What is the next leap that is needed for gaming-oriented PCs? According to Dell's gaming PC subsidiary Alienware it's not a faster processor or graphics card but moving to a more powerful operating system. In a new News.com article Alienware's desktop product manager Marc Diana says the major PC hardware companies (Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD) need to move collectively to fully support 64-bit based operating systems.

Ever since the release of Windows 95 13 years ago, most PC games have supported 32-bit based OSs with only a few that have fully supported 64-bit systems natively. In fact Diana admits Alienware doesn't even bother to offer 64-bit based PCs because the driver support for such a system isn't available, in their opinion. Yet going to a 64-bit OS would not only increase performance for PCs in theory it would also allow gaming PCs to have memory that can break the current 4GB limit that 32-bit OS have.

Diana said other factors could also help in making more powerful PCs in the future including moving to DDR3-based memory that use less power but are clocked higher than DDR2-based memory. At the moment DDR3-based memory is still much more expensive than the norm.

One of Valve's biggest benefits it gets from its Steam download service is finding out exactly what people have in their PC rigs via a voluntary survey. Today Valve released the latest results of their hardware survey (covering the period between Nov. 15, 2008 and May 15, 2008).

The results make for some fascinating reading and speculation. Among the highlights:

• Intel accounts for 58.48 percent of PC processors in the survey compared to AMD's 41.51 percent
• Video cards based on NVIDIA Geforce chips took up the top eight places on the survey list; the highest ATI based card was the Radeon 9600.
• Gamers still apparently have small monitors for the most part; the highest percentage is for 16 inch monitors with 25.8 percent. Only 6 71 percent of survey owners have monitors that are larger that 21 inches.
• 64.49 percent of PC owners in the Steam survey have microphones
• Windows XP still is installed in a whopping 80.92 percent of PCs in the survey; over a year after its launch Windows Vista is installed in only 17.61 percent of PCs (that includes the 64-bit version)
• 32.59 percent of PC owners in the Valve survey have hard drives that are higher than 250 GB.

If you have a gaming PC, you might need all you need is a powerful rig with a great graphics card, a big monitor, a super sound system and a gaming oriented mouse and keyboard. Oh, but 1Up.com says, "Wait a second, partner.". They have taken a look at some other types of technology that might (or might not) influence how we play games in the future.

Some of these devices are actually available right now such as the Novint Falcon controller that allows gamers to "feel" things like weight and textures inside the game. Other currently available "innovations" include the amBX sound and light system that allows supported games to extend beyond with new sounds and light and the TN Games Vest which allows the wearing to "feel" shots created by in-game shooting. One device that isn't out yet is the Emotiv Epoc headset which has sensors that in theory allow people to use their thoughts to control games. It's not due for release until this fall but the device had a fairly spectacular and fairly public failure during a press conference at GDC last February. In short; it just didn't work. The 1Up.com article also seems skeptical that the Epoc will gain again traction but who knows? Maybe next year at this time I will be playing Crysis with my mind.

Remember yesterday when we reported that Dell was phasing out its XPS line of gaming PCs, according to a story from the Wall Street Journal? Well, Dell looks like it's doing a little damage control on that item. In a post on Dell's official blog site its Corporate Communications head Anne Camden states, "We don't plan an early phase-out of these systems as the WSJ incorrectly stated, and in fact will continue to refresh them to keep them on the front edge of gaming."

However it's also clear that Dell does plan to put more of its gaming PC emphasis on its sister company Alienware, the Miami based company that Dell bought over two years ago. Camden states, "We are going to invest like crazy in product development, design and engineering to propel Alienware as the premier gaming brand in the future." We always thought it was odd that Dell promoted its own XPS gaming line when it already had a gaming line in Alienware. For now it appears things will stay that way but we get the feeling the XPS line will be used for other product lines and less for gaming in the years ahead.

