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Games Entertainment

System Optimization Guide for Gamers 304

Posted by Hemos from the gaming-for-that-extra-1% dept.
Mr.Tweak writes "We have written a comprehensive System Optimization Guide targeted toward Gamers looking to get the most out of their systems for all of today's latest highly demanding PC games. Take a few minutes of your life and read this System Optimization Guide for Gamers where TweakTown promises you will find something of use which will have you gaming at full speed in no time."
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System Optimization Guide for Gamers More

System Optimization Guide for Gamers

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  • Their Next Guide (Score:3, Funny)

    by kammat ( 114899 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:18AM (#4793380)
    How to Tweak your Webserver to Survive a Slashdotting

  • Screw tweaking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:18AM (#4793382) Journal
    I used to spend days tweaking my settings, getting the latest drivers, etc... SCREW IT!

    The only way to really get performance is to get good hardware. No amount of tweaking your old Geforce 2mx is going to get the same performance as a Geforce 4 ti4200 even with the worst system settings... Prove me wrong people!

    • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:5, Funny)

      by Psmylie ( 169236 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:26AM (#4793449) Homepage
      Delete your pagefile. Have every possible service running.
      Now, run your game while doing a continuous virus scan.
      I can guarantee that your "fast" system will run much slower then an optimized "slower" system
      On the plus side, it is a great way to increase your frustration level.
      • Awesome reply!

        Are you sure you are not a (L)user I support?

        • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Psmylie ( 169236 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:38PM (#4793993) Homepage
          Are you sure you are not a (L)user I support?
          Heh, quite sure. This is actually culled from real-life experience from someone I did have to support. The woman is question did a lot of her own "fixes". Like deleting the pagefile (to increase disk space), running virus scan non-stop (can't be too careful, can we?) and starting up every service she could (what if I need it?)
          I forgot to mention that, according to this person, you should compress all files on your C drive (smaller files run faster)
          It took me a while to get her system working normally again, and it took even longer to explain why all of her "tweaking" was a bad thing.
          An idiot with a little bit of knowledge and admin rights to the local machine is a dangerous thing.

      • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:2, Insightful)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 )
        I would hardly call the inverse of this as "tweaking".

    • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:5, Informative)

      by mczak ( 575986 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:31AM (#4793503)
      This is quite obvious - how much faster is a GeForce4 ti4200 than a GeForce 2mx? 4-5 times? But, I'd bet a reasonably tweaked system with a GeForce4 ti4200 beats a wrongly configured system (e.g. no VIA drivers installed etc.) with a GeForce4 ti4600 (all other components identical) any day.
      There are also other advantages to tweaking than pure performance. For instance, if you don't switch on dma mode for your dvd-drive (AFAIK, WXP is the first Windows to do it automatically), chances are dvds will stutter when you play them, no matter what hardware you have.

      mczak

    • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:2, Insightful)

      by scalis ( 594038 )
      I am not proving you wrong since you are absolutely correct.
      However, replacing a GeForce2 card with a GeForce4 card might not give you the perfomance boost you might think.
      If you take a closer look at the systems most providers of "test results" use to actually test the hardware on, you wont find your average AMD T-bird 1000.
      Most of theese new gfx cards from ATI and Nvidia more or less require enough raw CPU and memory power to be able to provide the GFX card with enough data to actually make a difference.
      I am not saying you are wrong, just that you should think about what harware upgrades you do and that they might not provide anything in terms of increased performance.

    • Re:Screw tweaking (Score:4, Insightful)

      by slow_flight ( 518010 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:51AM (#4793625)
      So, how long have you been married? It's hard to justify the cost of constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest to "she who must be obeyed" when she knows damn well that "all you do is plays games on that thing." She really doesn't care that I'm limited to a 7 car field in Grand Prix Legends, and that I automatically drop to the back of the field on every start since my old PIII can't hack it.

      It is routine for me to start with a fresh re-boot, followed by killing just about every process running just to get barely adequate performance. The one thing consoles have going for them is that you don't have to dick around like this to get them to work.

      • Easy solution. (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by DAldredge ( 2353 )
        Don't marry a bitch.

      • Yeah, I know what you mean... my husband just doesn't like it when I go out and spend money on hardware. "You've got a perfectly good GeForce 3 and it's barely a year old! Why the heck do you need a GF4?"

        Just do what he did... find a girl who likes computers. ;-) (Too late for you, but for those playing along at home...)
    • Tweaking isn't a replacement for buying new hardware, you're right. However, that's not the point. People tweak to optimize their existing hardware - to make their current hardware run as fast as possible. While a tweaked out GeForce2 MX will always be slower than a GeForce4 Ti, a tweaked GeForce2 MX will (hopefully) be faster than an untweaked one.

      Take overclocking, for example. It's not uncommon to hear stories about Northwood 1.6 GHz P4 being overclocked to speeds around 2.4 GHz. That is quite a signficant performance boost. While a brand new 3 GHz P4 will obviously be faster, the point is that compared to the original system without any tweaks, you get more speed without spending additional money.

  • why tweak when you can cheat... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just install aimbots, speedbots, and wallhacks. You will outperform anyone with a faster pc, faster connection, better video card...

  • Is it really worth it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage ( 589836 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:26AM (#4793448) Homepage
    Note : Due to something respected Doctors and Scientists are calling "The Slashdot Effect" I have not read the article.

    Honestly. Do I get my membership to "Club Nerd" revoked because I'm not interested in water cooling my PC, airbrushing the case, or fitting ass-loads of neons?

    When I do game (which is a little rare now-a-days) I would rather just have decent hardware, and not have to worry about over-clocking, heat sinking, over-binging on jolt, and the associated woman repelling habits.

    Is there something wrong with me?...

