The next generation of computer games sporting more realistic visuals than ever is not yet in full swing but a range of new graphics chips is letting gamers beef up their PCs today in anticipation. It"s the latest round in the grudge match between Nvidia Corp., the last remaining independent graphics chip company, and ATI, which was folded into PC processor maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. last year.
The new chips are some of the most impressive pieces of silicon ever produced -- sporting more than half a billion transistors, hundreds of processing engines and accompanied by more than half a gigabyte of memory. The magic lies in their ability to run games using DirectX 10, the latest version of the software from Microsoft Corp., enabling games to run on its Windows operating system