Hardware to make B3d Rock!

I need to spec up a new PC soon and I just wondered:

In your experience what does make B3D REALLY ROCK?

Does having a multi core processor on board give any benefit to B3d? What about graphics cards, if the skies the limit, what will make B3D Fly faster than ever?

And CPU and DDR RAM and...anything else?

Ta

IPete2.

Multi-core and latest GPUs won't have any effect how Blitz3D runs because it's based on DX7 tech.

Fast (singlecore) CPU will help a lot because for example skinning is done with CPU AFAIK... faster RAM would have minimal effect too.

Good monitor will impact the ROCK value most because then the stuff at least CAN look good ;P

Not immediately. It depends on how much other crap you have running in the background, but generally speaking, no.

Either 2 Crossfire X1950's or two SLi 8800's. It would seem that of the two solutions the SLi solution is more geared towards the legacy way of rendering, and thus most suitable for B3D.

That's not entirely true. The latest GPUs still have much higher fill rates than older ones. Sure he won't be able to use many of the advanced features, but if you're going for pure power, the latest is still the greatest.

Sure... but I thought along "best bang for the buck" and then it's fastest CPU you can afford. Fastest GPU would of course be better than second fastest but the boost for B3D perf would not be as great as with high end CPU. If B3D would be shader-based it would be other way around.

Ah okay. I was arguing from the "money is not an issue" angle, rather than the "best bang for the buck" one.

Woah, X1950 crossfire? Not even contemplatable with the 8800 out and available.

Why not?

Thanks for this very useful info guys.

Just to be clear both

"more bang for bucks"
and
"Fastest whatever the price!"

are BOTH valuable opinions to me, I have yet to decide what amount to spend but I really do want to be able to push as much as possible onto screen without any problems.

Presumably you want this blitz uber machine for personal projects, mostly? Because, of course, stuff isn't going to run so well on other users' average machines.

I think it's part of the end product, big10p.

8800 is the new king of not only performance but bang for buck. Until the new ATI cards come out, nothing else makes sense for medium/high end (8800 GTS 320 is just over 500 bucks here and outperforms pretty much all last gen cards). Nothing between 7600 GT and 8800 GTS makes sense.

I'd go for an 8800 GS or GTS for your 3D card. Lightning quick and good value for money (320Mb version should do fine).

To really show off this sort of card you should be looking to use a next-gen engine for it's shader features.

Core 2 duo is good, any speed (6300, 6600, 6700) are all quick and perform well.

Go for the 640mb 8800 card. There's not much yet that needs the extra 320mb but when it is called into use it apparently makes a big difference.

You need a good processor to run a high-end game in debug mode.

I too am back in the mood for a super-spec PC.

One thing I would advise is buy it with WinXP and get the voucher for Vista (so you can add Vista when you want). Dell will still not let customers pre-install Vista to a 'gaming' machine and other vendors have advised customers not to select Vista.

Unfortunatley, I never really got to test Blitz3D with my Ultra big-boy PC I bought a few months back.

However, I am still going to get the 8800 GTX with a 680i mobo - I think it wise to go for the 680i - however, I would advise you not to buy the Striker Extreme (which is what I did at the time). Personally, I am not currently considering an ATI card - I am adamant that my next card will be nVidia and I want the 8800 GTX.

I'd certainly go for the minimum of an E6600 Core 2 Duo - this benefits from double the cache of all the Core 2s below it. For me - it is Intel all the way at the moment - I will not install an AMD CPU whilst Core 2 is Larging itself. There is a rumour that Intel are going to reduce the prices of their Quad Core range later in the year - MAKE SURE YOUR MOBO CAN TAKE A QUAD CORE CPU - A Core 2 is fine for now - then later you can easily upgrade by just swapping it with a Quad Core - easy as that.

RAM - You want 2GB RAM (minimum) - make sure it is 2x 1GB. Get DDR2 and go for a miniumum of 6400 (800MHz) - BE WARNED faster speeds/bandwidth do not necessarily reap benefits - just make sure it is at least DDR2 (6400). April's PC Format (UK) has a DDR2 RAM Supertest if you want further info.


For me it is an Intel CPU with 680i mobo and a nVida card.

Right, but that won't be for a while - even today the difference between the 320 and the 640 versions only starts to split running at 1920x1200, and even then not by much. I run 1920x1200 native (actually 1920x1200+1200x1290) and chose the 320 mb version because it was just so cheap that, in a years time, I could buy the next equivilant card (9800 GTS or something - haha) and not really worry about it. No way would I upgrade from a $1000 (nzd) card in a year!

Although you are dead right about the memory making all the difference, once the card starts swapping it slows down to pathetic speeds. But that's quite an extreme case - I can still run most games at 1920 with 4xAA, and everything at 1920.

I just ordered an ATI X1650 XT card myself -- it's in the same price class as the 7600GT, but seems to edge it out in the majority of the benchmarks.

(One of the main differences is that the X1650XT has 24
pixel pipelines, vs. 12 for the 7600GT. the other specs are fairly similar)

what i know that few projects I did with B3D, running on my FX5600 around 56 FPS and on 7600GT running around 210FPS...so, for me obviously new hardware making a boost, and for me its clear sign what going on with B3D regarding new hardware...of course some new features supported by newest hardware will be out of reach for B3D, but speed regarding there is a difference and everyone whos saying there is not is damn wrong...

Yan's right about this being a one off game on a one off system.

@Naughty, Thanks for that, I'm in a better place to decide specs now and although I may not be able to afford the top gfx cards - I may stretch to it with a top cpu too.

Does anyone know of an lcd at about 19"-22" which has a very fast refresh and high contrast and doesn't make pixels look jagged? I want my game to look the 'bees knees' not like crawling ants.

Or should I stick with a large CRT?

I just bought LG L2000C-SF (20") few hours ago... been planning to change my (t)rusty similar sized Samsung SyncMaster for ages, and finally got around it.

LG was a great success last year in the test MikroBitti had (one of the biggest comp mags here). They thought it was well balanced monitor suited for wide range of tasks - for example scaling didn't look as bad as in the other monitors... good if you need to run it other than it's native 1600x1200 rezz. They awarded it with "editor's choice" & "Best Value" awards too.

Also the price is now very reasonable, paid 399€ for it and got "zero defective pixel warranty" as well meaning that even if ONE pixel is damaged (always on/off/rgb) they replace the monitor for free... and this covers the whole 3-year long factory guarantee!

Here's one user review I found:


http://www.unreal.ie/forum&c=showthread&ThreadID=2749

Cheers for that Mustang...
1600 x 1200 is probably too high a resolution for my project, but still well worth knowing for other uses.

Any others please?

You want a big screen but low resolution? That will be hard to find. If 1600*1200 (typical native resolution for monitors 20" and up) is too much you can always run it in 800*600 which is cool because pixels are just as sharp as in 1600*1200, they are just twice as big. This would work also for monitors that are not so good at downscaling.