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94-581: Although pitched as an “enterprise-class drive”, it won favor with the PC gaming and enthusiast community because the drive was capable of speeds usually found only on more expensive SCSI drives. Adopting the SATA interface meant that it could be used easily on all modern motherboards with no separate host adapter card. Also, integration was made easier still by the inclusion of a standard 4-pin Molex power connector in addition to

188-486: A Software Publishers Association conference that the market for console games ($ 5.9 billion in revenue) was 12 times that of the computer-game market ($ 430 million). However, computer games did not disappear. The industry hoped that the CD-ROM and other optical storage technology would increase computers' user friendliness and allow for more sophisticated games. By 1989, Computer Gaming World reported that "the industry

282-497: A Software Publishers Association study found that 74% of personal computers were IBMs or compatible, 10% Macintosh, 7% Apple II, and 8% other. 51% of IBM or compatible had 386 or faster CPUs. By 1992, DOS games such as Links 386 Pro supported Super VGA graphics. While leading Sega and Nintendo console systems kept their CPU speed at 3–7  MHz , the 486 PC processor ran much faster, allowing it to perform many more calculations per second. The 1993 release of Doom on

376-458: A 2.5-inch Velociraptor (BLFS models) which is nearly identical to the 3.5-inch version, but without the IcePack heat sink. These drives are designed for use in servers and are unsuitable for laptops because of their power requirements and 15 mm thickness. TLER is also enabled by default on BLFS models. A severe issue with the fourth generation of raptor drives was faulty firmware , which caused

470-503: A WDC technician and is still readily available through various download sites. The bug was of minor significance for desktop users, but prolonged drive operation in RAID setups could result in mass drive dropouts after 49.71 days, causing maintenance problems and potentially data loss. The fifth-generation Raptor (or second-generation VelociRaptor) drive was announced in April 2010. Besides increasing

564-691: A different configuration. (The game Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. satirizes this by depicting two beautiful women exhaust the hero in bed, by requesting that he again explain the difference between extended and expanded memory .) Computer Gaming World provided technical assistance to its writers to help install games for review, and published sample configuration files. The magazine advised non-technical gamers to purchase commercial memory managers like QEMM and 386MAX and criticized nonstandard software like Origin Systems 's "infamous late and unlamented Voodoo Memory Manager", which used unreal mode . By 1996,

658-511: A different connotation on consoles which are typically restricted much more heavily. As publicly released development tools are rare, console mods usually refer to hardware alterations designed to remove restrictions. PC games are sold predominantly through the Internet, with buyers downloading their new purchase directly to their computer. This approach allows smaller independent developers to compete with large publisher-backed games and avoids

752-435: A disk drive is the product of the sector size, number of sectors per track, number of tracks per side, and the number of disk platters in the drive. Changes in any of these factors would not usually double the size. Depending on compression methods and file format , a megabyte of data can roughly be: The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , by Oscar Wilde , hosted on Project Gutenberg as an uncompressed plain text file,

846-491: A game for the platform and 66% of developers currently developing a game for PC. In 2018, the global PC games market was valued at about $ 27.7 billion. According to research data provided by Statista in 2020 there were an estimated 1.75 billion PC gamers worldwide, up from 1.5 billion PC gaming users in the previous year. Newzoo reported that the PC gaming sector was the third-largest category across all platforms as of 2016 , with

940-419: A game is popular enough mods generally arise even without official support. Mods can compete with official downloadable content however, or even outright redistribute it, and their ability to extend the lifespan of a game can work against its developers' plans for regular sequels. As game technology has become more complex, it has also become harder to distribute development tools to the public. Modding has

1034-542: A genre that would become one of the highest-selling in modern times. The game was originally distributed through the shareware distribution model , allowing players to try a limited part of the game for free but requiring payment to play the rest, and represented one of the first uses of texture mapping graphics in a popular game, along with Ultima Underworld . In December 1992, Computer Gaming World reported that DOS accounted for 82% of computer-game sales in 1991, compared to Macintosh's 8% and Amiga's 5%. In response to

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1128-574: A larger single platter (one 75 GB platter vs two 37 GB platters). Support for TCQ (rarely supported on SATA RAID controllers) was dropped in favor of NCQ, and at the same time replacing the SATA-to-PATA bridge controller chip with a native SATA controller. Unfortunately one of the major enhancements of WD740ADFD, the NCQ, is implemented so badly in the WD740ADFD-00NLR1 that it has been added to

