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The first concern is do you need a gaming machine at all, I ask this because a lot of the guys I know that have asked me this question are not gamers and as for myself, I asked myself the question too. My wife and I both needed a machine but did we need 2 gaming grade machines? Could I justify the cost of a second full gaming machine? The truth is I didn’t, I bought a mid-range laptop instead and I am not sorry and here is why.
Here below is my 3 types of requirements:
| |
Gaming |
Development |
Office |
| CPU |
The faster the better |
>= 1.8GHz Core Duo |
>= 1.5GHz Core Duo |
| Cooling |
Liquid is better |
Air |
Air |
| Case |
Full aluminium with air duct |
Any thing really |
Any thing really |
| Motherboard |
Over-clockable |
Must have a E-SATA port |
Needs network and USB |
| RAM |
4Gb over-clockable |
Minimum 4Gb |
1Gb |
| Video Accelerator |
The latest GT or GTX preferably over-clockable |
Anything Direct X 10 capable. |
Anything Direct X 10 capable. |
| Hard Disk |
The faster the better |
Lots of space for those Virtual machines |
80Gb is plenty |
| Sound |
No less than an X-Fi will do |
It needs to work |
Optional |
| Screen |
One 2ms 22 inch LCD |
2 of any screen works for me |
Anything as long as it works and it’s visible |
| Operating system |
Windows Vista x64 |
Windows Server 2008 x64 |
Windows XP Professional |
| Cost |
> R15,000 ($1,500) |
> R7,000 ($700) |
> R5000 ($500) |
As you can see the requirements are vastly different and so are the price tags. You can expect to pay more than R10000 ($1000) for the box alone, excluding the Screen, Keyboard, Mouse, … That is the price of a nice laptop!
I feel that a good development machine should be able to run the .NET development environment comfortably and be able to simulate any other situation one might encounter using Virtual Machines. So the 3 major requirements are hardware virtualization, disk space and RAM. Though I do state that Windows Server 2008 x64 is my preferred development operating system I have to admit that I only use it at work. The reason is that personal machines are usually used for other things too. Microsoft Windows Vista Business x64 is the ideal all around operating system, particularly for development and general use. One word of caution though, make sure the drivers are available before buying the hardware.
Eventually, I ended up buying a laptop, mostly because I also do digital photography and needed something portable. It’s an HP Pavilion dv6000 series with 4GB of RAM, a 160GB Hard Disk, an Intel Core Duo T7100 1.8GHz and a 128MB Mobile Intel GMA X3100. To be totally honest, I can do all the above the only thing that I miss terribly is an E-SATA port but I could buy an Express Card for that. I also have a couple of external hard disks for the “larger” files.
So do you need a gaming machine as a development machine? the answer is no but do gaming machines make good development machines? See my next post to find out.