    • Re:Is it really worth it? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Is there something wrong with me?...

      Yes. You apparently have a job and are willing to pay for convenience, both of which are anathema to good slashbots.

    • Re:Is it really worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The worst stunt I ever pulled was running a p133 at 200 mhz INSIDE A FREEZER (with mucho duck tape to let the relevant cables going in and out without losing insulation). It worked for quite a while. I realized it was rather pointless although it made for a few laughs to the few people who even know what overclocking was. I decided it's really not worth my time when I figured that it's often cheaper to buy the next better processor than spend god knows what in cooling devices.

      That said, it remains my honest opinion that anyone who wants to cool down things inside his pc case and puts glowstrips and/or neon tubes in it (increased heat) is a moron and should be laughed at. What's next, a Stirling engine running as a kinetic cooler on top of the heat exchange?
      • That's why they made cold cathode tubes. Heat is not an issue with them.

        • Re:Is it really worth it? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:58AM (#4793673)
          Cold Cathodes are not called that because they run cool. They are called that because they dont have filiments at the ends of the tube that are used to kickstart the tube into starting by heating the gas inside the tube. a cold cathode with enough wattage will get warm. just nowhere near as warm as an incandescent bulb

      • Re:Is it really worth it? (Score:4, Funny)

        by FurryFeet ( 562847 ) <joudanxNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:42PM (#4794022)
        What's next, a Stirling engine running as a kinetic cooler on top of the heat exchange?

        Dude, I already did that and got 3.33 GHz out of my old Pentium II. Am working on cooling the Stirling engine with liquid nitrogen. When I'm done, I'm sure I can crank that baby up to 3.34.

      • Heh, it reminds me of the story posted several years ago about the guy who essentially created a jet engine in his garage in order to use the (atomization)? to cool his beer. By the time the beer was cold, the garage was like 150 degrees.

      • Actually, neon tubes use electrically excited gases rather than chemical processes or heated solids. The effect on heat is therefore marginal. Don't believe me? Go hold your hand a few centimeters from a neon tube. Even on direct touch most neon tubes are just very slightly over the temperature of the surroundings. Cold Cathodes also have virtually no heat output. Also, if you're water-cooling your system, case heat is less important than it is with air-cooling.

        That said, I think some overclockers are way over the top too. When the price of your cooling kit exceeds that of the hardware it is cooling, I think something is really wrong with your sense of proportion... But hey, if they have fun doing it, who are we to stop them?

    • Re:Is it really worth it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:51PM (#4794086)
      Is there something wrong with me?...

      No, not at all. The solution is found in a counter-intuitive place, however: console games.

      I was a big PC gamer in the nineties, tweaking and upgrading and tinkering with drivers, DOS boot-discs etc etc. During that time, the requirements of the "real-world" apps I was running on my PCs were keeping pace with the expanding game requirements. Sure, I might be upgrading six months earlier because of Quake, but I knew that the performance for the next release of Lotus 123 would appreciate it as well. Meanwhile, I read about all the consoles, saw the "super mario" and other four-color franchises grow, and figured these were toys for the high school kids.

      Me, I was an adult, and I had an Adult Game Machine -- a PC! (*ahem*)

      Then one day around the release of the G4 card (at circa $500) I realized that, unless I switched careers over to astronomy, there was never any reason I could justify that my business apps would ever benefit from all that graphical goodness. Since my time spent gaming with anything more sophisticated than blocks was becoming less and less (twin toddlers), I figured my gaming days had reached their natural, evolutionary end.

      Okay, okay, I actually ended up buying two G4 cards, but that's not my point, hear me out...

      I bought a console. X-Box, specifically, but the brand does not matter for purposes of this discussion. And it's great! The games look great, it sits in my LIVING ROOM, plugs into the home theatre 5.1, and there are titles available that appeal to just about every member of the family. Most have multi-player mode which allow for spouse co-op or dad v. kid(s) play.

      I now play games as much as I did five years ago, but see my wife and kids more while doing it. There are, of course, some games that suffer from "dumbing down" due to the absence of a keyboard, but just as many or more which benefit greatly from being controller-specific (esp the Diablo-esque "Baldur's Gate" and its ilk). Best of all, I'm done: No monitor upgrades, no new cards, no registries to comb over, no OS's to flush every five months, it's all brilliant. You take a game out of the box, pop it into the console, and you're playing immediately.

      And someday, when XBox 2 comes out, and I've played all the XBox 1 games worth playing, what's it going to cost me to "upgrade" to a new console.... $200? $300? Seems like that might be livable...

      Yeah, I know, for those of you who have been playing on consoles for 20 years, this is old hat. But to a PC-diehard like me who has only recently stepped into the light, these are womderful times.
  • 1) Get dual P4-3.06GHZ proc system w/ heat pumps.
    2) Get radeon 9700
    3) Get really large RAID-0 array.
    4) Get linux

  • Slashdotted! (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0x20 ( 546659 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:29AM (#4793478) Homepage
    How about a System Optimization Guide For Web Admins [apache.org] instead...

  • Priceless (Score:2, Funny)

    by jcm ( 4767 )
    Cost in time for Mr.Tweak to send in /. article about his site: $2

    Cost in time for Hemos to post article to /. for Mr.Tweak: $2

    Cost of server able to handle /. load: Priceless

  • Forget Tweaking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:35AM (#4793523)
    (I couldn't read the article...slashedoted already)

    Unless its an super easy reversable change forget the tweaking stuff on Windows.

    Its just to easy to screw up your system. A less than optimal system still plays WC3 fine on good hardware. Trying to squeeze another 5% smoothness out during 5% of the gameplay isn't awe inspring. What is worse is that you could screw up your system or driver and then you have a non-functional game machine. Reinstalling Windows isn't fun when you were expecting to meet up with friends and play some WC3.

