The Jeffrey And Tracey Info Emporium

Sudoku puzzles have reached legendary popularity over the past few years. If you play regularly, then you have a pretty good idea what makes this puzzle game so special. If you have never played before there is only one question to ask. Where have you been? Open your eyes and grab a pencil, because it is time to join the rest of civilization.

If you are looking to find information on Sudoku puzzles, do not fear. The Internet is an amazing source of information on Sudoku. If you log on to your favorite web search engine, enter in the phrase “Sudoku puzzles,” click the search button and let the World Wide Web do the rest. Within seconds you will find millions upon millions of sources about Sudoku. Just to warn you, you will be shocked at the extent of the following this logical and challenging puzzle game has.

When you first encounter the Sudoku puzzle, try not to think about mathematics. Sudoku does not require any math skills. It is an exercise in logic and logic alone. When you see the numbers try to remember that you will not have to add, multiply, divide, subtract or take the square root of anything.

Sudoku is all about reasoning and it can give your brain a pretty good workout. The average solving time for Sudoku Puzzles is between 10 and 30 minutes. Of course, seasoned professionals and Sudoku prodigies can whiz through them in no time.

There are nine 9 x 9 grids inside a box. Some of the spaces in the sudoku puzzle are filled in with clues and numbers. The point of the game is to use those numbers and clues to figure out how to fill in the empty spaces. It sounds pretty easy and in some cases the puzzles can be created to be fairly simple. But as you become more experienced you can test your concentration with more difficult puzzles.

If you start playing Sudoku puzzles you will learn pretty quickly why it is considered one of the most addictive puzzle games in history. Do not take my word for it, pick up a book or log onto one of the millions of web sites dedicated to this great and innovative puzzle game.

For more information about Sudoku Puzzles visit http://www.sudokudome.com

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Introduction

In this article you will learn how to get the most out of your graphics card by installing new drivers and tweaking Windows. The guide is based around Windows XP Professional Edition but you can use the same guide to tweak other Windows operating systems.

Step 1.

The first thing you need to know what graphics card you are using. The most popular graphics card companies are nVidia and ATi. Both these companies have an excellent range of products and offer excellent service. Once you know what graphics card you are using, then head over to the companies website where you can download the latest drivers.

Drivers are software that runs your graphics card, printer or scanner correctly. Being up to date with drivers will help solve issues that may arise with modern PC games. Just recently I had to update my drivers to fix a problem I had with a game I recently purchased, and this solved my problem.

OK once you have downloaded your drivers for your graphics card make sure you create a restore point using the utility System Restore. This can be done my click Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools and then System Restore. Then follow the on screen instructions to create the restore point. By doing this it makes sure that if a problem occurs after you installed the new drivers, you can return to the restore point to see if the problem is the drivers you installed.

Once you’ve finished creating your restore point, you need to install your drivers. This can done by double clicking on the file you downloaded and then you follow the on screen instructions. After you’ve installed your drivers you will have to restart Windows so the changes can take effect.

If everything goes according to plan you should see an increase in performance in your games and you will not need to go back to your restore point. If you do have problems, use your restore point to go back and fix the problems. If the problem persists, then contact the company that made your graphics card.

Step 2.

Make sure you have the latest version of DirectX. This can be done by going onto the Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com and searching DirectX. Once you’ve downloaded the latest version, you will need to create another restore point. One person I know installed the latest version of DirectX and then had problems afterwards, and because they didn’t create a restore point they couldn’t fix the problem and so they needed to reformat their computer to solve the problem. Again to create a restore point, go to Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools and then System Restore.

Once you’ve created the restore point install the latest version of DirectX by double clicking on the file you just downloaded. Follow the on screen instructions and once you’ve finished you will have to restart your Windows.

Step 3.

In this step I will guide you through tweaking Windows XP. The first step will be changing the performance of Windows, to do this right-click on My Computer and then Properties->Advanced->Performance->Settings and select ‘Adjust for best Performance’.

The next step is to change your Themes, so right-click on your desktop and select Properties. Under the Themes tab set your theme to Windows Classic.

About The Author

I run a small PC gaming website called Gaming Archive. I’m currently a student in England studying ICT. steve.hames@gaming-archive.com

I’ve always loved video games, ever since I first played them on a friend’s computer in the afternoon after elementary school. There’s something almost magical about the fact that we can move images around and interact with virtual worlds, a living fantasy presented for us to interact with however we please. I’ve also always wanted to make games myself but, until recently, didn’t have the technical knowledge to do so. Now, I’m a second year software engineering student, so if I weren’t able to code a game without too many dramas there’d be something drastically wrong. But what about the common person: the person for whom the term ‘memory leak’ conjures up images of their grandfather, ‘pipeline’ is where the water flows, and ‘blitting’ is unheard of? Well, everyone can get in on the game creation process, and you don’t even need to learn ‘real’ programming to do so.

