Ideal development PC spec?

Lot of RAM and lots of cores. At least, I find lots of cores helpful in keeping the machine usable while heavy processing/multiple builds are going. Also really important is a fast hard drive setup, so find out what configuration provides a lot of speed. (RAID 0 isn't always the answer.)

1) Second monitor. Most current graphics cards have two DVI ports already. It really saves time being able to keep debugger windows visible (even if your game runs windowed, it most likely still takes up a decent part of the screen), looking at MSDN without switching forth and back between browser and IDE, and so on.

2) SSD. Especially if you're working with larger projects, a solid state drive will drastically improve compilation speed and therefore greatly reduce the time between changing something and testing it, be it in a unit test or directly in gameplay. Visual Studio will also start up much faster :)

3) RAM. Not that much of an issue these days where everyone and his mother has a machine at home with 4+ GB RAM, but still worth mentioning. The IDE can eat up lots of RAM, your project's constantly changing executables and libraries will work the cache and most likely you'll have several heavy-weight apps open at the same time (eg. IDE, 3D modeler + your game)

Ideal? Dual Xeon W5580 quad core processors, 24GB of 1333MHz DDR3 or 24/48/96GB of 1066MHz, multiple SLC SSD drives in RAID 0, appropriate graphics card.

Realistic? You can get a quad core Nehalem system with 12GB of RAM and a decent SSD and sizeable mechanical storage for under $1,500.

2 monitors, Quad core at least, i7 if you can manage it (920 is good enough) and plenty of ram (I've 12 gig, DDR3 which keeps things really smooth).

Other than that, a fast hard drive. The Samsung F1 Spinpoint drives are nice and fast and pretty cheap for the 1Tb size you can get (if you want speed don't get the 'green' drives however, they are slower).

Aye, as mentioned above: quad core + lots of ram. Mainly so you can still use the computer when compiling! Dual monitor is really nice too. :P

A question on the RAM side of things. Is the 3-4Gb limit on WinXP still present on 32bit versions of Vista/Win7? And if so, is it now 'safe' to finally move up to a 64bit OS given that my clients/customers mostly have 32bit? I think Win7 is still coming in 32/64 bit variants so I am expecting standard PCs will continue to be 32bit for a while at least.

The ~3GB-4GB limit is present in all 32-bit OS's. So, yes, you will run into this issue on Vista/Win7 as well.

Ever since Vista x64, 64-bit support on Windows has been excellent. You'll find that compatibility issues will be few and far in between. And the fact that your clients are running on 32-bit shouldn't preclude you from running x64 on your development machine.

If you really need to do testing on a 32-bit OS, you could always run a VM or something similar (or dual boot if you're desparate).

Quote:

Original post by d000hg And if so, is it now 'safe' to finally move up to a 64bit OS given that my clients/customers mostly have 32bit?

Even on a 64bit system you have a 32bit subsystem and you can continue to make 32bit programs with VS etc with no problem.

Just to jump on the SSD Bandwagon. My Dell XPS M1730 came with a 80 GB SSD (can't remember make/model atm). It was nice and quick to start up, applications were nice and responsive.

Having quickly filled that up with images, videos, projects etc, I purchased a 500Gb HDD (non-SSD) and moved my video's and projects onto it.

My compile times now have shot up to an order of dozens of seconds rather than seconds. Loading a model has gone from instantaneous to a second or two.

At like the others, RAM + Cores and a good monitor, if you're anything like the normal developer you'll spend hours at your machine. I'd recommend 22" at least, 24" if you can afford, multiple screen's give added bonuses as mentioned before.

Any thoughts on the comparative merits of quad-core Intel i7 Vs 6-core AMD? The AMD Opteron is technically a server-focused CPU but does that make any difference? I guess I'd probably go for the i7, especially if Hyperthreading actually works this time round, but 6 cores is quite tempting.

Let's try to narrow things down a bit also... I already have dual monitors and probably will keep them this time round. So given a budget of up to $1500 (£1000) what would people drool over as a (windows-based) development PC? I have licenses for any software I need already.

I got my ($1500) system 6 months ago, but if I was in the market today, I'd get almost the exact same thing and be able to save a bunch of money. I wouldn't bother with a server processor - overkill. You won't be able to tell the difference and will wonder where your money went.

i7 920 (buy a $40 after market cooler / heatsink and overclock if you want more speed...)
6gb ddr3
radeon 4890 (nvidia if you prefer them I suppose)

Standard dvd burner, hd, etc etc. You know the drill...

Personally I'd say go with the i7, but that's mainly because I want one to cum over, whereas I hate ATi and anything to do with them.

In order of importance:

0. Second monitor. This makes tremendous difference, don't think of doing any serious work with a single monitor. Two 1920x1200 monitors are the best option (HP 2475w are an excellent choice). Two 1680x1050 will work in a pinch, too.

1. Hard disk. Get a SSD if you can or a large mechanical disk if you can't (the larger the faster). The Spinpoint F1s are quite good mechanical drives. Raptors are even better. Intel SSDs are the best.

2. Memory. 4GB at the very least. 8GB is better.

3. CPU. Get a quad core if you can. Intel's i7 are good but expensive. Ati's Phenom II are the second best choice and Core Quads the third.

SSD + lots of memory + parallel builds = awesomeness unlimited.

Quote:

Original post by Fiddler 1. Hard disk. Get a SSD if you can or a large mechanical disk if you can't (the larger the faster). The Spinpoint F1s are quite good mechanical drives. Raptors are even better. Intel SSDs are the best.

