New Dev Box

[20thCenturyBoy]

Time for an upgrade! I want a Core2Duo (who doesn't) :D, currently using old P4 1.8. Anyone else got a C2D and if so is it worth the extra cash? I am looking at the E6600. Dev env consists of WinXP, VS2005, VAssistX, Photoshop. Really looking to speed up C++ compiling times.

[nbkolchin]

Switch from AthlonXP-2500 to AthlonX2-4200, lowered my project compilation times from 6 hours to 45 minutes.

Parallel compilation --- is THE great thing.

[Spaceman Spiff]

-Please forgive me in advance for talking about big Game Devco, rather than indie efforts.-

The E6600 really does seem to be the sweet spot for Intel CPUs, and it's where the L2 cache switches from 2MB to 4MB. Everyone at work who has gotten a C2D for their home rig has gotten the E6600 and loves it. The high price premiums for the E6700 and X6800 don't make sense for the small bump in clock speed ($+66% for +11% clock, $+225% for +22% clock).

As developers, most of whom have to compile a huge, unwieldy licensed engine *cough*U*cough*E*cough*3*cough*, we've got a tiny bit of experience with being frustrated by, er... maximizing build performance.

To help compile times with something other than the CPU, The following seems to matter (in order of impact):

1) Incredibuild. Seriously. This cuts down build time more than any other one thing. However, at about $350 per agent (system), it's not practical for most indies.

1a) A Dual Core CPU is going to give you more total CPU bandwidth than a single core which will help only a little bit, unless the compiler can take advantage and spawn 2+ simultaneous compiles. I’m not sure if Visual Studio 2005 can do that. MSFT is working on a new version of Visual Studio, code name “Orcas”, for which a March 2007 Community Technology Preview is available, which does this I think.

2) Disk I/O & seek times. Compiling seems to involve reading a zillion tiny files. Over and over again. Western Digital's Raptor 10K RPM drives are the developer's favorite here. So is putting 2 drives into a Raid 0 configuration. Triply so if you put your Raptors in Raid 0.

Another way to slightly improve disk performance, thanks to SATA drives having fully independent I/O channels, is to have your development environment and files on a separate drive (or array) than your Windows C:\ Drive and it's swap file. Thus page file activity can overlap other file activity.

I know of some developers who put their entire projects (shipped titles) onto RAMdisks to build them.

3) RAM. You need enough and then a little more. Given the cheap prices, At least 2GB is what I would recommend for your primary development box. 4GB is standard where I work, FWIW.

(Forgive me if the following advice is too obvious… I've met developers who should know better, but didn’t)

4) A Clean Machine. This should probably be higher on the list. Not having a bunch of stuff loaded up and running in the background on your machine is a big deal. Anti-virus programs seem to be the worst at hammering systems, but there is no shortage of programs that want to gunk up your system, gobble memory and suck up I/O checking every file you touch.

All of my Windows dev machines have a clean install of the OS, with unneeded crap like Windows Messenger, etc stripped off with a program such as Autopatcher or nLight (which also let you install the bazillion critical updates all at once and without having to go online). Almost nothing is allowed in the system tray. Use a program like Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin to limit what gets to run when you boot up.

Turn off OS functions that can get in the way such as System Restore. Defrag your disk / development partitions every now and then. Don’t rip CD’s to MP3s while compiling. :)

Don't use Vista. Seriously.

[Sharpfish]

i'll be going for an e6600 (overclocked past e6700/ex6800 speeds) on an asus p5b deluxe mother board, 2gb pc6400 ram...

The price on the current core2duos is gonna drop ~ April 22nd so that the e6600 will retail for the price of the current e6400 (2mb cache).

Later in the year the refresh c2d's will be out with similar (cheaper than now) prices + faster FSB speeds (1066?) and possible extra performance. The new extreme (6850 I think) is also going to be priced a lot cheaper than the current extreme, more inline with the 'normal' c2d's.

However, i've waited long enough so I agree the E6600 is the sweet spot right now (esp after April 22nd).

As for compiling, i'm lucky that I don't work on anything big enough to wait that long now even on a Duron 800mhz!!!!! (desktop/old test system) or my laptop AMD64 (3400+ single core). So an E6600 o'clkd is going to be plenty for the foreseeable future. :)

[Josh1billion]

Switch from AthlonXP-2500 to AthlonX2-4200, lowered my project compilation times from 6 hours to 45 minutes.

Parallel compilation --- is THE great thing.

6 hours? Holy crap what kind of project is that?

[Nikster]

I agree, more ram helps a lot, that and a fast HDD, and is generally a cheaper upgrade option.
In general, spaceman has a good overview.

[20thCenturyBoy]

Later in the year the refresh c2d's will be out with similar (cheaper than now) prices + faster FSB speeds (1066?) and possible extra performance.

FSB will go to 1333Mhz, which the Asus P5B doesn't support, but some boards do, like the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. But I can't imagine upgrading from an E6600 for a few years yet! Well, one year anyway ;)

[Sharpfish]

FSB will go to 1333Mhz, which the Asus P5B doesn't support, but some boards do, like the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. But I can't imagine upgrading from an E6600 for a few years yet! Well, one year anyway ;)

yeah 1333mhz... faster anyway... btw I know the asus p5b isn't intended for that. I wasn't recommending the p5b for the c2d refresh in Q3 (I just mentioned the refresh incase people were interested in researching/holding out). I'm going for the e6600 and the p5b which is a fine combo as you know, and I agree it won't need updating for quite a few years to come! :)