Hardware vs. Software: Which drives which?

[~*McoreD*~]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That?s easy! The egg came first. Eggs were around for a long time before any bird evolved into a chicken. But the relevance is not, in which came first, but which do you prefer? Eggs or Chicken? Will that be fried or over-easy? Hardware or Software? Which drives the market? Which drives the consumer?

Some might argue that Software drives the market, especially for gamers. Remember how we all had to scramble for better video cards, RAM and processors to play UT and Q3. Everyone wanted more frames per second. Valuable frags and flags couldn?t be risked on poor frame rates. Now we are all upgrading again to enjoy the beauty of UT2003. In our quest for the best we scraped, scratched and dug in the cushions so we could get a Geforce4.

But then ATI comes out with RADEON 9700 just as we updated our latest drivers from NVIDIA. We are all drooling over this card now. Does this mean Hardware drives the market?

Certainly in the business world, hardware is way ahead. Most businesses could get by running applications on a Pentium II. Dare I say Cyrix even? In this domain, the software is far behind. Obviously, computer graphics, photo editing and movies require some hardware, but not like the gamers. So maybe the answer is the gamer. Does the gamer drive the market?

Consider that many of gaming geeks probably would have been working on our cars, if we lived 10 or 20 years ago. We are the modern day gear heads. Well, almost! At least gear heads got babes. But that is another argument, an area where us geeks definitely need to improve. Let us not digress.

As computer gear heads, we want more power, bigger engines, more torque, and more speed. The best hardware we can afford, or that mommy or daddy will buy us. We are jealous every time one our LAN buds upgrades. ?Damn man! He?s getting 300 fps and I?m only getting 250! I think I?ll buy an new motherboard?! Cha-ching! We?ve all learned to back-up by now. Does this mean gaming gear heads with the thirst for diesel drive the demand for more horsepower? Could be? We all surf the web, drooling over faster drives, motherboards and processors, even when our present machines run everything just fine. Does this sound familiar?

This debate could go on forever, and it certainly will as long as, Intel and AMD keep upping the ante. You better believe that I would be upgrading my Processor if UT2003 didn?t run great on my Athlon 1500XP. While I believe hardware is ahead of the game now. What will happen with Quake4 or UT2006? This entire thinking makes me want to blow something. Battlefield 1942 here I come!