CPU gurus , need some help!!

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Aristarc

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Im in the process of deciding to buy a new computer. i know wht i want, a G5 'cause is mostly for my work. But the problem is, that i have absolutly no idea wht are the specs needed to run FFXI. Take a look at the specs and if its good enough, yay. If not i'd appreciate advise on custom upgrades that ill need to run it.

Here it is:

Dual-core 2GHz PowerPC G5 processor
1GHz frontside bus per processor

1MB L2 cache per core
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
Three open PCI-Express expansion slots
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE with 128MB GDDR SDRAM


Thank you once again.
 
Yeah, you WISH you could run FFXI on a mac...
 
My younger brother asked me something similar about a year ago and went ahead and bought a Mac anyway... he still gets little reminders of the list of reasons I gave him not to buy one when it comes to gaming.

Supposedly, the Windows emulators are a pain to get working if you're lucky enough to find one that actually should work for your current OS, and then you've got about 1/100th of a percent chance of being able to play any games with that emulator with the right tweaking from what I've heard/read around.

That sounds like a potent little system, it's just a shame you'd get boned out of FFXI and about a million other games that aren't supported on any Mac OS (Counter-Strike, Diablo I/II, and quite a few I can't think of atm that are really good).

Aside from all my ranting, that should be plenty for your work, I'm assuming it's something along the lines of audio and/or video editing? That's what my bro uses his for, and he's using one of those "Mini-Macs" and the specs on it are nothing I'd call spectacular, but it sure allows him to do some nice studio quality editing/authoring for his band from his bedroom without any trouble at all.

My other bro on the other hand, asked me to build him a PC system capable of gaming, and several other things... spent about $460(US) total for a complete system and I was impressed how far we got with that much money, I think another hundred bucks would have made his system even better, but he wasn't looking for a hardcore graphics card and bought a cheapie that does just fine for his games XD.

Hopefully this info helped a bit, and I didn't come off as some "know it all prick" or something ^^;

Nearly forgot: Newegg.com I think was an affiliate or in one of the ads here at some point, one of the best places to order parts and such online, quick shipping and more parts for a decent price than you'll find in any store that I've ever been to.

Tigerdirect.com is another one that'd I'd suggest taking a look through in the unlikely event that you can't find something on newegg.
 
What Dante said. Using a Windows emulator to run games should work much more smoothly on a CISC processor (I believe PowerPC is RISC... not sure, I have as much love for Macintosh as Hitler did for the Jews).
 
With the exception of the 1st reply, thanks guys. this info helps alot. as for my work...im not talented enough to deal with music. i need for animation/graphic design...ect.
ill see, wht i can come up with..ill probably just have my friend build me one from scratch.
 
If you're just using it for Graphic Design, etc. Sure, get a mac. But if you wanna get FFXI, PC onry.

If you decide to get a PC, AMD opteron 1-- series, and over clock it with a decent mobo. The higher range of Opteron's over clock to insane levels (alot higher than most dual cored processors) but they are only single cored =\
 
I use Adobe Pagemaker 7.0 and I'm PC only Aristarc. I positively abhor Macs. Mebbe it's just a personal preference and I'm old school, but I used to work for a publishing company and I used PC. I loved it. Then when the place went out of business I went to a printing company. They had a Mac there for certain things, but pretty much my boss and I did everything on PC.

Now, mebbe times have changed. I don't do typesetting except in my home now. Also I'm freelance, so I really don't know what people use in the workforce these days, but for my own personal preference, I'll still take PC over Mac. I can not only do my desktop publishing on my PC, but I have no problems gaming.

Bottom line I think it just comes down to what you're comfortable with. I don't think you'd be able to game very well with a Mac though. Although, I do have to admit, I've never tried it. Sometimes there is just no teaching an old dog new tricks. I try to be versatile in most things, but some things I'm pretty adament about, and my PC is one of them.
 
A64 X2's are getting cheap. If you do end up going with a non-Mac, a good Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system can be built for about $1000cdn (~$700 american?) and you'll be prepared for future sofware/hardware/OS's that take advantage of both dual core AND 64-bit processors. Mind you, for that price it aint gonna break any speed limits - but it will perform more than adequately.

I know you graphic nerds breed and bleed on Macs though, so I shall digress...
 
CmdrFly said:
I know you graphic nerds breed and bleed on Macs though, so I shall digress...
Click to expand...

Actually I don't agree with this. I think it depends on what type of machine your taught on. When I first started typesetting I started with Aldus (now Adobe) Pagemaker 3.0. I've been doin' it off and on since I was 27. Anyway, I was taught on PC. Then when I went to the printing company they taught me how to use Adobe Pagemaker 5.0, I think it was at that time, on a Mac. OMG, it sucked. Mebbe if I had learned it on a Mac, I'd be singin' a different tune, but to this day, I truly hate Macs.
 
