dx10 posts

Okay, not awards, per se, but at least some recognition of things that didn't suck -- stuff like improved performance and big price reductions (sometimes). Generational advancement in the CPU and video card arenas brought more power to our desktop systems than ever before. DDR3 stopped costing its weight in gold. The Phenom... got its ass handed to it all year long. (Seriously, AMD? You can't roll out a replacement soon enough.)

Also, one of the biggest legends in the realm of physical vaporware finally came to market, but BI doesn't see a lot of folks ponying up two grand for the Optimus Maximus keyboard. At least it made it to market after a rumor-and-tease gestation period that rivals that of Duke Nukem 3D.

There were a handful of big stories in the realm of gaming hardware in 2008, and, for a change, they were almost all good news for gamers.

Crysis blew gamers away in 2007 with its eye-popping graphics, and met with generally high critical acclaim. Despite what people thought about the actual plot and gameplay, few could deny how fantastic looking the game was. Gamers also realized that intensely realistic DirectX 10 graphics came at a high cost. The developers, Crytek, claim that piracy had a lot to do with relatively average sales of Crysis, which may be the case, but the game's reputation for requiring expensive high-end hardware to run properly had its impact too. The game's follow-up, Crysis Warhead, released recently and claims that the game can run smoothly on a $699 PC using medium settings. We decided to compare the performance differences between Crysis and Warhead and see if the game engine received any significant optimization since its release one year ago.