I'm going to speak a little on the programming side, hope you don't mind.
If you intend to write games for Mac OS X or iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch), you absolutely cannot do this without a Mac computer, and a newer one at that (10.5 should be good, but I'd recommend 10.6 or even better wait for 10.7). Apple has made it pretty much impossible to develop for Mac without it.
An alternative is to turn a normal PC into a "Hackintosh" by simply installing OS X on it, but this is a violation of Apple's EULA for OS X and OS X has strict hardware requirement in comparison to Windows and Linux (which are built to work on pretty much any hardware; except Windows is limited to x86/x86_64 processors); so you'll need to select the hardware very carefully (there's a site on the net dedicated to this, google should help).
But you don't need a $1000+ Macbook to have a genuine Mac computer -- the Mac Mini** is a surprisingly powerful little desktop computer and costs around $600 for the basic unit; which is fairly cheap for an equivalent Windows-based desktop.
If you plan to develop for Linux (or Unix/X11 in general) or Android***, you should go with Linux.
Linux has the widest hardware support of any modern Unix-based OS and there's a few distros like Ubuntu that are excellent even for Linux novices. Linux also has readily-available cross-compilers for Windows and Windows CE (aka Windows Mobile) through mingw (the gcc port to Windows), and can run some windows applications through Wine (Wine is very finicky). Also, if you have a Mac, you can install Linux in a second partition and switch between OS X and Linux through Apple's "bootcamp" program, which is available for free of their site (and I believe it is shipped with OS X 10.6).
If you plan to develop for Windows, nothing beats Windows. Wine, quite frankly, blows. Developing applications on Windows gives you access to Microsoft's powerful Visual C++ compiler (aka MSVC), which is generally preferred for Windows and Windows CE development. Some like myself who became too used to gcc on Linux tend to prefer mingw (Minimal GCC on Windows, or something along those lines), which not only ships with a few of the development tools we're used to on Linux, but also the familiar implementation of libC and STL (and some stuff to ease the translation between a POSIX and non-POSIX environment). You can also install Windows to a partition on a Mac and switch between the two with bootcamp. It is also possible to compile GCC to cross-compile to Linux from a Windows PC (or even from a Mac), but this process is generally about as painful as having all of your wisdom teeth pulled by a dirty hobo with a rusty G-clamp and no anesthetic; unless you're familiar with GCC internals (in which case my post should be largely useless to you anyway) I would not advise even attempting this.
You can dual-boot Windows and Linux freely. There is also "coLinux", which runs a linux kernel as a cooperative kernel on Windows; but this isn't nearly the same as having an actual Linux distro installation.
So you're probably thinking: "The solution is obviously to get a Mac, and install both Windows and Linux on it!" -- not quite. Boot camp only allows you to install one "guest" (for the lack of a better term, this is actually a misnomer on my part) system IIRC, so you can't do this. Your best bet would be to have two computers -- one a Mac mini, the other a Windows-based PC with Linux dual-booted. You can develop and test on both. I used this setup for a short time before I had to leave my computers at home (since then I've bought a Windows laptop, but not another Mac) for convenience's sake.
** - The only problem you may have with the Mac mini is that it does not come with a monitor; but that is easily remedied. Newer Mac minis also dropped support for VGA and picked up mini-DVI, but many newer monitors with VGA ports have DVI ports as well and the Mac mini comes with a DVI-to-mini-DVI cable. You can also find plenty of VGA-to-DVI cables, in fact Apple sells one for about $15.
*** - Google provides an Android SDK download for Windows, Linux, and OS X. You are not limited in how you can develop for the Android at all. However, I found it significantly easier to use on Linux, especially when building native code using the NDK.
As for hardware specs, I agree with the above. Once you're over 256MB of RAM (on Linux or XP -- more like 2GB on Vista and probably just as much on Windows 7) and 2GHz processor speed (or dual core), it shouldn't be an issue.
In fact, I recommend testing on the lowest-grade hardware you can find that supports your target platform. (A very typical [for its time] PC bought in 1999 with Windows XP and Ubuntu 7.10 is what I used back home) This allows you to truly stress test your application, and see how it would do even on the unlikeliest of your end-user's system hardware. That said, compiling took for several minutes on that thing (so did switching between Windows and Linux but that was less avoidable), so I recommend it for testing ONLY and not actually writing code.
PS: If you have a multiple-computer development setup, I recommend storing everything in an external hard drive. The size you need will depend on your project, but 1TB USB 2.0 hard disks are commonly below $100 nowadays and I'm confident that will be plenty.
Best computer for game development.
