i am writing an article on how the constant demand of modern pc games is what drives the persuit of better hardware. i'm sure that there has been countless # of articles before mine, and i need references.

any help? or your own opinion?

the constant demand of modern pc games is what drives the pursuit of better hardware

I used to have (but threw out when I moved house) a copy of PCW magazine from about 1992, which included their award for "best power-user's system". They naturally started out by asking what counted as a power-user. "One answer," they said, "might be 'a user who plays games'." That answer, I think, is taken for granted these days, but in 1992 it was perceptive to the point of being subversive.

The same issue featured a GBP20,000 SGI workstation, fitted with a GBP80,000 graphics card, which could just about cope with rotating a 3D shaded image of an aeroplane in real time. If you'd shown them Doom they'd have died.

Peter

I fed google with 'games pushing hardware' and the third link seems to be what you are looking for.

No links, but perhaps a starting idea -

Go look at the historical performance of the likes of Silicon Graphics, 3D Labs, and other high-end graphics machine/chipset manufacturer that targetted the corporate market. You'll notice their profits drop significantly in the late 90s as the gaming boards catch up to them in performance, at a far lower price.

Now, you could read this 2 ways:
1) The likes of ATI, nVidia, 3Dfx were always targetting the corporate 3D power-users. (But I think you'll find plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise)
2) The motivation for creating faster and better 3D hardware shifted from the needs of the 3D power-users to the needs of the gamer.

But I guess that graphics card element is a gimme. What about other hardware? You could try sourcing a selection of games from over the past 5-10 years, and charting their stated minimum and recommended requirements. Whether or not that shows causality is debatable - and perhaps you should question that in your article anyway (The best articles always look at the other side of the argument ).

You could also look at the market share of AC97 sound cards vs that of the 'prosumer' soundcards. That tells it's own story. Creative sell millions of SB Live cards that make soundcards with good 3D effects and crappy analog/digital outputs (audiophically speaking). But who's heard of MAudio?

You could try sourcing a selection of games from over the past 5-10 years, and charting their stated minimum and recommended requirements.

More tellingly, compare requirements for games from a given time period with requirements for business apps and operating systems from the same time period. But don't forget about high-end applications like video editors and whatnot. They've been around for quite a while and have pushed the edge, too.