IT WAS A LONG dry spell without but PC gaming is just about to go bonkers. This winter promises to be the best since 2004, when we saw the release of Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half Life 2.

After John Woo's Stranglehold came onto the market (the game looks just awesome in 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 with full details and 8xAA), the key month for PC gaming industry will be November.

Gears of War under Games For Windows banner - PC version brings updated DX10 graphics, new levels, map editor and more...

Hellgate: London will be launched on October 31st/November 2nd (depending on a market), Gears of War will see the light of day as PC version on November 7th/9th, while Crysis is going to hit the market on November 16th/19th. at least, according to information we have managed to get here in Qwest Field Stadium/Convention Center.

Crysis is being demoed as Alpha, but everything should be tuned in time for the launch...

In order to accommodate the launch of Hellgate: London, Nvidia pushed forward the release of GeForce 8800GT, now being released at the same time as 780i chipset (NDA should expire on October 31st). AMD is still looking likely to launch complete K10 attack in third week of November to have a simultaneous launch with Crysis - and then all players will go into overdrive to exchange as much old computers as possible.

This industry works in cycles, and it is more than obvious that we have reached a beginning of new cycle. Main players in this cycle will be multi-core processors, and mainstream single-chip graphics cards being used in creation of high-end cards. µ