PC for development

slap

Hi there,

I'm thinking of building/buying a PC for development (mostly .net).

Would you recommend building a beast of a thing (i7) or is this really required.

Also, what about moving to a 64bit OS? (Windows 7)
Would this mean that any apps built under 64bit would not work under 32bit PCs?

Which would you recommend, 64 or 32?
Apologies for the noob questions

Thanks in advance,
Slap

Kidchameleon

Visual Studio likes to have a fair bit of ram to play with, concentrate on that more-so than the processor... As for the 64 / 32 question, not sure. Would be interested in peoples responses to that...

BostonB

Visual Studio 2005 onwards need 4GB+ in my experience and is a dog with less than 4GB. Same with MS SQL server.

FSL

If you are developing for other than personal use I would have a multi boot or VM setup so I could test on various OS's.

Even if you are developing for only one OS I would still have that OS set up as a multi boot, one with the development software on and one without so you can check what, if anything, needs to be installed with the application to make it work.

If you are developing multiple applications I would also have a cloned copy of the vanilla OS so I could restore and test each application independently from the others.

hobochris

my rough spec for a dev machine would be:

-i7 cpu
-8gb ram + (would probably go for 12gb.. can't have enough ram)
-sd primary hard drive, sata secondary.
-dual monitor capable graphics card, get two screens and thank me later.

deadbloke

Surely an uber-pc isn't required for small time/personal dev work? I manage to do a nice bit on my fairly average-by-now laptop. The dual screens is a must though!

fasty

And i5 and 4GB RAM with a dual screen setup is more than enough.

BostonB

deadbloke wrote: »

Surely an uber-pc isn't required for small time/personal dev work? I manage to do a nice bit on my fairly average-by-now laptop. The dual screens is a must though!

I guess it depends what you are doing. With MS SQL and VS open my machine Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz crawled until I got more RAM. 2GB>3.5GB

deadbloke

I don't use Visual Studio, but is all that beefy .net stuff that big a hog on resources? The system requirements for VS2010 are quite low - http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/products/2010-editions/professional

kayos

If you dont get enough ram you page, if you page and you have a crap disk system you grind to a halt. So RAM and a fast disk system would be the thing I would shell out for most. CPU, unless planniing on doing a major CPU intensive application, would be the lowest of the wish list for me. In saying that I'm not talking budget entry level CPU but no need to go out for "Extreme Edition" an i5 or above should be more than enough.

A VM setup, as previously mentioned, would be good as well if your targetting multiple platforms.

BostonB

I'm messing around with a i3 machine at the moment its its about 4x faster than my dual 3.2 Xeon. One job that takes me 4 days now takes me one.

kayos

deadbloke wrote: »

I don't use Visual Studio, but is all that beefy .net stuff that big a hog on resources? The system requirements for VS2010 are quite low - http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/products/2010-editions/professional

That would be the minium specs your looking at. Hell I wouldnt want to work on a box with those specs for anything never mind development.

Current VS2008 box in work is a P4 3GHz with 2Gig of RAM and a slow HD. Opening one solution gives me time to go grab a coffee

ressem

With regards to x64 and compatibility of the programs you compile, you just set a compiler flag /platform. The default for code compiled for .Net is to work with any CPU (including itanium supposedly).

There's an environment flag for building C++ in x64 mode, again it's not the default.

64 bit win 7 Professional is fine.

I know it's loaded with debugging code, but the beta version of VS 2010 crawls compared to 2008.

i5 should be fine. Depends what you're building, how much use you make of VMs.

Dual screens are very nice. I like the dell ones which rotate 90" clockwise to give a A4 portrait view for documents but your mileage may vary.

slap

Thanks for all your replies.
You've all been very helpful.

I see that option to target Any CPU/x86/x64 in Visual Studio. Can the same thing be done with something like Eclipse/Java?

Slap

Ginger

My current dev machine is a Core i7 930 and 12GB of RAM. Also have 2 24" screens and plenty of hard disk space (10.5TB)

The beta of 2010 there was a flag that didnt make it to the release that you could speed up the startup .. http://www.certsandprogs.com/2009/10/speeding-up-start-up-of-visual-studio.html#axzz0oSnRSKrk

I use quite a few VMs and the multi core processer and RAM make it a lot easier. Also with SQL Server plenty of RAM helps, tho you should restrict the RAM usage otherwise it will take all you can throw at it. I have test VMs running different deployment targets such as OS's and x86 editions.

Also with SharePoint 2010 development you need a certain amount of juice.

I use the x64 edition of Windows 7 Ultimate. Sometimes you need to set the flag for the deployment architecture but most of the times its fine.

Again depends on what you are going to be developing.

ressem

slap wrote: »

I see that option to target Any CPU/x86/x64 in Visual Studio. Can the same thing be done with something like Eclipse/Java?

