What are some computers for online games?

Battlefield 3 (2011 game): What kind of computers does the developers use themselves to test the games?

• Just wondering what specs theirs computers have!

• Answer:

  It depends on the platform. I can answer from the perspective of development for PC and Xbox The general answer for PC is "aim to dev on a box that matches the spec your customers will have". No sense having a game that only runs smoothly on hardware that is so expensive that most of your customers won't have it. You might be surprised at how "normal" the machines are on developer's desks. That's intentional. Sure, you'll find the monster rigs throughout the studio, but those are for running the game at the extreme settings levels. Way more fun to play that way, but before the game ships, it has to run well on more boring hardware as well. :) For console development, it's much less variable. Think Xbox, PlayStation - as a developer you know what the spec of the console is, and the game development kits match those specs as closely as possible. Especially in the early stages of a console's lifecycle (before the console ships), those development kits are little more than off-the-shelf grade PC hardware. Later, the devkit is basically the same as a consumer console w. a bit more hard drive space and debug connectors added on. Same memory, GPU, and CPU though.