    Hardware has more of an influence on performance than mucking with frindge software elements. For my game machine, I just want it to work. If I have to tweak something then I'm better off replacing what is flaking out.
    • ...A less than optimal system still plays WC3 fine on good hardware. Trying to squeeze another 5% smoothness out during 5% of the gameplay isn't awe inspring...

      WC3? Well, considering the Minimum specs on the box when it came out in '95 were 486 DX/50 and 8 megs of ram, then yes, I think Wing Commander 3 will play fine on any machine made in the last 3 or 4 years without tweaking. Might have to scare up a copy of DOS, though.
    • Sorry to say, but if you manage to screw up your pc that bad with just some performance tweaks...what are you doing here? I mean, setting the correct fixed swapfile size on another disk, correcting swapfile usage using msconfig, setting your L2 cache in the registry, disabling unused services...this stuff is trivial and I'd say quite hard to fuck up. Plus doing all this gives you at least a 10% faster machine. Which is worth the hour (due to restarts) you put into it.

  • Quick Question... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:36AM (#4793534) Homepage Journal
    Where's the line between a system tweaked for gaming and a gaming console?

    Isn't a gaming console, in essence, a system tweaked for gaming?

  • It's not JUST the hardware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by core plexus ( 599119 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:38AM (#4793548) Homepage
    What would really be nice, as long as we're wishing, is that game producers would rethink the whole coding. So many games are bloated and buggey, and work only with this OS or that card. How many times have one of us installed a game and something else quits or starts acting strange? Whatever happened to "Write Once, Run Anywhere"? And how about (this is the last, I promise) more tools to add our own real-world stuff in the game easier. There are car and furniture and carpet dealers whose face I'd love to see in UT.
    • When you write a game you have to write to a certain architecture. The fast way to do something under one API is often totally incompatible with the fast way to do it under another API. When you have some virtual machine running interference between the program and the CPU, like java, it always results in a performance hit.
      • Performance hit? Lesse, a 2.4ghz machine with 1gb of RAM shouldn't really CARE if the game is written in Java. It just shouldn't matter. Radeon 9700 or GeForce4 Ti in it and a 10krpm HD. That's a gaming rig, and it's a relatively common gaming rig. You could run an all Java version of every game that came out this year on that thing and I SERIOUSLY doubt you would notice the performance hit...
        And even if you would... how about someone redoing a bunch of semi-classic games in Java just to see it done? Quake II, Warcraft II, SimCity 2000, stuff like that. Just rewrite it all in Java!

        Kintanon
        • For one, no, that's a high end gaming rig. Secondly, do you know what kind of power you need for all the eyecandy and (especially) physics and AI? More than we have now...the more powerfull pc's become, the more realistic the physics become, the better the AI gets.

          Also, remember this well: you can do what you propose, but to write it like that would take way longer than the current 18 month average dev cycle. Which would make games prohibitively expensive and would make technological evolution too long to trickle down into new games.
    • Whatever happened to "Write Once, Run Anywhere"?

      It's being adhered to more closely than ever before, at least in the realm of game coding.

      Why, back in the old days, you had to write your own sound subroutines for each and every soundcard on the market... SB, SB Pro, SB16, Gravis UltraSound, PC (blech) Speaker... thanks to libraries like DirectSound, coders don't have to worry about that crap any more, and can focus on the game engine itself. Same thing happened with video hardware (particularly 3D accelerators) and input devices.

  • The Site Needs a Eula (Score:5, Insightful)

    by puto ( 533470 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:41AM (#4793566) Homepage
    So they have written a manual for non technical people to really screw up their systems?

    I can feel the pain already.

    1. They reccomend futzing around in the bios. BIOS is a no no even if you know what you are doing. Most people who really know hardware stay outta the BIOS unless it is absolutely necessary. The standard settings are usually the best, and unless you need to free an IRQ, or change the boot device, leave it alone. Anyway these days BIOS kinda maintain themselves. Flashing the BIOS as well, Christ on a rubber crutch, don't get me started. Unless you really need some feature don't do it.

    2. Overclocking? With AMD high ends running at such low prices why? The cost spent on all the fancing cooling devices can be used to just buy a better CPU. I dont overclock, admittedly I did drop 35bucks on all copper heatsink with heat pipes, to cool the new Athlon, but i think it looks cool,(like anyone is ever gonna see it anyway). LAst thing you need to do is get some newbie burning up his chip/board/ setting the curtains on fire, voiding his warranty.

    I think this whole article is really bad advice for the non technical person. Because any tech worth his salt would not advise any of this stuff for a few more FPS.

    I would say the best advice is quality hardware and don't pinch pennies when buying it. Aside from the ultra high end video cards, stuff is really cheap these days.

    Here is my guide to a good system. I judge it by having the case cover on and how often do I have to get in there and open it up. New computer three months old, burn in 3 days, I havent had the case off since. And I am a hardware nut.

    This whole tweaking thing is like the ricers. Just spend the money that you would have dropped on fans,pumps, copper, heatsinks, on the high end stuff to begin with.

    Puto

    Imagine the support calls.
    • Kids, don't try this at home.

    • Re:The Site Needs a Eula (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IshanCaspian ( 625325 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:55AM (#4793664) Homepage
      What's up with this constant need in our society to baby-sit the recipient of information? If someone doesn't understand those things, then they are accepting a certain risk when putzing around with them. If you read this guide and screw something up because you didn't know what you were doing, well, too bad. The mere existance of dumb people should not require smart people to talk like friggin lawyers all the time.