1222-406: A major influencing factor for the development and marketing of graphics cards . Emulators are able to play games developed for other platforms. The demoscene originated from computer game cracking . The uncoordinated nature of the PC game market makes precisely assessing its size difficult. PC remains the most important gaming platform with 60% of developers being most interested in developing

1316-763: A much greater falling off of disk sales than anyone anticipated." A third attributed the end of growth in sales of the Commodore 64 to the console, and Trip Hawkins called Nintendo "the last hurrah of the 8-bit world". Experts were unsure whether it affected 16-bit computer games, but games lost shelf space at computer software stores, and many of the hundreds of computer-game companies went out of business. Hawkins said that while foreign videogame competition increased, "there's an increase in product supply without an increase in demand". He in 1990 had to deny rumors that Electronic Arts would withdraw from computers and only produce console games. By 1993, ASCII Entertainment reported at

1410-422: A powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), which accelerates the process of drawing complex scenes in realtime. GPUs may be an integrated part of the computer's motherboard , the most common solution in laptops, or come packaged with a discrete graphics card with a supply of dedicated Video RAM , connected to the motherboard through either an AGP or PCI Express port. It is also possible to use multiple GPUs in

1504-432: A quantity that conveniently expresses the binary architecture of digital computer memory. Standards bodies have deprecated this binary usage of the mega- prefix in favor of a new set of binary prefixes , by means of which the quantity 2 B is named mebibyte (symbol MiB). The unit megabyte is commonly used for 1000 (one million) bytes or 1024 bytes. The interpretation of using base 1024 originated as technical jargon for

1598-552: A reader's challenge to find a DOS game that played better than the Amiga version the magazine cited Wing Commander and Civilization , and added that "The heavy MS-DOS emphasis in CGW merely reflects the realities of the market". A self-reported Computer Gaming World survey in April 1993 similarly found that 91% of readers primarily used IBM PCs and compatibles for gaming, compared to 6% for Amiga, 3% for Macintosh, and 1% for Atari ST, while

1692-779: A resurgence in the United States with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In Europe, computer gaming continued to boom for many years after. Computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro were successful in the European market, where the NES was not as successful despite its monopoly in Japan and North America. The only 8-bit console to have any success in Europe would be

1786-414: A single computer, using technologies such as NVidia 's Scalable Link Interface and ATI 's CrossFire . Sound cards are also available to provide improved audio in computer games. These cards provide improved 3D audio and provide audio enhancement that is generally not available with integrated alternatives, at the cost of marginally lower overall performance. The Creative Labs Sound Blaster line

1880-698: A single group. PCs may possess varying processing resources of video gaming systems. Game developers may integrate options to adjust screen resolution , framerate, and anti-aliasing . Increased draw distance and NPCs amount is also possible in open world games. The most common forms of input are the mouse / keyboard combination and gamepads , though touchscreens and motion controllers are also available. The mouse in particular lends players of first-person shooter and real-time strategy games on PC great speed and accuracy. Users may use third-party peripherals . The advantages of openness include: There are also disadvantages, including: The openness of

1974-506: A userbase of about 40 million accounts. Origin , a new version of the Electronic Arts online store, was released in 2011 in order to compete with Steam and other digital distribution platforms on the PC. The period between 2004 and now saw the rise of many digital distribution services on PC, such as Amazon Digital Services , GameStop , GFWL , EA Store , Direct2Drive , GOG.com , and GamersGate . Digital distribution also slashes

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2068-541: Is episodic gaming , an adaptation of the older concept of expansion packs , in which game content is provided in smaller quantities but for a proportionally lower price. Titles such as Half-Life 2: Episode One took advantage of the idea, with mixed results rising from concerns for the amount of content provided for the price. The defining characteristic of the PC platform is the absence of centralized control, an open platform ; all other gaming platforms (except Android devices, to an extent) are owned and administered by

2162-538: Is a cross-platform API for graphics rendering that is also used. The version of the graphics card's driver installed can often affect game performance and gameplay . In late 2013, AMD announced Mantle , a low-level API for certain models of AMD graphics cards, allowing for greater performance compared to software-level APIs such as DirectX, as well as simplifying porting to and from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, which are both built upon AMD hardware. It

2256-629: Is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB . The unit prefix mega is a multiplier of 1 000 000 (10 ) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes of information. This definition has been incorporated into the International System of Quantities . In the computer and information technology fields, other definitions have been used that arose for historical reasons of convenience. A common usage has been to designate one megabyte as 1 048 576 bytes (2 B),

