The $500 Gaming PC Upgrade 215
sand writes "Building a powerful PC for gaming doesn't have to be expensive. In this article, FiringSquad spends $500 on a gaming upgrade, and compares its performance to that of a high-end Core 2 Extreme PC. The Core 2 Extreme rig is faster, but you may be surprised by how well the $500 PC is able to hang with it in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament 3."
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Newsflash: If you buy the last generation of hardware, and not the top-of-the-line video card, you'll save money!
I've been keeping my PC about one or two cycles behind the bleeding edge for this reason, and it plays games just fine
- Roach
It's all about mainstream vs. high-end. (Score:3, Insightful)
For 99.9% of people, buying very high-end stuff is a lot like buying a ferrari. Sure, it looks nice, but what practical use are you going to find for it?
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I have to say though
Practical? No, not really.
Fun, on the other hand? Absolutely.
A high-end gaming rig falls into that category
- Roach
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
As in, only desperately lobotomized morons would buy an Intel Extreme for $1000, when there are Intel Quads with as much cache and the same FSB for one fourth that, and frequency means zilch when the price difference allows you to buy liquid cooling. Now how's that 4x 4,8 GHz with 2x 4Mbyte cache sound?
As for GPUs, well, just buy the last-gen Ultra. An ATI X1950Pro 256M is now $200, anything really more powerful is at least $500. And it will run any recent game at decent speed.
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That just reminded me that OpenGL still has yet to provide their answer to DX10 - hopefully still this year, but po
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OpenGL features have four phases, but sometimes skip some of them. The first is vendor specific - e.g. NV, ATI, Apple, SGI, etc. These are written specifically for a type of hardware and are not agreed upon by anyo
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I may upgrade in the next couple years, but I am a mobile user now, unfortunat
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Friggin' amazing!
Do read TFA (Score:2)
Their point is that current-gen has multiple price points, some of them more accessible than others.
(I'm in the process of upgrading a 3 year old PC (6800 GS / Athlon 3000) so paying attention to how not to spend a billion dollars on the thing)
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Athlon64 3500+, Geforce 7900GT, and 2gb of PC3200 ram. I suppose my processor is creating a bottleneck, but I've not been tempted to upgrade it. Everything runs fine-- Just finished Prey, which was running at a wonderful framerate with all settings maxed out-- did the same thing to C&C3 a month ago, and F.E.A.R. before that. Am I just luc
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I'm pretty sure I ran it at close to max as well. Dunno if Prey was just well designed or we've reached a sort of plateau in requirements growth.
How was the full game BTW?
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I have upgraded some of the video cards (it was painful when someone used a smoke bomb in Counterstrike), but I've never spent more than $125.00 on one.
Really, when you're getting to that level, if it's not making you money, it's a pretty sens
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It reminds me of people who use to gasp when I told them I took the toll road home. "But you're wasting seven dollars a day doing that!" they would say. They didn't get that I'd gladly pay seven dollars to have an extra hour or two at home doing what I want with my time vs. sitting in shitty traffic.
I'm fine wi
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No, your just not running Vista.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1990 when I first started playing games on a PC, a computer like the one in my living room now took a dedicated building and was called a "supercomputer", yet I can't play a new game on it. And the new game cost sixty bucks.
Now, I used to be into gaming; some of you may remember the old Quake site th Springfield Fragfest. But here's where the absolutel stupidity of the game designers comes in: they design for the next generation of machines. This gains teh hardware manufacturers dosh, at the expense of game designers who can't even sell me a game any more, let alone Joe Normalguy.
A game called Screamer 2 is an excellent example of why their designing for the next generation is stupid. When it came out (1997 IIRC), there wasn't a single PC in existance that could run it at its highest resolution. Today it would be a piece of cake - except that it is written for DOS and my Audigy isn't supported. No sound.
I still get Road Rash (1995) out once in a while. A fun game is fun. Developers, by designing for the next generation of equipment, are shutting out this generation of equipment, as well as most of their possible audience. Design for this generation of equipment and sell the games for $15 instead of $60 and you'll sell a hundred times as many.
