With the imminent release of Steam for Linux on the horizon, I’m thinking about how to reshuffle my systems for this eventuality.
I’ve already pushed my i7 out to being a linux server, but that means it’s unavailable for gaming. I’ve been using an Athlon x3 as my gaming PC as of late, and have my always-on windows system running on a E350 system for its low-power capabilities.
The other thing that is imminent is the release of Piledriver processors from AMD. I’m thinking that it would be nice to upgrade my E350 to an A10 chip. This would give me much higher graphics performance and let me run most of the lower end windows games that I want on that platform, yet the idle wattage is only about 40 watts. A bit higher than the E350’s 36 watts, but not bad. Not sure what to do with the old E350 though. Maybe I’ll make it a router.
For the main gaming and development PC, I’m thinking of running it in Linux most of the time, and trading it up to a 4-module 8-core Piledriver chip.