Ideal hardware for hardcore system

[casnix]

So, I'm building a laptop. Which I intend to use mainly for OSDevving, and I thought, "Well, what intel processor would be best suited for speed and capability in a laptop?" Thus I ask:
In the ideal machine for developing a system:
A) How much RAM do you find ideal?
B) What processor (Model, Manufacturer, Brand) do you find best?
C) What size physical storage do you find ideal?
D) What ports do you find most useful (Ports as in USB, CD/DVD, floppy, etc., not COMM (I think))
E) What graphics card do you find best for 3D gaming
F) I'm sure there's things about building a machine for OSDev that I'm missing. So please, if you have any insight/experience with this, post it!

Thank you!
~Matt

[AJ]

Hi,

Do you have any idea of the budget? If there's no limit to the budget, the answer would just be "Get the Biggest / Fastest" for every question.

Cheers,
Adam

[NickJohnson]

OSdev doesn't require much, because you'll probably be doing most of your development with an emulator. Therefore, get something with sufficient RAM for doing emulation (although your OS probably won't need much) and a processor with virtualization extensions (i.e. VT-X for Intel, which means anything but Atom.)

Also, this really has nothing to do with OS Design and Theory.

[Brynet-Inc]

Building?

[Combuster]

Which I intend to use mainly for OSDevving
(...)
E) What graphics card do you find best for 3D gaming

Err, what do you want?

A video card for OSdev (read: testing graphics drivers) purposes is strictly different from a video card for gaming purposes. If you want to hack an existing card, get a trio64. If you want to play games, get the latest nvidia/ati.

[CrypticalCode0]

Berkus could you agree to Nvidia/AMD?

[Brendan]

Hi,

B) What processor (Model, Manufacturer, Brand) do you find best?

Whichever CPU is the "most different" to whatever I already have. If you already own 5 different "core 2" machines then buying another "core 2" machine isn't going to increase the variety of machines that you can test your OS on much.

C) What size physical storage do you find ideal?

Unless you store lots of movies it's impossible to buy a hard drive that is too small; and I'd care a lot more about performance/seek times than disk space. For a desktop system I'd want multiple devices (e.g. 2 fast drives setup as a RAID mirror, and a larger/slower/energy efficient drive for backups), but for a laptop you don't have the space and probably wouldn't want the extra power consumption and weight if you did. If price doesn't matter, consider not having a hard drive at all (e.g. SSD).

E) What graphics card do you find best for 3D gaming

If you're planning to do 3D gaming on your OS, than you need to write good video drivers, so you need good documentation. In my opinion, the "least worst" documentation is Intel's onboard video (especially if you can find an older version of it).

If you're planning to do 3D gaming on Windows or something, then for best results forget about a laptop (they can't handle the heat generated by high performance graphics and busy CPUs, and you end up with "crippled to reduce heat" hardware). Instead, go for something with a pair of Nvidia cards with SLI.

F) I'm sure there's things about building a machine for OSDev that I'm missing.

Chipset, ethernet and sound. Choose something you can get documentation for (most likely Intel, but download the documentation for as much of the hardware as you can before purchase).


Cheers,

Brendan

[DavidCooper]

If it's for OS dev, you may want to work on something that ordinary users of your OS will typically be using it on. If your OS is intended for servers, you want to run it on a big box with many processors and all the rest of it, and if you OS is intended for the ultimate in gaming you'll need a similarly big box of tricks, but if you're aiming at mainstream users you might think about aiming for something more like a netbook with multiple processors - the popularity of the ipad shows how much size matters, and there's likely to be a merging of netbooks and tablets in the next year or two when Intel finally delivers on its promise of more economical processors and when large amounts of flash memory can provide the capacity of a current hard drive at affordable prices. Tablet computers will always need a screen cover, so that might as well be a keyboard that folds in underneath when you don't want it, and a touchpad is often superior to touching the screen where your finger blocks your view of the pixels you're trying to select: what counts against netbooks at the moment is that they're too heavy and hot, their screen resolution isn't high enough (they need 1080x1920) and they tend to lack grunt. All of that will change before long, and I reckon they'll evolve into the main machine people use (whenever they aren't trying to do things on a phone, though there will be a further merging of these technologies later on when we start wearing screens in front of our eyes). I'm aiming my OS at that kind of machine and see it as an advantage to work for the time being with something where the processor isn't that quick and the memory is small. When I run it on a machine with all the bells and whistles, it should fly, but an OS designed on a powerful beast of a machine may grind to a halt when you try to run it on something more basic.

I know the OP specifically mentioned a laptop and 3D gaming and the title includes the word hardcore, so much of what I've said isn't directly relevant to him, but other people may be influenced by this into thinking in a direction that doesn't suit their actual needs.