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Computer games are practically
as common as computers, themselves. Almost every computer has at
least a few games already installed when purchased. Such games often
include solitaire, FreeCell, hearts, and pinball. These represent
some of the more basic computer games. The more advanced games
incorporate increasingly realistic 3D graphics and more intricate
game details than ever before. While games such as solitaire and
board games, they do not require powerful computer hardware to run
well, the more advance games do.
The experience a gamer has with
modern 3D games is very dependent on the computer system it is
played on. If the processor is not powerful enough, the actual game
code will run slowly. This is the code that processes user input and
controls where objects and characters are in the virtual world. The
user interface could become sluggish, and sound might not play
correctly. If the processor is slow enough, playing the game will
not be an enjoyable experience. While a slow processor can obviously
be a problem, the heaviest requirements from 3D games are the video
card's capabilities.
The game's code controls where
everything will be drawn, but it is the graphics card that actually
draws them. The video card interprets the objects in the virtual
world and draws them on screen. Every pixel must be redrawn this way
every time the screen is refreshed. When there are millions of
pixels to draw, and it is desirable to have the screen refresh up to
75 times per second (or more!), it is clear that a solid video
card(s) is important.
Games are constantly demanding
more and more powerful hardware. A few years ago, 3D games like
Quake 2 would run reasonably well on a 300MHz machine with 200
Megabytes of disk space and almost any 3D-enabled graphics card.
Now, games such as Ghost Recon: Advanced War Fighter require a
Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, 5 Gigabytes of disk space, and a
graphics card with 256 Megabytes of Video RAM that supports the
current DirectX 9 standard. All of the gaming computers that we
offer can play a majority of the current titles out. |
