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As 2010 draws to a close, we look back and marvel at how far PC gaming has come over the past decade. The start of the new millennium brought technology and trends that will resonate for years to come. So we take this opportunity to examine some of those technology trends and see how they might grow over or fizzle out over the next ten years. Here are our predictions of what PC gaming might look like in 2020.

It's less than two weeks away from the big day. Have you sent out your holiday cards yet? Yeah, we haven't either. We've been too busy with getting some end-of-the-year features ironed out.

• AMD has just released new 10.12 Catalyst driver updates for its Radeon series of graphics cards.
• Steam has a new Guardians of Graxia patch update available to download.
• If the Call of Duty games were ever adapted into one of those Lego-style game, this is what it might (sort of) look like.
• StarCraft II's list of the top 200 players in North America has been updated again.
• It was inevitable: WikiLeaks: The (Flash) Game.

Last year, AMD was the first company to offer DirectX 11-based graphics cards to PC gamers, beating its main rival Nividia by several months. One year later, AMD is about to release the next generation of its Radeon DirectX 11 graphics cards. It will also be the first Radeon cards to not use the ATI branding which AMD has decided to abandon.

Our sister site Engadget reports that the first two cards from AMD will be the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850. You can see the 6870 card in the above image but beyond that AMD is keeping the technical details on both cards, including pricing, under an embargo. More info will be revealed on the new cards on Friday.

Up until now Valve's Steam download service has been mostly for downloading games, demos, movies and strategy guides. Today it was announced that the service will be used by processor maker AMD for another purpose. If you have an ATI Radeon-based graphics card in your PC, Steam will automatically detect that and make available the latest driver updates for your graphics card.

This will certainly be a huge benefit for Steam owners which those graphics cards since many issues with PC games can be solved with a graphics driver update. The updates will begin later this month with the release of the 10.9 version of the Catalyst drivers. Ironically this announcement comes on the heals of the word that AMD intends to dump the ATI brand name for its graphics cards by the end of the year.

Update: Those 10.9 drivers are now available to download via Steam and from AMD's Game web site.

In 2006, PC processor maker AMD made huge headlines with its acquisition of the ATI PC graphics chip and card business for $5.4 billion. Now, four years later, AMD has decided the ATI brand name has served its purpose and will phase out the use of the ATI brand name later this year.

While the ATI brand is going away, AMD will still retain the Radeon brand for its consumer graphics chips and boards. All of AMD's current graphics products will still have the ATI brand, presumably until they are phased out. According to AnandTech, AMD is also simplifying its brands across the board in 2011 with the Vision name as the only one that will be used for all of its CPU products.

So we got a couple of new game reveals today and a big old fashioned internet argument about game patches and bugs. Just another day on the PC gaming news front:

• Want to see your idea for a player model hat actually show up in Team Fortress 2? Well we have a contest for you.
• AMD has released new Catalyst drivers (10.8 version) for its ATI Radeon graphics cards. The update includes official support for anti-aliasing in StarCraft II.
• A new and minor update for the Mac Steam client has been released along with a Garry's Mod update.
• The BioShock.com URL is not owned by publisher Take Two and now it looks like it never will be.

Things in StarCraft II land have calmed down a bit but there's still some excitement in the air about the game and about other PC game developments:

• You can now purchase and download the StarCraft II soundtrack via iTunes for $9.99.
• Is this a teaser site for Irrational Games' next title?
• AMD has released the new 10.7 ATI Radeon Catalyst graphics drivers.
• Steam has a sale of Everquest and all of its expansion packs in one bundle for $14.99.
• Steam also has Trainz Simulator 2010 on sale.
• Impulse has added some of Bethesda Softworks' older games to its line-up, although don't expect Fallout New Vegas to be added thanks to its use of Steamworks.
• Direct2Drive offers a playable Federation Ferengi as a free bonus if you get Star Trek Online from them.
• You can now watch that Ghost Recon Alpha live action teaser trailer on GameTrailers.com.
• Medal of Honor and Linkin Park? Apparently so.
• Just watch this. It's funny.

The PC processor and graphics chip maker AMD is in a bit of a pickle. It makes processors that are second to Intel in terms of market share and while its ATI division has been making progress on its biggest rival Nvidia in terms of performance Nvidia's graphic chips are still the market leader for PC gaming. Now AMD has announced a new marketing program that's aimed specifically at PC gamers.

The marketing program is called Gaming Evolved and according to AMD's web site, the program is all about one thing, "Gamers Come First". The site adds, "We will listen carefully to gamers, create solutions and technologies that closely align to their wants and needs, and fulfill our "Gamers Come First!" mandate to the PC gamers of the world." The site also says AMD will listen to game developers as well, saying, "We will deliver the technical support and guidance needed to adopt new technologies like Direct X 11, and provide the indispensible business support that game developers need to help make their games a commercial success"." Big Download plans to contact AMD to get more concrete info on what its new Gaming Evolved program will mean to the PC games industry.

AMD's ATI graphics division is doing things a little earlier than normal this month with the release of their regular monthly update to its Catalyst drivers for their Radeon graphics chips. The 10.6 version of the drivers are now available to download via the AMD Game web site.

The release notes for the 10.6 drivers reveals that the new version has a number of PC games that get performance boosts if you have a CrossfireX PC set-up. Among the games that get some performance improvements are Batman: Arkham Asylum, Company of Heroes, Dirt 2, Crysis Warhead and World in Conflict.

[Via Blue's News]

PC gamers are now more likely to have a PC rig that supports at least a DirectX 10 video card, according to the latest hardware survey monthly update on the Steam PC game download service. The latest update shows that 56.47 percent of Steam PC users have either a DirectX 10 or DirectX 11-based video card with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Another 21.55 percent of Steam PC owners have a DirectX 10/11 supported card while still running Windows XP, which is DirectX 9 only.

The rest of the survey shows some expected results including Nvidia graphics card and Intel processors in the vast majority of PC systems. Systems with more than one GPU are in a very small minority; just 1.79 percent of systems have such a set-up.