desk anyway. :)

^^ Looks awesome scone :cool:
 
Had a quick go on Metro Last Light today, just to get a performance frame of reference. Not going to play the game just yet, as I have loads of others also on the menu.

Maxed out with 2xSSAA at 1920x1080 it seems to run fairly well. I would say around 40fps average, at a guess. Not really up to my standards though TBF. I may upgrade when the time comes to play this game.
 
Does anyone know if the FarCry 3 servers are down. Getting peeved off with my game trying, and failing, to access the servers every time I use a menu screen. Always online - pain the ass!
 
  Evo 5 RS
The next CPU will be Ivybridge-E which will be socket LGA2011 still and compatible with all x79 boards. Still 6 core, and roughly 10% faster than Sandybridge-E. Due September 2012
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Don't blame you, mate. I'm currently sat at my 128GB RAM 12-core workstation writing this... (although I've only got a suite of SLI'd 680's). Pauper spec. :eek:
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
And you've not thought to post specs? ;)

Makes my enthusiast consumer build seem weak on paper lol. (GPU aside)

More info and pictures needed.
LOL! I have to make the point that this is a work machine, NOT a home rig! I'd love to post up some pics but security would have me shot if I even as much pointed my mobile phone camera towards it. :( It's nothing much to write home about anyways. Machine 1 is Intel i7 based, 6 cores (12 HW threads), machine 2 is Intel Xeon based, 12 cores from 2x CPUs (24 HW threads), 128GB RAM, SLI'd GTX 680's, 1TB local storage (SSD), 6TB local storage (SATA3), manylotsabytes of network storage, 2x IPS 30" monitors, 1x 27" IPS monitor, no watercooling, no overclocking. There's also a render farm upstairs but it's sat quiet and powered-down as the licensing has expired on the software used. Pfft. If it weren't for the auditors I'd have all manner of games installed on there by now... :eek:

EDIT: Psst. It's an XB1 devkit...

EDIT2: Typing fail.
 
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Presumably (I really have no idea though TBF) dev kit machines have to do a lot more simultaneously than just run the game code?

But how are system resources managed in terms of simulating the console hardware? Is it all done in software? Like, say you're optimising code and testing frame rates - where is your frame of reference if you're running 12 core CPUs, 128GB of RAM, and SLI graphics?
 
  Fiesta ST
Is the XB1 kind of emulated/Virtualised on these high specs machines? I guess debug mode is heavy on the process aswell?
 
  Evo 5 RS
Yep, I just presumed being more similar lesser requirements would be necessary. I always remember gamecube dev kits where Rogue Squadron ran at 2fps. Nightmare
 
  Evo 5 RS
Not uncommon, I have too. Only they're split into two different arrays :eek:

Speed first, size laterz

That's with a backup processing in the background too.

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  Evo 5 RS
No, I have 4 Samsung 840 Pros 256GB. Two are my OS drive in RAID0, the other two are for applications and Steam etc again in RAID0


Total storage here for me is just under 26TB including the two NAS stations, both containing 12TB each. Plus my 3TB and 2TB external drives on my desk, and yes the NAS boxes are both full almost lol :D
 
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Ahhh! was thinking then I know I aint looked at comp stuff in ages but I cen't remember them being that advanced already lol
That's mad fair play! I got 1TB and a 500GB HDD... really want a new PC now lol
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
:eek: I feel I owe folks an apology... the bit about it being a dev-kit was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and I completely failed at conveying that. So sorry chaps. I'm not sure where the whole NDA thing is regarding devkit spec's but they are certainly nowhere near the system spec I use and outlined above. What I can say though is that a heck of a lot of next-gen console development is largely carried out on nicely-spec'd PC workstations that are generally higher-spec than the console (and console devkit variant). Prior to a new console launch, developers are briefed and provided with a general system specification of what the new system(s) are likely to be capable of (or at least some of the more popular or first-party developers are briefed!) and obviously this provides an early insight as to what said developer may or may not be able to do in terms of exploiting the system. But, relying on those spec's is a dangerous game as they can and do change; hence game engines have to be scalable to cater for the lowest common denominator right up to the latest bleeding-edge hardware... in an ideal world. :)

Typical multi-platform game development studios will have a build environment whereby a common code base is shareable across all platforms - e.g. code that can be run on any platform and doesn't tie itself specifically to one system. In addition, they'll usually have an abstracted (for example) game engine of some flavour that allows them to deploy a project specifically for that system. That way, the developer can issue a "draw my polygon" command using the abstracted API (without worrying about whether its on PS4, XB1, PC) and, depending on which system it is deployed to, the relevant platform specific code implements that "draw my polygon" command. This is obviously a somewhat simplified explanation but you get the idea... and it's not always so straightforward but I'm talking ideal world here. :)

As a rule of thumb, devkits are usually a souped-up version of the consumer system - with additional RAM and facilities for debugging and profiling code (through software and/or hardware hooks). To answer some of the above, yes - debugging is an expensive process and massively hits the performance. It's not uncommon to see 60fps games (or 100Hz physics engines) brought to their knees. Thankfully consumers only get to see the release version. I can't really say much more because I know nuffink. :)

As for the two machines I listed above, the i7 based 990x Extreme is the everyday machine and has the SLI'd 680's, but only 32GB RAM. This system also has the Samsung 840 Pro's and they are fantastic! It's the dual Xeon's (the other system) that pack the real power and these are used for serious number-crunching / processing of large data sets. In terms of GPU, these are kitted with a high-end Quadro card (which are cr*p for games and stupidly priced).
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Ah, gotcha - yes. That would be considered a little excessive for a dev kit!!! Back on the subject of home setups and home rigs, I think many people posting here would be severely disappointed if they walked into a game dev studio and saw what levels of hardware the majority of dev's have to work on. The impressive rigs you guys are posting on here are considerably more capable than those workstations used by friends of mine working on current and next-gen AAA titles! Mind you, it would get a bit expensive forking out £4-6k per developer for a top-end workstation configuration. Typically you get the core tech team and higher level engineers with the better machines and the n00bs with some baseline sh*tters.
 


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