Introduction

State of the Union

Our own Jakub "WarSpite" Wojnarowicz has taken some time off from writing all those game previews and reviews and has whipped up a quick computer industry snapshot from the gamer's point of view. We've separated the snapshot into two parts. We present the first half today, and the second half will appear later this week. Without further delay, on with the show...

Disclaimer

First, when I am talking about the state of the computer industry, please let me make it clear that I am talking mostly about PCs, with a little splattering of Macintosh here and there. Second, I am dealing with hardware almost exclusively, but I will refer to the software industry (mainly games) on occasion to argue a specific point about hardware, or to illustrate how hardware and software affect each other's development.

This little rant of mine will be divided into 3 main sections: sound, graphics, and CPUs. In the sound and graphics sections, I will deal almost exclusively with the high end, and only with chipsets, not specific cards. Many of today's cards are just use the reference designs supplied by the chips manufacturer. It's easier just to comment on the specific graphics engines rather than all the cards based on those engines.

The CPU section is all about current and future processors from AMD and Intel. As it stands, the Macintosh is not an important, interesting or diverse enough platform to have me devote and entire section to it. This is due to the complete and utter lack of choice when buying a Mac - you can only choose from what Apple offers, nothing more. :(
(Mac fanatics, you can find Jakub's e-mail address at the top of every page. -ed.)