Hardware

Last May, a study by the Jon Peddie Research group predicted that the PC gaming hardware market would suffer a 7 percent drop in 2009 due in part to the effects of the current worldwide economic recession. Now the same group is announcing that new research shows the market will actually grow this year to $21.26 billion, up 5.6 percent from 2008.

The reversal is due to what the study shows is a "higher than anticipated consumer demand for Enthusiast, Performance, and Mainstream hardware." In addition, the study claims that 2010 will see a massive surge in this category to $27.617 billion, up 30 percent from this year's predicted numbers.

The claim that the newly revealed ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card is indeed the "fastest graphics card in the world" isn't just boasting by parent company AMD. Hardware reviews from a number of web sites have confirmed that the performance of the new card blows away the previous king, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 295.

The big reason for such a boost is AMD's decision to put two of their high end GPUs from ATI on one card. That should enable the card to run upcoming DirectX11 PC games like Dirt 2, Aliens Vs Predator and Battlefield Bad Company 2 with all of the graphics turned up but still have a decent frame rate. Of course you will have to pay a whopping $600 for that privilege. Nvidia, we have to ask . . . where are you and why are you letting AMD beat you like this?

It's a double whammy of graphics card update goodness today. AMD's ATI unit has just released their official Catalyst 9.11 drivers for their Radeon based video cards. The release notes have all the details about the new drivers which include some bug fixes for games like Tom Clancy's HAWX, Wolfenstein and World in Conflict.

Not to be outdone, ATI's main rival Nvidia has released new beta drivers for its GeForce family of graphics chips today. Among other things the beta drivers add new SLI support for a number of recently released PC games such as Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, and others.

Even though the high-end gaming PC is supposed to be an endangered species, a number of companies are still going old school and making PCs that cater to that particular audience. A number of former Alienware team members have decided to go out on their own and form their own company, Origin.

The Miami-based company has just announced their first products, the Genesis desktop and the EON18 notebook. In addition to offering high end componants and overclocking (they will even let you pick whatever case design you want) Origin also provides for custom paint jobs for both their desktop and notebook model. The big question: can this new company compete with all of the other gaming PC vendors already out there?

The folks at Razer have been very busy of late as they have announced the launch of either a new PC gaming mouse or a improved version of a previous product nearly every month. In July they announced the release of their Orochi laptop gaming mouse and in August they revealed their Naga MMO mouse. In September they even launched an improved version of their previous DeathAdder mouse product.

They managed to skip October but today Razer has yet another brand new gaming PC mouse product to reveal. It's called the Abyssus and this mouse is being designed and priced for someone who wants a Razer but who doesn't want to pay the usual premium price for one. The $49.99 Abyssus has an ambidextrous design with three programmable buttons and support for up to 3500 dpi sensitivity. The mouse is now available to purchase at Razer's web site and will be available in stores worldwide by the end of the year.

It's been a longer wait than first announced but it looks like Emotiv might actually get their long awaited Epoc PC thought based controller to its customers just before the end of the year. The device' official web site indicates that "limited quantities" of the device will ship to US customers only on December 21, just a few days before Christmas, for $299.

The device, which is supposed to let PC gamers control actions with just their thought while wearing the device on their heads, made its official debut at the Game Developers Conference in 2008 with a press event with lots of media attending. It turned out to be a bomb as the Epoc did not work as expected (at the time he company blamed interference from nearby high-powered wireless equipment).

While the device was supposed to go on sale by the end of 2008, the company delayed its release and went into semi-stealth mode until recently. During the GDC 2008 demo the company announced that developer Demiurge Studios would create a game specifically for the Epoc controller but there's no sign of such a game being included with the device.

[Via Engadget]

You may remember us reporting a little while ago that Nvidia was going to use Halloween to launch some kind of new product connected to their PhysX support. Well, that product is now outed as graphics card maker EVGA has announced the GTX 275 Co-op, a new card that has a chip dedicated just to hardware-accelerated game physics support.

The GTX 275 has a Nvidia GTX 275 graphics chip just for GPU duties plus another Nvidia chip, the GTS 250, that's set up specifically as a PhysX chip only. The card also has SLI support which means you can have three GPUs plus the extra just for PhysX support.. As you can see the card has the Joker's face just waiting to give you the creeps as EVGA and Nvidia are branding this card as the perfect way to play the PhysX-supported Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pricing for the card will be a bit high (over $300) but it looks like Batman: Arkham Asylum will be bundled with the card.