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
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You won't hear me complaining, though. Those crazy developers and bleeding-edge early adopters keep technology moving ahead at a quick pace for the rest of us.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
In many cases, such as Quake 3 and, more recently, Crysis, it's because the game engine is designed as a licensable asset that will be reused by other game studios for a number of years & they want it to remain relevant. Game engines are expensive to produce so once you've written a good one, there's few reasons not to license it out. If you plan on licensing the system & you want it to be relevant in 2-3 years, you not only need to be able to support todays top-of-the-line hardware but also be able to produce respectable results in two years when derivative titles are being released.
The other case is when you anticipate games to be played for long periods of time. A great example of this is Everquest 2 - SOE knew that they could expect the game to be actively played for 5 years or more. Given an anticipated lifespan like this you face 2 options - produce an engine with room to grow or plan on rewriting the engine so that 3 years in you can continue to meet player expectations.
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Perhaps you're looking at the wrong games. There are games that will run very well on extremely low end machines, even AAA titles. Valve's Orange Box comes to mind. There are also games that will demand a ludicrous machine to even contemplate playing. If you walk into your local Best Buy and look on the shelves, you will find system requirements on average to be overwhelmingly low. It's just that games like Crysis get a lot of press, so you're getting the *impression* that the entire industry demands expens
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I was just thinking about this weekend as I was playing the Wii. I just got a 1080p display, and some Wii games look fine on it, and others explise the Wii's technical limitations. Games like Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Strikers and Super Paper Mario (see a theme here?) look excellent. Other games, like Twilight Princess, have beautiful art in them that could really benefit from a higher resolution, the Wii's technical capabilities are
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It's an upgrade I guess.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm sure half the nerds on this site could build an entire SYSTEM that'd put this upgrade to shame at that price.
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What about the types who are still running a system with IDE drives? Or their old case has dead fans? The cost starts escalating fast. If they built an all-new system for $500 that could play Crysis, maybe then I would be impressed.
Re:It's an upgrade I guess.... (Score:4, Informative)
I recently went through having to upgrade, and I have 4 IDE drives I wanted to keep. I found most new AMD based boards only had one IDE channel. Meaning, I get to keep my DVD drive and one HD.
Most intel based boards had more. Usually 2 to 3. Not sure if this is because of the reference designs for the chipsets or not. But a lot of searching led to that conclusion.
The ASUS I just grabbed had 3 IDE channels. And 6 SATA connectors.
I got a thread on here detailing what I picked up for $450 shipped last week. It's inline with what they're showing in the article. Nice full-size ATX towers can be found for $75 and less, with a power supply. Add a single 500 gig IDE drive, $100. That's how much I paid for one a few months ago at CompUSA even. DVD R/W Drive, $30. 17" flat screen LCD, $100. Find a decent one onsalse at CompUSA or BestBuy. Heck, I walked into a 21" View Sonic on sale a few months back and grabbed it for $250. Mouse and keyboard, wireless optical 2, $40.
So you're looking around $800 for a comparable system, but including everything built from scratch. Of course, you still need an OS, and since you're talking games, you're going to be paying for that too. So you're looking at a grand total IMO.
But it would be a rather nice system.
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IDE drives aren't really an issue. For the MB in the article, sure. But that's not the spirit of the article I'd say.
I recently went through having to upgrade, and I have 4 IDE drives I wanted to keep. I found most new AMD based boards only had one IDE channel. Meaning, I get to keep my DVD drive and one HD.
You could have used usb and kept 4 IDE drives, if you really didnt want external enclosures you could mount the drives internally and connect using internal USB connectors. Or a PCI IDE card...
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But like I said I was able to find them OK for the Intel based boards. Considering most CPU's
Use VIA chips (Score:2)
Most motherboards for AMD Athlons are based on the latest chips from either nVidia or ATI/AMD which usually feature SLI/Crossfire, etc. and a big amount of SATA channels. In theory, motherboard makers could provide more IDE ports by soldering additional controller on the motherboard (and that used to be the case a couple of years ago, when IDE was king and chipsets only provided 2 chan
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There are certain pieces you can pick up from large brick and mortal retailers that they have cheap.
