Clustering for gaming.....

[RisnDevil]

Has anyone tried clustering several Windows XP machines together for gaming? I am looking into clustering, and wondering if anybody has done this/has any advice/has any suggested guides or reading. I can't help but imagine three low-end Athlon64s clustered together for a relatively lower cost gaming solution.... :twisted:

Thanks in advance,
RisnDevil

 

[mdd1963]

"Has anyone tried clustering several Windows XP machines together for gaming?"

If by clustering you mean "working together in unison on rendering a single scene" , aLthough a few Linux guys do this for various assorted applications, including flight simulators using 20-24 monitors, etc, I don't think it is even possible under normal Win XP or XP Pro, and even if it were possible, several A64 machines running legal versions of XP would hardly be "low cost", and would be hampered by a single or dual gigabit ethernet connection to each other, hardly impressive with the 20GB/ sec throughput of video cards of today

 

[maxxum]

No, it’s not possible with XP though it is with Server 2000 and 2003, though there may be some sort of third party software (Lightwave for instance). I cluster Linux machines for consistently/speed with serving up applications through the web (XML, PHP, MySQL). I don’t see how this would help with video games.

 

[Fox_granit]

MaxxuM is correct, unless your using windows server 2003 you won't be able to cluster together, and it still wouldn't be worth it because your spending too much money on a 50$ game. Now for video editing and such it MAYBE a good investment. It just wouldn't make any sense to do it.

 

[MisfitSELF]

There is a least one application for Windows (98 or XP) and Microsoft's Flight Simulator where you can use multiple computers to display different views and exhance your 'gaming' experience.

See:
http://www.wideview.it/

I've tried it across two machines with one have two monitors for a total of three monitors and it works relatively well. It's a bit of work to set it up though and you have to get additional software to sync up weather across the different views.

 

[steveosazninvazn]

I don't think performance would increase that much. There would most likely be a huge bottleneck from the the hooking up of the computers.