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I'd say "adequate" rather than "killer". But if you are on a budget then this would probably do the trick for now and then upgrade parts later. The power supply is what worries me the most about this build with regard to safety (of your PC) and longevity rather than performance.

 

Re. PC vendors -> agreed, never buy a PC already made... ever!

I like how the word "garbage" links you to the Microsoft Windows Home page

Coincidentally I was just building a pc for the first time in 2 years yesterday.

 

I last built my pc 3 years ago, and while the benchmarks are still relatively good by today standards support for the latest OpenGL drivers is no longer available and I'm stuck at v3

 

I'm also hesitant about the assumption that more cores means better performance. Not all games\applications take advantage of all cores, and you'll always have you main thread managing the rest. But at the same time, a lot of modern games are far more GPU intensive then they are CPU intensive.

 

Are you using a SSD hard drive?

For a budget machine, I would probably get a socket FM2 motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138370

$44.99, same price.

 

With an AMD APU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113288

$98.99, with OpenGL4 / DX11 graphics.

 

You would save $10 on the CPU and $95 by not having a GPU, with the option to add one at any time. Total cost: $325.

 

However, I haven't verified how well AMD APUs run Leadwerks on Linux yet.

 

Are you using a SSD hard drive?

I bought one 128 gb but end up not using it for anything because it's too small and I run out of space. Go 200 gb, minimum.

You are suggesting 4 GB of ram? Is this a joke? 8 GB is currently a minimum. With next gen consoles behind the corner we already get 8 GB as a system requirement for a Watch Dogs game. More to come. And the time it takes for linux games to need those 8 gb is not that long.

The new consoles use integrated graphics, so their system memory is all they have. Discrete graphics cards have their own separate video memory. It is not my purpose to speculate on what hardware games that have not been developed yet might benefit from.

The new consoles use integrated graphics, so their system memory is all they have. Discrete graphics cards have their own separate video memory. It is not my purpose to speculate on what hardware games that have not been developed yet might benefit from.

 

Josh, please, stop confusing people. Consoles use discrete graphics. The only difference is that the graphics card share the same system memory. Integrated graphics are the one's integrated into CPU or motherboards like Intel HD Graphics. My reference to consoles was only there because the current gen consoles have small amount of ram and most games that came out had their textures compressed so much that you could get along with 4 GB of RAM. That generation is over now.

Second, Watch Dogs is already almost finished. It's in final testing currently, and those hardware requirements are for PC, not for consoles, so the 8GB requirement is real already.

They're both using AMD APUs, which are AMD's version of Intel integrated graphics:

http://techreport.com/news/24391/amd-sheds-more-light-on-the-ps4-custom-apu

 

I have one right here, it's just a graphics chip built into the CPU:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1937035674/leadwerks-build-linux-games-on-linux/posts/617271

Yes, they will (or might) be using a SoC solution, but both of them are based on discrete graphics card GPU's, just put together into 1 chip, which is clearly not the default integrated CPU APUs which, often, use the CPU universal processing power in addition to their own to compute graphics.

Valve just released some specifications of their "game-console". Looks like a competent hardware combination that too (still no price which I think will be a bit higher than the suggested hardware here).

 

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/2145128928746175450

 

The graphics card of their choice is NVidia too. Have not been using AMD cards for a while but had some expectations for the new APU chips but it looks like it will be some time before it is supported (and have good enough performance ?).

 

//Eirik

Just to update you on this, we have seen absolutely no problems on ATI graphics cards on Linux so far.