The terms Gaming PC and Gaming Computers specifically refers to computers built to have the capacity to play current personal computer games. This is generally accepted to mean PC or IBM clone hardware. In the more general sense of the term however, this could also refer to games on the Apple Macintosh or the various consoles available from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and other CPU chip based electronic platforms.
Although PC games will run on general purpose home computers, a true gaming computer is specifically made to process the instructions necessary for high detail graphics, physics engines, interactive interfaces and multiple user interactions (for multiplayer computer games).
The personal computers made specifically for playing games got their start with the introduction of the game Doom from id Software made for Microsoft Windows based personal computers (also known, at the time, as IBM clones). The game pushed standard business and home computer hardware to the point of literal melt down and game enthusiasts began building computers with the highest performance hardware to run Doom at the highest possible performance (also known as frames per second). So, the gaming computer got its start as a modified utilitarian device for competitive events similar to modifying a street car for higher performance in order to do well in a NASCAR race.
As computer games started becoming graphically and computationally complex in the 1990's, with games such as Quake and Tomb Raider using hardware accelerated graphics, the concept of building PCs specifically for gaming was born. As such, the power of a gaming PC's GPU has always been the top priority. In the early and mid 90's, companies such as Voodoo PC, Falcon Northwest and Alienware, focusing entirely on gaming and high-end PCs were launched. Games like The 7th Guest and Myst helped CD-ROMs and sound cards become far more popular. In 1998, AMD incorporated the 3DNow! instruction set into their K6-2 CPU line as well as every CPU model thereafter. The technology was designed for vector processing, a frequent task in 3D games. Intel responded with Streaming SIMD Extensions in the Pentium III, which AMD eventually also incorporated from Athlon XP onwards. However, it wasn't until the 2000's when major computer manufacturers such as Dell made any serious attempts at building gaming PC's. Wikipedia
