Croquet - some system specs for good performance

Hi all,

I thought I'd give some feedback on performance with my system so that
people might have an idea of what it's like when it flies.

AMD Athlon XP 1900, 
1 gig RAM, 
Nvidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 video card with 64 MB DDR RAM (3.3 nanosecond) -
latest driver, 41.03, and overclocked with RivaTuner

I have to say that the experience is amazing - motion is really smooth,
2D tools (browsers, paint, etc.) are really useable in 3D (the Nvidia
card does a really good job of scaling without significant blurring)
with menus, text selection, scrolling working just as well as in real
2D. Textures are really sharp and the translucency used throughout is
beautiful. I had no problem getting things started and the load time is
not very significant. Easily worth the download, but I do have a
broadband connection and I figured I would meet the requirements
hardwarewise. 

I'm only afraid that people with clunkier systems will try this out and
go - "Yeah, I guess the concept could be good if only things worked in
real time" and dismiss this as something whose time hasn't yet come.
That time is here guys - let me do the math for you!

AMD Athlon XP 1900 CPU - $109 CAD
RAM - $140 CAD (this is for 133 MHz SDRAM) - performance could be even
better with DDR, I guess, but I wanted to use the RAM I had with my
previous system
MSI Nvidia Geforce 4 card - $212 CAD
Motherboard - ECS K7S5A (this board takes two sticks of SDRAM or two of
DDR) and has built-in lan and sound - $82 CAD

Total - $543 CAD  or a measly $340 for you lucky folks south of the
border - I just recently upgraded to this (kept case, HD and rest from
previous system). That's not a lot for quite good performance. 

The point I want to get across is that the environment, even in this
alpha (beta?) state, is very usable (not talking bug free by any means
obviously) in the sense that you do feel total immersion and don't get
the sensation that, yes it's cool, but you want to escape to the
"surface" after a little while to do real work. I certainly felt like I
could actually work inside the teapot without any pain.

To everyone involved in Croquet's development - I want to congratulate
you! This _is_ the dawn of new era and this is no cliche, I assure you.
I'm so hyped I can't tell you. I'm willing to carry my system (which is
nowhere near being portable) about 1 KM just to show the guys at work. 


Woohoo!

Adrian