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Gaming On Windows 7
Jason Wilson writes "Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, as Microsoft promised Vista would, or a disappointment (like Vista was at its launch). Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who's covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it'll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing. 'Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.'"
Uhhhhmmmm, why do you need a super duper CPU to run DX10? That is the job of the GPU. Trying to improve your video with a CPU upgrade is a lost cause. If you're using onboard video that uses shared system memory, you never see video performance.
http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-US/AboutGFW/Pages/DirectX10-a.aspx
Simply put, DirectX is a Windows technology that enables higher performance in graphics and sound when you're playing games or watching video on your PC.
At the core of DirectX are its application programming interfaces, or APIs. The APIs act as a kind of bridge for the hardware and the software to "talk" to each other. The DirectX APIs gives multimedia applications access to the advanced features of high-performance hardware such as three-dimensional (3-D) graphics acceleration chips and sound cards. They control low-level functions, including two-dimensional (2-D) graphics acceleration; support for input devices such as joysticks, keyboards, and mice; and control of sound mixing and sound output.
Because of DirectX, what you experience with your computer is better 3-D graphics and immersive music and audio effects.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually, the OP is correct. Modern games with a recent graphics card are bottlenecked by the CPU. Specifically, GTA 4 needs a monstrously powerful CPU in order for the engine to draw the city at a decent framerate. This is probably a result of poor programming by the folks that ported the game, but in any case you need a beefy CPU to enjoy GTA4.
Everyone else has already moved on to consoles
Translation : I bought a Xbox 360 when it came out and since then I never play PC games anymore, which gives me the feeling that the whole world has done the same as I have.
Here's a hint : PC gaming has over the last 15 years been given about as many death knells as Apple.
You just got troll'd!
"Diablo3 and Starcraft2 will probably be the last two major PC game titles."
Your post shows your complete ignorance of the recent releases for the PC, like Empire total war and Street fighter 4 and other games
Lets not also forget PC's still have RTS and FPS genres licked in case you weren't paying attention, Battle field 1943, team fortress 2, left 4 dead, these are hardly "console only", and these are all fairly recent releases.
I really wish the "PC gaming is dead" crew would get a life, everyone has been saying PC gaming is dead and games still keep being released for the PC forever now.
The fact that Diablo 3 and starcraft 2 are being made is proof positive that it isn't dead, the truth is game developers who couldn't produce good games moved to consoles because they simply lost their mojo and couldn't control development costs. Also console players tend to be easier to please and also generally more stupid on average, you're also selling to mom + pop crowd who will buy any shit in a box for little johnny.
Every point you have made was made 10 years ago with the advent of the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox.
In case you weren't paying attention, Resident Evil 5 is coming to PC and also Street fighter 4 was released for the PC and it's heads and shoulders above the console versions, so much so I've bought a copy.
Enterprising Companies like Capcom will come into fill the PC void because they know there is money to be made by the vacuum left behind.
Only an idiot would write off the PC game market, those who say PC gaming is dead haven't been paying attention at all, or are not really into gaming that much at all. There are plenty of games on the PC.
A troll wants nothing more than to see people pissed off. The first thing a troll does when he gets mod points is to mod interesting or insightful comments (like the GP, which now stands at 5, interesting) as "troll".
There are six billion people on the planet, and some of them aren't very nice. Plus, even though this is a nerd site, not everyone here is a nerd.
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