[rescue] OT: Games and workstations (was OT: Linux and USB on Intel)

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 07:08:33PM -0600, deanders at pcisys.net wrote:
> At 02:55 PM 4/21/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >> Do you really -need- 16MB of TRAM, though?
> >
> >I don't know how much is really enough.  I'd say that the N64 definately
> >had too little, but then, it didn't actually have TRAM, it was a unified
> >machine like the O2 was, and had 8 megs I believe (after having the
> >expansion pak installed).  I think it is quite likely that 16 megs is a
> >good number to have.  Less than that would probably be rather limiting
> >in a bad way.
> 
> 16MB isn't much for a consumer video card (I haven't seen anything (new)
> with less than 32MB in years); most current PC games seem to require at
> least 32MB, sometimes 64MB (higher-resolution textures, etc.). Of course,
> I'm not sure how much of that is used for textures and how much is
> geometry, but I'd assume that it's mostly textures. 

Don't forget the frame buffer.  It wouldn't be hard for the frame buffer
alone to take up 10 megs of the video card memory.  SGIs use seperate
frame buffers and TRAMS.  I think that geometry only gets stored in
general ram, and anything it gets cached in.  I don't think there is
dedicated geometry ram on SGIs. 

> Given that my PS2 cost about $300 (more like $200 now) and my Win2k gaming
> system (if I didn't play games, I wouldn't need this...but I do, and I'm
> not willing to put up with the headache that is gaming under
> Linux/Wine)

I don't put up with the headache of linux/wine either.  Thus, I play
linux games or console games.  And when I get the money for a reasonable
mac, I'd be happy to play mac games.  Most quality PC games are
available on one of the other platforms anyway.

> As it is, I'll buy an SGI (or Sun, or IBM, or whatever) system to use as a
> Unix workstation or server, and I'll buy a commodity x86 system running
> Windows to use as a game system. Different operating systems and platforms
> work well for different things; I no more believe that Windows is the One
> True Operating System than I believe that any of the Unices would be able
> to fulfill all of my computing needs.

But, the point is, I want to play games when I want to play them.  Not 3
hours after I first wanted to play it because that's how long it took to
bloody beat windows into submission.