Your ideal system would be...

[DukeLeto]

Seems like a simple question, but one that hasn't been asked in a while.  Taking into account what it's going to be used for, what would your ideal system be, money as no object?  An ultra-powerful gaming rig?  A multi-processor productivity powerhouse?  Or a top-of-line notebook?

Mine would be some sort of high-end, AMD-based gaming machine:

-AMD Athlon 64 FX-55

-Dual nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultras (PCI-e SLI)

-Dual 37GB Raptor 10,000 RPM HDs

-4 GB of whatever the best RAM is (not really up to date on that)

-Top SB 24-bit sound card

-21" flat-panel monitor

Mmmm....*salivating*

[Cyborg]

I think I could make do with one of those super computers. There's one in Japan, I think, that is very fast.

However, I wonder if it runs Windows ;D

Probably not, but some kind of operating system must be in it.

[Anathema]

They're installing a super computer in my city (Groningen) to assist the radio telescope LOFAR. It would be the second most powerful computer in the world, the best one would be in Japan I guess.

Maybe not the best machine for gaming, but useful if you're going to err, you know, study star systems and stuff.

[veK]

I'm just building 2 new systems:

system1 will be my gaming machine

system2 is my multimedia pc for the living room

system3 is my notebook for the office to work with

then I'll have a different pc for each category. a small but powerful notebook which I can use at the office as well as at home or  on business trips. the gaming pc will also be very small but a powerful system with high end gpu and cpu, very strong memory (which is even more expensive than the cpu). this pc will be a little bit louder but it's for gaming, overclocking and benchmarks only, so I don't care about the noise.

and the media system will be placed by the tv and hifi stuff... it will be a mini-itx system with passive cooled cpu, onboard gfx. I will put in a big but silent hdd for all my music and gaming videos and so on... I will build in a tv card too and this system is only for tv, music and somehow my fileserver :)

[Cyborg]

A PC in the living room...

I don't know about you, but the computers in my house have their own sanctuary and place of worship.

Kind of like their own living room, just with computers.

[desert_storm]

Actualy the BEST super computer (as far as I can tell) is in the US.  It is the "BlueGene" with 70.72 TFlops.  That is one fast computer. 

[DragonfireMaster]

A wonderful idea this topic! Anyway, here are the stats of my dream computer (That is actually possible at this stage in time):

50 gb ram

500 gb Hard Drive

Pentium 4 Processor

ATI Radeon X300 SE

Double Layer (8.5GB) 8X DVD+RW/+R Drive

Windows XP Pro/Mac OS X

Extras:

9,999,999 GB Portable Hard Drive

Wacom Graphire3 Tablet (Already Have)

WireLess HP Keyboard (Already Have)

HP 17 inch LCD Screen (Already have)

Either this or that supercomputer in Japan.  :D

[d3m0nger]

here's my dream machine,  which im building right now:

SLI Quadro FX 4400

Dual Opteron 252

16GB RAM

Tyan S2895 <- motherboard

1.6 Terabytes of SATA raid

Win 2003 Enterprise 32 and 64 bit

[veK]

@ Avatar: check this out:

http://www.watercool.de/cms/forum/thread.php?threadid=1194&threadview=0&hilight=&hilightuser=0&page=4

scroll down a bit to the 5th post. Pictures of a watercooled Dual-Opteron 248, 16gig Ram, 1,2 TB Raidcore Raid5, GF 5950  ;)

[d3m0nger]

Very nice, poor graphic card though.

As for me getting watercooling, it depends on the noise my graphic cards produce, and they haven't arrived yet so I can't tell =), if it's as loud as most 6800's/x800's then there's a good chance I'm getting watercooling.

[veK]

you don't need more gfx for a server than this...

maybe you can tell me why you put in so much gfx power into your system...

[d3m0nger]

Oh ok, I didn't know it was a server I only looked at the pictures, though I could've guessed it with that much storage space.

I'm going to use this system mainly for gaming, the cards run games better than ultras.

and im pretty sure this system ( as in performance ) will be standard in a few years.

[DukeLeto]

Um, I doubt 16GB of RAM will be standard for many, many years. :P  You could load the entirety of UT2004 into that RAM 3 times over!

[d3m0nger]

16GB isn't very impressive, new OS's support up to 40GB+

its just that the current mobo's don't support that.

[veK]

for gaming? lol? but you know that opterons are server cpus, don't you? there is no use for them with gaming...

[gryphon]

for gaming? lol? but you know that opterons are server cpus, don't you? there is no use for them with gaming...

and why is that. . servers can't play games ?

[veK]

you don't buy a server cpu if you want to play pc games with it. that's like buying a porsche for a kayak tournament...

usually you buy a fx-55 if you need good gaming performance. you also don't need 16gig ram for gaming... 2 are enough.

[d3m0nger]

Is that so?

weird..

last time I checked they performed excellent in games..

my results --->

X2 The Threat bechncmark

All eye candy

1600x1200

specular, auto-detail, etc

101.601 FPS

Doom3

4x AA, ultra setting, 1600x1200

~Timedemo Demo1 usecache

124.5 FPS

Painikiller 1.62

All eye candy maxed, 1600x1200

~benchmark C5L1 206.44 FPS

~benchmark C5L2 155.10 FPS

3DMark05 -

[DukeLeto]

124+ FPS out of D3 on those settings?  Glad to see you didn't spend excessive amounts of money on a system that will have no practical use for years. ;)

[Megashrap]

I'd be happy with what I have now plus a new 30 inch plasma screen monitor. Yea, thats the ticket.