      Life is painful when you're stupid.
    • Or like I like to say to ricers:
      "Ya know how to make that ride faster? Crush it and buy a 'vette!"
    • BIOS is a no no even if you know what you are doing.

      I have to disagree on this. Sometimes changing settings in the BIOS is necessary (both of my Athlon system motherboards default to 100MHz FSB even with a 133MHz FSB CPU installed, so I've had to manually reconfigure that). OTOH it's also useful for changing things like boot order, num lock on/off by default, checking CPU temperature when you've installed a new chip, disabling onboard audio if you've got an add-in card, et cetera.

      Anyone who is incapable of or uncomfortable with changing BIOS settings should be treating their PC like I treat cars - something to be bought as a whole instead of building from pieces, and which is serviced by professionals. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. We all specialize in different areas.
    • Flashing the BIOS as well, Christ on a rubber crutch, don't get me started. Unless you really need some feature don't do it.

      That's odd... I just flashed my mobo and video BIOSes and got almost a 10% performance increase...

    • Re:The Site Needs a Eula (Score:4, Informative)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @02:22PM (#4795005)
      BIOS is a no no even if you know what you are doing.

      In other words, you don't know what you're doing.

      If you buy a motherboard, there's a 90% chance the default for AGP prefetch and Fast Writes is 'off'. That can cause between 30-50% performance loss on the hardware you just paid good money for. They're off by default for compatability, but your mid-range to high end video card will perform like crap unless you go in there and turn them on. Some moterboards set things like CPU bus speeds through the BIOS, so if you don't go in there and change the setting, you'll run your CPU at 25% slower speed.

      If you build the system, the BIOS is an essential utility. You can't just ignore it and never go in there.
    • This whole tweaking thing is like the ricers. Just spend the money that you would have dropped on fans,pumps, copper, heatsinks, on the high end stuff to begin with.

      The difference here is that a good cooler (peltier, heat sink, fan) will cost you upwards of $50. Assuming a $1000 PC (about average now right?) that's 5% of the cost of the car. It will give you perhaps a 5-15% increase in performance due to overclocking. CPUs are generally rated at or near their performance maximum so you can't overclock them that far.

      With a car, you might spend $2500 on a turbo kit or an engine swap. Assuming the car costs $18,000 that's about 14% of the price of the car. Doing this will generally net you around a 40% performance increase, because car engines are seldom if ever run at or near their limits in a stock vehicle. They are designed for longetivity. Well, at least the Japanese engines are, and we're talking about rice, right?

      Or put another way; I can spend $8000 getting a 1997 or 1998 S14 240SX (Nissan.) Then I can spend $8000 on a SR20VET 2.0 liter turbo motor with a six speed transmission, putting me up to 257bhp with a six speed. If I spend another $4000 on tires and $5000 on engine upgrades and related equipment (injectors, fuel pump, cams, header, intake, ECU reprogramming, rocker arms) I can have 400hp on stock internals (Crank, pistons, rods, valves) as a reliable daily driver for ~$25,000. This is a RWD car with 5-link rear, 53/47 weight distribution, and I'm talking 17" wheels here, the whole shebang. That will absolutely massacre any production (more than, say, 500 cars) automobile ever sold in the US with the possible exception of some exotics (MODERN lamborghini and ferrari for example). The vehicle will also feature all the creature comforts like leather, ABS, air bags, et cetera.

      This is just the Nissan example. You could do this with Honda or Toyota to (but why would you want to) :) Incidentally that's less than the price of a new 300ZX TT (when they were still available) and less than the price of the BASE MODEL 350Z. It will blow either of them away, as well as anything else you care to name which is less than $100,000 and is stock, and it'll get 25 freeway in the bargain.

      As to the "rice" items which people put on their cars, like big exhaust tips or a wing on a FWD car which never goes over 80 mph, or an aero body kit; All of these are useful if you are going fast. Well, not the big exhaust tip, unless you also have a big exhaust. I used to have a 2.4 liter I4 with no turbo making 180 rwhp in a 240SX improved touring car, largely due to a big header and a 3" exhaust. Neon and shit is never useful, except for winning shows perhaps.

      Essentially, this is NOTHING like import performance. Performance tuning for gamers is also nothing whatsoever like ricing your car by adding all kinds of cute doodads because that doesn't improve performance at all (unless you've done the engine and suspension up as well) but performance tuning of your PC does.

      Next time you feel like talking about something you know nothing about, consider the fact that some people on /. DO know a little something about cars and will shut you down.

  • Security? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Schik ( 576085 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:50AM (#4793617) Homepage
    I love one of his first suggestions -

    "I recommend only one account (the Administrator) for fastest performance... If you have only one User account (as recommended above) and you leave your password field blank you shouldn't be prompted for a username and password each time you bootup XP. This is the fast way to bootup."

    So only have one account, the Administrator account, use it all the time, and don't put a password on it. Great advice.

    • Re:Security? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jedie ( 546466 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:08PM (#4793737) Homepage
      That'w why it's "System Optimisation Guide for Gamers" and not "System Optimisation Guide for Super Secret Information Server Security Systems"
      What? Someone is going to log into their PC and uninstall quake 3?
      I don't think that people who follow a guide with such a title care that much about security anyway.

      • Re:Security? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rschwa ( 89030 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:24PM (#4793901)
        ..What? Someone is going to log into their PC and uninstall quake 3? ..

        Last week my brother was setting up a machine for his mother in law, left the admin password blank to make it easy for her to log in, left it running for 4 hours while it downloaded service packs over his cable modem.

        He came back and it had 2 different DDoS bots loaded on it.

        I laughed at him.
        • Even if he had set an admin password, Win2k has so many vulnerabilities out of the box, it prolly would have happened anyway. He should have downloaded sp3 and any patches he needed on a secure box, burned it to CD, and not put the box on the net until he had it patched up.

