Expert: Andre Hickman - 10/4/2008

Question
I want to build my son a pc for his video animation and game design company.he writes his own software and publishes his video games to Microsoft.I just need the breakdown of the specs I need for his new PC.I also want to purchase a Wacom Tablet for his drawings.Please help me.
Thanks jean

Answer
I responded to this yesterday...I don't know what happened.

I was trying to get a feel for how old your son is, and how long he has been designing games, as well as how he is designing them (i.e. 3D graphics or 2D, etc.), what software is he using.  

With the Wacom, it is what it is, and I wouldn't get anything smaller than a 6"x8" tablet.

If your son is already into this stuff and does the things that you are saying, then even if you want to surprise him with a machine, I'm pretty certain he has a list of specs for his "dream machine", and if I were you I'd try to figure out a clever way to get them out of him, perhaps by asking him to show you a top of the line computer on the internet, or the components that you would put in one.

If the design company and clients are a dream of his for the future, you can start much less than the absolute best.  I answered a question on 10/02/08 for a guy named priyan, and you can see some of the stuff I said to him in my past answers.  

Bottom line is if he's an expert in software design, then you need to get the specs out of him, because trust me, he knows what he wants to work on.  If he is a novice and doesn't know a megahertz from a megabyte, then it becomes much easier, and just develop a nice machine that is dual-core with at least 2gig of ram, and a graphics card with at leas 512mb of onboard memory (preferably with dual monitor capability, so you can run 2 monitors side by side), and you will be fine. You'd actually be fine with much less, but I would rather have you come in with the current technology than to start out behind and be obsolete sooner.

If you can answer the questions that I asked at the beginning, as well as a budget range, I can help you out a lot better.

Cheers,
Andre'