[Via PC Percepective]

Much like Dell's Alienware gaming PC division revamped their entire lineup of desktops last month, other gaming PC makers are doing the same with their products. Today Maingear announced a major revamp of their own desktop line which they have named Shift. Along with the new desktop line comes a new logo for the company and a new case design made specifically for the Shift brand. Inside the case Maingear plans to allow for a ton of high end hardware choices and with prices starting at $2.199.

Big Download got the skinny from Maingear founder and CEO Wallace Santos about Maingear's "shift" in direction, along with what he thinks about the newly launched Windows 7 and the future of gaming PCs.

Remember how Alienware sometimes launches a teaser site when they have a major product announcement? Well it looks like fellow PC gaming maker Maingear is doing something similar. The company's main site has been changed with a countdown clock that is pointing to an announcement on Monday morning.

So what is it? We have no idea although the weird animation of a red cloud sky thingie and the "Something Wicked This Way Comes" on the teaser site makes us thing that something downright sinister is going to launch. And we are all about sinister here. In any case we should know Monday morning if Maingear will launch a new PC or if the apocalypse is due.

One of the big problems with Windows Vista was the fact that Microsoft's next-gen 3D graphics API DirectX10 was exclusive to the OS. That was likely the big reason why game developers were reluctant to offer a lot of DirectX10-supported games since the audience for such games would be limited. The release of Windows 7 last week brought out a new version of the API, DirectX11, but Microsoft promised that it would make an apperance on Vista.

That time has apparently come as a new automatic update for Vista has now implemented DirectX11 support for the nearly three year old OS. With two versions of Windows now supporting DirectX11 we expect game developers will embrace using the API in their games than they did with DirectX10.

[Via Blue's News]

As part of the Windows 7 launch, Microsoft opened up the first retail Microsoft store on Thursday in Scottsdale, Arizona (a second store in California will open next week). In addition to selling items like PCs, Xbox 360s, Zunes and the like, That VideoGame Blog has posted up word that Microsoft are selling PC games in their new retail location, but in a rather cool manner.

Instead of a boxed product you go to a kiosk in the store and select which PC game titles you wish to buy. After you pay for your games, a store employee then creates the disk, case, insert and game manual in the back of the store and hands them to you. The entire process supposedly takes just a few minutes. Perhaps GameStop should consider such a move. It certainly will allow them to offer more PC games than anemic few titles they have in their stores right now. We also wonder why Microsoft failed to mention this rather cool feature in their own promotions about the Microsoft Store.

[Via Joystiq]

Last year, when LucasArts released the console version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the publisher claimed the game couldn't be released on the PC because the system requirements would be too high. That was disproven earlier this summer when LucasArts announced (shocker) a PC port of the game.

Now the PC version's developer, Aspyr Media, has revealed the PC system requirements for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition. As we have reported before, the PC version will have all of the content of the original console game plus some extra missions. You can check out the system specs after the jump:

We suspected that AMD might wait until the Windows 7 launch date to release its regular monthly driver updates for its ATI Radeon graphics cards, and we were right. The Catalyst 9.10 drivers are now available for download from AMD's gaming web site.

The release notes for the new drivers give the 411 on what's new, improved and fixed in this release. One of the new features is a new anti-aliasing method called Super Sampling that AMD claims will improve image quality for its ATI Radeon HD 5800 graphics card (the only ones that currently support DirectX11) while still allowing for solid performance. There are also some bugs addressed for games like Ghostbusters and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.

Windows 7 launches officially in stores and inside new PCs today and Ubisoft used the occasion to announce that their upcoming RTS game R.U.S.E. will be one of the first major PC games that will use Windows 7's native touch screen features.

The WWII-themed strategy game was first introduced earlier this year via a trailer that used a fictional touch screen interface to show off the game's unique RTS features such as no fog of war and using deceptive units to throw off opposing players. At E3, Ubisoft showed the game being demoed on a table that used Microsoft's Surface touch technology. Today's announcement means that any PC running Windows 7 with a supported multi-touch monitor will be able to manipulate R.U.S.E. on the screen itself instead of just the usual mouse and keyboard set up. R.U.S.E. is currently scheduled for a first quarter 2010 release date.

[via email press release]

It's the day before Microsoft unleashes Windows 7 to the world at large and their latest operating system for PCs has gotten a lot of praise compared to Windows Vista, which was released with tons of performance problems and compatibility issues.

But what if you want to upgrade your existing PC or even buy a new one? The big question for you is whether an upgrade to Windows 7 is right for you. We try to give you the 411 in this latest feature.