Linux

Ask something
Question Locked

Would A Mac Cluster Work For Gaming?

0 helpful
3 replies

by q2dance

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hello everybody, I am attempting to cluster 10 G4 Powermac's together for personal research, my goal behind it is purely education yet everybody who I have told about my project wants to know if it is able to run games. I honestly do as well. I have been interested in clusters for quite some time. I am going to be using linux (have not decided which distro due to PPC)
The powermac's range in processing power from 400 MHz to 700Mhz

3 replies

by rookietech

Clustering works best on non-interactive tasks like compiling large amounts of code or rendering scenes. This is because you send the job to a remote machine it processes it and sends it back. So in the case of compiling with 2 computers you compile half the files on each machine then link them on one.

Games do not really work like this and the latency of transferring data over the network would kill it. If you are doing real-time audio a cluster will not help, but if you are applying a lot of effects to multiple channels you may be able to use a cluster to reduce final output times.

Tiger has xGrid for clustering built in so you may see more of Apples pro apps take advantage of this. XCode can already offload compiling tasks around the network.

by larryd4

For playing games, it would be a definate no.
But as a server for a game that does not require a GUI for the game I say yes, maybe. Can the Powermac's run Linux versions of game servers for say Left for Dead? If so then yes!

This discussion is closed to new replies.