2350-469: Is achievable using only the CPU, potentially allowing players a much greater degree of control over the world in games designed to use the card. Virtually all personal computers use a keyboard and mouse for user input, but there are exceptions. During the 1990s, before the keyboard and mouse combination had become the method of choice for PC gaming input peripherals, there were other types of peripherals such as

2444-457: Is displayed and then it allows transfers up to UDMA/100. In Microsoft Windows, they are reported as UDMA 6, but give a burst rate of 104 MB /s, while WD360GD with the 88i8030-TBC1 chip are reported as UDMA 6 and give a burst rate of 122 MB/s, close their theoretical limit of UDMA 6. Those Raptors limited at UDMA 5 were bought for SATA I 150 MB/s support, but they only support the legacy PATA UDMA 5 at 100 MB/s. Like its larger brother

2538-454: Is likely to be popular with case modders . Like the regular Raptor, the Raptor X has a MTBF rating of 1.2 million hours, or 137 years. Both drives are covered by a five-year warranty. While this drive uses the NCQ feature of SATA 2, it lacks support for the increased bandwidth of SATA 2. The fourth-generation Raptor was announced by Western Digital in April 2008. The new drive is being sold under

2632-406: Is moving toward heavy use of VGA graphics ". While some games were advertised with VGA support at the start of the year, they usually supported EGA graphics through VGA cards. By the end of 1989, however, most publishers moved to at supporting at least 320x200 MCGA , a subset of VGA. VGA gave the PC graphics that outmatched the Amiga. Increasing adoption of the computer mouse , driven partially by

2726-477: Is not unusual for a game company to use a third-party game engine , or third-party libraries for a game's AI or physics . Multiplayer gaming was largely limited to local area networks (LANs) before cost-effective broadband Internet access became available, due to their typically higher bandwidth and lower latency than the dial-up services of the time. These advantages allowed more players to join any given computer game, but have persisted today because of

2820-496: The BASIC source code of even commercial games. Microchess was one of the first games for microcomputers which was sold to the public. First sold in 1977, Microchess eventually sold over 50,000 copies on cassette tape. As with second-generation video game consoles at the time, early home computer game companies capitalized on successful arcade games at the time with ports or clones of popular arcade video games . By 1982,

2914-710: The Mad Catz Panther XL , the First-Person Gaming Assassin 3D , and the Mad Catz Panther , which combined a trackball for looking / aiming, and a joystick for movement. Other common gaming peripherals are a headset for faster communication in online games, joysticks for flight simulators , steering wheels for driving games and gamepads for console-style games. Computer games also rely on third-party software such as an operating system (OS) , device drivers , libraries and more to run. Today,

Western Digital Raptor - Misplaced Pages Continue

3008-623: The Master System . Meanwhile, in Japan, both consoles and computers became major industries, with the console market dominated by Nintendo and the computer market dominated by NEC 's PC-88 (1981) and PC-98 (1982). A key difference between Western and Japanese computers at the time was the display resolution , with Japanese systems using a higher resolution of 640x400 to accommodate Japanese text , which in turn affected video game design and allowed more detailed graphics. Japanese computers were also using Yamaha 's FM synth sound boards from

3102-518: The VelociRaptor name. As well as increasing the capacity to 300 GB (split over two 150 GB platters), the form factor is as follows: Earlier GLFS models have been criticised for being incompatible with 3.5-inch SATA hot swap bays due to the position of the connectors; however, a new revision (HLFS models) has been released which remedies this problem. Furthermore, TLER has been enabled by default on HLFS models. Western Digital later released

3196-641: The microprocessor and microcomputer , computer gaming on mainframes and minicomputers had previously already existed. OXO , an adaptation of tic-tac-toe for the EDSAC , debuted in 1952. Another pioneer computer game was developed in 1961, when MIT students Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok , with MIT student Steve Russell , developed Spacewar! on a PDP-1 mainframe computer used for statistical calculations. The first generation of computer games were often text-based adventures or interactive fiction , in which

3290-558: The nVidia PhysX PPU , ostensibly competing with middleware such as the Havok physics engine . Issues such as difficulty in ensuring consistent experiences for all players, and the uncertain benefit of first generation PhysX cards in games such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and City of Villains , prompted arguments over the value of such technology. Similarly, many game publishers began to experiment with new forms of marketing. Chief among these alternative strategies

