It looks realistic. But it can look so much better. Words like Nvidia GTX 580 and Radeon 6990 are terms that are about to get heaps more popular.

Several years ago, tech journos like me would revel in benchmarking hardware using the latest games. Far Cry, Call of Duty 2, and Crysis were all so good that you felt compelled to play them at their best settings using the latest hardware. But that all ground to a halt. What happened? And could Battlefield 3 be responsible for re-igniting a demand for the latest computing components?

If you read most technology magazines back then, you'd have seen heaps of computer component reviews - principally graphics cards, motherboards and processors. One of the main reasons one would need to know about these would be because you'd need to have the latest to play the latest games. This is why hardware manufacturers always try and succeed in the gaming market. It's huge. Or at least it was.

One of the first games of recent times that we got excited about was Far Cry (early 2004). Before that, Unreal Tournament 2003 had come to pretty much represent the definitive level of video games and if your PC ran that using the best settings, then it was something of a beast. Having come out in late 2002, however, it was feeling a bit long in the tooth. Then early teasers of Far Cry grabbed everyone's imagination. Its use of High Dynamic Range lighting wowed everyone as it represented a huge step towards the cinematic gaming goal that developers and hardware makers were aiming for. It was set on a beautiful tropical island with amazing colours and details. It was so amazing, many people spent time going for little walks just to admire the scenery rather than shoot the bad guys. I did that. You could play it at lower settings with the special effects turned off, but that felt like a travesty and was missing the point of the game.

To illustrate just how far PCs were ahead of consoles back then, remember that later in 2004, Halo 2 (whose graphics looked generations behind Far Cry) was launched on the original Xbox. Doom 3 appeared on PC around the same time and while that wasn't quite the success we hoped it would be, it too was a hardware-punishing game that set new standards for realistic gaming on the PC (quick aside - Half-Life 2 appeared in November that year and mercifully showed developers that a stunning-looking game didn't have to use a monster computer to look its best.)

But after a year or so of getting used to Half-Life 2's high framerates and high detail settings (and allowing the not-so-early adopters to catch up with their system upgrades), another game appeared which would spark not just a new wave of upgrades but the largest media franchise of all time: Call of Duty 2. I reckon it took just a few minutes of playing that game before anyone would realise its brilliance. It was by far the most realistic and cinematic game to date and essentially let us re-enact World War II. We used it for a computer benchmark for years, such was the punishing toll it took on graphics cards.

But just when you thought that you couldn't possibly need to upgrade again, up popped the stunningly-beautiful, Oblivion in early 2006. This amazing Dungeons and Dragons-ish role playing game was another one you could lose yourself in for very many hours and the idea of turning off all the amazing realistic graphics effects felt like sacrilege. Mercifully there was a bit of a break until we needed to upgrade again after this and, well, then things changed.

I reckon the real peak of the last round of triumphant PC gaming came with November 2007's Crysis. Crysis was the follow up to Far Cry and so expectations were enormous. It didn't disappoint. It looked phenomenal and offered stunning gameplay thanks to the protagonist's nanosuit which could power-up and turn invisible. But there wasn't a computer invented that could play the thing with all effects turned on. Hardware eventually did catch up but this coincided with a few things happening.

Crysis is arguably the first game (or one of the first) that hit a graphical level which didn't really need to be bettered. How much more real did you really need a game to look?

It was also a time when the Xbox 360 and PS3 were really making huge steps into becoming the most profitable games platforms and they both exhibited graphical levels that could match the PC (which had traditionally been capable - at least potentially - of trouncing the performance of consoles). The consoles could play Crysis. They'd later show us that they could also play drop dead gorgeous-looking games like Red Dead Redemption, Halo: Reach and Uncharted. Why should anyone focus mainly on a PC anymore? Why keep having to pay for expensive upgrades and stress over whether a game would work on your particular PC when you knew the best games would just work on the consoles?

Whatever the reasons, we've spent the past four-or-five years experiencing the "consolization of games". Virtually all PC games plateaued at a level where consoles could also play them comfortably: they look great and developers haven't felt the need to push boundaries beyond what consoles can handle. Gears of War (one of the Xbox 360's first big hits) looked great back in 2006. Halo: Reach might look far superior, but it all uses the same hardware - it just shows what you can do when you don't rely on brute force of the hardware to improve graphics and instead tighten up your coding.

I haven't felt like I needed to upgrade my PC graphics since Crysis. Back then an Nvidia 9800 would do it. I've used the same chipset since.

But for the first time in years, I think PC games are about to step ahead once more.

The recent Witcher 2 needed a mighty computer to play it at its best although you could still have a great experience with older hardware. But good as it was, it didn't get the masses out buying it.

More recently, at a launch event for Battlefield 3, the host's fleet of one-year-old hardcore gaming PCs was deemed unsuitable by publisher Electronic Arts as they weren't powerful enough to show the game off to its full potential.

EA had a point. The teaser trailers of actual gameplay from Battlefield 3 are stunningly realistic and represent an amazing technical achievement whether you like shooter games or not. Here's a screenshot below.



Battlefield 3. You could be watching a film.

But when I installed the game, my water-cooled Nvidia 9800 GTX SLI graphics cards were dismissed by the game as inadequate. Turns out they were right. These were state of the art just a few years ago.



A hardcore gamer setup of water-cooled twin 9800 GTX graphics cards in SLI. Or as we call them today, "old hat."

But while the technology has well and truly superseded those cards, there's been no compelling reason to buy into it. The 9800 GTXs have handled everything I've thrown at them. Until now. Thanks to Battlefield 3, here's what I'm seeing...



I've barely noticed the past few generations of graphics cards. Now... I'm fascinated to see what's available.

I can just about achieve smooth gameplay with the cards parallel processing together. A single 9800 GTX chugs and jerks along though. And that's with all settings dialled down to minimum...



I haven't seen such depressing performance for years. It's great!

I've decided to stop playing the single player part of the game - it's been widely-described as a technology demo anyway, so there's no point in grinding through the mediocre storyline if you're not going to admire the visuals along the way - at the best quality possible.



Great graphics, worthy of any console. This is the lowest playable quality the PC version of BF3 can muster.

But the multiplayer is downright outstanding. Reviews are starting to appear but they're all going to have very high scores indeed. I'm going to be spending a great deal of time on this game and so looking at second rate visuals is just not going to cut it. The game might not be perfect as a whole, but it's got it where it counts.

Asking around the Good Game office, they're using top-of-the-line cards accross the board. Other game and tech journos have agreed that now is the time they'll upgrade their computers. This will be great news to umpteen hardware brands who will finally be able to think about selling $500 components to the general public again - not just ultra-enthusiasts and competitive overclockers.

It can't be underestimated what the long term effects of this will be. If a huge sector of gamers upgrade their PCs then there will be a boom in computer and component sales. It should also push the PC back in front of the consoles meaning that we should see next-generation consoles sooner rather than later. From a media point of view, there should be more advertising and hopefully a boom in tech publishing... which helps drive the technology industry in return.

Certainly, having the same level of gaming performance for the past five years has had some great benefits. If you bought your first Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 today, you could go and binge on old or second-hand games and pick up absolute gems like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Halo: Reach for a fraction of their original prices and be safe in the knowledge that you were playing a game that still looked awesome.

But it's time to move on. Hopefully, Battlefield 3 will be the spur. If not alone it could be helped by Oblivion's successor, the imminent Skyrim. Whatever the case, the component manufacturers are feeling very optimistic right now, as are tech publishers. Gamers, meanwhile, are spoilt rotten for choice, whatever platform they prefer. But the future is that bit brighter for PC gamers, in my humble opinion.