New hardware needed

[Cybermonkey]

Hi, since you all are game developers, I assume a lot of you are gamers, too. So, I need this new PC because my old one is needed in my office. What kind of hardware (CPU, graphics card) would you recommend? The problem is money, though. It should be at a reasonable price, means about 400 € (about 500 US$ or 320 GBP). [without OS!] Some specs are fixed: 8 GB of RAM and 1000 GB Harddisk. I hope you have some good ideas; it's possible for me to build this PC by myself by the way.

[User137]

I guess this would give some ideas:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
There's GPU, CPU and Harddisk benchmarks

And.. oh wow, i thought my yeaars old graphics card was with score 130 or so, it was actually bit more :D
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+5600%2F5700
CPU gets score 2,226. I'd definitely get something more powerful than that. Did i read there are 3.6GHz quadcores for cheap'ish?

[SilverWarior]

Not so long ago I have been looking to build a new PC for my friend (he chaged his mind later on). The PC would be suitable for normal tasks like web browsing etc but would also be posible to run some les demmanding games. In slovenia it would cost me about 430€ for all components I gues in Germany it would cost even less.
So componets which I intedned to use are:
1. Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 motehrboard http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3817#ov
Motherboard has some cool overclocking capabilities supports latest AMD A3+ socket and upto 16GB of DDR3 ram. It also has integrated AMD graphics card which is compatible with ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology which means that if you add standalone AMD graphics card also capable with this technology bth of them can be used to speed up graphics processing.
2. AMD FX 4 Core black edition processor http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=773&f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=&f10=&f11=&f12=
This processor is from the latest AMD processor family and has great support for Open CL technology. It can be comparable with Intel i5 processors but has a bit lower price.
3. WD Caviar Blue 1 TB, 7200 rpm, 64 MB, SATA III (WD10EZEX) hard drive.
4. PRO-925B - ATX Pro-Line casing http://www.lc-power.de/index.php?id=323&L=1
The casing doesn't look like much but it does support good coling capabilities.

While the above configuration isn't suitable for serious gaming it can be easily upgraded by adding standalone graphics card (I recomend using AMD based graphics card to make most of it - AMD chipset on motherboard and capability of using both integrated and standalone graphics card together), adding aditional RAM and exchanging CPU for 8 core AMD FX processor.
NOTE: 430€ of estimated cost is only for Computer tower without CD/DVD writer(whic would be reused from my friends old computer), no Monitor or other periaphal devices.

[LP]

If budget is the issue, then I would suggest going for AMD FX 8150 or similar CPU as despite disappointing online reviews, in our own benchmarks, it appears to be a very powerful CPU. You can go for some cheap DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM and later upgrade to something like DDR3 1600 Mhz or higher. The only noticeable difference in RAM speed you will see going from 1333 Mhz to 1600 Mhz (mostly due to improved latency), so it's not recommended to spend on anything beyond that.

If you want to go for Intel, then you can go for cheaper last year's Sand Bridge CPUs, Core i5 2500K would be a very strong CPU, or you can even go for Core i7 2600K, although combined with motherboard it will eat your 400€ rather quickly. The benefit of going for those is new Intel HD 3000 (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-3000.37948.0.html) integrated video card, which finally supports multisampling, OpenGL 3 and is a pretty good deal. It also seems to work in Linux very well.

[code_glitch]

Silverwarrior: AMD FX4 series... Peronsally I would steer clear from all but the top of the line FX series. However, the AMD route is probably the way to go unless you need the VERY best CPU on the market - although for the money thats going to be really hard... Edit: Ah, you meant FX 4 core not FX4... So basically I agree somehwat now... Sorry for the confusion ???. I did some research into the FX series into some depth since when it came out I was all 'FX is the future for my next build....' before seeing some stuff which I checked out just about every and was all 'oh.................... phenom ii x4 960t is is. no more available? wha???' :D

Cybermonkey:
I finished my last build for £300 (monitorless) as an emergency so I didnt put in too much shopping around, but it was on budget and creams most £450 moniterless systems I can buy anywhere which is nice... Heres my process, 1) find market sweetspots and find a 'target specification'. 2) shop around, see where acrifices can be made so it fits around 95% of the budget including shipping... 3) enjoy XD

1. My recommendation would be to do something like this:
CPU: Athlon II x4 (one of the high end chips, if you dont mind a bit of overclocking...) Or a Phenom II x4 unless you can pick up a top spec FX-6 series or an FX8 series. The issue with bulldozer and the FX chips is simply that they do worse than previous generation Phenoms and Athlons when applications are badly threaded. So if you need more threads then go FX, if you need a few threads and lots of speed go Phenom. This would put you back around £60-95 depending on what you get. I have an Athlon II X3 (the 460 I believe currently with the stock cooler and if I have it running in its normal 3 core mode I get around 3.9-4.1GhZ which creams any core 2 and on the cpu benchmarks seems to stack up just under a mid range i5). If I unlock its 4th core I get a Phenom B50e which I can only take to about 3-3.2 GhZ due to it munching more power and spewing more heat into the stock cooler. My pick for germany would be this: http://www.lambda-tek.com/HDZ965FBGMBOX-AMD-Phenom-II-X4-965-AM3-Black-Edition-Retail~csDE/B255784 although there are 6 core phenom iis they are sort of expensive...

Motherboard: You're going to want an AM3+ board, with something later than an 870 chipset - AsRock do nice boards at nice prices as do asus in my experience - so that you get all the upgrade options open for quite some time as well as all the USB3 goodness and whatnot. I have an ageing AsRock 870 Extreme 3 R2.0 with the latest BIOS/EFI support. A VERY important thing to check since some SSD/motherboard combos can have issues. My setup is fine with SSDs now but not when I first built it - would only start in BIOS 'safe' mode on every 2nd boot... al fixed now though :) My recommendation at the moment would sit somewhere around an ASRock 970 Extreme4 which has all the latest as well as an x8/x8 pci slot setup if you want to crossfire later on... You can pick one up for around EUR95 apparently http://www.lambda-tek.com/970-EXTREME4-Asrock-970-EXTREME-4-AM3-AMD-SB950-ATX-4-DDR3-2100-GLAN-USB-3-0-ESATA~csDE/B861327

GPU: This one has been moving at one heck of a pace lately. I have an HD5750 from XFX which is sitting at clock speed just higher than a stock HD5770 which is actually surprisingly capable of a GPU in my opinion since I have no problem playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, MAss effect 1,2 and 3 all on the highest settings at vsync (which for me is 1280x1024 at 60fps). Although for around £50-65 gets you an XFX HD6670 with 1GB of GDDR5. NOT DDR3. GDDR5. I like XFX for my cards, my friends likes Asus... We both had no issues. Although if driver support is a must consider an nVidia alternative. My board recommendation has no issues with SLI so.... :D