3384-739: The top-selling games for the Atari 8-bit computers were ports of Frogger and Centipede , while the top-selling game for the TI-99/4A was the Space Invaders clone TI Invaders . That same year, Pac-Man was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, while Donkey Kong was licensed for the Coleco Adam . In late 1981, Atari, Inc. attempted to take legal action against unauthorized Pac-Man clones , despite some of these predating Atari's exclusive rights to

3478-482: The 3.3 V Serial ATA power line. There is no need to use a SATA power connector as it will not be fully utilized. As is usually the case for hard drives featuring a faster spindle speed, the Raptor outperformed other ATA drives and in some situations was even able to reach the performance of contemporary 10,000 rpm SCSI drives. SCSI drives still outperformed the Raptor in multi-user scenarios, but for high-end home computers it fared very well. For enthusiasts' systems,

3572-754: The Commodore or Apple, and the Tandy 1000's enhanced graphics, sound , and built-in joystick ports made it the best platform for IBM PC-compatible games before the VGA era. By 1988, the enormous popularity of the Nintendo Entertainment System had greatly affected the computer-game industry. A Koei executive claimed that "Nintendo's success has destroyed the [computer] software entertainment market". A Mindscape executive agreed, saying that "Unfortunately, its effect has been extremely negative. Without question, Nintendo's success has eroded software sales. There's been

3666-472: The IcePack, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink . Western Digital claimed that the new drives were 35 percent faster than the previous generation Raptors. On April 6, 2010, Western Digital updated the VelociRaptor series. The drives contain up to three platters and a 600 GB total capacity, upgraded from the dual-platter 300 GB design of the prior flagship model. Western Digital claims

3760-451: The Internet. Online multiplayer games have achieved popularity largely as a result of increasing broadband adoption among consumers. Affordable high-bandwidth Internet connections allow large numbers of players to play together, and thus have found particular use in massively multiplayer online role-playing games , Tanarus and persistent online games such as World War II Online . Megabyte#Base 10 definition The megabyte

3854-711: The Linux libata drive blacklist. The WD740GD did not apply because it uses TCQ and not NCQ. In order to deal with it, NCQ is disabled Link to the NCQ-Bug in the Kernel Bug Tracker . In TCQ capable controllers, the WD740GD is possibly faster than its successor as some of the WD740ADFDs' gains are lost. The WD740ADFD has also caused problems in some motherboards and their manufacturers had to release BIOS updates. The third generation Raptor

Western Digital Raptor - Misplaced Pages Continue

3948-409: The PC as opposed to porting from other computers. Bing Gordon of Electronic Arts reported that customers used computers for games more than one fifth of the time whether purchased for work or a hobby, with many who purchased computers for other reasons finding PC games "a pretty satisfying experience". By 1987, the PC market was growing so quickly that the formerly business-only computer had become

4042-510: The PC difficult; an observer said that year that Flight Simulator had sold hundreds of thousands of copies because customers with corporate PCs could claim that it was a "simulation". From mid-1985, however, what Compute! described as a "wave" of inexpensive IBM PC clones from American and Asian companies, such as the Tandy 1000 and the Leading Edge Model D , caused prices to decline; by

4136-487: The PC platform allows players to edit or modify their games and distribute the results over the Internet as "mods". A healthy mod community greatly increases a game's longevity and the most popular mods have driven purchases of their parent game to record heights. It is common for professional developers to release the tools they use to create their games (and sometimes even source code ) in order to encourage modding, but if

4230-476: The PC was a breakthrough in 3D graphics, and was soon ported to various game consoles in a general shift toward greater realism. Computer Gaming World reiterated in 1994, "we have to advise readers who want a machine that will play most of the games to purchase high-end MS-DOS machines". By 1993, PC floppy disk games had a sales volume equivalent to about one-quarter that of console game ROM cartridge sales. A hit PC game typically sold about 250,000 disks at

4324-601: The Raptor also had the key advantages of low noise and temperature levels compared to similarly performing drives. All WD360GD drives with Part Number WD360GD-00FNA0 (December 2003) and earlier cannot accept SATA latch cables, as the SATA data connector does not have the required rails. Therefore, only normal cables can be plugged into these connectors. WD360GD Raptors with the Marvell 88i8030-TBC PATA to SATA bridge chip, such as WD360GD-00FNA0 (December 2003) and earlier, are limited to UDMA 5 transfers. In Linux, "applying bridge limits"

4418-511: The SSI Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance , or The Bard's Tale , for example. By the late 1970s to early 1980s, games were developed and distributed through hobbyist groups and gaming magazines, such as Creative Computing and later Computer Gaming World . These publications provided game code that could be typed into a computer and played, encouraging readers to submit their own software to competitions. Players could modify