I can't speak for artist needs but as a programmer HP Z800 is pretty pro, though they don't get all that interesting until you get to the dual 6-core configurations.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/12454-12454-296719-307907-4270224-3718645-3718646-4193576.html
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/12454-12454-296719-307907-4270224-3718645-3718646-4193576.html
Build your own pc and use a core i7 920 then something like the geforce 9800gt 8gb of ram and a copy of Win 7 64bit
I just got a 6-core moboproc at newegg.com for $270, works good, is fast. Also got 4gb ram for $45 since ddr2 and ddr3 slots look similar.New power supply and case for $150 locally too! Already had the 460 and 3d glasses/screen from nvidia. They also sell assembled gaming and non-gaming computers, however game building typically has not been very demanding, although some 3d modeling can be....you don't actually have to render anything very often! Programming is a text editor with a rarely run compiler. Also if you're indie maybe target old computers for free, make it as simple as possible to practice shipping and having players, and start free with donations until you get players then plan.
Just my two cents, monitors, monitors, monitors. The more the better. There is never too much data, too much code, too much documentation visible at once. I run three monitors and I don't know how I ever got by without them. Particularly the portrait one. When it comes to landscape though 16:10, not 16:9. Acrobat reader fits two letter sized pages side by side just right at 16:10, but leaves a bit to be desired at 16:9. A 5770 supports DirectX 11 and runs three monitors. It's a bit underpowered but is a good target. As far as I know nVidia doesn't support three monitors without two cards. Two PC's are nice too. It's nice being able to restore to a clean OS install, but you don't really want to do that on your main machine. Programable keyboards and keypads like the Logitech G510 and G13 are really handy as are gaming mice. I hate remapping keystrokes in applications and with a programable keyboard you don't have to. Just map whatever contorted key combination is required. Dual drives are nice for doing mass conversions reading from one drive and writing to another. Almost every CPU has multiple cores and you need them if your going to multi-thread. Failing to lock something becomes a whole lot more obvious when two threads change it at the same time instead of in sequence.
Overall you're testing. You don't really want anything more than the minimum system requirements. If you're running $1k worth of GPU's then it's easy to release something that going to require your user to have $1k worth of CPU's and there aren't many of those users. If you want a high end gaming machine then use a seperate machine. A $600 machine will do development just fine. The issue is productivity, not performance.
Overall you're testing. You don't really want anything more than the minimum system requirements. If you're running $1k worth of GPU's then it's easy to release something that going to require your user to have $1k worth of CPU's and there aren't many of those users. If you want a high end gaming machine then use a seperate machine. A $600 machine will do development just fine. The issue is productivity, not performance.
What I need is a computer with enough power to run z brush max, maya and C+ etc. Basicly a computer powerful enough to support building a game from the ground up without slowing down.
Everyone in this thread is preaching serious overkill, and perhaps overkill is what you want (it certainly sounds like you can afford it). But I will chime in with the opposite side of the coin:
Everything you described there, will run just fine on a $500 laptop, which you can buy off-the-shelf from BestBuy/Wallmart.
Now, I personally don't recommend using a laptop as a primary dev machine (mostly due to the low screen resolution), but even a low-end laptop has plenty of horsepower for the needs you described. So I would suggest you take a closer look at the other things you will need to use this machine for (i.e. do you plan on using it as a gaming machine?), and come back with an additional set of requirements.
I just use my aging IBM laptop. The only fancy thing about it is that I have a second monitor I can plug in when I have it on my desk. Two monitors is definitely a huge productivity booster, since I can keep documentation up without having to constantly flip windows.
You don't really need a top of the line PC to do anything, and you need to keep in mind that not everyone in your audience will be playing on a supercomputer. In fact, most won't be. If there's any consolation for people like me it's that if I know it works at a fine framerate on my computer, no one else is ever going to have a problem with it.
You don't really need a top of the line PC to do anything, and you need to keep in mind that not everyone in your audience will be playing on a supercomputer. In fact, most won't be. If there's any consolation for people like me it's that if I know it works at a fine framerate on my computer, no one else is ever going to have a problem with it.
never buy alienware, you're paying a grand just for cable management. Always build your own pc, it's not that hard, in fact it's very easy. Peruse newegg.com for cheap hardware (don't pay for faster delivery either, newegg has the tendency to ship stuff too fast 3 day always shows up in atleast 2 days for me.)
It's pretty much impossible to buy a bad PC in this day and age even off the shelf as long as you clear out all the junk OEMs like to install to make it *unusable*. Just make sure you've got a decent graphics card and the rest will be fine. I have a quad in my desktop and most high-end software like Max and Premiere can barely use two cores when rendering/baking - though interestingly Blender has absolutely no issue using all four at 100% when asked.
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