RAM: A set of corsair XMS3s should have you covered. 2x4B should fill up some slots on that motherboard as well as be nice and dual channel.... and for only EUR40 http://www.lambda-tek.com/CMX8GX3M2A1600C9-Corsair-XMS3-8GB-2-x-4GB-Memory-Kit-PC3-12800-1600MHz-DDR3-DIMM-240pin-CL9~csDE/2071001

Storage: In my experience: SSD boot drivers are here and they are the future. Take my old SU4100 laptop. A paltry penryn dual core deal with 1.3GhZ of headroom... HDD boot times are around 35isj seconds for my setup of mint. Stick in a first gen SSD and it'll do it in 12 flat. SO: for a boot drive I'd go for something like a 120GB Vertex 3 which can be had for around £60 and a 1.5TB WD caviar black for the storage drive for around there, say £70 to be on the safe side... Or save £10 or so and get 1tb... I prefer the 1.5tb deal since its more or less todays sweetspot. Put your OS and core applications (or all if you like XD) on the SSD and the data on the HDD and reap the rewards of blistering speeds and load of space...

Case&PSU: I usually buy these together since there are some bargains to be had. I paid £30 for my case and I got a brand name 650W psu. Okay the case is a tad flimsy but it has space, drive bays and a nice PSU so... From my above recommendations you should have a total cost so far of EUR40(RAM)+EUR90(CPU)+EUR95(MB)+GBP65(GPU)+GBP70(H DD)+GBP60(SSD)=EUR225+GBP195 which according to google is around EUR240 for a grand total of EUR445... which I know is EUR45 above the target, worst case scenario - that is, if you have no bargains, want the top of the line CPU option, 'spacious' SSD and extra space, pay extra shipping and land current RRPs... Lambdatek I have dealt with (in the UK) and are an awesome bunch so there you have it. Next...

From here you have some choices, heres the order I'd tackle them in:
1.) SSD: do you mind loading/boot times. An SSD boot drive makes things FEEL a LOT - and I mean a geological AGE FASTER - but is costly...
2.) HDD: I know this is an odd one HOWEVER if on windows, by the time you fill 1TB of space your OS is going to slow down. Quite a lot. If you dual boot or are a linux user you can pretty safely ignore this point (unless you apt-get everything on your HDD in which case... nuff said :D)
3.) GPU: If you dont play many games, going down a notch here can save a few euros although going down to far may affect compatibility with the latest OpenGL releases as older architectures lack the support. Eg. My 5750 only supports OpenGL3.2 if you go that far back, despite it giving out nice frame rates on everything I throw at it :)
4.) Motherboard: the 970 chipset is VEEERY nice in terms of upgradeability options. Full on native sata 6gbps, Am3+, >8 core support, USB 3.0 all out of the box by design - unlike the older 8 series which tend to feel a bit 'kludgy' to setup although those features are USUALLY possible... The 9xx series are usually 10euro or so more than the 8xx but its worth it if you upgrade rather than replace...
5.) CPU: I would recommend sticking to a phenom ii x4 black edition, it can be overclocked, it has threads, it has raw power and it'll do everything you ask it to. If you want to you can skimp to an x3 model and hope it unlocks when you need it to/permanently but there are no guarantees. x3s are quite capable on their own though. It depends if you do a lot of multithreading. Note that a step down here is only likely to save you a couple of euros at 10% performance cost or so so I'd advise against it...

So, where does the case/PSU fit in? Well simply - I can't survay the ebay, amazon and such sites to find a good bargain. Just try and find something with around 650W of juice from some brand or you might have power fluctuations that can hurt performance and worse - hardware. As for the grand total I think this target spec is doable for around EUR425-440 is if you shop around and take amazon and such shops up on their numerous xyz%off this week offers. Also it does, to the best of my understanding reflect a mid range market sweetspot and should - dpending on your needs (whether its gaming, encoding and such) serve you a good 3 years+ with the minor tweak here and there. eg: new game comes out, you want MAX not HIGH settings, need to spend what will be <EUR50 to crossfire and virtually double GPU performance ;)

Anyway, sorry for the long post and all the depth, just didnt quite know the use scenario so I covered all the bases and since EUR400ish is my price point, if I hadnt built my new machine last year this is actually EXACTLY what I would build :) Hope this helps at least somewhat.

[Cybermonkey]

Hey, thanks guys.
@User137: Very useful links, thanks.
@all: I think I might go the AMD way. My actual PC is an Intel Core 2 Duo, with mainly Xubuntu 12.04 on it. Everything other than XFCE seems to slow down my Geforce 8600 GT. In my shop I got an Athlonx 64 X2 with only 2GB RAM (my home PC's got 4GB), already over one year old with onboard graphics and it seems faster to me. The PC before my actual home PC is already in my shop, it's a Pentium 4, a snail. ;) Before that I had an AMD K5? It was like a Pentium with 200 MHz and was really fast for that days.
Well, I am not the hardcore gamer (seems that game programmers don't have time to play games ...) but now and then I like to play some games. I will definately have a look at the new Tomb Raider next year, besides of that we have some nice German PC gaming magazines with full versions on their CDs/DVDs. For example Drakensang used to be on one. Needless to say it doesn't perform very well on my actual PC.
Oh, another point I have to take care of: the graphics card needs to have a VGA port, since my (bit older) FullHD display has no other option to connect.

EDIT: What I found for even a lower price (319,00€) is a complete system with an Athlon II X4 631, 8GB RAM (DDR 3 - 1333MHz only), a Radeon HD6670 with 2GB and 640 GB HDD. (It will be a dualboot system). At last this is a bargain, I guess ...

[code_glitch]

2GB HD6670 = DRR3 not GDDR5 model, and that can result in quite a hit on performance... As for a VGA port, displayport has VGA adapters you can use... Though if its a system thats super-reposnive, an SSD truly is the way to go :)

[LP]

GPU: This one has been moving at one heck of a pace lately. I have an HD5750 from XFX which is sitting at clock speed just higher than a stock HD5770 which is actually surprisingly capable of a GPU in my opinion since I have no problem playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, MAss effect 1,2 and 3 all on the highest settings at vsync (which for me is 1280x1024 at 60fps). Although for around £50-65 gets you an XFX HD6670 with 1GB of GDDR5. NOT DDR3. GDDR5. I like XFX for my cards, my friends likes Asus... We both had no issues. Although if driver support is a must consider an nVidia alternative. My board recommendation has no issues with SLI so.... :D
Drivers for AMD GPUs have issues almost on all platforms, so for stability I'd suggest Nvidia. If you pick AMD video cards, go for raw power, in which case get 6770 or higher. Mine Asus HD 6780 is pretty good, but fully loaded it runs at 90+ C, and 70 C if you use more than 1 monitor on it. If you don't need raw power, avoid AMD video cards for now.