4512-480: The WD360GD. It featured a capacity of 37 GB on a single platter, a Serial ATA interface, and was the first ATA drive to operate at a spindle speed of 10,000 rpm . Like many early SATA drives, the Raptor was not a "real" SATA drive because it was really a PATA drive that used an 88i8030C interface bridge chip from Marvell. However, this fact did not significantly hamper the Raptor's performance. WD360GD Raptors do not use

4606-471: The WD740GD resulted in a performance decrease in single-user scenarios. It is worth noting that as of 2005, only a few SATA controllers could fully support command queuing. This drive became immensely popular in high-end gaming systems because of these features. In 2006 Western Digital revised the WD740GD specification and released the WD740ADFD, ostensibly the same drive but with 16 MB of on-board cache, and

4700-436: The WD740GD, the WD360GD was revised in 2006 and released with the designation WD360ADFD - incorporating twice as much on-board cache (16 MB vs 8 MB ), at least one side of a single platter that offers twice the areal density, and enabling NCQ. The second generation Raptor was introduced in early 2004, featuring two platters for 74 GB of storage space. Unlike its predecessor, the WD740GD didn't use ball bearings to support

4794-571: The byte multiples that needed to be expressed by the powers of 2 but lacked a convenient name. As 1024 (2 ) approximates 1000 (10 ), roughly corresponding to the SI prefix kilo- , it was a convenient term to denote the binary multiple. In 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published standards for binary prefixes requiring the use of megabyte to denote 1000 bytes, and mebibyte to denote 1024 bytes. By

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4888-775: The computer industry since. Mainframe and minicomputer games are a precursor to personal computer games. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983 . In the 1990s, PC games lost mass market traction to console games on the fifth generation such as the Sega Saturn , Nintendo 64 and PlayStation . They are enjoying a resurgence in popularity since the mid-2000s through digital distribution on online service providers . Personal computers as well as general computer software are considered synonymous with IBM PC compatible systems; while mobile devices  – smartphones and tablets, such as those running on Android or iOS platforms  – are also PCs in

4982-512: The computer's hardware, often requiring a fast central processing unit (CPU) to function properly. CPU manufacturers historically relied mainly on increasing clock rates to improve the performance of their processors, but had begun to move steadily towards multi-core CPUs by 2005 . These processors allow the computer to simultaneously process multiple tasks, called threads , allowing the use of more complex graphics, artificial intelligence and in-game physics. Similarly, 3D games often rely on

5076-485: The console sector second-largest, and mobile gaming sector biggest. 2.2 billion video gamers generate US$ 101.1 billion in revenue, excluding hardware costs. "Digital game revenues will account for $ 94.4 billion or 87% of the global gaming market. The APAC region was estimated to generate $ 46.6 billion in 2016, or 47% of total global video game revenues (note, not only "PC" games). China alone accounts for half of APAC's revenues (at $ 24.4 billion), cementing its place as

5170-432: The cost of circulation, eliminates stock shortages, allows games to be released worldwide at no additional cost, and allows niche audiences to be reached with ease. However, most digital distribution systems create ownership and customer rights issues by storing access rights on distributor-owned computers. Games confer with these computers over the Internet before launching. This raises the prospect of purchases being lost if

5264-461: The crash were largely limited to the console market, as established companies such as Atari posted record losses over subsequent years. Conversely, the home computer market boomed, as sales of low-cost color computers such as the Commodore 64 rose to record highs and developers such as Electronic Arts benefited from increasing interest in the platform. The North American console market experienced

5358-405: The distributor goes out of business or chooses to lock the buyer's account, and prevents resale (the ethics of which are a matter of debate ). Valve does not release any sales figures on its Steam service, instead it only provides the data to companies with games on Steam, which they cannot release without permission due to signing a non-disclosure agreement with Valve. However, Stardock ,

5452-401: The drive to report TLER timeouts after roughly 50 days of continuous operation (precisely 49.71 days counted in milliseconds, which corresponds to the overflow of a 32-bit number). The bug has been present in all models of drives shipped, from their introduction up to late 2009. WDC never admitted the existence of this bug, or officially released a firmware update; however, an update was leaked by

5546-474: The early 1980s. To enhance the immersive experience with their unrealistic graphics and electronic sound, early PC games included extras such as the peril-sensitive sunglasses that shipped with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or the science fiction novella included with Elite . These extras gradually became less common, but many games were still sold in the traditional oversized boxes that used to hold

