Calling all Linux-heads

[Kyrottimus]

If you were to buy/build a PC as a dedicated linux-box, what hardware would you use?

AMD? Intel? ATI? nVidia?

I keep hearing Intel + nVidia to be the best combo for linux machines.

But let's say you wanted to play RO on max-graphics settings with all the pretty eye-candy enabled; what type of machine would you get for that?

Minimum processor? Minimum RAM? Minimum VRAM? MOBO? etc.

I've been playing on a fairly archaic machine (low graphics settings on shader 3) and would like to (within a year) upgrade or start looking.

Your input would be greatly appreciated.

[NotScias]

About GPUs, yeah, Nvidia GPU is the best on Linux, because their binary driver is the most decent one under Linux. ATI's ones were horrendous, but even though it's gotten better over the past few years, it's still below Nvidia's one concerning performance, stability and features.

About CPUs, well I can't really pronounce and I don't think it's really relevant. I've only had AMDs so far and never got any problem on Linux with them.

Anyways for a powerful enough build that can run RO at max settings, I'm not really expert in Intel/Nvidia hardware so I let the others say about them, but I'd consider an Intel Pentium Dual Core at least for CPU (i5/i7 is better), a Nvidia GT 450 with 512MB minimum as GPU, 3-4GB of RAM minimum (depends of your environment since RO eats up to 2GB...).
Motherboard is not really relevant. As long as it can hold your CPU and other stuff it should be good. Most of the Intel,Nvidia and AMD southbridges are Linux friendly.

[Ricksa]

What Scias said +1.

I'm running an Ati Gpu, the proprietary driver has come a very long way and is more than decent, only problem i have is the lack of reliability between updates and having to wait on Ati to release a half compatible driver with the latest X-server.

That being said if i had the choice i'd go Nvidia for reasons already stated, less hassle overall etc.

Edit: Just to emphasize that i'm talking about the proprietary Ati driver, open ones are still very meh, very very meh. Also i think Scias meant as minimum Core2Duo processors, Pentuim dual cores are old as fu now and most new rigs/laptops etc come with a Core i5 or better anyways, so getting a low end i5 shouldnt be costly.

[Zas_]

Yes, sadly, the only high performance OpenGL option is to go with Nvidia.

GTX 570/580 are very good (and expensive) choices, any cpu will do, but beware about motherboard chipsets and embedded stuff (network/sound/...).

Also don't forget Optimus technology isn't well supported (no auto switch, unstable stuff).

[standistortion]

I'd second all above. I'm running a high end core quad (Q6600) and have no issues with performance but very limited for future upgrades with both that and DDR2 ram. Using 4 gigs of ram and would like more, you can never have enough

I would suggest getting the best motherboard and power supply you can afford and kitting it out with a cpu, ram and graphics card that gives the best price/performance for your remaining budget even if they are quite low spec as this will give you a fairly future proof system thats easy to upgrade later. I would put a high priority on the power supply as it can easily wipe out everything if it fails.

When you can afford to upgrade imho a top end cpu is worth getting, improvements have slowed down and you should get at least a few years from one. Graphics cards are still improving fast and there promises to be a whole new generation of computing as more is done with them (opencl, cuda etc). I would go for something slightly below top end and upgrade regularly.

Solid state drives seem impressive but I have no experience of them, worth checking out though. Conventional drives are cheap, if you use them instead get 3 and use software RAID 5, good performance and much lower risk of data loss (cant do this with windows :P ).

Good luck with it, no lack of experience on the forum if you need a hand

[Cuchulainn]

Originally Posted by standistortion

I[...]
Conventional drives are cheap, [...]

The prices of conventional hard drives went up last and this month. Some hard disk models have more than 50% higher prices than before. That is because almost every hard disk manufacturer lost production capabilities in Thailand due to the huge flood.

AMD and Intel CPU's are both very well supported under Linux. Intel CPU's usually cost more money and are a little bit faster.

I use a Radeon HD 3200 in my notebook and a Radeon HD 4650 in my desktop and I don't regret that I have a ATI card instead of Nvidia. It really doesn't matter that much, if you can wait on new Xorg or kernel version support. And if you hardly play any wine games (Nvidia cards work often better with Wine games).

If you're not a hardcore gamer, you can save money if you buy a APU instead of CPU+GPU. AMD's Llanno graphic performance is considerable better than Intels APU's. Availability of some Llanno models is pretty bad though.

[NotScias]

Originally Posted by standistortion

Solid state drives seem impressive but I have no experience of them

To give you a good reason :

[scias@synesta ~]$ systemd-analyze 
Startup finished in 2811ms (kernel) + 2268ms (userspace) = 5080ms

And 1-2 more for full KDE 4.7.

[standistortion]

Startup finished in 2811ms (kernel) + 2268ms (userspace) = 5080ms

Omfg, instaboot

[Kyrottimus]

Thanks for your input everyone.

I posted this because I'm tired of 25fps and having to dumb down view distance and not using shadows.

For the record, I'm using an AMD X2 64 bit CPU @ 2.9ghz and an ATI HD Radeon 4550 w/ 512mb on LinuxMint9. I keep trying the newest ATI drivers when they come out, but I usually wind up reverting to the default supported Mint Driver as it's still the most stable and I don't notice any other differences in FPS.

And the solid-state HD intrigues me (at the very least to install/run the game from as well as keep the virtual RAM on it) as I hate how the game hangs at the worst possible times (rushing a foe, getting knocked and trying to cast UM before the next cc, etc.)

If anyone says hardware has no effect on your game performance, they're wrong. Sure it's not EVERYTHING, but I'd like to remove all possible faults and simply have myself to blame entirely when I screw up

[NotScias]

For the record, I'm using an AMD X2 64 bit CPU @ 2.9ghz and an ATI HD Radeon 4550 w/ 512mb on LinuxMint9.

Hah I'm not so far. AMD x2 64-bit @ 2.6. ATI HD 4670 512MB on Arch.
If I max out everything, I have 30-35ish FPS (shaders 4.0).

And the solid-state HD intrigues me (at the very least to install/run the game from as well as keep the virtual RAM on it) as I hate how the game hangs at the worst possible times (rushing a foe, getting knocked and trying to cast UM before the next cc, etc.)

SSDs might be awesome, but they're still not designed to hold temporary and highly volatile data because SSDs have a shorter lifetime than regular HDDs and then need to save read/write cycles in order to keep them longer.
So putting the virtual RAM (swap), /tmp, /var, regular data, browser caches and autoupdating games on them is really not recommended
In fact they're adequate to hold only the OS and its programs.