P.S. Radeon HD 6670 does run Stalker - Shadows of Chernobyl smooth, but it quickly gets overwhelmed if you use 1920 × 1080 resolution, enable multisampling, or try Stalker - Call of Pripyat on med to high settings, for instance.



Storage: In my experience: SSD boot drivers are here and they are the future.

My experience says otherwise. I'd suggest sticking away from SSDs for now, unless you enjoy doing repair and reinstall every couple of months while losing all your data in the process. Unless, of course, you barely use your machine, in which case SSD will not make much difference anyway. Both Sandforce and non-sandforce SSDs have issues at one point or another; sure, not all of the fail within certain time, but it's like playing roulette. In our office, a sandforce-based SSDs have been replaced twice now (and they had latest firmware) and Crucial SSD has recently locked up and no way to extract the data from it. Sure, all of them received 7.9 score in Windows, but fewer seconds faster boot time was quickly overwhelmed by 2-3 days of repairs, headaches, calls to support center and backup recovery each time SSD dies. You can google for: "Intel SSD lockup", "Crucial SSD lockup", "Sandforce problem", "Samsung SSD lockup" and so on.



1.) SSD: do you mind loading/boot times. An SSD boot drive makes things FEEL a LOT - and I mean a geological AGE FASTER - but is costly...
2.) HDD: I know this is an odd one HOWEVER if on windows, by the time you fill 1TB of space your OS is going to slow down. Quite a lot. If you dual boot or are a linux user you can pretty safely ignore this point (unless you apt-get everything on your HDD in which case... nuff said :D)

Avoid large HDDs, they are usually slower or faster to age. Stick with 500 Gb, if possible. If you properly defragment your hard-drive, at least on Windows, the boot time difference between SSD and HDD is minimal. For instance, on my rig, Core i7 2600K with 2133 Ghz Patriot RAM 16 Gb, the majority of boot time is eaten by BIOS POST, not the actual OS startup (and no, I no longer use SSD).

Also, I remember reading an article somewhere that stated that hard drives available in stores are typically those that failed quality checks (the ones that passed QC are sold to companies at higher prices). In my own case, I've never seen any of my Fujitsu HDDs fail, neither WD HDDs, but I have experienced physical wear on Seagate HDDs (manifests itself as higher noise and lower performance).

P.S. I would not recommend overclocking, unless you want to kill your hardware earlier; overclocking is only possible if you have highest-end CPU and motherboard (OEM tested and certified to survive extreme usage conditions) along with very efficient cooling solution and years of experience doing it. Sure, it is a fun thing to do, but you get only a marginal performance boost since there are many bottlenecks in the system that are not affected by raw CPU speed.

P.S.2. As an example to above, AMD FX-8150 watercooled and not overclocked runs at 50C at 4.2 Ghz (Turbo boost) on full load, while on stock cooler it runs at over 70C, which is higher than 62C maximum OEM suggested temperature. No matter how hard I tried, my both Core i7 rigs running at full load and 3.8 Ghz (Turbo boost) slowly heat up to 70C while on expensive pure-copper air solutions and thermal paste. I can't imagine how can you cool this thing when overclocked without using anything but liquid nitrogen.

[WILL]

Before I can throw in my 2 cents, what kind of development do you want to do?

Cross-platform? Commercial? Stick to a single platform? library development? just hobby/freeware/community stuff? High end graphics and 3D with physics?

[Cybermonkey]

Before I can throw in my 2 cents, what kind of development do you want to do?

Cross-platform? Commercial? Stick to a single platform? library development? just hobby/freeware/community stuff? High end graphics and 3D with physics?

Development should be cross-platform, Windows and Linux. At the moment just hobby/freeware stuff, usually 2D (with physics ;)).

[SilverWarior]

Drivers for AMD GPUs have issues almost on all platforms, so for stability I'd suggest Nvidia.

What isues? I'm hardcore AND/ATI supporter and in all theese yers I recall to have problems ony 3 times:
1. Back on my ATI Radeon 9200 I downloaded once corupt driver package (old driver and new Catalyst Control Center). ATI has fixed the problem in one day.
2. On my old laptom I once had some problems becouse I actually instaled wrong graphics drivers (mobile drivers also contain information about Flat Panel Screen). So my picture looked a bit garbled (Flat panel was still conected with graphics card throug VGA conection). In todays laptops Flat Screens are conected to graphics card through Display port which alows drivers to get the necessary information from the panel itself.
3. Last problem I had aprox. a mont ago when I intentionally downloaded beta drivers and they contained a bug which prevented OpengGL to work properly (some artifacts in 3D games), DirectX renderning worked OK.

[Cybermonkey]

What isues? I'm hardcore AND/ATI supporter and in all theese yers I recall to have problems ony 3 times:
1. Back on my ATI Radeon 9200 I downloaded once corupt driver package (old driver and new Catalyst Control Center). ATI has fixed the problem in one day.
2. On my old laptom I once had some problems becouse I actually instaled wrong graphics drivers (mobile drivers also contain information about Flat Panel Screen). So my picture looked a bit garbled (Flat panel was still conected with graphics card throug VGA conection). In todays laptops Flat Screens are conected to graphics card through Display port which alows drivers to get the necessary information from the panel itself.
3. Last problem I had aprox. a mont ago when I intentionally downloaded beta drivers and they contained a bug which prevented OpengGL to work properly (some artifacts in 3D games), DirectX renderning worked OK.
What about 64bit Linux and AMD drivers? Any experience with that?

[code_glitch]

Okay, Im seeing some ATI/AMD slamming going on here... Lets clarify:
ATI driver 'issues' usually revolve around a few things:
On windows, if you upgrade to the latest catalyst and do a full uninstall/reboot/reinstall windows driver in device manager - you might get slapped a little. Eg: a game may crash when some look nice feature is enabled. Have I experienced this? No. Why? When ATI said, ooh look we just made CCC 12.8 and released it 6 hours ago I waited a day, typed 'catalyst 12.8 issue' into google and found that it was quite stable, so I upgraded. This will avoid you 99% of problems. Also, if your setup of catalyst is fine - in other words nothing wrong with it: don't touch it for funzies and go to the absolute bleeding edge. Just like with open source. If you do - you sort of deserve a bit of pain in exchange for being on the bleeding edge.