I'm with you every step of the way Kat. Macs are my mortal enemy, and every time I see one I make a little scratch on my arm to remind me to smash something with vigorous force later. If I ever infiltrated a Macintosh manufacturing plant, I would turn green, tear my shirt off, and destroy everything in visible range while screaming like a banshee who's been injected with an ethereal drug that scrapes at their soul with a rusty razor blade.

You have a point too, depending on what you're originally taught on will bear your preference for future releases. I drew that statement from some family members of myself & my girlfriend, who work for marketing agencies. All their offices use Macs, even though they are PC users at home. I see instructional videos for Photoshop / Premiere / PSP online, all recorded in that aneurism-inducing OS-X. Oh god, here we go aga-

*thud*
 
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I agree with you wholeheartedly above. When I went to The Label Printers and started working there, I did fill in work with making the labels once in a great while because of my background. They used Mac and used this program totally alien to me because I've always worked with Pagemaker. I wanna say it was called Ventura? Something like that, can't remember. I really hated working with it. Luckily, I only did that for the first year I worked there.

I was actually hired for another position, and ended up being the Expeditor. Anyway long story short, imho Macs suck. Sorry Aristarc, you can take that or leave it^^.
 
LOL, you guys crack me up. Well, im sure you 2'll be happy to know im not gonna go with a Mac for the simple reason that it doesnt make friends w FFXI.

Now...wht i really want is to be able to go to a website/store and buy PC that can run PS, CGs. smoothly as well as run a game. w/o me having to get all kinds of upgrades for it. Granted i will buy them if needed, but id preffer not to.

The reason i wanted to get a mac, its cause thats where i learned to do work i do.

I thought about sony Vaio, but sony is just that a sony....Alienware might be another poss. but really when it comes to PC's that are able to run this kinds of games smoothly w/o being design for that specific reason......i r teh nOObz.
 
Oy Aristarc

I have worked with the Mac when i was in college. I used it for video editing. (It has a very good video editor "Final Cut Pro") And Adobe does consider the Mac to be it's flag ship for Photoshop. (I think money was involved in this one)

For alot of video files and just about any image file you can imagine is compatible for Mac is the same as it is for a PC. Only thing i can say Mac has is some very nice accessories... namley their highend monitors are ultra HD.

Transfering an Image file from mac to PC, the image will look exactly the same. Photoshop works the same on PC as it does on the Mac aswell. If you know photoshop on mac, you know it on PC.

Mac was the first to develop graphics on computers and still go strong with it. They are in their 4th year of having 3D software availible. In the event of using 3D software you'd have to purchase a new mouse, cause the Mac only has 1 button. 3D software you'd want 3 buttons, you can get away with a clickable mouse wheel.

The Mac runs off of an operating system called OSX, which will probably make you feel sad on how it's used alone. Like tossing the CD icon in the trash can just to open the tray (It's the only way to do it), and in my experience OSX likes to crash on big projects even when under the watchful eye of tech support. (the guy was getting paid 80 an hour and yes he is amazing).

In terms of 3D...There is a kind of computer called SGI, most of which runs off of an operating system called Unix ( very stable )

Again when i was in college we used 2 kinds of SGI's one was called "SGI O2" and the other was the "SGI Octain"

check this out now....

One of the students complained how the "coarse read out" said how we would be using the state of the art machines to prouduce our work, and caused a major stink with the college and the students...

...College says ok, and orders out some tests to be done...

-We get a PC from Compaq (Yes Compaq lol)
-and the latest "SGI fuel"
- Our Mac station remained innocent. The 3D software wasn't availible on it at the time. It was only used for editing.

One of SGI's representitives asks me to open a project on the machine and i say ok... the SGI was lagging and it took forever to start up the software and when handeling the model it was very choppy. Now... I'm talking about SGI a $60,000 dollar computer....

...SGI man leans over to me with a smirk on his face and nudges to the Compaq and says "Heh Soooo... How's that Compaq ?"

I told him, "It's like lightening ! starts up the software no problem and handles this same scene so easy it's discusting... even did a basic render of over a million particles in seconds.. wanna see ?"

The smile on the SGI man's face vanished, and i swear his heart was broken cause the school was on the verge of purchasing 43 "SGI fuels."

Moral of the story, a cheaper brand of PC did this to an SGI, and not a Mac. Mind you this PC was packing deul intel Xeons and some ATI Tiger card.

Movie effects like the ones you see in Lord of the Rings and the late Star Wars movies were done on PC. Same with video games, but i know a few big companies that still have O2's in service, like Konami.