Only a few days since the release of some new beta drivers, NVIDIA has now released some new official Forceware drivers for its GeForce line of graphics cards.These new drivers bring the version number to 175.16 and the release notes reveal the various changes and fixes in this new release.

These new drivers have the same fixes for games in the previous beta release along with various other non-gaming related performance tweaks and improvements. It also adds support for the new NVIDiA GeForce 9600 GSO and 9800 GTX graphics chips. Make sure you get the right driver for the right OS; these new drivers come in Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit versions along with Vista 32-bit and 64-bit support.

Dell may have just launched their new XPS 730 line-up of hardcore PCs game machines but according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal (the full article is for subscribers) that may be the last XPS gaming PC the company will make. The report states that Dell will begin to phase out the XPS line because it was eating into the sales of its sister company Alienware which Dell purchased back in March 2006.

Again, Dell just released its new XPS 730 and the XPS 730 H2C PC systems a couple of weeks ago so it's interesting that they might be considering such a move soon after this new model release. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Alienware plans to release new case models that are made of new materials and look much different than the current design.

A few days ago we reported that Microsoft had finally allowed folks to download the final service pack update (SP 3) for the Windows XP operating system. The release was delayed due to SP 3's incompatibilities with the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program. Well, according to a News.com story some PC owners with AMD based chips are reporting that installing SP 3 is causing their systems to be put into an endless reboot cycle.

A Microsoft rep states that the reason for this issue is because of " . . . OEMs improperly placing a Windows XP image created for an for Intel-based computer onto machines with non-Intel chipsets." If this unfortunate issue happens to you it looks like your only recourse is to contact Microsoft's support line. Hopefully no more bugs will be found in this final update to Windows XP; the formal support for the operating system is suppose to end in June although some PC makers are finding loopholes to continuing selling XP based PCs.

A few weeks ago Ubisoft announced that it would release a patch for their PC ports of their highly successful stealth action game Assassin's Creed. However, instead of fixing bugs or adding new features, the patch is to remove the support for DirectX10.1 graphics. According to the initial announcement about the patch the DirectX10.1 support in the game added "a render pass during post-effect which is costly."

While the patch has yet to be released as of this writing, some are accusing Ubisoft of playing hardware politics with this proposed DirectX10.1 removal from the game. Why? Because at the moment the only graphics cards in stores that support DirectX10.1 are cards from AMD's ATI unit (specifically the Radeon HD 3000 hardware). Performance issues with Assassin's Creed were reported on NVIDIA graphics cards. The problem is that Assassin's Creed is part of NVIDIA's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" marketing program where the company makes deals with game publishers to add their logo and ad support for a number of PC games.

So did NVIDIA ask Ubisoft to remove the DirectX10.1 feature from Assassin's Creed? Officially the answer is, "No." TG Daily contacted both Ubisoft and NVIDIA reps and both denied any sort of external influence, saying that the decision was made by the game's development team. The author feels that the game simply was not finished in terms of proper code and that the programming team put in the DirectX10.1 support without making sure the game would work on normal DirectX10 hardware. It just goes to prove that developing PC games without taking the tons of different hardware combinations can still be tricky.

On NPR this morning, there was a delicious little item talking about something that is, canonically, Big Iron. IBM has taken the wraps off of bluefire, their latest supercomputer. After its shakedown period, it's expected to be one of the 25 most powerful supercomputers in the world, capable of 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second).

To get there, it sports the new POWER6 microprocessor, which has a clock speed of 4.7 gigahertz. "So what?" I hear some of you saying, "Supercooled home PC systems have been topping 5GHz for a while now." The difference here is that bluefire consists of 4,064 processors, 12 TB of memory, and 150 TB of disk storage. That's certainly impressive, but not enough by itself to land bluefire here at Big Download's hardware HQ. No, what caught our attention is what sets bluefire apart from other supercompters, including the three (!) it's replacing, is that it's water-cooled. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, one of the open secrets of home-brewed system tweaking has hit the big time. IBM reports that the move to watercooling has allowed them the double bonus (which many of us already enjoy in our home boxes) of being able to run faster processors, while at the same time, saving energy to keep it running at a stable temperature. IBM says that bluefire uses 33% less energy per rack than the equipment it's going to replace.