  • Tweaking is lame - somewhat OT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:50AM (#4793619) Journal
    I used to tweak the hell out of my hardware. It got boring after awhile - between that and just getting things working, I'm much happier just to insert a disc into my Gamecube and just play games.

    Console gaming is rapidly catching up to pc gaming:
    Internet multiplayer support? Check (although Nintendo is dragging their feet here)
    Awesome graphics, surround sound? Check
    Play in your comfortable living room? Check
    System = same price as a mid range pc video card? Check
    99.9% problem free? Check
    Largest selection of games? Check

    I still play games on my PC, but I find I do it less and less over the years, and only in areas that my console lacks (ie/ Gamecube has next to no role playing games).

    I think between this and the four noisy fans I have in my PC right now, my next one will not be bought with gaming in mind. Maybe a tablet PC :)

    About all the PC has is a lot more choice/freedom in hardware (though not really - usually two or three companies producing the top gaming hardware). Those of us with money can get a slightly better gaming experience (well, audiovisual experience, anyway) - but even that has the price of incompatibility.
    • consoles are increasingly competing w/ PC's on all of the PC's traditional selling points (online play etc.)
      but there is one reason PC gaming will never die - user mods and content

      Unreal 2003 comes with the full featured level editor they used to design the actual game!
      that right there was enough to get me to buy it without even trying the demo (and yes, the editor is &%$!#@ amazing)

      until consoles can give me something like this, i'm going to have to stick w/ owning both - consoles for fast arcade style action, PC's for letting me screw around with the guts of games I buy (arguably more fun than playing them)

      • Very good point. Additionally this means that you get more gaming for your dollars. Look at the people that bought Half Life and have played CS for the last (?) years on the same old hardware.

        However, I wouldn't doubt that eventually, console gamers will be able to mod content. Of course, those consoles are going to strongly resemble PC's.... hmmm... :)
      • Halleluja, say it loud! Say it proud!

        Or whatever it goes like. Other good example, Morrowind. The new expansion pack is PC only. All the mods and stuff? PC only. All my favorite games are like this. Recently Mafia had a great mod. Turn all the fake car names into the real ones. Like to see this done on a console.

        As for the original posters claim that the hardware is coming closer to the PC, dream on. How much memory does an X-box have? 64mb. My vid card has twice that. Yeah so my pc is a lot more expensive then a console. A porsche is a lot more expensive then a trabant. You get what you pay for.

        And for every game that needs a patch there are the great patches that add to the life of a game. Grand Prix Legends wich was constantly upgraded to support newer vid cards. Halflife wich got a increase in its polygon count for the monsters. Free levels for Tomb Raider, eat that console owner :)

        As for playing in the living room. I don't know how most other people play but for FPS and racing games I need a desk like setup. I guess this is a matter of preference.

        • Heheh, for the record, this wasn't intended to be a pc vs console thread [penny-arcade.com] though it was inevitable given what I wrote in the top post :)

          Modding is cool and all, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility in the console world and unfortunately there are a lot of mods that just suck - hardly an excuse against modding in general, but I personally have only played a handful of good mods (and despite what I have said, I play a lot of PC games - just less and less every year).

          That reminds me of another nice thing about console games - NO PATCHES! Heheh, except occasionally a bug will make it into a console game, and then we're screwed.
    • Consoles tend to drift behind PC gaming, then make leaps to catch up as each console comes out. An up-to-date PC will always beat the latest console it seems, but of course, at what price?

      But where there's the same game with the same options, the consoles are usually more fun. Except for FPS - I don't think I can play any FPS with a controller anymore (though Vice City's FP aiming weapons I'm getting used to, and Timesplitters wasn't bad).

      But I'm glad I have both, and PCs don't usually need too much tweaking it seems. Although games like Morrowind, etc. can sometimes be real bears.

      I think if I was limited on cash, I'd stick with a modest PC for regular stuff and spending my gaming dough on a console.
      • Two words: Metroid Prime. If you've played it (Gamecube), you'll know what console FPS is all about.

        I played Red Faction II on the PS2 with a keyboard/mouse. It was better than using the controller, but it still seemed kind of clumsy (the movement with the mouse was slow to respond). I find the best console games are ones that are designed directly for that specific console -- instead of having multi-platform engines adding bulky overhead to an otherwise fine game. Additionally, games targetted to a specific platform can take advantage of features only that platform has. Kind of the opposite of the Java philosophy, but when I have a game running at 20fps on a console with graphics that could arguably run at 60fps, I notice a difference (a la Gran Turismo 3)...
    • It's more about what kind of game you want to play than anything else.

      FPS, RTS, Turn-based strategy (e.g. - Civ), and MMORPG are best on PCs. The controls do not lend themselves to the little hand controls on consoles. These kind of games evolved on the PC.

      Driving games, shoot-em-ups, platform games, and fighting games are best on consoles. Their controllers are great for this kind of thing, and they largely evolved from the arcade, which is the same audience consoles were originally aimed at.

      RPGs are something of a toss up -- they're usually fun on both platforms. Ditto Flight Sims, which essentially require a separate control system on either platform. Driving games often do too, but even so the console versions are generally better.

      Basically, decide which kind of game you enjoy playing more and go for it. The other big advantage of a console system is that if you have friends over a lot then you're more likely to play head-to-head games on it than on PCs -- PC games just don't do well for multi-player-on-the-same-box generally.

      It used to be that PCs were the only real choice for playing online, but as you mention, that's changing. I don't forsee the game types on each system changing dramatically though - the ones the PC rules in are usually because of the more complex controls needed. Maybe once consoles come with keyboard/mouse standard, but not until then.
      • FPS, RTS, Turn-based strategy (e.g. - Civ), and MMORPG are best on PCs. The controls do not lend themselves to the little hand controls on consoles. These kind of games evolved on the PC.


