Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 11: Gaming Over a Wireless Home Network
At the most basic level, you need any modern multimedia PC (or Macintosh,
for that matter) to get started with PC gaming. Just about any PC or Mac purchased
since 2002 or so will have a fast processor and a decent graphics or
video card. (You hear both terms used.) If you start getting into online
gaming, think about upgrading your PC with high-end gaming hardware or
building a dedicated gaming machine. Some key hardware components to
keep in mind are the following:
� Fast processor: Much of the hard work in gaming is done by the video
card, but a fast Intel Core Duo (or the AMD equivalent) central processing
unit (CPU) is always nice to have.
� Powerful video card: The latest cards from ATI and nVIDIA (www.nvidia.
com) contain incredibly sophisticated computer chips dedicated to
cranking out the video part of your games. If you get to the point where
you know what frames per second (fps) is all about and you start worrying
that yours are too low, it’s time to start investigating faster video
cards.
We’re big fans of the ATI (www.ati.com) Radeon HD 3850 card, but then
we’re suckers for fast hardware that can crank out the polygons (the
building blocks of your game video) at mind-boggling speeds.
� Fancy gaming controllers: Many games can be played by using a standard
mouse and keyboard, but you may want to look into some cool
specialized game controllers that connect through your PC’s Universal
Serial Bus (USB). For example, you can get a joystick for flying games or
a steering wheel for driving games. Check out Creative Technologies
(www.creative.com) and Mad Catz (www.madcatz.com) for some cool
options.
� Quality sound card: Many games include a surround sound soundtrack,
just like DVDs provide in your home theater. If you have the appropriate
number of speakers and the right sound card, you hear the bad guys
creeping up behind you before you see them on the screen. Très fun.
Networking Requirements for PC Gaming
Gaming PCs may (but don’t have to) have some different innards than regular
PCs, but their networking requirements don’t differ in any appreciable way
from the PC you use for Web browsing, e-mail, or anything else. You shouldn’t
be surprised to hear that connecting a gaming PC to your wireless network is
no different from connecting any PC.
You need some sort of wireless network adapter connected to your gaming
PC to get it up and running on your home network (just like you need a wireless
network adapter connected to any PC running on your network, as we
discuss in Chapter 5). These adapters are often built right into your PC. If
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