Game Programming Hardware

You would probably consider the following:

We are moving into a multiprocessor system. Getting a dual core system might be a good idea, since games would love to implement that.

Get a 64-bit processor, we're on the verge of switching to it, and its power is extream.

Get a video card that follows 1.5 (if you can 1.5.1) OpenGL standard. These are the only kind of video cards supporting GLSL. If you can, wait from buying one, because the DirectX 10 system will require a new kind of video card.

Laptop systems are unwieldy as far as development. I've actually burned out a laptop by overusing it for processing and the like (It was a Dell 5550, a really expensive system too....). If you're looking for development along the lines of 2D, then you could be programming on a modern Tablet PC for all it matters (Though, I certainly would not reccomend it. I suppose it's possible, but if they use Windows CE...)

For top of the line, "I just made John Carmack wet his pants" kinda graphics, don't even think about touching a laptop. No matter how much you try to fight it, nothing beats having a nice, solid, reasonably cooled system on a desk for heavy 3D.

I don't know about "Low-end 3d" (EG: Counter-Strike/Everquest/the like). While I've seen tons of laptops run it, I'm not sure if it would be smart to try it on a laptop.

Like I said, I dont want to be able to PLAY or anything, just develop and SEE what I am coding...

anything should be able to be rendered using software rendering...

but a dual core 64bit cpu in a laptop ?? sound expensive to me.. ;)

There are some pretty good laptops for doing 3D development, but they are expensive. It's all about the GPU.

And, to answer your question, YES you will pretty much need the newer GPUs to do the higher end graphics. Everything is being done with shaders these days, so you need a GPU that supports the most recent ones. It not simply a matter of it running faster or slower, but of actually supporting the more advanced stuff.

If you are just wanting it for lower end 3D stuff and maybe some older shader support, you can get a cheaper one.

so hardware is important just for the sake of supporting built in shaders and whatnot...

ok, thanks for the information...

guess I will just buy one with onboard gfx.. like intel.. ;)
and be happy to code for opengl or directx.

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Original post by smitty1276 There are some pretty good laptops for doing 3D development, but they are expensive. It's all about the GPU. And, to answer your question, YES you will pretty much need the newer GPUs to do the higher end graphics. Everything is being done with shaders these days, so you need a GPU that supports the most recent ones. It not simply a matter of it running faster or slower, but of actually supporting the more advanced stuff. If you are just wanting it for lower end 3D stuff and maybe some older shader support, you can get a cheaper one.

He is right about the GPU, for many games are heavily on the shader. Unreal 3 focused there engine on shader & GPU. I'm just saying, we are about to move into a 64 bit world, and getting a labtop to support it isn't a half bad idea.

I agree that the 64-bit age is right around the corner, but I don't see it being an issue before the laptop is obsolete anyway. [smile]

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Original post by Puskas I am thinking of buying myself a laptop my question is; do I need the latest gfx hardware to be able to develop 3d gfx that will only run on the latest hardware.. I dont care if what I develop is SLOW on my computer, just want to know if its possible to see anything using the latest directX and openGL and so on...

No, you can use any old hardware. Of course, when it comes to 3d graphics, things will be *extremely* slow if there's no hardware support for the features you use. (It will usually be emulated in software, but your framerate will go well below 1 FPS).

So what I'd suggest is a graphics card that supports shader model 3.0. (That means Geforce 6xxx, 7xxx or Radeon X1k series, which I dont think exists for laptops yet). Or at least, a proper card with 2.0 support (Radeon X600 seems to be popular on laptops) Whatever you d, don't go for Intel's onboard graphics. Ever.

Other than that, a good chunk of ram, and... that's it. If you really want to develop 64-bit games, get a 64-bit cpu, otherwise, it's no biggy. It's not going to be a requirement any time soon. Even Windows Vista will still be 32-bit compatible.

To all those ranting about the 64-bit age and the urgent need for dualcore CPU's, did you even read the OP's post? He is looking for something that has the neccesary features to develop games that *will run* on modern hardware. He is not looking for something that can run games at max settings 3 years from now (or even today). So far, well below 1% of the user base has 64-bit Windows, and that number is not likely to rise until Vista ships in *at least* a year. (And even then, you'll be able to run old 32-bit apps)

The top choice would be the GeForce 6800 Go (or, as soon as it's available, 7800 Go0), with as much memory as possible. Runners-up include the 6600 Go and 6200 Go, as well as the various Mobility Radeon 9600+ and X600+ variants. The Radeons don't do floating-point texture filtering or framebuffer blending, though.

