Tuesday 9 October 2007

Pic of the day: I hope you like talk about personal computers, because this entry is all about one of those. And one I haven't even bought yet!

Quad-core it is, then

For a while I have been pondering what kind of personal computer would be best for playing The Sims 2: A dual-core computer with a higher clock frequency or a quad-core with slower clock. At the moment, you can't get the quad-core with the high speed of the dual-core. And when they soon become available, the price won't be right for a long time.

Of course, I could just wait a long time. The game runs fine on the three newest computers, albeit to a different degree for each. And I don't have all the expansion packs on any of them. I don't have the latest expansion pack (Bon Voyage) at all, but this is mostly because it is said to be buggy and also contain a root kit that could make the computer stop working completely.

But if I were to either install more expansion or run larger Sim households, the consensus seems to be that quad-core processors give the best effect if your software is written to use more than one processor, otherwise not. But how would I know? It is not like I can borrow a quad- core computer to test the game on. And the people in the Sims 2 LiveJournal community tend to not be tech geeks, many of them are students or housewives who cannot afford high-end machines.

I knew that Sims 2 ran well enough of my dual-core Dell laptop, which was a pleasant surprise since laptops tend to be far from the best for gaming. Then again I had fewer expansion packs on it (only University and NightLife) and I thought it might be because one of the two processor cores was doing all the Windows stuff that runs in the background, freeing up the other core to run the game. It did not occur to me that instead of speculating, I could test it. Until now.

What I suddenly figured out (or perhaps the voices in my head revealed it to me) was that I could run the Windows Task Manager while the game was still running in the background. It has a graphical display of the processor load, and on dual-processor machines it has two such displays at the same time so you can easily see how the processors share the load (or not). In this case, they shared it almost perfectly. You could see that it was not an exact carbon copy, but they rose and fell at the same time and by about the same amount. So clearly the game is made for multiprocessing. If it can handle two cores that smoothly, it is a safe bet that it can handle four cores quite well too. Possibly more, but that's the most you get this year.

This is good news. Now for the less good news: Dell.

I checked Dell's online store, of course. To my disgust, I found that they have reorganized the model line. In the past, you had few basic models but a lot of variation in each. Now you have many more models but they are (like most other shops) made of matching components. If you want a quad-core computer, you have to go with the super uber everything. The excessively gamernerdy video card, the store-all-your- DVDs hard disk, the industry strength power supply and the "my daddy is richer than your daddy" price tag. No squee for you Mr Dell!

What I want is a humble PC with a quad core processor. You see, unlike most games, The Sims 2 depends almost entirely on the processor alone. The graphics are OK, I guess: If you have a decent video card you get more detail and prettier, sharper pictures. But the heart of the game is the artificial intelligence. The more Sims you have active at the same time, the more possible interactions there are, and the processor works like crazy to make them all figure out what to do at any given time. "Hmm I want to use the bathroom but there is already someone there, I better use the upstairs bathroom." "Hmm, I am bored but I could play with one of my friends, but whom?" Currently my sims can handle this fine when there is less than 20 of them on the fastest machine, but if I add more sims or a robot (which are more intelligent, ironically) they all start moving jerkily. If I add another expansion pack, the max number will go down.

I am not really interested in super graphics, the ones I got are already amazingly detailed, with butterflies fluttering around and moths attacking my trees unless I spray them. What I want is being able to run a large apartment complex with dozens of sims, each of them living their own life and at the same time interacting with each other. I have had apartments with around a dozen sims, but that is still too personal, more like a large family than a society.

Luckily a Norwegian web shop, Komplett.no, has a simple affordable computer with a quad core processor. It won a competition for the consumer web site DinSide.no for best PC for NOK 10,000 (roughly $2000) and has sold under that name ever since, the "Din Side PC". ^_^ So I am leaning that way at the moment.

But it won't be for the next month or two. NaNoWriMo is coming! November will presumably be eaten alive by novel writing if nothing worse happens, and my current computer is quite excellent for that. My poor sims will just have to hibernate, I guess. I am not sure about December. It will be utterly panicky at work, with all the moving and stuff, but I really don't plan to work a lot of overtime. That's not the kind of man I am. Of course, I might want to wait and see if Din Side holds a new competition, since I am fairly sure the next time they ask what you can get for NOK 10,000 it will be better.

At the very least, it would be nice with a power supply strong enough for the video card that comes with the machine. (It comes with a 500 W power supply, but the Komplett.no website also says that a 550 W supply is recommended for that particular video card. 0_0 But since the test machine did not explode during the review, the need may not be acute. Still, exploding power supplies is the bane of geeks. It happened to my black monster, the main machine I have now, late in December last year. Sparks and smoke came out of the power supply and I had to hand it in for repair. North Corporation not only replaced but upgraded the power supply at no cost to me, so I can hardly complain, but it is not something you want to happen while you sleep in a flammable house for instance.

So, only vague plans today. More later if I'm still around, which I sincerely hope and will do my best to be.