So where do games start? With an idea. Games, like all fiction, require an idea to be successful. Sure, in the same way you can just sit down and write a story without foresight, you can jump on in and slap a game together. However, unless you get ridiculously lucky, the best works are usually the ones that have been well thought out beforehand.

There are two methods of planning a project. You can start from a known technological standpoint and build your project on top of that or you can just go for the design, add as many features and ideas as you like, and then remove the ones that you can’t use when you’ve decided on the technology you’re going to implement the game with. In general, the second type is probably the best one to go with when designing games. When you’re first starting out however, the first option will save you many headaches.

So, for a first game you’re going to want a pretty simple idea. Don’t get me wrong, crazy-go-nuts game ideas are fantastic, and there should be more of them out there, but you’re not going to be able to create a real world simulator with fifty billion virtual people all interacting real time with your actions having a butterfly effect on the future of the virtual universe when it’s just your first game. Really. Many people try it; none that I know of have succeeded. Imitation is the best way to start out. Simple games such as ‘Space Invaders’, ‘Tetris’, ‘Pacman’ or even ‘Pong’ are great places to start. All are largely simple to create but have some inherent challenges. ‘Pacman’ for example, requires path finding for the ghosts. I recommend that you start even simpler than that for your very first attempt. ‘Space Invaders’ is a nice point to jump in. You can make a simple, complete game without much effort and it’s almost infinitely extensible.

If you’re stuck for an idea, pick a genre that you enjoy. Do you love adventure games such as ‘Monkey Island’, ‘Grim Fandango’, ‘Space Quest’, ‘King’s Quest’ etc.? Design one of those. Are you into fighting games like ‘Street Fighter’, ‘Tekken’, ‘Soul Calibur’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and so on? Come up with an idea for that. Do you like first person shooters such as ‘Quake’, ‘Half Life’ or ‘Doom’? I don’t recommend it as a first project, but you can always give it a go. Feel free to be as generic as you like, this is a learning experience after all.

Now that you have your idea it’s time to flesh it out. Don’t worry about the technology or the fact that you may not know how to actually implement a game just yet, just grab yourself some paper and a pencil and go crazy with ideas. Describe the main characters, game play, goals, interactions, story, and key mappings, anything you can think of. Make sure you have enough detail so that someone can read through the notes and play through the game in their head with relative accuracy. Changing game design during the coding process is almost always a bad idea. Once it’s set, it should remain set until the tweaking phase (I’ll go into this more later) or you’re likely to enter ‘development hell’, where the project goes on and on; more and more work is done with less and less outcome.

At the end of this period of your game creation, you should have the following:

- A written outline of the game’s characters and possibly a sketch or two (be they space ships, yellow circles, cars or the prince of the dark kingdom of Falgour, you need to know who or what the player will be and who they will compete against)

- A written outline of the story (if there is one, this isn’t too vital for ‘Space Invaders’ or ‘Tetris’, but for ‘Uber Quest: An Adventure of Awesomeness’ it’s a really good idea)

- A description of game play, written or storyboarded. Storyboards are visual representations of ideas. Draw your characters in actions, with arrows showing the flow of action and short written descriptions detailing the events occurring in your image (because some of us aren’t fantastic artists and our images can be a little… open to interpretation…)

Now that you have a fleshed out idea, it’s time to work out how this will all get put together. If you’ve gotten to this point and are worried that you’re going to have to spend years learning complex programming languages in order to implement your idea, fear not! Others have already done the hard yards for you. There are many RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools available for game creation, a number of which are available for free online. Some of them still require you to learn a ‘scripting language’ (a simplified programming language made for a specific task) but in general this isn’t too complicated or involved. I’ve compiled a brief list of some of these I have found at the end of the article. The free ones are listed first, organized by game genre.

Well, that should be enough to get you started in the creation of your game. The most important thing to remember once you’ve gotten this far is that you need to complete your game. Many people start a project and then lose interest and it fails, or they keep moving on to one new project after another without finishing anything. Start small, build a working (if simple) game that is, above all else, complete. When you get to this stage you will always have a huge number of things that you wish to change, fix etc. but you’ll get a great feeling from knowing that it is, in its way, finished.