They do heave leaders you know, and if you're not prone to dropping $500 on worthless crap you don't need then there's no reason to be afriad of them.
Yes, you can usually find stuff online that matches the price of what they are using to get people into the store. But then you need to wait a few days to get it, you're most likely paying shipping, etc.
For example, the video
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Fans aren't that expensi
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That is a no, you wouldn't have a problem. Worst case you have to reactivate. If you've done more than the 10 installs that Microsoft let's you activate over the web then you have to call to activate. In any case, still not a problem as they will still let you activate it.
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Really? I've never had it that easy. I have a full priced version of XP Pro upgrade. A few days after building my nifty new dual core AMD system, the brand new DVD drive broke and I had to replace it. I swear to you, I am not lying when I say this, because I always hear that people never have this happen to them - Windows had to be reactivated.
And it wasn't as simple as typing in th
Re:It's an upgrade I guess.... (Score:4, Informative)
NVidia 7600GT with 256MB: $99.99
Asus M2N-E motherboard (4 PCIE slots, 3 PCI slots for my existing cards): $96.99
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (Brisbane/65 watt version): $84.99
1 GB Corsair RAM: $44
Seagate 250GB SATA drive 16MB cache: $69.99
Lite-On SATA DVD burner: $36.99
Thermaltake 430 watt PS: $39.99
Total: $472.94 not counting the $40 in mail-in rebates
That's basically everything but a case and peripherals... and my focus was getting the best bang for my buck (while being able to retain things like my PCI SCSI controllers), not trying to keep under a certain amount.
* My computer started randomly rebooting and the other night, I smelled that wonderful joy of electric melting plastic. Turns out all the 5 volt lines connecting the power supply to the motherboard melted their connectors. I cleaned the melted plastic out the matching pins on the motherboard side, connected it to my backup power supply and things have been running fine since... though I wasn't sure if it was going to work at all when I ordered my new parts last week.
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I'll let you know what I find with the DVD drive after I get it together and get my OS running again (really people, compiling gentoo isn't as bad as you think. It's not 1999 anymore)
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Since even the nerds from firingsquad are able to do their benchmark on the 30 days evaluation version.
4 components (Score:2)
CPU
GPU
Motherboard
RAM
It is assumed you already have the other components (PSU, case, HDD, etc)
Dan East
Unimpressive (Score:4, Informative)
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You left out "/stolen"
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Sure, but that's not news. You can save a lot of money by buying goods with no proven legitimate source of supply, and could have come from anywhere, under any means. Not that I'm condemning you for it, but just food for thought. A *huge* amount of goods on eBay are stolen (or worse, robbed).
If you're talking about >40% off store prices, your goods are almost certainly stolen, since that is below even wholesale cost.
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Unless the goods are used. When I sell parts to fund an upgrade I usually dump them for around half retail.
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-shrugs-
The 8800GT is something of an anomaly in the normal price/performance ratio, and its brand new so used isn't really an option. So yeah, I agree in this specific circumstance, you probably can't beat that card for less money without it being stolen parts.
But in general, you can.
That said, the OP could have used an 8800GT,
A big HOWEVER, perhaps... (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
"The GPU of choice in our upgrade article is without a doubt the recently announced GeForce 8800 GT from NVIDIA. ... ... ... Most of the online retailers sold out of their inventory of GeForce 8800 GT cards within hours of the GPU's release, but hopefully they'll be restocked shortly. EVGA is a great brand, offering goodies like a lifetime warranty and their Step Up trade-in program. We've reviewed their cards in the past quite extensively and always liked them.
Keep in mind that NVIDIA is producing all of the early GeForce 8800 GT cards for their board partners like EVGA anyway, so regardless of the brand of card you choose they're all coming off the same production line. This includes the factory overclocked cards.
Alternatives: Until AMD ships their upcoming RV670 chip, the Radeon HD 3800, there really is no viable alternative to the GeForce 8800 GT that we'd recommend. If you want to save a little money the Radeon X1950 Pro would be an excellent alternative though."