On linux things are not as clear cut: you can opt for open/closed source drivers.
open source radeon drivers: IMHO is nicer - it has almost all the chinks ironed out now, runs great for your desktop, is native as they come and is built right in. The down sides are that it can hurt DirectX performance under wine by some 10-40%+ depending on the game. Although this is to be expected somewhat - does linux used DirectX? Not really. So why include it? There you go.
Closed source fglrx: if you go this route you get the ATI speeds on everything albeit ATIs driver team has its reputation. In 3 years of having these installed I cam accross 1 issue which is shared with nvidia cards: docky has a random bug in it and one from my ignorance as a result of a badly botched Xorg.conf for multi-monitor support which had some 'garbling' in some 3d opengl textures.. wiping Xorg.conf and getting an updated deb for the game fixed it so I can't complain.

So what it comes down to is whether you NEED the very best, macish driver support, albeit usually at an extra cost. Since this is not a 600 euro build, AMDs offerings tend to have the market well in hand.

SSDs: I've had my SSDs 2 years, its my primary and only disk - it has 158.2 days of power on time in 340 power cycles. SMART data says not a single sector is bad, and thats the same experience for anyone in my family who has one for work as well as family friends (although one of my friends' intel drive failed after 18 months...) I would conclude that if your drives die after 2 years you're dong something wrong in some way. For example: SWAP file/partition. Bad BIOS/driver/firmware/application setup... Or any number of factors. In short its inconcievable for an SSD to have largely inferior life to an HDD - it has no moving parts, it has management to keep sectors equally used and it does things in a timely manner which avoids users getting annoyed and going into buzzkill mode on the mouse and thrashing the disk.

As much as I like intel - they sit in all my laptops at the moment and an old desktop from the sandy bridge announced and about to ship hype era... Well, old.... Its a dual core deal at some crazy GhZ.... Intel run hot. Very hot. This was blamed on north/south,xyz bridges and chipsets and then intel put them on die and it was the magic pixies' fault as to why a die shrunk, locked down Xeon runs hotter than anything seen before on a custom cooler is beyond me. My X3 is oced on its stock cooler by a fair margin - and its rarely hits 50C. GPU wise my 5750 hits 85 at peak times. Thats not a big deal - 100-105C is usually the overclockers start being careful, 110C is the problem zone and 115C is the emergency shutoff and 120-125C is the damage zone.

Thats my opinion - and although it sounds like AMD fanboyism I have 1 AMD machine and my sister has one. The other 5 are intel machines and I'll leave it at that. True AMD doesn't do the highest end stuff, and if I were serving up databases for datacentres a dual Xeon/i7 it would be...

[LP]

Okay, Im seeing some ATI/AMD slamming going on here...
Not at all, I've stated that although it's raw power is excellent, the drivers are might be less polished than those in Nvidia, which can also be troublesome, especially if Optimus is used. I've actually suggested all three brands - Intel (for HD 3000), Nvidia (more polished, less power) and ATI (more power, less polished), while you seem to have special bias towards AMD.


On windows...
With my Asus HD 6780 and XFX HD 6770 in the office, I've been using most driver versions from 12.x series, including 12.8 on all fresh installs. Neither allowed to turn on/off VSync and multisampling in Direct3D 9. If you enable VSync in Catalyst, it doesn't work - you have to use D3DOverrider. Enabling multisampling in Catalyst for random app will force it on any other application. If you don't use any of these features, or somewhat complex GLSL shaders in OpenGL in Linux/Mac OS X, then there's nothing to worry about.


I would conclude that if your drives die after 2 years you're dong something wrong in some way.
Please don't be upset for contradicting your recommendations. There is no need to start another [Overclock, AMD GPUs, SSDs] vs [Not-overlock, other GPUs, HDDs] religious war. As for the reasoning I've quoted, I'm sure you understand why it is a logical fallacy.

P.S. Our drives failed after 2-3 months of use, not 2 years.


For example: SWAP file/partition. Bad BIOS/driver/firmware/application setup...
For the record, we've disabled SWAP file on SSD and used certified Asus motherboards with latest BIOS updates. Why our SSDs died out quicker? Probably because of usage patterns as we've been recompiling and linking projects many times daily, not to mention full 20-30 Gb project rebuilds.

You also didn't mention that lifespan of SSD might be considerably lower than of HDD under certain usage patterns due to limited write cycles. However, if we don't mention write cycles, many problems in SSD are due to bugs in firmware logic. For practical applications, SSDs should not fail under any of usage scenarios unless write cycles become a problem (and even those are mediated by using some random relocation). That's why I suggested using SSDs being as playing a roulette - in your case they did not fail (yet), but in many others they do, so the question remains: do the benefit of improved hard disk seek time outweigh the additional purchase cost and the risks of sudden SDD failure along with full data loss? This is something OP needs to take into account for purchase. You've put SSDs as perfect choice, albeit expensive. I've added increased risks to the equation.

Yes, calculating such risks is not easy, but with HDD you have warning signs (e.g. mechanical wear) and as long as plates are undamaged you can still recover your data, while in SSDs with fauly logic chip you may get data corruption even before you experience complete failure.

[Cybermonkey]

Hey guys, I don't wanted to start a flame war here. As for SSD: they are no option for me now. I am using HDDs since more than 15 years and never had any issues, so why change?

[LP]

Intel run hot. Very hot. This was blamed on north/south,xyz bridges and chipsets and then intel put them on die and it was the magic pixies' fault as to why a die shrunk, locked down Xeon runs hotter than anything seen before on a custom cooler is beyond me.
Well, at least in AMD FX 8150 that I've mentioned, the temperature increase is slow as you would expect, where the CPU case is heated first, then the room and so on. However, our Core i7 rigs have temperature spikes under load from 30-35C to 60C and then slowly increasing to 70C. I thought temperature transfer was a problem, but after touching headsink tubes - they are burning hot and can actually melt your fingers! The only OC I have is for RAM speed, but the difference between my rig and my partner's is only a couple of degrees. There is a funny thing out of this: when it's cold, I'm using CPU stress test to turn workstation into room heater. :)

[code_glitch]

2-3month failures? wha? I mean. Thats impressive, you guys should stress test for manufacturers :D SSD wise my recommendation is based on the end users experience of it feeling fast. We can go theoretical all day long. Eg: what in gods name was AMD doing when they came up with bulldozer and why intel does what it does... (this links with the final point...)

I can definitely agree ATI drivers aren't the best in that going in with a wrecking ball and leaving that as is might be an improvment in some cases... But credit where its due - ATI drivers are very compatible... I recall using some nvidia code for a GTX card on my 5750 to get some experimental stuff working with OpenCL. I mean seriously - nvidia GTX drivers for an ATI card. Well played :D Though I'm impressed that it doesn't affect ATI users more than just knowing what each checkbox does and whatnot.

Didn't mean to be agressive, sort of skim read your reply as I'd just got home and caught onto ATI, Driver, glitches, intel, intel, i7 and... Yeah. Rule of thumb - FX series tend to be innovative and new. With that comes rather a lot of 'stuff' that we simply can't quite get our heads around. Eg. why they use less power run a little hotter and deliver less power in some scenarios and much more in others with no relation. Personally I'm avoiding intel anything - since the AMD switch was my revelation that 60C stock is NOT acceptable compared to 40C on an unlocked and OCed chip with stock coolers. As for graphics, I like ATIs value though I'm a harsh customer when it comes to drivers...