While Intel's are certainly the best SSDs the Vertex Series from OCZ are also very good and cheaper as well. Heck, I've got one [grin]

The F1 vs Raptors comes down to space; a 1Tb F1 will probably do you better in the long run than the smalle Raptors (I've had both, my Raptor being replaced by my SSD now).

Just with respect to the Core i7's. In my experience, it runs about 20-50% faster per-cycle for sequential programs for CPU intensive/memory intensive respectively over an equally clocked early generation intel Core2 quads [running one core, turbo boost off on the i7, all other 3 cores idle]. With multithreaded applications, the gain is even larger, especially once you breach that 4 thread mark where the older quad cores bottom out. These numbers are a result of my own personal experience running my own programs, so take them how you will. The i7's are very fast though. For my experience, it is well worth the extra money you pay for motherboards and memory, as the processors themselves aren't really much more expensive [compared to the higher clocked Core2 quads].

Honestly, if you have the money to blow on server processors [which is largely a waste for a personal dev machine], I'd still go for the intel stuff, and go for multi-processor nehalem xeon configurations. I haven't personally run benches on the new AMD stuff, but from I've spoken to people who have, and they claim that the new intel stuff is just plain beating it for speed, 6-core or no.

Oh, and hyper threading works well.

Multithreading is like getting a VW Polo and putting a BMW Body Kit on it....a processor has finite resources. However you dress it up, it's still 1 processor doing 1 job at once.

Quote:

Original post by AndyEsser Multithreading is like getting a VW Polo and putting a BMW Body Kit on it....a processor has finite resources. However you dress it up, it's still 1 processor doing 1 job at once.

Wut?
God.. I hope you never give this advice to people who want REAL information because you clearly haven't paid attention to CPU development in the past few years.

A 4 core, hyperthreaded core i7 can do 8 things at once; it has 4 cores which operates independantly of each other for instructions, and those two cores can further execute two threads at once in order to keep the instructions ticking over and it can do more work at once.

So, seriously, educate yourself before you go making technically incorrect statements in the future, CPUs have been able to do more than one physical thing at once for some years now.

Quote:

Original post by d000hg Any thoughts on the comparative merits of quad-core Intel i7 Vs 6-core AMD? The AMD Opteron is technically a server-focused CPU but does that make any difference? I guess I'd probably go for the i7, especially if Hyperthreading actually works this time round, but 6 cores is quite tempting. Let's try to narrow things down a bit also... I already have dual monitors and probably will keep them this time round. So given a budget of up to $1500 (£1000) what would people drool over as a (windows-based) development PC? I have licenses for any software I need already.

Well if you want the fastest compile times(I'm assuming Visual Studio here) "speed" is still king so increasing the number of cores isn't going to help much there.
Here is a visual studio benchmark for example and it clearly shows a higher clocked dualcore cpu beating out one of the new i7 cpus!
Until more software is written with multicore in mind from the ground up this will continue to be the rule as you probably already know.

If you spend alot of time doing renders in 3dMax or some other 3D program a 6-core opteron would surely blow away an i7 especially if you got a workstation motherboard to go with it allowing you to stick 2 cpu on the board with 12 physical cores and 24 virtual you'd practically have yourself a supercomputer LOL!

Anyhow, my 2 cents is to make sure you get a harddrive that performs equivalent to a 10,000 raptor drive since I've seen quadcore and i7 systems crippled with slow drives!
Also, make sure to account for multiple drives so you can put them in raid so you don't lose important code by forgetting to backup,etc unless you already have a backup plan in place.

Larger monitor that you don't have to squint at is more important than a 2nd monitor IMO besides you can use something like virtual desktops to increase screenspace without having to get 2nd monitor.

I just built this rig for my development pc not long ago and I expect it to handle anything I throw at it for a while:
Intel Q9550 with crappy stock heatsink
Evga GeForce GTX275 896MB driving an Acer X243W
Kingston valueram 800mhz ddr2 8GB
Intel DP35DP motherboard
SB X-Fi Xtremegamer
LG GBC-H20L blu-ray burner
150GB and 74GB raptor drive
2x1500GB seagate sata drives
2TB WD sata
P180 silent case with Corsair 750TX
WinXP/Vista/Win7 RC Ultimate 64 tripleboot

p.s. Other major differences between server cpu's like operton/xeon is that they first cost more usually but you get multiple cpu on a single board support and the other biggie is ECC memory support which is also usually more expensive memory.
Plus Intel/AMD "officially" validate the cpu to run certain apps just like workstation graphic cards like the Quadro.
Finally, note if you do get an i7 it's different enough from earlier Intel processors to have several issues in Windows and Visual Studio.


[Edited by - daviangel on June 30, 2009 8:23:07 PM]

I can say with certainty that the new i7 975 beats out the Dual CPU QX9775 in compiling times. Well, maybe that's because a bunch of things also changed in my rig.

Although, I'll disagree with a few posters above me about what's most important except for:

The second monitor. The absolute first thing you must get. Whereas CPU, hard drive, CPU, etc., can be good enough, having a second monitor makes development SOOOO much easier. If you can only get one thing, it has to be the monitor.

Cost alone makes this a must purchase. SSD's seriously degrade in performance and also cost a fortune. The most expensive Intel Processors cost a fortune. RAM is fairly cheap, but unless you have under 2 GB, you won't notice that much, and even if you have more, the speed you save will be negligable.

But the second monitor will improve your efficiency significantly regardless of if you have an AMD X2 3800 or an i7 975.