From this point, you can start the tweaking phase. Play your game a few times and ask others to do the same. Take note of what isn’t fun or could be better and change things here. At this stage, it is more important than ever to keep backups of previous versions so that if a change doesn’t work you can go back and try something different without losing any of your work. It is at this point that you can add all new features, improve graphics and sounds, whatever you please, safe in the knowledge that you’re working on a solid foundation.

When you’re happy with your game, why not share it with the world? There are many cheap or free places out there for you to host your files on and then you can jump on link lists and forums and let everyone know about your creation. Well, I hope that this has been a helpful introduction into the art of creating games. It’s a great deal of fun, and can open whole new avenues of creative expression for you to explore. Jump in and have fun!

Links:

General Game Creation:
(Tools that allow easy creation of many different game types)
Game Maker: http://www.gamemaker.nl
MegaZeux: http://megazeux.sourceforge.net/

Adventure Games:
(Games such as Monkey Island, King’s Quest, Space Quest etc.)
Adventure Game Studio: http://www.bigbluecup.com
AGAST: http://www.allitis.com/agast/
3D Adventure Studio: http://3das.noeska.com/
ADRIFT (for text adventures): http://www.adrift.org.uk/

Role Playing Games (RPGs):
(Games such as Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Diablo)
OHRPG: http://www.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/
RPG Toolit: http://www.toolkitzone.com/

Fighting Games:
(Games such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Soul Calibur etc.)
KOF91: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kof91/
MUGEN (unfortunately the site is largely in French): http://www.streetmugen.com/mugen-us.html

Side-Scrolling Games:
(Games such as the 2D Mario Games, Sonic the Hedgehog, Double Dragon etc.)
The Scrolling Game Development Kit: http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/

There are many others available as well. One particularly useful site for finding game creation tools is: http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html

Also of note, although not freeware, are the excellent game creation tools available by Clickteam at: http://www.clickteam.com/English/
Klik and Play and The Games Factory in particular are the programs to have a look at and download the free demos of.

If you really want to do things right and program the game yourself, there are some excellent programming resources available at the following locations:

Java Game Programming:
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1262.asp
http://javaboutique.internet.com/tutorials/Java_Game_Programming/

Visual Basic Game Programming:
http://markbutler.8m.com/vb-tutorial.htm

C++ Game Programming:
http://www3.telus.net/alexander_russell/course_dx/introduction_dx.htm
http://www.rit.edu/~jpw9607/tutorial.htm

General Information:
http://www.gamedev.net/
http://www.gamasutra.com/

Daniel Punch
M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
Daniel Punch is a university student learning how to make a living through having fun.

MMOG currencies was first introduced from the popular game EverQuest (EQ) with their currency “platinum”, also known as “plat”. Since the first pioneers of selling plats on Ebay, many have argued and frowned upon those that have ever purchased plats online. I recall many players harassing others with foul names such as “newb” and “ebayer”. It has been over 5 years that everyone has been arguing whether the secondary market of trading MMOG money would ever be accepted.

Since the introduction of EverQuest platinum, there were probably more than 70% of players that wouldn’t even consider purchasing plats and discriminated against those who did. As of today, the numbers have been reduced extraordinarily. About 40% of the players now purchase currencies, 30% still disliking the idea and 30% of the other players probably does not care too much and may purchase some them selves in the near future.

Although online game currency is still a new trend to the online gaming community, it is getting popular at a very hasty rate. Within the end of 2010, I believe even the publishers themselves will support the foundation of the secondary market. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) have now begun their own EverQuest 2 gold auction system and planning to start a new MMORPG in which they intend to sell currencies and items themselves. With their support, I’m sure the secondary market will be accepted over a period of time.

The secondary market is only as successful as the primary. With the release of World of Warcraft (WoW), there are now more than 4.5 million subscribers. A vast majority of those players are probably new to the MMORPG world. A large increase of subscribers means alot more potential for the secondary market. So far, WoW gold has been the hottest seller of the year and perhaps a few more years down the road.
With the huge demand on, many players have even started a career in which they collect money, items and other virutal assets and sell them to players or to stores who may buy them at wholesale price and resell it back to individuals.

The secondary market one day may even be bigger than the primary. Many gamers of today probably spend more on buying currencies, items and equipments than their subscription fee. The publishers themselves can’t even deny the fact that there are lots of money to be made in the secondary market that over a vast period of time I’m sure they will be selling their virtual assets themselves. As for whether the players will support it or not, I believe is just a matter of time before acceptance, of course there will always be a few who will dislike the idea.