[veK]

why do you need 125fps at doom3?

50 are enough and can be achieved with less hardware. yiu also have to think about this: just because your system has enough resources it won't still be up to date in a year, because even if you have that much gfx power e.g. you still have video cards which only support directx9 or shader3 and so on... so their power might (in mhz) be enough for quite some time but their technology isn't - they won't support directx10, new shader techniques and so on.

the ram as well... you don't need 16gig for gaming. you maybe even don't need 2gig. just because you have 16gig they won't last for 5 years, because new ram technologies like ddr2 and even ddr3 are coming. they will be improved in speed, ratings and so on. 16gig doesn't mean GOOD RAM, it just means: A LOT OF RAM. it's like that friend of mine who told me he has 2gig ram which is much better than my system with only 1 gig... but: my ram is high quality ocz performance ram with excellent timings, lot of overclocking possibilities and they perform much better than his 2gig... he only has the advantage of having some more capacities if he needs them (he never does btw...)

so if you really have enough money to build such a system, you maybe should consider to build a system which only costs 1/4 but still reaches enough performance for all current games. and you can save 3/4 of the money to buy a new system in a year with new technology and still have 2/4 left. and then you can also sell your 1-year old system at ebay and still get quite some money back...

[d3m0nger]

..

Yes my cards are designed for DirectX 9

DirectX 10 will not be released until Longhorn comes into play.

And when DirectX 10 will be released, my cards simply won't benefin from the EXTRA features added in this new directX.

For example: If you have a directX 6 'ready' video card from 4+ years ago, it wont be able to use the programmable pipeline. So if you want to try playing Half-life 2 on that card, it might work (probably wouldn't) but your card wont take advantage of shadows or per-pixel shading or vertex shaders.

I won't suffer from lag in a decade, it's just that in 2 years games won't look as detailed as they could be, fortunately I already know much about Directx 10 and I can assure you I won't be missing much when it comes to games. Because the support for Pixel shaders 3.0 and Vertex pipelining is intergrated in ANY newcoming DirectX for at least 4 years. The difference will be my card won't support any new technologies (duh).

This has always been the problem with graphic cards, I don't care.

But saying that it's useless is just utter crap, then SLI would be useless (which it is at the moment for the most part but that will change) A single X800 or 6800U can handle any game above 40 FPS. And that is why the progress of introducing new technologies to the market won't go as fast as they used to, so that SLI can benefit.

The ram speeds will be sufficient for at least 4 years until highers timings are really needed.

I use the capacity for Maya rendering, sometimes 3Dsmax, same goes for the CPU's.

altough together they still perform alot better than the FX-55, for gaming its not really required yet to have such processing power, I don't even know if Dual-CPU's will be fully supported in Longhorn/WinXPx64.

if not, there's always linux.

[veK]

I use the capacity for Maya rendering, sometimes 3Dsmax, same goes for the CPU's.

this sounds like a reason for such a system - gaming only wouldn't be a reason...

[gryphon]

I don't even know if Dual-CPU's will be fully supported in Longhorn/WinXPx64.

if not, there's always linux.

If I remember correctly they both support dual cpu configurations.

you don't buy a server cpu if you want to play pc games with it. that's like buying a porsche for a kayak tournament...

usually you buy a fx-55 if you need good gaming performance. you also don't need 16gig ram for gaming... 2 are enough.

You know 1 gig of RAM's in enough for almost anything you can do with a PC. So any reason [ besides graphic rendering and real-time simulations ] to have more then 1 gig is overkill. It's nice to mention things will not be up-to-date in a couple a months beacuase we have DirecX 10 or whatever. But it's meaningless. Does that mean we shouldn't buy new stuff now because it will be out of date anyway. Or anything we buy is functionless in a few months anyway ?. Well, true .. but that's the thing we all take for granted with our PC. It is our ideal system as the topic is about. And we all know that our ideal system will start loosing it value the second afther we have bought it.

But does that make ous system less ideal or does it stop us from buyin it .. I doubt it...

Next week I have a LAN party at my house, one of my friends brings his dual Xeon 2.4 and we also will have a dual Opteron. The only reason they have those systems is gaming.

[ One of them just wants a stable high-preformance system, the other one is one of the best Unreal Tournament players in the world -not kidding here- ]

To be hounest, I had a dual system untill I started to use my laptop most of the time. It was running with a dual Xeon and 2 Matrox graphics cards.

Opteron might be servers CPU's but why is there no use in gamig for them ? Just because they have more cache, and usually run your system more stable then one CPU will means they have no use in gaming ?

I think they are more stable then a single cpu system. And if that's my motivation to use them with gaming I think that's reason enough to buy it. It might not be for you to do so. But that doesn't mean it's not possible.

[desert_storm]

I think a lot of games are writen for 1cpu, and not 2.  So therefor they do not suport dual cpu systems.  But I might be rong...