        I'm playing Metroid Prime right now. Awesome FPS. The controls are a bit hard to learn (being a mouse and keyboard guy myself) but I learned. Turn based strategy works fine on console, just no publishers (I first played civ on my snes). MMORPG - just look at Phantasy Star Online - you have to buy a keyboard, but it's lots of fun, or so I am told. There are a few RTS on consoles, but not enough.

        RPGs are something of a toss up -- they're usually fun on both platforms. Ditto Flight Sims, which essentially require a separate control system on either platform. Driving games often do too, but even so the console versions are generally better.


        Consoles can come with more complicated controls like that new one for XBox (the name escapes me). And you can get mice and keyboards for the ps2 (and keyboards for the gamecube).

        Someone already touched on the big thing I missed though - modifiable content is just not that big on consoles. Yet. :)

  • Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:52AM (#4793641)
    This article might matter if you're a student who inherited your family's old PC and want some hope of playing new games on it. Otherwise, it's irrelevant. You can buy a nice 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with a GeForce 4 for under $1000. Actually, you can go below $800 pretty easily right now, if you keep your current monitor. PC performance has been leveling out lately, and the capabilities of what now sells for $800 have barely been scratched.

    I'm a game developer. I used to do high-end 3D game development on a P2-450 with 128MB of memory. I shipped commercial products on that system. It was a tad slow, but that was more because of swapping than anything else. Then I moved up to a P3-866 with 256MB. Now that was a nice system: very fast, no swapping, no complaints at all. Again, I shipped commercial products on that system, and meanwhile the gamer kiddies were all moaning about how you can't survive without anything below 1.5GHz or whatever. Heck, Dell advertising claims that a "low end" 1.8 GHz P4 is good for internet browsing and email. Then I moved up to the typical 2.4GHz system that everyone is buying these days. I can't really tell the difference. Compile times are faster, but they were pretty quick anyway.

    Bottom line: If a game runs crappily on a system like this, then the developer should be put out of business. There's no excuse. Why mess with this stuff anyway, when you can buy the hassle-free game console of your choice for significantly less than a Radeon?

    • Re:Irrelevant (Score:2, Interesting)

      by natron 2.0 ( 615149 )
      This article is not nearly as irrelevent as you think. Not everyone has $800-$1000 just laing around to buy a new PC. Sure you could go and get it financed though Dell, and pay an outrageous interest rate. Everyone I know has a computer and I do not know anyone who has anything over a 1.8GHz. Hell, I am still running a PIII 1GHz (and no, I did not inherit this PC from my parents). It is just not feesable for most people to slap down nearly a grand for a new PC, when the one you have will run everything pretty damn good. I am sure if you did a /. poll you would realize that most people do not have the latest systems. So therefore, this article is very relevent.

      • Hell, I am still running a PIII 1GHz (and no, I did not inherit this PC from my parents). It is just not feesable for most people to slap down nearly a grand for a new PC, when the one you have will run everything pretty damn good. I am sure if you did a /. poll you would realize that most people do not have the latest systems. So therefore, this article is very relevent.

        And if you read my post carefully, I said that I couldn't tell the difference between a 866MHz and 2.4GHz for developing 3D games, and game players don't need nearly as much capability.

    • Re:Irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mr Guy ( 547690 )
      Indeed. I run a 866 with 512MB (RDRAM) and I have no problem running TWO copies of Everquest [everquest.com] through the magic of EQW [eqwindows.com]. I always hear people bitching and moaning about how their system is struggling by and I just wonder what they are doing wrong.

      I bet a good defrag would make more difference for most people than upgrading their processor.

      On a related note, I'd love to see the peformance test of an 866/512MB system versus a 1.8/128 system, or a similiar test of a 1.8 with a (what is it, 10something RPM) versus a 2.4 with a 7200 RPM or 5400 (?) RPM drive and see which performs better for the average user.

      My hunch is INTEL and AMD wouldn't be happy with the results. When are they going to finally start putting out other components that are fast enough for the good chips anyway?

    • Re:Irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Egekrusher2K ( 610429 )
      Ok. So let me get this straight. Developers should stop making more complex games just because you don't want to have to upgrade your system? I take it you're not getting DooM ]|[. The games that tax a system do it for a reason: they look better than console games! And what are you talking about with incompatibility? What are you running, a Voodoo 5?
      • Ok. So let me get this straight. Developers should stop making more complex games just because you don't want to have to upgrade your system? I take it you're not getting DooM ]|[. The games that tax a system do it for a reason: they look better than console games!

        They look better because:

        1. A monitor is clearer and higher resolution than a TV.
        2. A GeForce 3 or 4 is practically a second CPU, one that's independent of the rest of your system (with 128MB and 8:1 texture compression, bus speed is a non issue) Plug one into a 400MHz system and you'll get the same graphics.

        I think that so-caled "high end" PC gamers don't have any kind of handle on what performance means or where it comes from.

        Also note that high-end PC games are selling very poorly. Doom 3 will be the exception, because all the fanboys will buy it, but try listing 12 PC games that require hardware T&L and have sold more than 100,000 copies each. Heck, try listing 5. Or 3. High end PC gaming is all but dead.

    • I completely agree. I think the inflated hardware requirements of modern games only serve to turn gamers into mindless consumers who have to keep buying more hardware to get high on the latest fix of benchmark scores. If these people did their work right, the upgrade race would be a lot less furious than it is, and we'd have less stress and annoyment to deal with.

    • Actually, you can go below $800 pretty easily right now, if you keep your current monitor.

      Wow, that's only 4 times as much as an Xbox!!!

