Computer Utilities

Using computer utilities is a very good way to keep your computer healthy.

Utilities include: Cleanup utilities, anti-virus, firewall and defragging.

Cleanup utilities. These help get rid of any cached data still not deleted by your computer. Useless files that aren’t needed anymore.  There is already a cleanup utility on windows. However I would recommend CCleaner. This keeps your computer clean of unnecessary data so that the data you need can be found quicker. Keeping your hard drive free of unwanted files keeps it from fragmenting keeping read and write times up. Computers that don’t use this tool regularly may find that again, like defragging their hard drive may become slow, and accessing data will be harder because there is useless data clogging up the hard drive.

Anti-Virus can is a very important thing to have on your computer. Protection against things like Malware and virus’. If you don’t have an anti-virus, you should probably think about getting one. Windows has a built in one however I would recommend investing in Avast! as it offers added online safety. It is constantly updated. Anti-virus’ keep your computer free of virus’ that may make your computer slow and unresponsive. Computers that don’t have an anti-virus will encounter a host of problems. E.g. using up resources making your computer slow, causing blue screens, data loss, etc.

A firewall is normally installed as part of windows and enabled by default. However it is useful to make sure it is enabled as it analyses the incoming and outgoing network traffic, which is vital to make sure nothing gets past your network and possibly steal your data. These help keep threats outside of your network so that your network works more efficiently. Having a firewall turned off means that pretty much anything anything can get into your network. Virus’ can pass right through infecting things on its way without you even knowing.

Defragging is a utility that comes pre installed with windows. There are some defragging tools that you can download e.g. defraggler. Defragging basically reorganizes the data on your hard drive to make it more easily accessible. This can boost the speed at which your data is found, boosting computer speed. Improving the read/write times of your write times. Use this with a cleanup tool to keep your hard drive clean and fast. Computers that don’t regularly use this tool will find that their hard drive read speed will slow down, making their computer slow. And making it hard to access data when it needs to be.

Computer system for game developer

Welcome to my blog, this one is going to be for anyone that is thinking of making a game and needs a powerful system to run and render your games on.

A computer system i recommend is the new mac pro. This new mac is an extremely powerful computer and the perfect system for making games on.

It has 2 AMD FirePro D700 graphics cards offering 160 GB/s bandwidth and 975 MHz each. 12 GB GDDR5 and 7 teraflops. Rendering physics and moving foliage with this graphics card will be done with ease. These two Powerful GPU’s can handle anything you can throw at them. 2k – 4k textures, phys x effects. Anything. Make your games look incredible.

The processor is an intel xeon E5 that can be bought with up to 12 cores, up to 60 GB/s PCI express bandwidth and 1866 MHz clock speed. Handling all of the other components with this processor will allow you to make full use of all the power in the machine and allow the many of thousands of processes in game to be done in the blink of a eye. Those 12 cores can run multiple tasks with ease making this computer a multi tasking powerhouse.

The 64gb of four channel DDR3 memory running at 1866 MHz. 60 GB/s bandwidth. If you are rendering a map in game engine, with 64GB alot of the things you need to load, will. And at an extremely fast pace.

The SSD is up to 1 TB and the read write speeds are upto 1200 MB/s. This makes it so that not only the computers OS will load up quickly but any large game engines you are loading up will load up extremely quickly.

	Processor (CPU)Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4440 (3.1GHz) 6MB Cache
	MotherboardASUS® H81M-E: Micro-ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
	Memory (RAM)8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
	Graphics Card4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 – 2 DVI, HDMI, DP – 3D Vision Ready
	Memory – 1st Hard Disk240GB INTEL® 530 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 490MB/sW)
	1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
	Memory Card ReaderINTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
	Power SupplyCORSAIR 750W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£89)
	Processor CoolingINTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
	Sound CardONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
	Wireless/Wired Networking10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT – AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
	USB OptionsMIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
	Power Cable1 x 2 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
	Operating SystemGenuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 – inc DVD & Licence (£79)
	Office SoftwareFREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
	Anti-VirusBULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY – FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
	Warranty3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
	DeliverySTANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
	Build TimeStandard Build – Approximately 9 to 11 working days
Quantity	1

If you are a games developer wanting to work form your bedroom  then the above picture show the specs i would recommend for that use. If your are willing to spend on an extremely good system/server PC then I would recommend the new mac pro for professional game creators wanting to create a game that will look and feel amazing.

GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)

GPU are made for processing things like floating point operations which are where the coordinates of an object. If the object is spun the coordinates will change so the graphics card must process that. These are complex mathmatical algorithms. The more powerful your graphics card the smoother your game or rendering graphics will go. It also handles ingame physics.

This is a graphics card.

HDD and SSD

A HDD or Hard Disk Drive is used to store information. It works by using a small disk that has a megnetic field on its surface, the read/write head stores data by using a positive and negative charge with series of ones and zeroes (binary data bits). Normally HDD’s work at around 7200 revolutions per second.

The read write head actually floats on a small cushion of air that is made as the disk rotates. The read/write head sits as little as 3 Nm above the disk as it spins.

 

SSD’s have no moving parts and use NAND chips to store data in a random order. The seek time is almost eliminated.

CPU (Central Processing Unit)

A CPU handles the processes within computers e.g. loading up programs. They operate in cycles per second,

MHz operate at millions of cycles per second and GHz operate at billions of cycles per seconds. The more cores that a CPU have the more instructions can be carried out at once.

If a dual core is hyper threaded it is technically classed as a quad core, 2 physical cores and 2 virtual cores. However this does not mean that the CPU speed is doubled normally you would get 15% to 30% increase in performance with hyper threaded cores.

They have caches inside which contain the processes that are constantly repeated so that the cpu does not have to be constantly used repeating these processes.

CPU’s handle the processes that go on in your computer e.g. the operations involved in running your OS. In-game, the CPU would affect things like AI and how many AI you could have active at once.

MotherBoard

Motherboards hold the components of the your computer. RAM, graphics card, sound card and CPU. It also connects the components together and allows them to communicate with each other. Other than holding the main components of the computer it also does other things.

It holds the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) which basically tests the components of a machine. It holds the north bridge and the south bridge. The north bridge handles communication between the bigger parts of a computer e.g. CPU, RAM, GPU. Whereas the south bridge handles the communication with the smaller components e.g. USB ports