how much PC do you need to build a given game?
its getting time for me to get a new dev pc. so the question is how much pc does one need?
when a game is released, some set of system specs will be the "average" game-capable PC at that time. it seems that set of specs should be the recommended specs for that game. does that make sense?
so to test the game during development, you'll need a PC that at least meets those recommended specs. and you can draw less on slower PCs, and draw more on faster ones. you could also do a similar thing for update with a cap for max active entities (more entities on faster CPUs and fewer on slower ones). and for DX games, WARP could be used to test graphics beyond recommended specs that your card couldn't do. does all this sound right?
i'm not doing anything crazy like pre-computing all the possibly visible surfaces in quake on a mips alpha running 24 by 7 for an entire month, so the recommended specs should be good enough for development as well as testing. granted - a better PC would speed development, but for the moment i'm figuring out what i need at a minimum, not what would be nice.
so would it be safe to say that at any given time, you should be developing for - and testing on - a PC that will be "average" when the game is released?
so far i've spent an entire day looking at recommended system specs for new games, i7 6700 series chips, fury x cards, r9 cards, cache size, type, and speed, benchmarks, and stuff like that (til my brain turned to mush!).
seems there are 6 parts to consider: CPU, vidcard, ram, cache, HD size, and a power supply big enough for the vidcard.