Slap

Not with the standalone program. With Java, you'll be creating platform independent jars and wars. This would only come up if you're interacting with stuff that uses C in the background, like the SWT. In which case you call the relevent build task in the SWT ant build.xml script. http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#gtk64

Not something that most would be messing with.

privateBeavis

also you'll need to run Windows 64bit if you want to have more than about 3.5-4GB RAM:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx

I'm running Vista 32bit with 4GB RAM but actually only uses about 3.25GB due to the limits of 32bit.

slap

Wow.
Okay, this is getting a little complicated for me.

So, it seems fine to install Win 7 64bit and develop .net apps etc. True?

With regard to VMs...
Is the idea to then install Win 7 32bit as a VM? (for Java?)
Then maybe Linux as VM, so that I'd have multiple OS's for targetting?

Which VM should I use? VMPlayer? Hyper-V?

@Ginger: can i d/l a VM of SharePoint? Or do I have to go through an entire install - Server + SharePoint?

Once again, apologies for the noob questions. All the setup seems quite distant to development. Wish I had listened in college

Slap

ukdirect

I prefer 64 bit system then 34 bit system , as 64bit computing more fast and reliable .You will feel very smooth operations.

ressem

slap wrote: »

So, it seems fine to install Win 7 64bit and develop .net apps etc. True?

Yes.

slap wrote: »

With regard to VMs...
Is the idea to then install Win 7 32bit as a VM? (for Java?)

No.
Just download and use eclipse 32 bit in windows 7 64 bit (unless you build your own or download the beta version, they currently only offer 32 bit build for windows for the mainstream Eclipse ).

If you run into problems with the 64 java runtime, then you can use the free Windows XP pro virtual machine.

slap wrote: »

Then maybe Linux as VM, so that I'd have multiple OS's for targetting?

If you think that you'll make use of it. If you're just getting started with developing then the linux and Win Server /sharepoint VMs might just be a distraction.

slap wrote: »

Which VM should I use? VMPlayer? Hyper-V?

Hyper-V is a role for windows server 2008 or 2008 r2. The Windows 7 Pro equivalent is Virtual PC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Or VMware, or Sun Virtual Box. Others might be a bit complicated.

slap wrote: »

@Ginger: can i d/l a VM of SharePoint? Or do I have to go through an entire install - Server + SharePoint?

The Microsoft-supplied demo VMs for sharepoint as far as I've seen require Hyper-V, i.e Server 2008 as the base operating system.

Sparks

RAM, RAM and more RAM. Always more RAM.

Horsepower's good, as it lets you run virtualbox to test against different platforms, and for LAMP stack stuff, lets you run the full stack without much slowdown. Even for app development, it lets you run emulators at a high enough speed to test usability.

Multiple monitors are exceptionally valuable. The more screen real estate the better. Personally, I prefer three to two and at least one in portrait mode for the code editing, but that's personal taste - some prefer two, some prefer landscape mode.

Personally, I'd prefer a real behemoth for dev work (I can't think of a worse waste of money than a cheap dev machine when developer's time is so expensive), but maybe not the very latest - about one or two steps behind the bleeding edge to get stability is about right IMHO.

Webmonkey

+1 on the RAM and especially if you using Visual Studio. It eats the stuff. I'd say 4GB would be recommended.

lmimmfn

hobochris wrote: »

my rough spec for a dev machine would be:

-i7 cpu
-8gb ram + (would probably go for 12gb.. can't have enough ram)
-sd primary hard drive, sata secondary.
-dual monitor capable graphics card, get two screens and thank me later.

i agree with most of this, ive only 3Gig on my i7 and badly need another 6( i have several PC so i run db servers or whatever on them and remote connect in ).
Depending on the type of development i would consider AMD's new 6 core( insanely cheap £165 for 6 core 1055T and £250 for 1090T on overclockers.co.uk ), that would be fantastic for sticking a database on 1 or 2 cores and using the rest of clients/servers and IDE

2 screens is a must, ive 3( with 2 gfx cards ), but theyre only 2x19" screens and a 22" screen, im hoping to replace the 3 with 3x24" later in the year.

As for the SSD, hmm, its debateable, fine for sticking the OS on and if youre constantly crashing a PC with your code, but never ever use it for source control as you'll destroy it, and theyre still too expensive and a Samsung F3 is a fantastic and much cheaper alternative

Oh and i have my i7 920@4Ghz, really helps when running a tonne of test cases, 2mins for a few 1000 integration tests, compared to 40 mins on my POS work laptop lol

To go with what is required for a dev PC, id put the following as must haves:
1. Big can headphones( to listen to tunes and drown out everything else )
2. A decent keyboard and mouse, my PC is also a gaming rig so i have a G5( with extra weight ) and a G15 keyboard( which i find excellent for coding due to the lower profile keys and the backlight )