5640-630: The early-mid-1980s, and by 1985, the NEC and FM-7 computers had built-in FM sound. The first PC sound cards , such as AdLib 's Music Synthesizer Card, soon appeared in 1987. These cards allowed IBM PC compatible computers to produce complex sounds using FM synthesis, where they had previously been limited to simple tones and beeps. However, the rise of the Creative Labs Sound Blaster card, released in 1989, which featured much higher sound quality due to

5734-483: The end of 1986, the equivalent to a $ 1600 real IBM PC with 256K RAM and two disk drives cost as little as $ 600, lower than the price of the Apple IIc . Consumers began purchasing DOS computers for the home in large numbers. While often purchased to do work on evenings and weekends, clones' popularity caused consumer-software companies to increase the number of IBM-compatible products, including those developed specifically for

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5828-593: The end of 2009, the IEC Standard had been adopted by the IEEE , EU , ISO and NIST . Nevertheless, the term megabyte continues to be widely used with different meanings. In this convention, one thousand megabytes (1000 MB) is equal to one gigabyte (1 GB), where 1 GB is one billion bytes. Randomly addressable semiconductor memory doubles in size for each address lane added to an integrated circuit package, which favors counts that are powers of two. The capacity of

5922-774: The extra " feelies ". Today, such extras are usually found only in Special Edition versions of games, such as Battlechests from Blizzard . During the 16-bit era , the Amiga and Atari ST became popular in Europe, the Macintosh and IBM PC compatibles became popular in North America, while the PC-98, X68000 , and FM Towns became popular in Japan. The Amiga, X68000 and FM Towns were capable of producing near arcade -quality hardware sprite graphics and sound quality when they first released in

6016-558: The first Raptor models employing the Advanced Format (AF) 512e internal layout. [Original link no longer available] Official Reviews Personal computer game A personal computer game , also known as a computer game or abbreviated PC game , is a video game played on a personal computer (PC). The term PC game has been popularly used since the 1990s referring specifically to games on " Wintel " ( Microsoft Windows software/ Intel hardware) which has dominated

6110-410: The general sense as opposed to console or arcade machine . Historically, it also included games on systems from Apple Computer , Atari Corporation , Commodore International and others. Microsoft Windows utilizing Direct3D become the most popular operating system for PC games in the 2000s. Games utilizing 3D graphics generally require a form of graphics processing unit , and PC games have been

6204-532: The growing popularity of Microsoft Windows simplified device driver and memory management. The success of 3D console titles such as Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider increased interest in hardware accelerated 3D graphics on PCs, and soon resulted in attempts to produce affordable products with the ATI Rage , Matrox Mystique , S3 ViRGE , and Rendition Vérité . As 3D graphics libraries such as DirectX and OpenGL matured and knocked proprietary interfaces out of

6298-404: The higher latency of most Internet connections and the costs associated with broadband Internet. LAN gaming typically requires two or more personal computers, a router and sufficient networking cables to connect every computer on the network. Additionally, each computer must have its own copy (or spawn copy ) of the game in order to play. Optionally, any LAN may include an external connection to

6392-591: The home versions of Namco 's game. As the American video game market became flooded with poor-quality cartridge games created by numerous companies attempting to enter the market, and overproduction of high-profile releases such as the Atari 2600 adaptations of Pac-Man and E.T. grossly underperformed, the popularity of personal computers for education rose dramatically. In 1983, American consumer interest in console video games dwindled to historical lows, as interest in games on personal computers rose. The effects of

6486-441: The improvements introduced with products such as ATI's Radeon R300 and NVidia 's GeForce 6 series have allowed developers to increase the complexity of modern game engines . PC gaming currently tends strongly toward improvements in 3D graphics. Unlike the generally accepted push for improved graphical performance, the use of physics engines in computer games has become a matter of debate since announcement and 2005 release of

6580-494: The inclusion of a PCM channel and digital signal processor , led AdLib to file for bankruptcy by 1992. Also in 1989, the FM Towns computer included built-in PCM sound, in addition to a CD-ROM drive and 24-bit color graphics. In the late 80s and throughout the entire 1990s decade, DOS was one of the most popular gaming platforms in regions where it was officially sold. By 1990, DOS

6674-508: The largest and fastest-growing, and most important platform for computer game companies. DOS computers dominated the home, supplanting Commodore and Apple. More than a third of games sold in North America were for the PC, twice as many as those for the Apple II and even outselling those for the Commodore 64. With the EGA video card , an inexpensive clone had better graphics and more memory for games than