My bias towards AMD is more of a 'okay intel does everything you will ever do for 20 years at 500 frames/sec at double the cost'. Okay. But why? You really wont notice the 440frames that dont get displayed on your monitor. But I'll notice the $200 alright XD And to top it off, intel have had VERY aggressive marketing in the UK and people buy intel because its 'cool' and has 'HD graphics' with 'enhanced yadida' and so on. Then theres the ultrabook bribery and whatnot which tends to use the market to attain a monopoly. I have a similar attitude on the sainsburys vs tesco wars. Of course I wont sustain that a Phenom ii x6 or top of the line AMD is the best for everybody - I recognise intels' xeons trump opteron, i7 trump phenoms and etcetera. I however dont agree with intel promoting cpu power alone and using marketing to convince everybody it is fact. If intel have their way - developers can take the cyanide pill: they only just got OpenGL 3.1 more or less right and their latest support for anything is not quite up to what I call an ATI driver kludge.

Though on the heat issue, its worth noting: ATI heatsinks while gaming. No touching. Ever ;)

[SilverWarior]

What about 64bit Linux and AMD drivers? Any experience with that?

No! I must admit that I have almost no expirience with Linux. So pardon me on this.

[SilverWarior]

2-3month failures? wha? I mean. Thats impressive, you guys should stress test for manufacturers :D SSD wise my recommendation is based on the end users experience of it feeling fast.

From what I read around the web the biggest killers for SSD-s are:
1. Windows Defrag which does a lot of data moving back and forth. Fragmentation barely slows down SSD drives especialy those with TRIM support so defragmenting files on them is almost pointles. And Windows XP has disk defragmentation enabled on all drives by default. Windows Vista does have defragmentation enabled on all drives by default if the computer has atleast one standard HDD (might have been fixed with SP1). Windows 7 is suposingly smart enough to keep defragmentation active only for normal HDD-s.
2. Windows Indexing service which is part of Windows Serch 4 can also cause quite some stress on SSD-s due to frequent reading of varios files which are being indexed especially when there is indepth indexing enabled (indexing contents of supported files).
3. Windows tends to constantly acces lots of log files, writing whole bunch of data in them. Not to mention how often it does reads from varios system files. Download process monitor to see how much disk activity there is even when Windows is idle. You will be surpized.
You can get Proces Monitor from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
4. Using uTorrent with SSD can also be a real killer. The reason for this is the fact that uTorrent always operates with small chunks of files. Not to mention the fact that it rapidly reads and writes data from his Chache folder. And if this folder is on SSD it will cause quite a lot of stress on it.


I can definitely agree ATI drivers aren't the best in that going in with a wrecking ball and leaving that as is might be an improvment in some cases... But credit where its due - ATI drivers are very compatible... I recall using some nvidia code for a GTX card on my 5750 to get some experimental stuff working with OpenCL. I mean seriously - nvidia GTX drivers for an ATI card.

Probably it all worked becouse ATI graphics cards have very good support for OpenCL while there are still some newer nVidia graphics cad which don't support OpenCL.
And NO nVidia Cuda is not the same as OpenCL. OpenCL is the emerging standard which tries to unify approach for using varios technologies like nVidia Cuda, AMD Stream or now caled APP, etc.

[LP]

2-3month failures? wha? I mean. Thats impressive, you guys should stress test for manufacturers :D SSD wise my recommendation is based on the end users experience of it feeling fast.
We purchased SSDs exactly to speed up compilation process, which improved 30 minute compilation time to 20 minutes when doing full rebuild of 20 Gb project. This would typically involve processing (reads, some writes) of more than 100,000 files. If there is a bug in SSD logic chip, this will make it fail rather quickly. I agree that it's not a typical end-user usage scenario, but honestly for me it doesn't matter if it will fail now or at some random point later - I would rather use hardware that I know is quite reliable, in which case it is HDD (I just stay away from Hitachi and Samsung/Seagate brands).


Didn't mean to be agressive, sort of skim read your reply as I'd just got home and caught onto ATI, Driver, glitches, intel, intel, i7 and... Yeah. Rule of thumb - FX series tend to be innovative and new. With that comes rather a lot of 'stuff' that we simply can't quite get our heads around. Eg. why they use less power run a little hotter and deliver less power in some scenarios and much more in others with no relation.
Well, despite online reviews, AMD FX 8-core series are pretty powerful, at least for us where we use them for work and not necessarily multi-threaded. Yes, in our rigs Core i7 2600K beats AMD FX 8150 in single-threaded applications, but when things become multithreaded, they both work very well.


Personally I'm avoiding intel anything - since the AMD switch was my revelation that 60C stock is NOT acceptable compared to 40C on an unlocked and OCed chip with stock coolers.
That is because AMD's stock coolers at least have some cooper in them, while Intel's coolers are made of some poor quality aluminum mixed with sawdust. I once tried to cut off piece of aluminum from Intel's cooler (to make a gasket as a replacement for laptop's deep thermal pillow) only to see it crumble into pieces under pressure.



they only just got OpenGL 3.1 more or less right and their latest support for anything is not quite up to what I call an ATI driver kludge.
On that note, I was wondering. Does Apple ever update their graphics drivers on OS X? Because Intel HD 3000/4000 with latest Windows drivers handles OpenGL 3 on Windows very well, while on Mac OS its OpenGL 3 support is buggy and detrimal.

[code_glitch]

Hmm... Thats true about the windows part now I think about it: I have a few GiB of ram and never use more than 25% of it and linux uses that as cache for files. I haven't truly used windows as a primary os in a while though I always get roped into helping people out with it. Though I'm surpised to hear you say that there is no gaping difference between the 2600k against the fx8150 - I'll have to take that onboard since I've only heard negatives and my only experience was a bit of demo testing on a shop PC (an FX-6 something if I recall) and found that it coped like my OC'ed athlon. Guess its not a true comparison as I hear the FX chips can OC something impressive...



That is because AMD's stock coolers at least have some cooper in them

I'm so checking this out when I next do an upgrade... Mine is an old grey deal that feels sort of flimsy and I thought it was rather awful (though I suppose I was OCing...). For instance, when I first got my machine and wanted to see how far I could push it before things got unstable I had my hand on the cooler and it was still cool but while running prime95 the actual temperature was around 60C+ so I came to the 'crummy aluminium' conclusion about mine too :D

As for drivers I have no clue as to OS X's drivers - though I gather driver updates are primarily released with new versions of OS X. However I dont think that issue lies only with OS X... I've read some horror stories and been asked to get some games running on them... Its a miracle I haven't jumped off something tall in desperation yet ::). Though to be fair - the llano and APU drivers, although coming a long way in a short time, don't leave much to be desired either. On any platform. I guess the one nice thing about intel graphics is that out of the box experience.