For CPU, the latest XPS laptops from Dell actually use 533 FSB Pentium M chips, rather than dual-core or hyper-threaded Pentium 4 based chips.

Seems like WidowPC has a dual-core Athlon option, with a 7800 GTX. It also seems to draw 180 watts, which won't be good for battery longevity ;-)

The most important part of developing on a laptop is to get a fast hard drive, though. Your typical 5400 rpm laptop drive will slow down your link a lot.

may I recommend the asus Z71V? you can get a pentium M 533 FSB @ 2 GHz with a GF6600 go (best balance between power/battery usage, IMHO) for a mere $1500.

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Original post by Spoonbender Quote: Original post by Puskas I am thinking of buying myself a laptop my question is; do I need the latest gfx hardware to be able to develop 3d gfx that will only run on the latest hardware.. I dont care if what I develop is SLOW on my computer, just want to know if its possible to see anything using the latest directX and openGL and so on... No, you can use any old hardware. Of course, when it comes to 3d graphics, things will be *extremely* slow if there's no hardware support for the features you use. (It will usually be emulated in software, but your framerate will go well below 1 FPS). So what I'd suggest is a graphics card that supports shader model 3.0. (That means Geforce 6xxx, 7xxx or Radeon X1k series, which I dont think exists for laptops yet). Or at least, a proper card with 2.0 support (Radeon X600 seems to be popular on laptops) Whatever you d, don't go for Intel's onboard graphics. Ever. Other than that, a good chunk of ram, and... that's it. If you really want to develop 64-bit games, get a 64-bit cpu, otherwise, it's no biggy. It's not going to be a requirement any time soon. Even Windows Vista will still be 32-bit compatible. To all those ranting about the 64-bit age and the urgent need for dualcore CPU's, did you even read the OP's post? He is looking for something that has the neccesary features to develop games that *will run* on modern hardware. He is not looking for something that can run games at max settings 3 years from now (or even today). So far, well below 1% of the user base has 64-bit Windows, and that number is not likely to rise until Vista ships in *at least* a year. (And even then, you'll be able to run old 32-bit apps)

I never said anything was urgent, but he was on the topic of what hardware he should get for today's games. We are already in dual core games, but its not a huge industry. And 64 bit is a good idea considering the performance boost is HUGE.

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Original post by dbzprogrammer I never said anything was urgent, but he was on the topic of what hardware he should get for today's games. We are already in dual core games, but its not a huge industry. And 64 bit is a good idea considering the performance boost is HUGE.

No, that's my point. He did *not* ask what hardware he should get for today's games. He asked what he'd need to *develop*, not to run or play games, and he said that he don't care how slow it is, as long as it runs.

By the way, I can only think of one game off-hand that takes advantage of dualcore processors. I believe Star Wars Galaxies runs multithreaded, but... that's it. There are probably a few more, but we aren't "already in dual core games". Same goes for 64-bit. I know of two games that can be patched to run in 64-bit mode.

(And the performance boost is at most 10%. 64-bit isn't magic. The main advantage for games is the extra number of registers, but that doesn't radically change performance. The extra memory space doesn't make a huge difference for current desktop PC's, so that's completely irrelevant)

Of course, technically you're right, if you want to develop stuff that will only run on the latest hardware, then you need a 64-bit CPU.

thanks for all the awesome posts guys, I will have a look around to see what prices are out there and we will just see what I can afford.. ;)

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Original post by Spoonbender No, that's my point. He did *not* ask what hardware he should get for today's games. He asked what he'd need to *develop*, not to run or play games, and he said that he don't care how slow it is, as long as it runs. By the way, I can only think of one game off-hand that takes advantage of dualcore processors. I believe Star Wars Galaxies runs multithreaded, but... that's it. There are probably a few more, but we aren't "already in dual core games". Same goes for 64-bit. I know of two games that can be patched to run in 64-bit mode. (And the performance boost is at most 10%. 64-bit isn't magic. The main advantage for games is the extra number of registers, but that doesn't radically change performance. The extra memory space doesn't make a huge difference for current desktop PC's, so that's completely irrelevant) Of course, technically you're right, if you want to develop stuff that will only run on the latest hardware, then you need a 64-bit CPU.

I leave with this. You are correct, but I have 2 things to say. First, if a single game has the abilities of parrallel processing then we are technically in the age of dual systems. Doesn't mean everyone is doing it, but it is out there. Secondly, a 10% performance boost is quite large, but it's not only that, we can have larger hard drives, better data structured systems. It's not neccessarily raw speed.

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Original post by HeliosLoireIf you're looking for development along the lines of 2D, then you could be programming on a modern Tablet PC for all it matters (Though, I certainly would not reccomend it. I suppose it's possible, but if they use Windows CE...)