6768-566: The largest video game market in the world, ahead of the US's anticipated market size of $ 23.5 billion. Bertie the Brain was one of the first game playing machines developed. It was built in 1950 by Josef Kates . It measured more than four meters tall, and was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition that year. Although personal computers only became popular with the development of

6862-675: The magazine mocked as "amateur acting" in the added audio and video —new games such as Myst included many more assets for a richer game experience. Many companies sold "multimedia upgrade kits" that bundled CD drives, sound cards, and software during the mid-1990s, but device drivers for the new peripherals further depleted scarce RAM. By 1993, PC games required much more memory than other software, often consuming all of conventional memory , while device drivers could go into upper memory with DOS memory managers . Players found modifying CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files for memory management cumbersome and confusing, and each game needed

6956-577: The market, these platforms gained greater acceptance in the market, particularly with their demonstrated benefits in games such as Unreal . However, major changes to the Microsoft Windows operating system, by then the market leader, made many older DOS-based games unplayable on Windows NT , and later, Windows XP (without using an emulator , such as DOSBox ). The faster graphics accelerators and improving CPU technology resulted in increasing levels of realism in computer games. During this time,

7050-538: The mid-to-late 1980s. Among launch titles for the IBM Personal Computer (PC) in 1981 was Microsoft Adventure , which IBM described as bringing "players into a fantasy world of caves and treasures". BYTE that year stated that the computer's speed and sophistication made it "an excellent gaming device", and IBM and others sold games like Microsoft Flight Simulator . The PC's CGA graphics and speaker sound were poor, however, and most customers bought

7144-671: The new models are 15 percent faster than the previous generation of VelociRaptors. On April 16, 2012, Western Digital updated the VelociRaptor series for the second time. The new drives contain up to three platters and a 1000 GB total capacity, upgraded from the triple-platter 600 GB design of the prior flagship model. It was the last generation of Raptor hard drives to be manufactured; Western Digital removed it from its product catalog in mid-2016, without any direct successor. Alongside VelociRaptor, Western Digital also produced S25 , rebranded XE in May 2012, an SAS version of VelociRaptor. It

7238-521: The player communicated with the computer by entering commands through a keyboard. An early text-adventure, Adventure , was developed for the PDP-11 minicomputer by Will Crowther in 1976, and expanded by Don Woods in 1977. By the 1980s, personal computers had become powerful enough to run games like Adventure , but by this time, graphics were beginning to become an important factor in games. Later games combined textual commands with basic graphics, as seen in

7332-406: The powerful but expensive computer for business. One ComputerLand owner estimated in 1983 that a quarter of corporate executives with computers "have a game hidden somewhere in their drawers", and InfoWorld in 1984 reported that "in offices all over America (more than anyone realizes) executives and managers are playing games on their computers", but software companies found selling games for

7426-431: The previous owner of competing platform Impulse , estimated that, as of 2009, Steam had a 70% share of the digital distribution market for video games. In early 2011, Forbes reported that Steam sales constituted 50–70% of the $ 4 billion market for downloaded PC games and that Steam offered game producers gross margins of 70% of purchase price, compared with 30% at retail. Modern computer games place great demand on

7520-514: The speed and capacity limits of the optical discs which most other gaming platforms rely on. Valve released the Steam platform for Windows computers in 2003 as a means to distribute Valve-developed video games such as Half-Life 2. It would later see release on the Mac OS X operating system in 2010 and was released on Linux in 2012. By 2011, it controlled 70% of the market for downloadable PC games, with

7614-557: The spinning disks, but rather used fluid dynamic bearings . These allowed the new Raptor to operate at a noise level comparable to the quieter 7,200 rpm drives. Another advantage the WD740GD had over its predecessor was Tagged Command Queuing , a feature that had previously been available only in SCSI drives. Command queuing resulted in a notable increase in the WD740GD's multi-user performance—a key discipline where its predecessor failed compared to SCSI drives. However, enabling command queuing on

7708-403: The standard SATA power port. This, however, was available only in 3.5" models. Despite having been in production since early 2003, there was no direct competition in the same market for many years. In 2006, Western Digital acknowledged the primary consumer of its Raptor brand drives by releasing a revision of its 150 GB drive. In keeping with the PC case modding trend of stylizing, the drive

7802-400: The success of adventure games such as the highly successful King's Quest series, and high resolution bitmap displays allowed the industry to include increasingly high-quality graphical interfaces in new releases. Further improvements to game artwork and audio were made possible with the introduction of FM synthesis sound. Yamaha began manufacturing FM synth boards for computers in