At any rate Cybermonkey - if its 64 bit linux you need and don't mind not having all that good directx speed the open source Radeon drivers are excellent for all the 'pure' linux needs. If you need directx for wine gaming and whatnot then just grab a copy of fglrx from AMD, as much as people moan theres very few issues as of right now and although its not a laptop, the fglrx drivers are (in my experience) quite a bit more power efficient. Though given the radeon drivers' development pace I wont be reading these words and nodding in the near future :) And as for CPU I guess that if a PGD i7 user can say they can stack up then thats good enough for me though you'd have to assess your usage pattern as to whether its worth it. Great thing about AMD: Its all AM3+ (bar the APUs but hey, thats not what we're here for) so you can have any CPU you fancy ;) So long you dont need the most cutting edge stuff. Performance wise. Theres some trippy stuff in Piledriver :D

[WILL]

Sorry for taking so long to reply.


Development should be cross-platform, Windows and Linux. At the moment just hobby/freeware stuff, usually 2D (with physics ;)).

Ok well if you only want to support Windows and Linux then you might be safe sticking with a Windows machine for your development platform. However should you ever want to support Mac OS X, then I would suggest making the Mac your main development platform. Simply put it's 1000 times easier to go from a Mac-based Lazarus project that accounts for Windows than it is to go from a Windows-based Lazarus project and then account for Mac. Bundling, resource paths, etc. I can't emphasize that enough.

Windows development is a heck of a lot easier than Mac, I can't speak towards Linux as I've only tinkered and played with it on the odd occation and out of the box Lazarus seems to play nicer on both of those OSes than Mac. That said, Lazarus 1.0 has just come out and it could be a whole different story.

How this relates to hardware... it doesn't. Other than the Mac factor of course. ;)

To be honest, what hardware you get shouldn't matter too much for 2D other than getting a good decent graphics card that can do the level of shading you want to pursue should you get into 3D. If you ever want to go commercial, I'd consider a Mac simply to develop on to cover the booming Mac/iOS markets. (a Mac Mini if you don't want a heavy investment) You won't make any money (or enough to matter) from Linux.

Sorry I couldn't tell you buy X, Y or Z piece of hardware. I don't think you need that advice from me anyhow. :P Just balance out what is in your budget with how cutting edge it is and you'll have something that should last you long enough until you have to replace it down the road.

[Super Vegeta]

As for Windows vs. Linux as dev platform, cross-compiling from Windows is a pain in the ass. Under Linux, I had no problems whatsoever. Speaking of Lazarus, I guess it depends on what components do you use, but I personally found some features lacking under Windows. Configuring Linux can be tiresome at the beginning, mostly because you're already used to the Windows interface and because, oh well, You have to learn something about the system. But if you give it some time, you can really bend the OS to your wish.

It's a matter of personal choice, but frankly, after I finally found a distro I liked (Fedora) and configured it to be comfortable for me, WinXP on my laptop is mostly laying dormant, sometimes turned on for gaming.

Or, if you like challenges and don't mind spending some time banging your head against the wall, maybe try coLinux (http://www.colinux.org/)? It is an interesting project that allows you to, basically, run Linux alongside Windoze. (Yep, you have two kernels running alongside eachother at the same time). Configuration can be tough, but then, you won't have to dual boot and switch OS.. :)

[Cybermonkey]

Sorry, guys, I already know Linux. I use Linux since the beginning of this millenium. I know how to configure Lazarus and Freepascal under Linux and Window. Thanks for that but it was more the hardware question because it was clear that this will become a dual-boot machine. Linux will be some Ubuntu flavour either Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE. I think I will go with that Athlon X4, I think that's almost 3-4 times faster than my actual PC according to the benchmarks. As for the Mac: it's too expensive (even a Mac Mini) currently. Btw, for development, I will have a closer look at Asphyre Sphinx 3. Seems what I need although I'm missing some beginner's tutorial.

[Super Vegeta]

Seems what I need although I'm missing some beginner's tutorial.
I daresay that's the pain of many many libraries. :(

[code_glitch]

@Will: Its always possible to make a hakintosh... Not saying anyone here would know anything about that ;) Although its usually considered harder on AMD hardware I believe that gap has now closed quite a fair bit in recent years and now its roughly equal. Though some driver issue still exist.

Or you could vmware/virtualbox a copy of OS X since AMD seems to include all the VM instructions sets on virtually anything and everything. Not saying anyone would know anything about that either though :D

[WILL]

@Will: Its always possible to make a hakintosh...

Actually the Hackintosh and virtual machine concept is completely legit these days. In fact when Steve Jobs first presented Mac OS X, he was running it on PC hardware. If that's not endorsement, then I don't know what is. ;)

Do note that I said at least get Mac OS X running to do development from Mac to Windows if you were going that route. And for all commercial games I'd recommend making a Mac version of your games. You'll double your sales if not more since the Mac gaming market isn't quite as saturated as the Windows gaming. If the quality of your game is high and is quite marketable you can do well on the Mac today.

I don't mean to step over Cybermonkey's main topic here, but for commercial games, I would never do Linux as a priority unless it was a mere couple hours of work to include them. Adding Linux to your supported list of platforms is simply PR for your game as most Linux users don't want to buy anything that they use. It's like selling neck ties to pot smoking hippies. :P

As for the hardware, I only suggest getting something that is current and will have a little bit of power for now. (sorry I just can't say what that is as I don't by clone PC parts anymore) Should you want to go commercial(selling your games) in the next couple of years get a Mac or hardware that will run and be fully supported by Mac OS X. You'll still be able to develop for Android allowing you to hit the top 4 selling platforms for gaming.

[code_glitch]

And from what I hear, people are now making money making linux games and selling on things like the ubuntu software centre... (eg. Lunduke) And for smaller games platforms of choice now include Linux, Android (linux), Mac (BSD, linux's "cousin"), iOS (god knows... probably something a little like BSD in some way) XD What weird times we live in. I remember the days when the list was more like: Windows 2000. Windows XP. Windows XP. Windows XYZ. Symbian.... Not. :D

[Cybermonkey]

I daresay that's the pain of many many libraries. :(
I must admit it's the problem with EGSL, too ... ::)

Yeah, even Steam is being ported to Linux now ...

