HARDWARE // WORKSTATIONS | BUILD
START-UPS: WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN BUYING A WORKSTATION
BUY AT THE START OF A LIFECYCLE “The best advice when choosing a workstation is to buy at the beginning of a CPU architecture lifecycle,” says Lenovo’s Ashley Rolfe. “That way as the studio expands you can add additional workstations when needed, without causing complications for the IT team.”
CHECK FOR SUPPORT The vendors make convincing arguments about software compatibility and whisper-quiet fans and so on. But when you find yourself in a tangle, reliable hardware support is what counts. Speak to fellow developers about vendor support before you make up your mind about who to buy from.
DON’T FORGET YOUR END USER When buying a set of workstations, Rolfe also recommends that you include at least one entry-level system too, as this will allow you to test games on less powerful machines, which are more aligned to what consumers will use.
BE FLEXIBLE Your budget may limit you to a single platform, but scalability is where Ovum’s Adrian Drury argues that Mac gives you an edge: “Depreciation on a Mac is likely to be slower than a custom gaming workstation, so for a start-up studio that may have to scale-up and scale-down the number of workstations, that’s another good reason to look at a Mac environment.”
SHOP AROUND Workstations for HP, Lenovo and other manufacturers are sold through resellers. You can find a list of nearby sellers via the manufacturer’s website. May of the resellers do not list prices on their websites, so it is worth searching online for the lowest price comparisons or giving sellers a call directly to see if you can strike a deal.
APPLE: THE MAC FACTOR
THE POPULARITY OF mobile games has changed opinions on Apple, and with it attitudes towards gaming at the hardware maker itself. Many popular game engines and
SDKs now support Mac, and makers of software tools, such as Hansoft, have gradually adapted their software to ensure it is available on Apple computers, which have been in demand from iOS and indie devs. “Gaming is increasingly critical to
Apple,” says Adrian Drury, lead analyst at Ovum, who specialises in IT, media and telecoms. “It is central to the iOS ecosystem and with the introduction of 64-bit computing and OpenCL to the just launched iPhone 5S, the boundary between a console and a smartphone gets ever more blurred.” Apple updated its flagship iMac in
September. The super-thin 21.5 and 27-inch computers (above) now come with the latest Nvidia GPUs and the option of adding PCIe-based SSDs for rapid data transfer rates.
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET Also on horizon is the new Mac Pro
(right), which has undergone a radical redesign. At just 25.1 centimetres tall and 16.8 centimetres wide, this circular silo of black gloss could be mistaken for a designer waste bin. Equipped with dual GPUs, Flash storage by default and up to 12 cores with the highest spec configuration, the Mac Pro will be a formidable machine, and is due this December. As Mac’s have become a standard
feature in enterprise, Drury says support for OS X has become effectively standard. And cost-wise, he says Macs represent an affordable option for games developers: “The price differential between the iMac products and workstations sold as games developer-specific is not so wide. And, for the right users, Mac’s will generate less support calls or encourage self support.” The new iMac starts from £1,149 (including VAT).
www.apple.com/uk
NOVEMBER 2013 | 43
Top-to-bottom: Adrian Drury of Ovum, Ashley Rolfe of Lenovo and Ray Gilmartin of HP
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