If Mac can do it, PC can do it. PC has more compability with the world itself too, and is considered first when developers create software. the saying "Now for Mac" is an eco we often recall.

In terms of Graphic cards i'm an ATI man. For you i would recommend looking into an Nvidia card cause it's drivers are better for FFXI in particular. And Nvidia do make amazing graphic cards. The PC needn't be overkill to handle alot of polygons, it's mostly in the graphics card.

I know Aristarc when you develop relations with digital software, you'll be sick. This software was made for artists and your stuff is supurb.

You'd love your mac, but not like you'd love a PC.

*Edit* I forgot to mention if you do get a mac, you can make it run Unix, But Unix is not user friendly like Windows. It's nearly pure command prompt.
 
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Kay, this is exactly what I have to date. Now mind you, my comp is over 2 years old, so please no laughing guys. The thing runs like a raped ape, and I'm very happy with it to date.

Anyway ...

AMD Anthlon (TM) 2800+ w/333 buss speed
1.82 GHz, 1.00 GB of Ram
ACPI Uniprocessor PC
Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600 Pro VC (I also prefer ATI over Nvidia)
Asus Mobo

If you want to know anything else, please don't hesitate to ask and I'll try to find it for you on my comp. My friend Matt builds all my machines for me. I believe this machine was $400. a tad over 2 years ago for him to put together. That was including the case and stuff.

Oh yah, I also have a 485 power supply and Matt put, I believe 4 or 5 fans in the case in different areas.
 
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If your going with a PC, then my opinion is to build it yourself. This of course may not be an option, but in my opinion it is the best option.

You never know now dayz if you buy from a vendor if your getting proprietary parts which will notoriously screw up your future upgrade path.

I really like it when I need to buy a new case, motherboard, CPU and RAM simply because my power supply blew out.
 
As far as pre-built systems, Alienware is actually really good. Falcon Northwest (is that the name? been ages since I seen them) is also excellent. Both companies build systems pre-spec'd for gaming, which usually means they will work flawlessly with any sort of 2D graphics work. They use good parts, but the price tag is high.

Custom-built is also what I'd suggest. Suggestions (dunno your budget here):

CPU: Athlon 64 X2 3800+ [cheap] or 4400+ [mad cache] (note, the "+" is actually part of the name, I dont mean "4400 or better").

RAM: Minimum 1gb, but these days it's cheap enough that 2gb dual-channel is affordable. Even 4gb isn't too shabby, and if you're running filters / effects on images with ridiculous resolutions, it may be something to consider.

Video card: Radeon X850 series is hella nice. X1900 is even better. I'm an ATI fanboy, but there are equivalent parts from their competitor Nvidia that you may or may not want to look at.

The rest of the parts, you can (if need be) cut corners on. A good motherboard always seems to be worth the higher price tag though, and the same goes for a good power supply (Enermax is still my favorite).

Ultimately, the more you spend now, the less you upgrade later. I built my current system over 3 years ago when I was in college, spent half my loan check on it. Only recently have I had to upgrade it (minor upgrade, <$200 cdn). It's been ripping through games ever since... well... except anything on the Doom3 engine. /grumble

Computer nerds are really a dime a dozen these days, I'm sure you have friends that can dribble on about this stuff for hours to you. But in case you dont, ask any questions you need to. There's tons of nerds on QCDN to answer, or send me a PM if you feel like a dumbass.
 
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LOL, @Cmdrfly. i do have alot of friends that love this kind of stuff, but they're all away on sea duty right now. and my budget right now is 2000-2500 usd. the thing about me is i rather get something thats already built, with a warranty and so i dont have to go thru all the searching for parts and wht not. but if the better choice would be to build one, then im ok w that too.

Im not too much of a fan of Dell, but their new XPS 600 seems to be wht i'm looking for. and honestly i'd rather hear wht the "nerds" here have to say about it, than the "nerds" that sell it or are affiliated w the company, for the simple reason that i consider many of you here my friends.And 9/10 i trust more wht my friends tell me.
 
Dell systems are hot. I've seen some of their gaming rigs here (I have no idea WHY they wanted an XPS desktop to be the server for a control system, but whatever) and they are impressive.

If you can afford their extended warranty, oh sweet jesus do it. It's ridiculous. I dont know what their standard service is like, but extended warranty is just hot.

I had a laptop, a pricey one, with a fried motherboard (well, onboard network card). Called them. They sent me a box, was here in a day. I sent the laptop out that afternoon.

A day and a half later, it came back. After being shipped ~9000km across the country, getting inspected, serviced, repackaged, and sent back. It was amazing. I was amazed. I still am. Amazed, that is.
 
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