"We're especially pleased that bluefire provides dramatically increased performance with much greater energy efficiency." -- Tom Bettge, director of operations and services for the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Computational and Information Systems Laboratory.

One of the big issues that came up in the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance was making the task of purchasing a gaming PC easier for consumers. One of the current problems is that making a choice of what graphics card to put in your rig can be difficult. Different naming and numbering of various chips and cards makes the decision process too confusing for the average consumer.

So if you are not a hardcore PC hardware enthusiast, what can be done? Roy Taylor, NVIDIA's VP of Content Business Development, told Gamesindustry.biz that they realize there are these kind of issues and expressed hope that they could do something about it. He stated, "It is a challenge that we're looking at right now. There is a need to simplify it for consumers, there's no question." If they and other companies like AMD (with their AMD brand) and Intel can move in that direction, regular PC owners will better understand what is inside their PC and, hopefully, understand what kinds of games they can run on their rig.

A few weeks ago Microsoft announced that their final service pack update for their Windows XP operating system was ready to be made available to download. Then Microsoft announced they had not only delayed the release of Windows XP service pack 3, they had also halted automatic updates for Windows Vista SP1. Now News.com reports that both XP SP 3 and Vista SP 1 are now available to download yet again.

According to the report, Microsoft cheated a bit in making the updates to their two operating systems available again to their customers. Instead of actually fixing the issue that caused them to be pulled in the first place (incompatibilities with the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program) they simply released the updates with a filter that prevents the updates from being installed on any PCs that have the Dynamics RMS program. This shouldn't affect most PC gamers who presumably don't have that program installed on their system. Microsoft said a true fix for both OS updates is in the works but didn't reveal a release date.

If you like living on the edge and working on the wild side, then have we got a download for you to enjoy...if you have a Nvidia GeForce based graphics card on your PC. The company just released new beta drivers for Windows XP and Vista owners that raise the version number up to 175.16. The release notes for the beta drivers (in PDF format) go into more detail on what's new in this driver release.

For PC gamers, this new release fixes a few issues for games like Command and Conquer 3, and Lost Planet along with older games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, Sid Meier's Railroads, Lego Star Wars, and Black and White 2. As with any kind of beta release, this is not being officially supported by Nvidia so download and install at your own risk.

Behind every single one of the games we love, it lurks. The lucky ones never fall prey to it. Some can barely escape its grasp. And it changes and evolves with every new title that comes to market.

What is this modern Grue, waiting to devour the unwary or unprepared? What rough beast, its hour come 'round at last, slouches towards NewEgg to be born?

The system requirements to play your favorite title, or the hottest new game coming down the pipe.

If your PC can't deliver a decent level of performance, it's all but impossible to enjoy playing a game. Fortunately, there are several factors that have come into play to allow the vast majority of us, the gaming public, to do so. At the very beginning are the minimum and recommended system requirements published by the game developers themselves. These specifications aren't drawn up out of the blue, but are laid down by the devs in order to make sure that anyone who wants to play their game can do so with the expectation of a decent level of performance.

Remember how we reported that Microsoft had gotten their final Windows XP service pack completed and ready to be released? Well, there's been a little snag. Microsoft has decided to suspend the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 indefinitely. Why? According to an official statement, the company discovered a last minute glitch that prevents SP3 from working on Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System.

Not only that but this glitch was also discovered on the first service pack for Windows Vista as well. That means Microsoft has decided to suspend the automatic updates for Vista SP 1 as well. Microsoft just begun to allow Vista users to download SP 1 via their automatic download feature earlier in April. So far there's no word on when either service pack for XP or Vista will be made available for customers.