7896-656: The time, while a hit console game typically sold about 1 million cartridges. By spring 1994, an estimated 24 million US homes (27% of households) had a personal computer. 48% played games on their computer; 40% had the 486 CPU or higher; 35% had CD-ROM drives; and 20% had a sound card. Another survey found that an estimated 2.46 million multimedia computers had internal CD-ROM drives by the end of 1993, an increase of almost 2,000%. Computer Gaming World reported in April 1994 that some software publishers planned to only distribute on CD as of 1995. CD-ROM had much larger storage capacity than floppies, helped reduce software piracy, and

7990-641: The total capacity to 600 GB, the SATA interface speed had been increased to 6 Gbit/s. The drives are sold either in the same IcePack mounting frame as the previous generation, or as bare drives (intended for rackmount servers). While the drive width of 2.5 inches may entice users to try to install a VelociRaptor drive in a laptop, this is not possible. Not only are the drives a thicker-than-usual 15 mm high, but they require both +12 V and +5 V power that most laptops cannot provide. Standard laptop hard drives typically only require +5 V. The sixth-generation Raptor (or third-generation VelociRaptor)

8084-512: The vast majority of computer games are designed to run on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Whereas earlier games written for DOS would include code to communicate directly with hardware, today application programming interfaces (APIs) provide an interface between the game and the OS, simplifying game design. Microsoft's DirectX is an API that is widely used by today's computer games to communicate with sound and graphics hardware. OpenGL

8178-492: Was 65% of the computer-game market, with the Amiga at 10%; all other computers, including the Apple Macintosh , were below 10% and declining. Although both Apple and IBM tried to avoid customers associating their products with "game machines", the latter acknowledged that VGA, audio, and joystick options for its PS/1 computer were popular. In 1991, id Software produced an early first-person shooter , Hovertank 3D , which

8272-411: Was announced by Western Digital in April 2012. The drives are 2.5-inch devices with 15 mm in height, sold either as bare drives (CHTZ and BHTZ models) or mounted in the IcePack 3.5-inch mounting frame (DHTZ and HHTZ models), which continues the variants available in the previous generation. Beside increasing the capacity to 1000  GB , the buffer size has been doubled to 64  MB . They are also

8366-509: Was first launched on November 3, 2009 with capacities of 147 and 300 GB, which are similar to competing drives from other manufacturers. They were later expanded to 450 and 600 GB in January 2011, and to 900 GB in March 2012. XE was removed from Western Digital's product catalog before VelociRaptor, in March 2015. In 2003, Western Digital released the first incarnation of the Raptor series:

8460-457: Was for many years the de facto standard for sound cards, although its popularity dwindled as PC audio became a commodity on modern motherboards. Physics processing units (PPUs), such as the Nvidia PhysX (formerly AGEIA PhysX) card, are also available to accelerate physics simulations in modern computer games. PPUs allow the computer to process more complex interactions among objects than

8554-516: Was given a Perspex window to match the internals of computer cases . This allows the user to see the drive's inner workings while it is in operation. On February 10, 2003, Western Digital announced the first consumer 10,000 RPM hard drive, sold in 36 GB and 74 GB versions. On April 21, 2008, Western Digital announced the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA Raptor hard drive series. The new drives, called WD VelociRaptor , feature 300  GB capacity and 2.5-inch platters enclosed in

8648-500: Was less expensive to produce. Chris Crawford warned that it was "a data-intensive technology, not a process-intensive one", tempting developers to emphasize the quantity of digital assets like art and music over the quality of gameplay; Computer Gaming World wrote in 1993 that "publishers may be losing their focus". While many companies used the additional storage to release poor-quality shovelware collections of older software, or "enhanced" versions of existing ones —often with what

8742-430: Was released by Western Digital in January 2006. It features two 75 GB platters (for a total of 150 GB) and a more advanced system of Native Command Queuing . At the same time, the Raptor X was released. It has identical specifications to the standard Raptor, but it has the addition of a clear polycarbonate window in the drive cover, making the movements of the disks and magnetic heads visible. This unique feature

8836-469: Was the company's first in their line of highly influential games in the genre. There were also several other companies that produced early first-person shooters, such as Arsys Software 's Star Cruiser , which featured fully 3D polygonal graphics in 1988, and Accolade 's Day of the Viper in 1989. Id Software went on to develop Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, which helped to popularize the genre, kick-starting

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