Modern tablet PCs do not run Windows CE, they run Windows XP Tablet-PC edition, which is just normal XP with tablet PC accessory programs (like SmartBoard software, Microsoft OneNote, the like) and SP2. I should know, I have one.

It can theoretically run in software, but it will run too slow for you to bare. For an example, download the latest DirectX SDK and choose a sample program from their browser that requires a later graphics card (i.e. the required graphics card must support a later version of DirectX than yours does). It will warn you that you can't run those effects in hardware, so you must switch to RAS (software rasterizer). Click through that and accept RAS. Unfortunately, the large majority of the time, the RAS effects are visible at < 1 fps. Which is unplayable even to you I'd imagine ;-)

In general, when you're developing a new game or a wow graphics app or whatnot, you want a system that can handle a higher framerate than your target, because undoubtedly you will first run your code using an unoptimized algorithm.

Having said all of the above, if you're fine with not supporting all of the latest DX effects in h/w (as what your end user is likely to have), then an older graphics card is just fine :-) Read above for the perils of using a laptop.

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Original post by Spoonbender By the way, I can only think of one game off-hand that takes advantage of dualcore processors. I believe Star Wars Galaxies runs multithreaded, but... that's it. There are probably a few more, but we aren't "already in dual core games". Same goes for 64-bit. I know of two games that can be patched to run in 64-bit mode. (And the performance boost is at most 10%. 64-bit isn't magic. The main advantage for games is the extra number of registers, but that doesn't radically change performance. The extra memory space doesn't make a huge difference for current desktop PC's, so that's completely irrelevant)

Any multithreaded game, that was developed by someone with brain, would take advantage about dualcore processors. That is if that game is not overly synchronized. (I actually tried also asynchronous communication between various part. And it looks nicely.) Minimum amount of cores that would give boost any complex and reasonably done game is 3. (GFX, sound, AI, I/O) The problem with multiple cores is CPU/memory transfer. Expect something simillar to paket storms, and possibly polution of L1/L2 cache. (It doesn't matter to me because, game that I work on now requires random access to really high amount of data. So higher amount of instruction per second per core would be more important for increase of speed.)

If you'd like an example of 3D engine that supports multithreaded/and multicore systems look at Vorax's work. (Summary. It's doable, and it works at simillar speed at single core systems as well.)



As for 64 bit systems. Main increase in speed is in memory access because AMD 64 has memory controller on dye. Results between some Intel 's CPUs and some AMD's CPUs is rather drastical and Intel should be hit behind the ears. (And AMD should be hit behind the ears for nonimplementing SSE2 instructions in Barthon, heat protection and management, and pricing policy.)
In fact 64 bit systems have a disadvantage in comparisson to 32 bit systems. It's increased pointer size and thus increased requirements for memory bandwidth. To cite an compiler writer "64 bits are slower, but they have higher amount of registers than 32 bit register starved Intel's CPUs so it balances itself out."

From my experience with assembly an increased amount of registers is a massive boost to performance. Instead of 2 nested loops and some light calculations, you can have 4 nested loops and heavy calculations with easier value caching. Of course increase to just 16 64 bit registers, with REX prefix, is too little, when they did increase it should be considerably higher increase.

There are results of a little benchmark between 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs. (Intel, AMD, Solaris...) http://192.18.37.44/forums/index.php?topic=8300.0

To OP

If you'd like a new computer, then 64 bit computer with PCIExpres is probably reasonable choice. Multicore systems are still somewhat expensive and power hungry.
As for GFX card. Minimum is support of vertex/pixel shaders 2.0. Support for 3.0 shader architecture is reasonable idea.

(It's actually nice idea to write fallback shaders for that minimal configuration.)

Actually what about using laptop just for code typing on travels, and normal PC at home for real testing and stuff? This could drop price of a loptop somewhat, and normal PCs are upgradeable.

maybe I should have explained my situation a little bit.. ;)

I am on a VERY VERY VERY low budget, doing university studies now,
dont have my own computer, using the ones in uni, will be doing games development
as my submajor and want to be able to play around with everything, sort of.

why I want a laptop is for many reasons, portability between home and uni.
low space at home, no space for a desktop computer.. ;) amazing.. uni life rules.. ;)

and I can only afford ONE computer so laptop is the best choice I think.

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Original post by dbzprogrammer Get a video card that follows 1.5 (if you can 1.5.1) OpenGL standard. These are the only kind of video cards supporting GLSL.

There is no such thing as OpenGL 1.5.1.

Anything from a Radeon 9600 and up will have support for glsl, I think.