Monday 27 August 2007

Pic of the day: Snapshot from a Sims 2 dormitory that I run on my current monster PC. It has 28 students, 2 cafeteria workers and a parrot, and that's about as much as my computer can handle. Time for a new? Not before I find out which...

PC vs. PC

If I don't use my money on computers, I am likely to waste it on bills. So recently I stopped by North Corporation, the last company in Kristiansand that still builds computers to spec. In fact, it is hard to get a good computer anywhere in town, you have to buy them on the Net. The shops in the city mostly sell laptops, and the desktops are a year after what you get at Dell but to the same price. Sorry, it is pretty close to the truth. So it is Dell or North. Not the final battle of my dreams.

The thing is, Dell does not include Raptor disks, at least on the models that are within my price range. (They are also selling some dedicated gaming machines for rich gamers, though I wonder who these could be. If I had that kind of money and was an avid gamer, I would cut down on my job to get more time for gaming rather than buy a super-powered computer I did not have time to use.) Anyway, I have a Raptor disk in the black Monster, my surviving North machine. It is still my main machine, having been repaired three times but at no extra cost to me. In fact, it gets better each time they repair them. Got to give them that, once you can prove that their machine is not working, they repair it fairly quickly and to today's standards. If it continues to fall apart, I may have a good computer for years to come… or at least until the 3 year warranty runs out. That's still almost one and a half year away, though.

A lot of things have happened in the one and a half year since I bought the Monster, though. It was one of the last single-core machines (nice timing there boy), and now you get quad-core machines for the same price. Actually, that's one of the two things I can't figure out.

The choice (within the same price range) is either a quad-core processor or a dual-core processor running a somewhat higher clock frequency. I honestly have no idea which is better. The current computer is quite good enough for all my uses, but in the beginning of September comes the next expansion pack for The Sims 2, Bon Voyage. By all accounts it will require more from the computer than its predecessors, some reports say the difference is even more drastic than with Seasons. What nobody seems to have checked is whether it can utilize multi-core processors.

I have a dual-core laptop that I bought last winter. Like pretty much all laptops, it is optimized for saving energy and taking up less space rather than for speed, so the two processor cores don't run as fast as in a desktop machine. Still, Sims2 ran surprisingly well, given that it was a laptop. Admittedly I only ran the two first expansion packs, University and NightLife, but on the other hand I built an apartment complex and it handled the load of a large number of sims better than I had expected. My guess is that Windows used one of the cores for playing the game and another for all the mundane housekeeping jobs that always runs on a modern operating system: Checking the Internet for updates to various programs, swapping little used memory blocks to the hard disk to clear up memory ahead of time, running the antivirus software, monitoring Instant Messaging programs for incoming calls… that kind of stuff, I don't know all of it. But if there were four cores, would Sims2 be able to use three of them? Because the other jobs are mostly sporadic and don't require a lot of processing.

Until I know that answer, it is really hard to decide on which processor to buy. That's one reason why I kind of gave up for now, even though I have plenty of money until I waste it all on bills or moving or other necessary things. (The moving seems less and less likely as far as my job is concerned, but my landlord could still want the house for himself. It is his family home after all, and he has a job now. He may not need my rent forever.)

Anyway, I don't know what kind of processor would be best until someone tests it with my favorite game! I think I know what kind of hard disk would be best, though. The Raptor disks rotate 10 000 times per minute, compared to 7200 for most disk drives within my price range. They also seem to have a higher transfer rate: Certainly my programs start noticeably faster. Sims2 takes 1 minute to load on the Monster, but very close to 2 minutes on the former bedroom machine with the same amount of RAM.

The problem, as I mentioned, is that Dell does not let me choose this kind of hard disk. They do however offer a RAID, which may do the trick. With two hard disk programmed to work simultaneously, it could write to and read from both at the same time, drastically cutting the time needed for disk access. Again, that's not something I have tried at home. We had a UNIX file system with RAID at work, but I did not have the chance to play around with it. No, really!

Most likely I'll end up with Dell because of the sheer price difference. Even with RAID, you just get so much more for the money. On the other hand, I would miss getting the computer repaired quickly (and being able to stop by frequently to remind them if it takes time). I also doubt Dell will upgrade the computer while repairing it.

Anyway, it won't be this month. Despite the undeniable coolness of having a computer with 4 processor cores, I think I shall wait until other people have reported their experiences with them. Preferably other Sims2 players, since Sims2 is the only reason to buy (except for bragging, I mean). Sims2 will take whatever processing power you throw at it and translate it into more sims acting naturally at the same time. Larger apartment complexes, larger parties, more sims in the shops and restaurants before the game slows to a crawl. Since the interaction of large groups is my particular area of interest, I will almost certainly get a more powerful computer if I live long enough. They still get cheaper every 6 months or so, though, so perhaps I'll skip Bon Voyage and get a computer next spring with 4 cores AND a high clock speed. ^_^

Except by then I may have wasted my money on bills and food.