Marketing manager for Team-VIP. That’s the place to go if you’re looking for MMO currencies, items and etc. We offer instant delivery and 24/7 live chat support. During my free time I work on my personal MMORPG site Tumeroks. It’s a great online community for MMO fans, free guides, images, movies, forums and more. Drop by and say Hi!

Tetris was the first computer game that involved falling tetromino pieces that the game player must align in order to create an unbroken line which subsequently disappears in order to free up more game play space. If the player is unable to make an unbroken line, the game play space quickly gets crowded until the point where no more space is available and the game is over.

The game of Tetris was first programmed in 1985 in the former Soviet Union by Alexey Pazhitnov. It ran on a machine called an Electronica 60 but was quickly ported to run on an IBM PC in the same month of its initial release. One month later and the game had been ported for use on the Apple II and the Commodore 64 by a programming team in Hungary.

The game quickly saw interest from a software house in the UK, Andromeda, who released it in the UK and USA in 1986 although the original programmer Pazhitnov had not agreed to any sale or licensing agreement. Nonetheless, Anromeda managed to copyright licensing for the game and marketed Tetris as ‘The first game from behind the iron curtain’. Tetris was an instant smash hit and had thousands of people hooked.

A new company, ELORG, took up negotiations on behalf of Pazhitnov and eventually the licensing rights were granted to Nintendo in 1989 for a sum of between 3 and 5 million dollars. Nintendo quickly exerted their corporate strength and forbid any other company to market the game that Andromeda had given license to, including Atari. However, Tetris had become the biggest selling game on all formats at that time.

Today Tetris is still hugely popular, with versions running on all formats, and still managing to get people hooked through its simple yet addictive game play.

Play Tetris online at www.crazybone.com

Well folks, the psp has now been out for about one year and its time to take a look at how it has done and whether or not it lived up to its expectations. All in all, I would say that the graphics on mostly any psp game definitely looked awesome. Its hard to believe how far technology has actually come over the years. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I can remember playing Tetris on my gameboy and i thought that was the best thing since sliced bread. Boy have we come along way, huh.

One disappointment I had with the average psp game is that most of them were just a copycat of games already out there for the ps2. Not that this is such a bad thing, because there are many excellent ps2 games which did translate to an excellent psp game, but I would just like to see some more originality for this system. How about using the psp to its full potential? Come on you software designers, lets see a new idea for a psp game once in awhile!

When questioned about this, some of the developers blamed it on lack of time, and that they were also busy with ongoing ps2 projects, so sometimes a psp game would have to take a back seat.

The good news is from what I’ve been reading is that they are really looking to expand the psp experience with new original titles and not the same old psp game that is already out there and played into the ground on ps2. So we will keep our fingers crossed and see what the future holds and keep our eye out for some new original games for the psp.

Reggie Dunn is a long time video gamer and also the host the the following psp blogs: psp game and psp download

Watching the evolution of sports games has been like watching a retarded child grow up to become a handsome and brilliant Master of the Universe. Now I’m not saying ESPN’s NBA 2K5 is the pinnacle of sports gaming, but I will tell you why it comes pretty damn close – especially for all of us basketball fanatics. Before I go on, let us talk a little bit about the “Corky” Thatcher friendly games of the past.

In 1958, Bill Higinbotham and Bob Dvorak developed Tennis-For-Two, the world’s first virtual sports game. The game itself worked on an oscilloscope and basically demonstrated the magic of Pong in green wave form. Electronic signals bouncing back and forth in an electronic . Over the next two years, Bill and Bob demonstrated Tennis-For-Two to astounded audiences across New York, but it would take another quarter century before the next electronic sports game would work its way into the public eye.

It was 1978 – our parents were high on coke, Carter was jerking off the Chinese and Atari released its arcade sports classic, Football. And if a title is any indication of the creativity behind this electronic ball of shit, it fit like a glove. Sitting on a whopping M6502 cpu with less than 1 Mhz of processing power, the only glimmer of hope for this inept beast was the unique roller-ball controls.

By the late 80’s, the NES vs. Sega gaming war was in high gear leaving Atari’s Football and most other first generation arcade titles collecting dust in dive bars across America. The fierceness of said battle brought us some of the most memorable sports games to date. With the likes of Tecmo Bowl, Punch Out, and All-Star Baseball, things were indeed looking up for the aspiring couch potato youth of the world.

