UPDATED: 07/31/2005
Virtual Magic Kingdom game playing has two different perspectives technical perspective and strategical perspective. This post provides more technical information regarding your physical computer system when playing Virtual Magic Kingdom. The following breakdown provides some background information for non-technical users:
GB, Gbps or GHz = Gigabyte, Gigabyte per second, Giga Hertz (1,000,000,000)
MB, Mbps or MHz= Megabyte, Megabyte per second, Mega Hertz (1,000,000)
KB, Kbps or KHz= Kilobyte, Kilobyte per second, Kilo Hertz (1,000)
NOTE: Think of the above numbers in dollars the more you have the better.
(1) I have a logitech mx500 optical mouse which I find fantastic. Moving up/down/left/right is extremely smooth with an optical mouse. The connection into my computer system is by usb. There are a few computer systems within our home and I have found the tracking ball mice to be difficult to use. Tracking ball mice actually have more resistance when moving up/down/left/right. Many people use a wireless mouse, unfortunately I do not own a wireless mouse device so I cannot comment too much. The only thing I can say is wired lines have always been faster than wireless lines. If your a gamer you probably want a mouse with an actual wire connection (i.e. usb) and optical/laser.
(2) The computer system I use is extremely fast with loads of memory. A dual xeon pentium 4 processor 3.391GHz, and 2GB Physical Memory. The computer system is a Dell Dimension 8400. This may work with other operating systems but on windows xp you can do the following:
- Click on Start|Run
- Type in winmsd
- Click on Ok button
- Review the "Processor" and "Total Physical Memory"
A fast computer system definitely helps greatly with any game, especially having lots of physical memory and fast processor. My fast computer still utilizes roughly 30% processor when playing virtual magic kingdom, so the game is definitely client heavy. For example, We have another system 333MHz pentium II processor and 384MB Memory...It is dog slow playing vmk. Literally walking across the screen the character looks more like a strobe light or skipping motion. The following thumbnail provides a before playing vmk and after playing vmk processor utilization snapshot:
(3) The fast computer system above actually has a network cable plugged right into our firewall/cable modem. There is very little lag, if any lag, when playing fireworks game on this computer. The other three systems vary in processor speed and memory (A) 1.6GHz Processor/1GB Physical Memory (B) 1.1GHZ Processor/500MB Physical Memory (C) 333MHz Processor/384MB Physical Memory, but all have wireless network cards connecting into my firewall. The wireless network cards definitely cause a delay when playing virtual magic kingdom. This goes back to my saying wired lines are faster than wireless lines. Wireless technology is great, but the technology is not there yet for really fast communication speeds.
(4) Cable modem or dsl fast speed lines are almost a must playing online games. The cable company (comcast) has really fast download speeds...Running a bandwidth test I was running at 3.48Mbps. If you have a phone modem the fastest you can go is probably about 56Kbps...Figuring this out my cable modem is roughly 62 times faster. The following web site provides some great information regarding cable modems and dsl (digital subscriber lines):
There are some great web sites out there regarding what processor speed, phyiscal memory, wireless cards, pcmcia cards, etc do for your computer with good explanations. I would recommend looking at cnet.com because they go over everything within technology and have some good articles. I know computers are pretty expensive especially when going high end, but wanted people to see what computer system I am playing with.
I am learning!!
thanksssssss