I dunno (Score:2)
Once the article actually loa
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Just some advice re: gaming and graphics. I typically limit myself to a resolution 'behind' the current target state -- my monitor is 1280x1024, i can play any game @ full options no problems. 1600x1280 or thereabouts is a substantial increase in pixels and requires alot more GPU power.
Who spends $1500 for decent ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, I know people that always buy top of the line right when it comes out. They actually care if they're able to get 71 fps in a certain game vs 68 fps. Not because they play it, but because it means something to them to have a high number.
But that's the exception, not the norm. People building their own systems like was done in the article aren't that retarded.
I was just forced into upgrading due to a motherboard that went bad on an old Athlon XP 2400 system.
A few hours of looking and a e4600 Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs of DDR2 667, decent Asus MB, and a 512 meg Nvidia 8600GT...
$450 shipped. That included seating the processor and having them do the bios upgrade before shipping for $9. This from a reputable online service that many people have used for years. Even if I had to add a case, monitor, hardrive, dvd drive, key board and mouse, you're still looking at under $750 without a problem. And that would certainly qualify as decent.
Now, I got no doubt they spent a ton of time finding just the right stuff to eeck out all that little bit of tweaking.
But overall, no one thinks when building a system yourself you need to spend anywhere near that for a decent gaming system. For top of the line to have bragging rights over a meaningless fps score, sure. But not for something that'll play everything new just fine and be fine for years.
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Not all of them are anyway!
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That exception is a market segment... (Score:2)
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Now 15 fps and the like in a FPS, sure that would be noticable. And I wouldn't call 35 fps ideal. But most probably wouldn't notice a big difference between 35 and 50. I mean, it is more then say standard TV.
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In other words, I don't know how you can say 35 FPS is "shuddering along". And there is a practical limit to FPS you didn't mention-- for instance, there's no point generating frames that your monitor can't render.
I prefer the $30 upgrade... (Score:2)
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Some PC games just arent available on consoles. In depth simulation or strategy games, more hardcore RPGs such as Witcher or NWN2:MOTB, adventure games such as Sam and Max...
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not so cheap in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Rough figures:
Athton 64 X2 4000 = £42
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H = £45
2x 1GB PC2-6400 = £80 (kingston, or £60 for cheaper brand)
GPU + CPU + Mobo + RAM = £339 (about $700)
--
http://bridgehosting.net/cheap-gaming-rig [bridgehosting.net] ?
GPU bound (Score:3, Informative)
What about a game like Supreme Commander? Which can bring a quad core processor to its knees.
SC isn't a good example (Score:2)
$500 is cheap? (Score:2)
The Significance (Score:3, Interesting)
Games today. (Score:2)
I think one of the bigger limiting factors back then was if your machine still ran only CGA or EGA when games
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So if you want to build/upgrade to a cheep gaming system pick up an 8800GT if not wait till the next high end chip hit's the market or buy 2 8800GT's.
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Unreal tournament 3 plays just fine at sane levels on a Throwaway P4-3.0ghz with a Geforce 7900GS video card, yes the incredibly slow AGP interface as well. I've been playing it on what amounts to a $250.00 computer all week.)
now if I turn on all the goodies I can make it slower on some of the more expansive and detailed arenas.. but some of the simpler short distance line of sight it still plays decently until you have 4-5 bots in the room all firing rockets like madmen..
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Re:500$ inexpensive? (Score:4, Insightful)
A bigger complaint would be:
They chose the AMD690 motherboard chipset. The big reason? The one they went on and on about? Dual digital [video] outputs (DVI + HDMI). They also had a discreet video card. Call me nuts, but if you use the DVI/HDMI output on the motherboard, you aren't going to be getting the goodness from that $250 graphics card you just picked up, are you (barring two monitors I guess).
Seriously, they could have saved some $$, or gotten a board with a better set of features, excluding it's graphical output.