  • Why I've pretty much gone console (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:57AM (#4793669) Homepage
    Used to be I would never own a console. Not gonna happen, not gonna do it - my PC is faster, better, has a hard drive -

    Then I played Final Fantasy VII, and got hooked into consoles. Now, I prefer them. Why? True plug in play.

    Buy/Rent game.
    Insert into PS2/GameCube/Xbox/Gameboy Advance.
    Turn on.
    Play.

    That's it. Granted, there are some games that don't "console" real well - I'm still not sold on FPS games on the console (though the developers who make their games keyboard/mouse compatible get kudos in my book), and games like Starcraft are just not happening (though there are some wonderful turn based strategy games), but overall, my console gets a bigger workout than my PC does for games these days.

    What would make it better? Well, I wouldn't mind if Sony would make the PS3 with a built in hard drive (goodbye, memory cards!) and keep the USB (for keyboard/mouse FPS, online games, and when they start making Command and Conquer style PS2 games that I like), and include a VGA output by default (or a real adapter rather than a third party hack). Then I could just plug it into a monitor, and the only computers I'd really need would be my PowerMac and my Linux Server in the corner.

  • Tweaking is useful, to a degree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @11:58AM (#4793672) Homepage
    As a zealot tweaker, I disagree that tweaking is useless. First off, if someone thinks they are going to double the speed of their system with some tweaks, thats ignorance. Tweaking serves two purposes for games: performance and quality. You know how often you can goto a support forum for a new game and see people saying, "Why does ___ run so slow?" and they dont realize they have all of the default game graphic settings on, which probably including shadows, realtime lighting, antialiasing, anistropic filtering and such. Understanding what these settings do can GREATLY improve your experience. No, this is not like buying a Radeon 9700, but thats $320, and this is free w/ a little time. Saying that tweaking is useless is like saying that recompiling your kernel is pointless if it works. Don't whine about people bothering to make the most of their hardware, no one is forcing you to do the same.
  • Thanks to Intel's "let's go for Mhz over performance" attitude, you can barely tell the difference between a PIII-800 Mhz and a P4-3 Ghz.

    But pseudol33t "gamerz" have to have a reason waste big money buying the newest CPU and graphics card. It's group therapy for spendthrifts..."See! The red line goes past the blue line on this website! This justifies my spending $500!"

    Flipping a few switches in your BIOS isn't gonna make your computer that much faster (unless you have one of those 486's with the "TURBO" button).

  • Short list of parts for an optimized system: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:02PM (#4793707)
    1) ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 chipset motherboard
    2) Fastest Athlon XP you want to spend money on, Athlon XP 2400+ at minimum
    3) Pair of Corsair DIMMs, PC3200C2 or higher, 256meg or 512meg each
    4) Thermalright SK7 or SLK800 copper heatsink
    5) Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound, follow the application instructions on their website [arcticsilver.com]
    6) Fastest GeForce4 Ti (or Radeon 9700 Pro) that you want to spend money on, I'd go with one of the new Ti4200 8X cards and save up for the GeForceFX (next year)
    7) Seagate Barracuda V 120gig IDE HD, the SATA version if it's available and has Linux drivers by the time you're ready to buy, alternatively a Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 SCSI drive and controller if you have way more money than me
    8) Lian Li aluminum case of your choice
    9) YS Tech rheostat (adjustable) 80mm fan for that Thermalright heatsink, or the highest RPM 80mm fan your ears can tolerate
    10) Pioneer DVR-105 4x/2x DVD-R/RW drive, just because.

    Substitute an ASUS A7M266-D and pair of Athlon XP 2400+ chips modded for MP operation (until the real MP 2400+'s are available) if you like. That's what I did. It's soooo nice. Make sure you get 266MHz FSB CPUs if you go this route as that's all the board supports.

  • Mr. Tweak. (Score:3, Funny)

    by BitHive ( 578094 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:16PM (#4793825) Homepage
    Don't worry about Mr. Tweak, he's some teenage kid in Australia. Anyone who used to read the [H]ardOCP (I stopped several years ago) will remember him as the kid that threatened to sue Kyle for not linking to his crappy website. Of course, he didn't just threaten Kyle directly--he sent his complaints to a whole bunch of hardware site webmasters. He's just another one of those dime-a-dozen specials.
  • It seems they need to tweak their server for webserving instead of gaming, it would appear it could not handle the dreaded slashdot effect. Would have been an interesting article if their server wasn't on fire right now.
  • This article had no mention of Linux, Mac, or any other Non-Windows tweaks. I've seen better tweaking guides at geocities pages, so I don't see where they get off calling their guid "comprehensive". Maybe they should substitute "Yet another" for "comprehensive".

  • Linux Gamers (can) have it easy (Score:5, Informative)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @12:49PM (#4794075)

    One of the things you want to do as a Linux gamer who really cares about getting the last few FPS out of a box should be to set up dedicated gaming sessions as part of the login process. This means that the only thing running in the box will be whatever minimal services you need, X and the actualy game you are running.

    If you use gdm for your logins, then create a script named, say, 'Quake3' in /etc/gdm/Sessions which has contents like:

    #!/bin/sh
    exec /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession /usr/bin/Quake3

    Make sure this is executable (chmod 755 /etc/gdm/Sessions/Quake3) and you should be set.

    Then when you login to your box, choose the Quake3 session in the top left and type in your user name and password as normal. The game will launch immediately with nothing else running at all. The main benefit of this is that you free as many of the resources available to be dedicated to game playing.

    Cheers,
    Toby Haynes

  • This book is a far better optimization guide... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Patoski ( 121455 ) on Monday December 02, 2002 @01:08PM (#4794266) Homepage Journal
    I was disappointed with the depth of this article. I expected lots of little hints and tricks that I didn't know about but instead found most of the material was common sense stuff for anyone who had been around computers for any amount of time.