The 90’s brought a new era of 64 bit systems and remarkable graphics in the sports game arena. Even the game play for football, hockey and baseball titles were impressing the masses, but developers still hadn’t given much attention to basketball titles. Just another example of whitey trying to keep the black man down.

In comes Sega’s ESPN NBA 2K5.

As fans of the real life game, we know the way players are supposed to move and interact with one another on the wood. We know that players don’t stop to catch a pass (so eat shit, EA) or change dribble direction in a split second. This is why Sega’s geeky team of developers can self high-five their asses straight to the bank.

This year’s release offers numerous adjustments and new features made to create the series’ most realistic basketball simulation to date, powered by a physics engine that can truly handle the quick paced, high scoring, stop-and-go game play with lubricated ease.

Sega also introduces a “Next Movement” system designed to display skills and talents from specific NBA players. A player’s particular physical makeup now helps determine how well he performs in everything from running up court on a fast break, rolling a pick, or cutting off an open lane on defense.

The key feature that ties all this goodness together is the “IsoMotion” control. Using one of the thumb sticks to control your player, you can glide him across the floor and execute hop-step jukes as smooth as Iverson on his best day. Playing online, however, I’ve learned that this method of controlling can be exploited to create impenetrable defense when you throw in network lag and a stick happy adversary. Once the glitches are worked out, I imagine the 24/7 mode of online play to be the biggest hit of this fall and winter season.

Speaking of which, the 24/7 mode is a definite step in the right direction for bringing gamers online. 24/7 allows you to create a player and run him through training levels to collect points which unlock new courts and increase your skill level. It’s like an RPG, but fun!

I’ll close with this: The fucking game costs $20 bucks. Go buy it.

Over the next 18 months the 3 giants of the Games Console world will be battling it out in stores and homes across Europe, America and Asia for the title of the world greatest Games Console. The stakes are high in this multi billion dollar business, not just for the console sales but for the games sales that go along side it. Since the launch announcements of all 3 consoles in May at the E3 conference in LA. The 3 combatants have been vying for the millions of column inches that have been written about the Next Generation Consoles. Each Press release has been hotly followed by another press release from a rival company so much so that extracting the facts from all the hype has been nearly impossible. At the launch press conferences Microsoft boasted that the Xbox 360 could do 9-billion-dot-product-operations per second. Sony then came out and said that the PS3 could do 51-billion-dot-product-operations per second however Sony had combined the CPU and GPU performance numbers whilst Microsoft only reported its CPU performance number. When the consumer is up against this sort of publicity blizzard it is best not to believe a thing until you can check the facts for yourself.

So what do we know?

Well for the Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 we have lots of lists of hardware and specifications which actually don’t mean very much in isolation. The main thing that need concern us are the processor speeds and they are both stated as being 3.2 GHz The only time that the hardware will mean anything is when we get to run them side by side and then if experience is anything to go by the difference in real life performance won’t be noticeable and will just be used by the press departments to battle it out.

Despite all the press releases and information that has been spewing out of the headquarters of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo we actually know very few facts.
We know that in all likelihood the Xbox 360 will be on the shelves in time for Christmas, Amazon are currently taking pre-delivery orders and are quoting a release date of November 28th. The prices have been set at $299 for the Core System and $399 for the Xbox 360, the difference being that the Core system doesn’t have the external hard drive required to save games and download new content or the headset required to play online on Xbox Live! Why 2 prices? and why a version that hasn’t got everything included? This looks very much like a product of the marketing department trying to get a product at the historically important sub $300 level more than anything and this may backfire on them in the long run.

Next to hit the Shelves will be Sony’s Playstation 3 supposedly in spring next year once again we have very few facts to go on, Sony are continually releasing press releases and mentioning in public that the price will be high and the figure of $500 has been mentioned but many industry experts suspect that this is a ploy so that when they release it at $300 or $350 it will look like a bargain. The final console to hit the shelves will be the Nintendo Revolution some time late in 2006 and 2007. Since the “launch” at E3 this year very little has been said about it by Nintendo. It seems at this time the “Launch” was just a way to deflect some of the publicity away from Microsoft and Sony.
One fact is certain, If Microsoft do get the Xbox 360 onto the shelves before Christmas it will be this year’s biggest selling Christmas gift. So until you get your hands on one of the consoles….Question everything!