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Second, there's some very good reasons for going with a board that includes onboard video. It gives you the potential to run more than two monitors (which is, I admit, very unlikely) but more important, if/when your m
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The thing is, actual gameplay is influenced by your graphics card. Loading between levels might be annoying with an old HDD, but most games don't do much disk access during active gameplay.
There's a world of difference between an old 20 or 40GB drive with 2MB cache compared to the newer ones with 16MB. And yes, there's plenty of disk access during gameplay with most games. Not only that, if you're stuck with a 40gig or smaller, you might not even have room to install those hot new games. For myself, I'm using a Radeon X1550 I bought at the beginning of the year, and it still runs the games I like. Granted, I'll probably have to upgrade to play Crysis or UT3, but I guarantee you it won't be t
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DVI's a superset of analogue VGA - it carries VGA-style analogue signals in addition to the more modern digital stuff, so adaptors are cheap and simple to make.
A few years ago, I didn't realise they're generally included with graphics cards - so I've ended up with a surplus of DVI-to-VGA adaptors. Oops!
Re:500$ inexpensive? (Score:4, Insightful)
Times are changing. Try not to make yourself look like some bitter old geezer who's behind the times.
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I doubt if it would cost five hundred bucks to replace every part in my computer. Now I remember why I quit gaming - DOOM 3.
Fucking elitists. Mod me down, "-1, he's not a rich boy".
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
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Fucking elitists. Mod me down, "-1, he's not a rich boy".
Alternatively, you could have tried playing games that concentrate on stuff other rather than the shiniest graphics?
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I never got into the MMOLPs because I was afreaid of being sucked into the addiction. Instead of selling crack, game developers should be selling twinkies.
With crack in them. They're shooing away many people they could get hooked.
-mcgrew
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OTOH, if you're making $40k a year in pre-tax household income, have three kids, a large house and car payment, and you've got CC debt issues... yes, $500 is a significant, large sum of money.
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As for rigs, I spent a crapton.. okay maybe only $750 on my mobo, gpu and psu about 2 years ago, and that particular rig is still doing okay, granted only getting about 40 fps on UT3, but it works for me, at thats at 1600 x 1200 at med to med high settings. I do plan on finding another 7800 GT (I know its old) so I can run in SLI, that s
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That is, if you
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That's called (Score:2)
Nope. That's called replacing a few parts in your PC (at most) after totalling your PS3.
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More fun is pretty subjective don't you think? A lot of people prefer the type of games you can get for the PC, see my previous post in this topic.
and would be guaranteed against obsolescence for a couple years.
I'd argue your PC stands the test of time much better. There are loads of emulators out there and you can buy classic games from sites such as Steam or
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Single-system multiplayer? (Score:2)
Just about any decent gaming videocard can hook up on an HDTV and do 1080p easily.
But how many new PC games will let me split this TV into four 540p windows? Or how many new PC games show the entire playfield at once, including all players, so that the screen doesn't have to be split?
(Besides, a 24 inch monitor in your face, or a 40 inch HDTV a couple of feet away... same deal unless you have friends around).
The point is that I do have friends around. I don't want to have to buy three extra computers, three extra monitors, and three extra copies of each game for when friends and relatives who don't own their own PC visit my house.
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That being said, I rather have a LAN party so everyone plays on their own monitor, no splitting crap, than playing multi on a single screen, which I simply can't stand (too small, even on a 60 inch 1080P, unless you're way too close to the TV for your own good), but thats another story altogether. My point simply was that the screen isn't larger. Your latest post does bring valid (
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It's so cute when the children argue over who's more grown-up.
The 4-player PC costs $2,000 (Score:2)
Let me know when a playable RTS or FPS (Metroid Prime 3 is close, but that's about it -- don't give me any of that "analog stick" shit), or a strategy game with any depth (we'll see about Civ Revolution) comes out for a console.
I buy consoles for use at family parties, where single-digit-year-old children want to play. Let me know when there's an E- or E10+-rated RTS or an E- or E10+-rated FPS that you'd find worth playing. And let me know when big-name native PC games make use of my PC's TV output and USB game controllers by supporting more than one simultaneous player per machine.
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