[LP]

Well, Windows is still the most popular operating system, which is over ten times more popular than Mac OS [1] (http://www.netmarketshare.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9), [2] (http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201208-201208-bar), so if you want to have wider audience both for commercial and non-commercial targets, Windows is still your best friend. ;)

However, I think there is an indirect factor, where I agree with Jason. Just think about it, who is most likely buy your commercial software, a guy that spent $500 on his Windows PC or a Mac "freak" who spent over $2000 on his Macbook Pro? Now, if you also consider people who replaced commercial Windows OS with free Linux distro, how likely are they going to buy it? This is an exaggerated speculation of course, but it's definitely an aspect that you need to analyze before releasing your software.

Also, there is another issue in mind - piracy. On Windows, it is incredibly easy to pirate, while, for instance, on an iOS powered device it may even result in warranty breach due to jailbreak.

Therefore, in my opinion, the "safest" commercial route for now is Mac OS and iOS, although for larger audiences, there is no beating Windows. Taking that in mind and back on topic, spending $500 on Windows-based PC, which can also sport Linux, can be considered money well-spent. :) Although, there are some Mac Mini's and MacBook Airs in $500 budget limit that have interesting hardware and should not be ignored!

[SilverWarior]

Just think about it, who is most likely buy your commercial software, a guy that spent $500 on his Windows PC or a Mac "freak" who spent over $2000 on his Macbook Pro?

If you are thinking that those who spend more money on computer will also be more prepared to pay for a game I must dissapoint you but you are wrong. There are many pepole who spend even more than $3000 and still don't buy any game.

I think that most important thing is the price for each game. Nowadays many games are way overpriced. So chosing right price for your game will aslo lower the chances for it go get pirated.

[Super Vegeta]

Adding Linux to your supported list of platforms is simply PR for your game as most Linux users don't want to buy anything that they use.
Not true, and the Humble Indie Bundle is a good example of this. Linux users provide about 12% of the incomes and the average payment of a Linux user is almost 2x higher than that of a Windows guy.

[LP]

If you are thinking that those who spend more money on computer will also be more prepared to pay for a game I must dissapoint you but you are wrong. There are many pepole who spend even more than $3000 and still don't buy any game.

I think that most important thing is the price for each game. Nowadays many games are way overpriced. So chosing right price for your game will aslo lower the chances for it go get pirated.

The next sentence in my post says that it was an exaggerated speculation. You have to be picky, don't you? :)

According to this reference (http://www.inc.com/guides/price-your-products.html):

Under pricing. Pricing your products for too low a cost can have a disastrous impact on your bottom line...

Over pricing. On the flip side, overpricing a product can be just as detrimental since the buyer is always going to be looking at your competitors pricing...

Unfortunately, it's not the reference I was looking for. There was an article that described the cost of the game in terms of prestige or quality. So a more expensive game might be perceived as better (or having more content) than a less priced game. However, as you've said, it is important to choose the right and fair price.

[LP]

Linux users provide about 12% of the incomes and the average payment of a Linux user is almost 2x higher than that of a Windows guy.
Do you mind explaining this one with more details? Why do you think so?

[Super Vegeta]

http://svgames.pl/trash/humblebundle.png
I wrote those words citing the example of the Humble Indie Bundle; the above is a screenshot from their site.

[code_glitch]

Hmm.... Thats says a lot more than it lets on at first Super Vegeta. Given that theres around 9 PCs for every Mac and a few Macs for every linux box... Somthing Like a 12:3:1 ish ratio (yes, thats off the top of my head :)) then wouldnt it be safeish to assume linux people are the most generous? I mean, thats quite the turnabout given that 99.9999999% of the linux experience is free...

Edit: oh, wait. It states the values down the left... -_-...

[LP]

{image}
I wrote those words citing the example of the Humble Indie Bundle; the above is a screenshot from their site.

That graphics can be interpreted as Windows buyers are some cheap bastards. :)

Edit.... or that Linux stuff is too expensive. :)

[WILL]

Not true, and the Humble Indie Bundle is a good example of this. Linux users provide about 12% of the incomes and the average payment of a Linux user is almost 2x higher than that of a Windows guy.

These people aren't buying the games as much as they are contributing or donating to a cause. A very different model and considering that these are only some of the very popular games from indie developers, I don't see this as viable market data.

Further to that I don't consider the pie chart reflective of amount of buyers as it is the actual dollars donated to a "cause." That is still very few Linux users however.

I get that you can buy games for Linux and there is even an Ubuntu Store, but it's such a small teeny tiny drop in the water that even if you wee successful on Linux, you'd still be way better off with Windows and Mac ports a thousand fold.

Linux is great for network gurus, uber geeks and your "free" thinkers, but it's useless for commercial gain. Unless you are are using it for IT purposes. ;)

[Super Vegeta]

Both yes and no. Yes, people are donating more than buying and it's a bit different. No - I think that most people, no matter the OS, will go with free software as long as it fulfils their needs. After all, if you can have something for free, why pay for it? The answer: when the free stuff isn't good enough. Or the commercial stuff is somewhat unique. Or there is no free stuff to do something.

Whereas I agree that developing a commercial app with solely Linux in mind is shooting yourself in the foot, I wouldn't consider Linux a dead market. Linux ports of some good games or specialistic soft (CAD?) would definitely get some buyers - the question is dev cost vs. income.

Last, consider how many pirated Winderps are installed on computers. Some people won't pay for software no matter what. :)

[code_glitch]

Ah, but WILL... WINE. For isntance, I buy AAA titles, but I dont have a copy of windows to my name anymore - I'm a linux user buying retail games (okay, from the local trade in store :D). Though this is also true for Mac I believe that WINE is currently more popular on Linux than Mac. And heres the interesting thing: after a little WINE tweaking I get higher frame rates on Linux with WINE in most of my games than I do on windows... Interesting :)



Linux is great for network gurus, uber geeks and your "free" thinkers, but it's useless for commercial gain. Unless you are are using it for IT purposes. ;)

This I believe to be debatable though. Yes, the market share of AAA titles sold to linux users and other mianstream software is teeny tiny. In that sense of commercial gain Linux has lost and as much as I hate to admit it, I dont see it catching up with Windows. However look at the kernel - theres IBM, Intel, Sun and every other big comapnys' code in there. Simply because its a more flexible platform - thus it was easier to pay people to contribute to the linux kernel than go out and make an in house product or modify existing alternatives. In this sense, Linux was of massive commercial gain to the R&D teams working all the 'new stuff' coming out today.

Then theres the fact that distros now seem to get sponsorhip from search engines based on how much search traffic they get from that OS. eg. Mint & duckduck go. Same story here as what is happening with firefox versus chrome: it is, at the moment, in googles' interest to not mess up relations with mozilla - since if mozilla sets their default search engine they get more queries on which they can display ads. (this one isn't my point, I read it in a ff vs chrome debate type article :D). Or you could look at the VPS route everyone on the internet is now rolling out - especcially those on large infrastuctures (eg Amazon eucalyptus bucket E2/3 thing) and those on very limited plans (linode type services for hackers, small companies and so on). These people rely on the fact linux is as versatile as it is to make their products viable and sell in those rather niche/extreme markets.