Mark Thompson ran an IT consultancy in London for many years. He now live in Spain and runs an number of websites including NextGen Consoles and World of the Weird

So you want to make money in World of Warcraft eh?
Well it’s easier than you think as long as you have the know-how. I remember my first character which was a rogue on the Whisperwind server. I rushed as fast as I could to level 40 so that I could get a mount, but a huge problem rose in front of me. I didn’t even have close to the amount of gold I needed to get that damn mount. How the hell was I suppsoed to be able to afford this thing??

It all starts with professions. Simple as this. Be a collector. skinning/mining or herbalism, enchanting. Collect materials that people need. Even a noob could exploit this. Let me give an example.

I created a Human Paladin and started at Northshire abbey. First I run my butt over to Stormwind after I’ve earned a silver or two and learn skinning and Mining professions. Quests in the Elwynn forest require me to visit a few mines so I keep “Find Minerals” skill on and hunt every wolf around the zone(btw there are a ton in this zone so skinning shouldn’t be much of a problem). While I am questing through the mines(especially Jasperlode and there is one more in this zone) I am gaining exp while gathering materials to sell at the AH.

Doing this strategy of farming light leather and copper ore I had 40 gold available to me by level 17. Easy.

Once I gained a few levels the options of what zones to level in were a bit spread out so I picked up a few guides to help me. (Hey everyone needs a little help now and then).

Right Now I have a Rogue with Krol Blade (500-700 gold on my server) and Assanitantion Blade (70-150 gold) Plus I also have money for my Epic mount. So yes, there are plenty of ways to make gold in World of Warcraft you just have to try new things until you find what works for you. I’ve given you my thoughts and resources so go find your fortune in WoW.

Good Luck and Best Regards,

Trevor

Those Who Dare, Win
I found a review site that gave me the top guides to get. After getting the top 2 guides I made 120 gold per hour following the unique strategies out of both. ( Thank you Review Judge) =) The site can be accessed here for WoW Gold Take a look to see what you think.

If you have an interest in playing PC games that were made at least in the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen the serious video demands these games now have. It’s not only that you need a fast system that can handle all of the information in today’s games, but you need a major performance video card to handle computer game video too.

For some weird reason, the video demands of these games have far surpassed everything else. If you’re even looking at the idea of playing today’s PC games, you probably have no interest in turning down the resolution and graphics quality in the game so you can play it on an okay system. If you want to play these games the way they were intended, you’ll need some serious computer game video processing power.

Other parts of the game, like sound and hard drive space aren’t really a concern anymore because most people’s hard drives are getting bigger, (or they run the game off a DVD) and most PC sound cards seem to be all about on the same level. It seems the average is 5.1 channels anyway.

But the problem starts when you go look at the types of cards out there to choose from, the kind of card that you can even get comes down to how your PC was built from the beginning.

PCI express is the new standard for PC video, but many hardware authorities are still saying that there aren’t really any games or programs out there that use the super data transfer speeds that it has.

Of course, in time, this will change, so it really comes down to a short/long-term investment question: Do you want a machine that will tear up the high-end games for years to come, or upwards of the next year and a half? If you want to go with the former, you’ll have to pay out a little. Also, if you want a PCI express card, you had to have either started with a motherboard with this kind of socket on it, or you have to look at swapping out your board.

Most people for now are still going to fit into the AGP 8X category. AGP has been used for years up until fairly recently, when systems all started coming with PCI express instead. You should make sure you get your hands on at least a good AGP 8X video card with lots of video memory (256 megs) and you won’t know the difference.

The big feuding video card brands have been ATI and nVidia for some time now, although nVidia is now basically leasing out their GeForce chipsets to other manufacturers, like Chaintech. For a while, it’s really been a toss-up as to which brand is better, the cheap level cards are going to all be the same across brands. According to recent reviews, however, ATI’s newest top-level Radeon X800 series card is supposed to be better than nVidia’s most recently released high-end card.

But rather than deal with the hassle of matching up video card socket types and worrying if what you’ve got will stay current, you might want to just go with one of the high-end system builders out there. Alienware is one of the most widely known ones; their systems are some of the fastest and most powerful on the market. Having your system already put together is one advantage, but Alienware tests different motherboard and video card combinations to find the optimal configuration for gaming.

By paying a little careful attention to brand names, video memory, price, and how they all fit together with your unique needs, you can get a system that can handle some serious computer game video for any game you throw its way.

Phil Moyers, owner of Build-Your-Own-Computer-Plan.com shows computer novices how to save a ton of money by putting together fast, high performance PC’s of their own with handpicked, quality parts. Learn more about meeting computer game video demands.