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Developer System Recommendations

W

wmmkiv

n00b
Joined
Jul 30, 2005
Messages
11
Hello,

I work for a small start-up. I need to pick a computer to be purchased from Dell for use by our software developers. Can anyone make suggestions of what would be good criteria for a developer system... We are looking to spend about $1500 for each computer.

I am thinking about the Pentium D840 processor, 1GB ram, large HD.

Feel free to weigh in.

Thanks!
 
What kind of development? Are they writing applications? Web pages? Servers? Games?

I can't imagine not having multi-monitor no matter what kind of work I'm doing at the moment.
 
We will be developing several web sites. So a typical developer will need to use mysql,php,apache, java servlets, jsp, etc.
 
WHere I'm working right now, we get by find with P4-1.4GHz boxes with 128MB of RAM, doing all our web development on the server, a P3-900MHz with 256MB running the DB, CGIs and webserver. +)

Following up on mikeblas, you definately want to get dual-head systems. After that the 2nd priority would probably be to get 2GB of memory if you're running all that stuff locally. Beyond this, any reasonable CPU/HDD/etc should be good (unless there's something specific to the apps you're developing that requires excessive resources) - dual-core or HT would be a plus and it would probably be good to at least be able to test on 64-bit...
 
Do you a 3.0 Ghz Xeon 2MB cache or a perntium 840D would be better? Trying to decide between a Dimension and an Precision.
 
Are you going to differentiate between test systems and development systems? You might want to have some test systems which are heavier duty servers that run the php/mysql/etc and can be easily wiped and restarted incase anything gets seriously borked from the development code. Then all of the developers can use machines with a bit less ram/cpu power since they are only doing coding (and transferring it to the test systems when segments are done), and you definitely want dual-head if you can afford it (API lookups + code all in reach is awsome).
 
Again, it will depend on what specific work you're doing.

Recommending one chip over the other is not easy, even if you're only going to run one specific application. Until you give us very concrete answers, it'll be impossible to give you a specific recommendation.

If it were for me (I do C++ and SQL, both server work and large-scale tool work) I'd rather have the dual-core machine over a single-proc machine with a large cache because I very specifically need to worry about scalability to multiple processors in the programs I develop.
 
I program java at work, using eclipse and we use laptop's, it contains a 1.7ghz pentium M and 1 gig of RAM. I really wish that I had more RAM. The CPU speed is fine, but running two instances of elcipse (eclipse 3.1 and IBM's Rational Developer - based on eclipse 3.0) really eats RAM. I'd highly recommend getting as much RAM as possible.

Mr_Superstar
 
Oh and if your not buying Dell Precisions, then don't buy Dell at all.

There other lines change components too often, so you won't be able to get replacements.

So if your not buying Precisions, I'd recommend:

A high-end Sempron, or low-end Athlon64
512 MB - 1 GB Ram
Some cheap 2D card with dual DVI output
etc.

That's all you really need for web dev.

Buy 1 or 2 extra computers for their parts and give dual displays to those who request it (know how to use dual displays).
 
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