I’ve been heads down on a number of freelance writing projects, many of which are finally reaching fruition.
I had fun writing an article on new graphics technology as it affects games. That ran in the August issue of Maximum PC, and is online now at MaximumPC.com. The real bummer is that I had lots of cool screen shots, most of which the magazine ran. But the need to reduce size for both print and online makes them less effective. Still, I think DirectX 11 will have the biggest impact on PC gaming since DX8.
Also up on Maximum PC is a review of Bigfoot’s Killer 2100 network interface card for gamers. It’s an interesting product, in that it works as advertised, reducing lag and ping times… but most people won’t notice any benefit. I’d class it as a luxury product, maybe useful to the 0.5% of gamers who compete online, care about winning and have the insanely fast reflexes to notice the small differences.
More stuff after the jump.
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What’s Going on with Nvidia?
Before I dive into this analysis, a bit of disclosure is in order: I worked at Nvidia briefly (roughly nine months) back in 2000, prior to leaving to help launch ExtremeTech.
Nvidia is one of those companies that I have a somewhat bipolar relationship with. On the one hand, they’re technology driven, have a large percentage of the best 3D graphics architects under one roof and have, in the past, constantly pushed the edge of the envelope, both in technology and in marketing. They’ve driven some important and cool technologies in the past decade.
As with any fast growing technology company, though, Nvidia is more complicated than just being a cool tech company.
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I started writing about technology back in the mid-1990s, writing some of the first hardware reviews for gamers in the old Computer Gaming World. Over the years, one of the constants in the game business is the constant tussle between console gaming and PC gaming.
Consoles have an edge for several reasons. Marketing support and developer assistance from the console companies is one. But the big deal is the known, consistent platform. When a game console ships, it’s good for at least five years. It’s possible that the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 will last longer than five years. Having a consistent platform makes issue like debugging easier from the developer perspective. From the gamer perspective, persistent platform problems (eg, graphics and sound drivers) are not an issue.
PCs have had the edge in overall bleeding edge performance. At some point in the console life cycle, PC games often look substantially better in the eye candy department, and developers can do more stuff with a PC than they can with a console.
That dynamic seems to be shifting.
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