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Gamers Drive High-End PC Market
TibbonZero writes "CNN reports that "Gamers drive souped-up PC market". They talk about the cost of high end computers, as well as their place in the PC Market. For some reason I thought it was playing solitaire that drove us to buy a Geforce 4 ti 4600..."
It isn't gamers directly -- it's John Carmack, et all, over at id Software who drive the high-end PC market; gamers have to buy the latest and greatest card just to be able to run the next id game. (Doom 3 is going to be HUGE, but it's going to require a beast of a computer to run.)
CNN reports that "Gamers drive souped-up PC market". Good job CNN.
Capt'n Obvious strikes again.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
Shhhh! My parents think you need a high-end PC for studying computer science (hah!) and duly support me buying one, you're costing me real money here! ;)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
It's not necessarily the gamers that drive the market, its the system requirements for games coming out. The target platform/system specs for the next generation of games keeps rising, forcing gamers to upgrade, else they're left out in the cold.
Do you think that they're designing Doom 3 to run on a pentium 2?
... Right next to "oxygen is necessary to sustain human life" and "enough beer makes ugly people attractive."
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
If you read the article, it's really more of a fluff piece about people who build custom souped up computers that have neon lights and look like battle ships. More of a fringe market, as opposed to the consumers and businesses that actually drive the high end computer market.
Kind of like the people eternally tinker with their cars, adding chrome trim to every possible part in an automobile. Interesting subculture, but not one that really has much of an impact on Toyota or Nissan.
- Aseh
pr0n and gamers have always driven the home market.
heh, pr0n drives about every new AV (or just V) technology.
Though I'd argue that pr0n is more dependent on bandwidth than CPU horsepower.
But, I'm still pretty happy doing all my gaming on home consoles. Why would I want to get my butt kicked by 12-yr-olds with nothing better to do than hone their skillz all day? Cluster some friend's around a 36" TV and have a grand old time, and a much more affordable upgrade schedule.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Well, It is nice to be watching 10 porn videos, while ripping mp3s of the 70's porn style music, and chatting in #hotseattle on irc. Now Intel has released its 2.8ghz cpu, I can be even more productive!
gotta make sure I post this anonymously...
If you READ the article, you'd realize it isn't really about the Mhz, the Megabytes and the Refresh rates. It's about the "Hot Rod" appeal. It's about the guys with clear cases, the guys with neon lights, and the guys with flames painted on the sides of their cases. All you would have to do is click the link and see right there in front of you a picture of a clear acrylic computer case. Logic would therefore lead me to believe that the average person tries to get their comment posted to /. before reading the article.
Anyhow, I enjoyed the article. While it wasn't anything new to me, it is a niche culture that has turned their computers into center peices and art. This is the generation that loves the I-Mac, and the same generation where the PC Counterparts want to have cool looking cases too. These are the people keeping Alienware and Thermaltake in business. And while a case fan might be essential, one that has brass grilles and neon lights are not. If you read the article, you'd comment on that, not Mhz and GBs.
How many of you guys are shouting RTFM to the non-geeks that bug you? Maybe we should be shouting RTFA!
So maybe I'm showing my age here, but a painted red computer case with a great gaping hole in the side and a blue neon light does not inspire me to drool about performance.
I'm much more interested in the specs -- an SMP Alpha or Sparc machine with gigabytes of memory, 64-bit SCSI RAID-5, DVD-RAM for removable storage and a fast pipe to the outside world is much more interesting to me than a single P4 with 512MB memory, IDE hard drive, 56k winmodem and a $2,000 paint+watercool+roundcable job.
Anyway, when I think 'fast computer look' I don't think something that looks like a Pepsi vending machine, I think more along the lines of those old Thinking Machines setups or even just your basic sun4 pizza box.
Damn, I am showing my age. I should have kept my mouth shut.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Likewise, video games can drive computer technology. Though most people have commented on the lack of a business needs preventing the adoption of bleeding edge technology, I think it is more a matter of reliability. After all, if a computer crashes or makes a slight rendering or math mistake in you game, it is not going to affect anything. It is not like making a mistake in a paycheck or bill of lading. The consequences are miniscule. Likewise, if a computer crashes every couple hours in a game, as long as the game is saved, there is little productivity loss. And of course, if the buggy Intel chip were limited to games, as it should have been, we would have not had such a powerful outcry.
We see this with the original Mac. It was a very capable machine. I would spend all day and most of my night on it programming, analyzing business data, and writing. It would not crash, and would not make mistakes. The problem was that graphic technology had not advanced enough to make the machine both reliable and inexpensive. We can absolutely thank gamers for our cheap GUI devices.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black