So when it comes down to it - yes, Linux people dont directly buy products from companies and thus its not of massive commercial gain to the sales people. But when you look at the fact that Linux is responsible for entire markets on which a large portion of the world wide webs and infrastructure we now take for granted - as well as all the trade that generates - supporting the Linux folk becomes far more attractive.

[LP]

However look at the kernel - theres IBM, Intel, Sun and every other big comapnys' code in there. Simply because its a more flexible platform - thus it was easier to pay people to contribute to the linux kernel than go out and make an in house product or modify existing alternatives. In this sense, Linux was of massive commercial gain to the R&D teams working all the 'new stuff' coming out today.
This is a speculation. The reason why companies modified Linux kernel was simply because some of its versions are open-sourced, while Windows is closed source and proprietary. I would speculate even further saying that being open source is what made Linux survive against insanely huge market share conquered by Windows.

Although I keep Jason's point of view that Linux is not a commercially viable platform per se, I think being a niche market it does have a sort of market opportunity exactly as shown in the graphs above, by getting support from people be it in terms of donations or contributions.

A little back on topic though, I do consider that Apple makes some rather good hardware; for instance, even though I had doubts before purchase, I find my Mac Mini 11'' particularly comfy and that tiny little thing powered by Core i5 is quite powerful! It is also *very* thin, while still being quite solid. Mind you, retaking our previous SSD vs non-SSD discussion, that Mac Mini has SSD, which hasn't failed yet. :) The only thing I hate in this thing is Spanish keyboard, which introduced new buttons and triple combinations, and after few months I'm still not used to it. (I'm used to US-based keyboards and many years ago there was no such thing as international keyboard).

[Cybermonkey]

The kernel of MacOS on the other hand is based on (Free)BSD, another open source operating system ...
But why has Windows this huge market share? Because if one buys a computer Windows is pre-installed. So if Dell, HP and all others would install Linux, I think the market share of Windows would decrease rapidly.
Now, back to my first sentence. ;) If Linux would ever gain a market share above 50%, I'll use FreeBSD. ::)

[LP]

The kernel of MacOS on the other hand is based on (Free)BSD, another open source operating system ...
As far as I recall, Mac OS was initially proprietary project where Steve Jobs along with some other guys participated. Later, they've based Mac OS X on some portions of BSD in their NeXTSTEP, but correct me if I'm wrong, it still remains proprietary, isn't it?


But why has Windows this huge market share? Because if one buys a computer Windows is pre-installed. So if Dell, HP and all others would install Linux, I think the market share of Windows would decrease rapidly.
"Why" is a much more complex issue. OEM distribution sure helps, but I bet there are historical reasons also. As a counter example, Asus tried to push Linux-based OS on their budget Eee PC line of netbooks, but many people formatted and reinstalled Windows there; now the entire Eee PC line uses mostly either Windows on Intel's platform and Android on ultra-portable line.

[pitfiend]

As far as I recall, Mac OS was initially proprietary project where Steve Jobs along with some other guys participated. Later, they've based Mac OS X on some portions of BSD in their NeXTSTEP, but correct me if I'm wrong, it still remains proprietary, isn't it?
you are right, mac os x is a closed system. but many hackers use freebsd/linux drivers to allow hackintosh to run on any non-apple computer, mainly if one has amd processors.


"Why" is a much more complex issue. OEM distribution sure helps, but I bet there are historical reasons also. As a counter example, Asus tried to push Linux-based OS on their budget Eee PC line of netbooks, but many people formatted and reinstalled Windows there; now the entire Eee PC line uses mostly either Windows on Intel's platform and Android on ultra-portable line.
"why" windows still is the king of the hill? 'cause the inmense software base, think about, if a designer can run photoshop on linux natively, he will switch out of doubts, same happens for any other kind of software, another reason many people didn't switch is because nothing can compete with microsoft office, even if you can use wine. linux, unfortunately has been related to geeks or rocket scientists and it is not windows. the ubuntu distro has made a good job on making linux easier for humans, but still not enough.

[Cybermonkey]

From Wikipedia:

Thanks to its permissive licensing terms, much of FreeBSD’s code base has become an integral part of other operating systems such as Apple's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.) OS X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X) that have subsequently been certified as UNIX-compliant and have formally received UNIX branding.
and

Other operating systems such as Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux) and the RTOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing) VxWorks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks) contain code that originated in FreeBSD. Debian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian), known primarily for using the Linux kernel, also maintains GNU/kFreeBSD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/kFreeBSD), combining the GNU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU) userspace and C library (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_C_Library) with the FreeBSD kernel.[37] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD#cite_note-36) Darwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)), the core of Apple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.) OS X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X), borrows FreeBSD’s virtual file system, network stack, and components of its userspace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userspace). The OpenDarwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDarwin) project (now defunct), a spin-off of Apple’s Darwin operating system, also included substantial FreeBSD code. Thanks to the permissive FreeBSD License (http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html), much of FreeBSD now also forms the basis of Apple OS X and OS X Server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Server).
It's not the GUI part that's from BSD of course ...

[LP]

"why" windows still is the king of the hill? 'cause the inmense software base, think about, if a designer can run photoshop on linux natively, he will switch out of doubts, same happens for any other kind of software, another reason many people didn't switch is because nothing can compete with microsoft office, even if you can use wine. linux, unfortunately has been related to geeks or rocket scientists and it is not windows. the ubuntu distro has made a good job on making linux easier for humans, but still not enough.
Exactly, I wanted to mention this in the end that the software base creates a vicious circle. Granted, there is Microsoft Office for Mac among other alternatives that work on Linux too (e.g. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, GIMP, Autodesk Maya). I myself have spent some time working in LibreOffice on Mac, but unfortunately, it doesn't handle well Word 2007/2010 documents that have shapes, equations, custom formatting and other visual customizations.

This is unfortunate, as I personally think that Windows 8 Metro style similarly to its mobile variant are regressions in terms of visual interfaces, yet Windows users including partly myself will have to cope with this silliness. :(

[Cybermonkey]

Just to keep you updated, my new hardware works, Windows 7 is up and running, too. The specs changed a bit, it's now an AMD FX-6100 (6x3.3 GHz) and a Radeon HD 7770. Man it's fast! And silent. But no more time now, I've got the Orange Box and have to play Half-Life 2 (waiting for this since years ...) :D
Of course it was a bit more expensive ... but less than 500 €.

[SilverWarior]

I'm glad you got yourself a new PC.
But I seriusly hope that this new machine won't draw you away from programing (by playing all the latest games) to much. :D