Speccing a gaming machine

[sorcerer]

A friend of mine sent me a quick message via Facebook yesterday - he wants me to give him a price for building him a computer for the purpose of running Rfactor, a motor racing simulator. Not being a gamer (I have the reflexes of a snail and get killed in the first two minutes of every game, which becomes somewhat boring!), I have no idea about building something specialised like this.

He mentioned that it'll need three monitors but apart from that, not much other info at all. I'm assuming that I'll be able to find the minimum system requirements on the Rfactor website and I'll have a look over there later, but for now I was just wondering if any of you folks use it and if so, what spec is your machine?

Are there any websites that you know of where I can plug in the minimum requirements for the game and get back a suggestion for low, medium and high spec machines so that I can give him a range of prices (I don't know how much he wants to throw at this project yet)?

If anyone's interested (or just curious) I stumbled on THIS video on Youtube - I'd say this guy's a bit of an enthusiast

 

[Dogzilla]

Have a look at http://gamesystemrequirements.com/games.php?id=245 site.

It gives the min and rec specs for most games.

However, where it states req spec, I would at least double it. Ie 2gb, I'd throw 8 fb into it, nice ssd drive for performance, decent i5,or i7 proc. graphics card of at least 2gb DDR.

You could also look into water cooling if needed to boost CPU performance and over clocking. However, if you throw in a decent proc, I don't think you'll need to oc it.

Decent gaming rig, top of my head, your looking at close to £1k.

 

[sorcerer]

You sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. Cheers Nige

 

[CLC]

I sent you a pm, I just did a nice machine for around $700.

 

[sorcerer]

I sent you a pm, I just did a nice machine for around $700.

Just replied, thanks

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

stop!

Not enough information yet. You have to make the decision on what 3 monitors you're going with. You cant choose graphics cards without knowing the resolution your going to go with. What kind of budget we talking about here? What size monitors is he aiming for?

 

[SAG]

stop!

Hammertime!!


Tripple CRT setup using 3x S3 Virge PCI video cards!
He couldn't possibly be shooting for more.

 

[KompuKare]

Hammertime!!


Tripple CRT setup using 3x S3 Virge PCI video cards!
He couldn't possibly be shooting for more.

Ah, someone who doesn't like LCD flicker or motions. (Sorry had to throw that in since there is this opinion out there that LCDs are perfect vs CRT, while the truth is that all display technologies are flawed.)

Ok, the best site for game benchmark reviews is usually pcgameshardware.de because they test a lot of different GPUs and CPUs to give you an idea what kind of specs a game needs. But it seems neither rfactor or rfactor 2 seem to have had any reviews. Another site which does similar stuff is gamegpu.ru but nothing there either.

But like ComputerRepairTech said, without knowing more specifics especially about the monitors and their resolution it's kind of hard to give a recommendation. Just assuming three 1080P monitors is 5,760x1,920 which is a lot of pixels. So depending on the game's requirements you might need multiple graphic cards.

Here are the publishers specs:
http://rfactor.net/web/rf1/features/
http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/rf2features/

Well, rf1 is so old it recommends XP and very old graphic cards. rf2 doesn't seem that recent either despite mentioning Win7 since HD4870 and GTS250 are at least five years old now.

Really the only way to go is either overspec and hope lucky or try and see if any forum posts somewhere can give you some numbers.

 

[sorcerer]

Sorry, been away for a couple of days so didn't see the recent replies, but thanks very much for that. Because I've never been asked to build a machine specially for gaming and know nothing of the specifics, especially one that needs three monitors, I just assumed I'd need more than one graphics card anyway (maybe one that drives two monitors and a single? three singles? - I don't know).

This is just the sort of info I need and why I asked the question. It's all a bit "catch 22" isn't it - he'll be asking how much it'll cost and I'll be saying that I can't answer that until I know what you want and he'll say that he doesn't know that until he gets some idea of cost

I've had no more information from my friend yet but as he's really into cars and driving, I'm going to assume he'll want three 1080p monitors and make that a starting point to do a bit of research.

Thanks everyone - your help is very much appreciated.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Racing sims are all about the peripheral hardware, not so much the computer itself like most people think about with common first person shooter games.

A long time friend of mine is a gaming programmer, one of the main guys such classic combat sim games such as 688i Hunter/Killer, and some other naval sims.

One of his hobbies is authentic racing sims. He's huge into some older classics like GTLegends...as well as racing real cars in real life.

His "mancave" at his house is SICK! He built complete enclosures for you to sit in, like you were sitting in a racing arcade game. You sit in a recaro like seat, have a shifter to your side, solid pedal system on the floor, steering wheel up on a mount in front of you that looks like a dashboard. It does the feedback on the wheel and brake pedal and all that stuff (vibration/shudders like if you're skidding off the track and across the grass). Or steering wheel goes "loose" if you lose grip on a curve.

His gaming computer has an output that goes to an overhead projector on the ceiling, shoots the image to a big blanked wall in front of you. (optimized paint on it I'm sure, or maybe some screen material was on it) Picture size is probably 80 maybe 100" in size.Quality projector that shoots a fairly fast image, and image quality is fast and good.

So his system looks a helluva lot better than that clunky setup in the youtube video in the first post. Especially good in the fact that you don't have the boxed in borders of multiple monitors in front of you. The projected image on a wall in big screen form blows that away. And cost wise...probably equal. Standard decent video card instead of a funky graphics card setup that support multiple monitors, plus no cost of multiple monitors.

Thing to do is research the most compatible supported peripheral hardware like the steering and pedal package. I was looking at doing one for my home but on a budget and he said Logitech makes a sorta decent entry level wheel setup for around 300 bucks. I'd spend some time at various forums for RFactor and I'm sure you will find many threads that talk about "best steering wheel setup". You'll find the good brands and models from there in well under an hour of skimming some threads.

But talking about dream gaming systems...I've also been inside of his office where the gaming programmers work. WOW!

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Start out asking about budget. My personal system, and I'm still a game, I've got an amd fx8120 overclocked to 4.0ghz, 8 gb ddr3 1600 gskill ram, standard hard drive for booting, and secondary for data. Graphics I'm running an amd Radeon 7850 2gb. Running a single screen at 1920x1080. I can run most things at high details, might have to turn down shadows or anti aliasing sometimes but does well for me.

Consider fx 8350(stock click of 4ghz). at least 8 gb ram, and a good video card. at that requirement I'd look at least at a 7970. Though you may need a better card than that.

 

[16k_zx81]

Start out asking about budget.

^thats what I would be doing, with any gaming build.