Future of Gaming – Where are we headed?

by Andreas Rothbauer on January 27th, 2009 at 9:31 pm EDT - 2,139 views

In these tough economic times when many people use the entertainment industry as an escape from the brutal reality and are looking for affordable family entertainment I thought it was time to reflect on the gaming industry and where we are going.  I am sure many of you have probably grown up with the NES and other 8 bit consoles – so have I. Looking back at those days of playing the Super Marios, Zeldas and constantly blowing on the dusty cartridges to get them to work makes me miss my first gaming experiences and the epic struggle of trying to play or should I even dare say beat some of those superhard video games from the early 90s. However, I loved every minute of it and doing it with friends were some of the best times I’ve ever had.

Today, video games take on a new but just as important of a role in our lives as adults. As mentioned before, money is hard to come by in this day and age and many people don’t even have jobs anymore. Still, families are seeking entertainment and the unlikely suspect of a video game console has stepped up to deliver just that. What was once a geeky and negatively looked upon activity has spread into nearly every living room and TV show in the United States and even the entire world – newly elevated to pop-culture: the Nintendo Wii.

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GPU’s at CES

by Chris Willhite on January 11th, 2009 at 1:22 pm EDT - 230 views

There’s not much in way of inovation at CES for GPU’s this year, from Nvidia we have the GeForce 295, a dual-GPU version of the 280 which packs almost twice the performance. Also from AMD we have a new mobile 4000 series of graphics chips for laptops.

The Nvidia 295 graphics card goes back to one of Nvidia’s failed attempts at dual-GPU graphics cards, but this time they do it right. With the 9000 series of graphics cards Nvidia greatly improved upon their SLi technology, pushing GPU scaling to match ATi’s Crossfire. Now with the 295’s improved SLi scaling the dual-GPU card succeeds and is now the top-performing card on the market right now, only to be rivaled by two 280’s in SLi and in some occasions the 4870×2.

A list of Nvidia 295 reviews can be found on Bjorn3d under the “Video Cards” section.

AMD decided to stay where they are in the GPU market as of right now and focus more on improving laptops, perhaps to show up Intel’s newer mobile GPU’s. AMD now has the 4000 series of GPU’s for mobile laptops, greatly improving performance for the gamer-on-the-go.  If these GPU’s perform even 75% as good as the desktop versions it’s still a great improvement for laptops. Even better if the GPU’s manage to keep cool and not kill battery life.

More on AMD’s new mobile graphics chips at AMD.

Image courtesy of GPUComputing.eu