Hi, This is for an assignment im working on at university on games and media and animation course, im asking for help on a project a project and would be very grateful if anyone could lend me some of their experience. From what i understand games are one of the primary reasons PC Technology continues to be pushed further and further, my project requires me to describe the individual game related components and features in a PC and describe the impact they had on games. I am having a lot of trouble finding resources on this subject that really links games and the pc hardware behind them, and i am really kind of hoping some better educated people on here could either shed some light through their own opinions or possibly direct me to some information i have missed regarding specific milestones in gaming history, or specific games that deserve a mention? I would be very grateful for any help regarding this as i am not a technically minded person and find it quite challenging lol, Thanks :) p.s I am sorry for posting this on multiple boards, i was unsure where to go with it and i also really needed some help with it, i apologize for upsetting anyone in advance :)

i disagree. games are the reason consumer level graphics hardware is pushed further and further, not pc technology in general

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Original post by Aerodyll From what i understand games are one of the primary reasons PC Technology continues to be pushed further and further, my project requires me to describe the individual game related components and features in a PC and describe the impact they had on games. I am having a lot of trouble finding resources on this subject that really links games and the pc hardware behind them, and i am really kind of hoping some better educated people on here could either shed some light through their own opinions or possibly direct me to some information i have missed regarding specific milestones in gaming history, or specific games that deserve a mention?

In the early to mid 90s, gaming pushed through changes in sound cards, so that we went from PC speaker beeps to digitised sound in a matter of years. There wasn't really any significant pressure from any industry other than games for better sound, although the AdLib card had some traction. After that, cards like the original Sound Blaster and the Gravis Ultrasound pushed things forward, with wave synthesis getting better and better until storage capacity and CPU power meant that they could be replaced with digitised sounds. Gaming also drove the 3D audio expansion, though Creative essentially killed that off by driving their main opponent into the dust.

Similarly, in the late 90s to the present day, a similar thing happened with graphics technology, where people started using dedicated cards for 3D graphics that did nothing in 2D mode. 3DFX are the company that led the way with this, but they started losing touch with what people actually wanted and ended up out of business. Competition in this area has been almost solely for the games market, although most of the techniques used were learned long ago for general purpose rendering.

However, beyond graphics cards and sound cards, the hardware changes are quite small, and in fact the technology now improves in ways that are hard for games to benefit from, such as multiple core processors. It may or may not be a coincidence that PC games that push the technology barriers are not selling very well these days.