    If you *really* want to get deep inside the guts of optimizing a Windows box I can think of no better guide than O'reilly's.

    Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia by David L. Farquhar [oreilly.com]

    This book is currently out of print and is getting a little long in the tooth (published in 1999) but the internals for Windows doesn't really change that radically from a tuner's perspective. This book isn't a mere collection of little tricks but gives you a more fundamental understanding of Windows and how to trim the fat. The Amazon user rating system gives it 5 stars and rightfully so. To top it off you can pick up a used copy [ebay.com] for about $8 or so at half.com among other places.

    This is really a great book for anyone looking to get the most out of their Windows machine or just trying to understand the black box that is Windows. I used some of the tricks mentioned in this book on my wife's old p233 laptop w/96MBs RAM. Her Win98SE box has been going for almost two years now w/o any serious stability or performance problems. Granted, she's not a niddler and only does a certain set number of tasks on this laptop but I think that's pretty darn good for a Windows 98 box.
  • Oops....just another wannabe trying to spout rhetoric that any moderate user would already know.

    And for Windows OS's only, from what I read on downloading SiSoft (or do they have a Linux version I don't know about?)

    Of course when I AskSlashdot about whether or not people have written to the major gaming magazines about covering the Linux Gaming world, it was denied to even be asked...hmmmm

    Has anyone thought that if they were to do as I have and WRITE the major gaming magazines and manufacturers to include Linux as a platform for coverage that they may see the interest is out there?

  • Aside from getting the best hardware you can afford, if you want the best performance out of your gaming machine, don't do anything else with that computer than play games. Don't even install any other software (save Mozilla for downloading patches, etc) but the base operating system. Anything else you install can have hidden stuff that will reduce your performance. All this extra tweaking crap is closing the barn door after the horses have already ran.
  • I'm an avid PC gamer. My tips:

    1. Don't install anything you don't need on your gaming machine. That means don't go to shareware.com and try every little utility program you can get your hands on. Stick with the essentials: Getright, unzip (I like the command-line version), Thumbs Plus (for viewing my screenshot collection), Opera. I've had Win98SE running for over 2 years and it's still stable.

    2. Get all the memory you can afford (to a point). 512MB runs anything I can throw at it.

    3. Get a kick-ass video card. My transition from a Radeon 32MB to a Geforce 4200 was amazing, and I've "only" got a 1.1GHz machine.

    Upgrading the CPU/motherboard is low on my priority list, upgrade your memory/video card first. It's cheaper and less trouble, lots of bang for the buck.

    4. Set your swap file to a fixed size, set your disk cache to a fixed size. Less thrashing that way.

    5. Disable/uninstall every background process that you don't need. Partly a side effect of #1. But make Windows behave too, it's not that efficient out of the box. Don't use Active Desktop, don't use the system scheduler, disable System Restore and all the other CPU-leeching services. Don't compress your hard disk. Don't let Windows do anything pretty or useful. :)

    I'll upgrade my 1.1GHz Athlon eventually, but since I can run games like GTA3, Max Payne, and Battlefield 1942 at 1280x1024 with a nice framerate, I'm in no hurry.
  • I can't let people think that you can't tweak a Macintosh. You do--but the tweaks are mainly with the game's settings, not the computer's.

    A Macintosh is typically ready to rock in OS X. Mac OS 9 users may want to turn off virtual memory if they have lots of real RAM, or buy more RAM (virtual memory in OS 9 is not the way to go, unless you like 5 FPS).

    1. Let the PC users struggle with every Tom-Dick-and-Harry game published that's barely worth the plastic they're printed on. Like all other good software, a few great games rise to the top. Sometimes a company knows a game will be so successful that they develop Mac and PC versions simultaneously.

    2. Wait for companies such as Aspyr [aspyr.com] to announce a port of the better PC games, such as Jedi Knight II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or await a simultaneous release of a PC and Mac game from companies such as Blizzard's WarCraft III and Diablo II [blizzard.com]. Be patient; ports usually show up approximately 6 months after a hit release on a PC. The wait is usually worth it because the big bugs have been squashed by the time you receive the Mac version.

    3. Buy a stronger video card. Macintosh systems make great game computers, but the recent Quake 3 engines in Jedi Knight and Castle Wolfenstein really don't do well with RAGE 128 16MB cards. Get an nVidia or Radeon card. The GeForce 4 MX works well, but the penultimate GeForce4 Ti comes with the most expensive Mac, but you can buy it separately from Apple and maybe others for systems with an AGP slot.

    4. Mac OS X has better overall power for gaming, but your OS X move puts your Mac OS 9 gaming archive in jeopardy as they won't well in the Mac OS 9 "emulation" called Classic. Caveat emptor.

    5. Profit! (No...not really. I just wanted to stymie the second posters)

    6. Switch off processor-intensive apps or ones that access the Internet if you are playing online (Mac OS 9 users should just switch off everything except the game, including unneeded extensions and control panels)

    7. Get a real mouse. Apple's one-buttoner doesn't cut it here unless you like compromising your speed. Microsoft may not be your favorite software company, but their IntelliMouse optical mice with multiple buttons will give you OWNZ3RSHIP of all those you play.

    Currently I'm a addicted RtCW multiplayer gamer. Ah, bliss. New maps? Just download 'em, drop the pk3 file in the maps folder and ride, baby. See the flamethrower and feel the burn, babe.

    Oh, and if you can afford it, a new dual-processor system is great for Quake 3 engineered games as many seem to be multi-processor aware. Players in Jedi Knight II never see me coming, and RtCW speed is smooth.

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