Here's one example of a hellish PR nightmare: customers mobbing your company's forums, wielding pikes and pitchforks of utter hate messages. That's what's happening right now for Creative Labs when they tried to stop a modder from distributing custom driver, that greatly enhanced the performance of their sound cards with Vista. Read all about it in the full article.

One word that can really stir up excitement is the word "tournament." Incidentally, that's exactly what GGL Global Gaming will be holding for players of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm. The prizes at stake are nothing to sneeze at, either. For more contest details, just check the full article after the jump.

 It was almost certain that, to play a game filled with a lot of water and freaky people in diving outfits, you'd need a powerful computer. BioShock (PC, Xbox 360) is getting a lot of buzz for both its PC and Xbox 360 incarnations. For folks who want to play the game on their PCs, however, be warned: you may need to upgrade your stuff.

2K Games recently revealed the PC requirements for Irrational Games' BioShock and, to put it simply, they're pretty hefty:

Operating Systems:

• Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or
• Windows Vista

Minimum System Requirements:

• CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
• System RAM: 1GB
• Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
• Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
• Hard disc space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• System RAM: 2GB
• Video card:
• DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
• DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
• Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

You'll also need an internet connection to register the game for play, but if you're reading this, then there's a good chance you won't have to worry about that. In any case, how does your current gaming rig compare? Will you upgrade your PC for BioShock, or will you pick up the Xbox 360 version instead?

We don't know exactly how hard Windows Vista works to make legacy programs compatible - we do know it's pretty darn hard - but that might not extend to hardware, and not because they don't have the juice or the megahurtz to handle it. Creative Labs has commented that Vista might not work for legacy titles that use its Sound Blaster Xi-Fi cards because, well, techno-jumbo:

The result of Microsoft’s removal of the hardware audio abstraction layer for Vista will confuse many gamers. Many people who have experimented with popular legacy games on the Vista beta release have been unable to experience multi-channel audio, with Creative and other sound cards, and even with motherboard audio. This is not something that a driver update can fix.

Hence, Creative is testing ALchemy - a free app that will bridge legacy audio with Windows Vista. It will convert the EAX or DirectSound 3D calls of these games into the OpenAL calls used by Vista, promising the same sound you've come to expect from the game as though it still were on XP. Hey, Fel Reavers are meant to be heard and not seen, after all - how 'ya supposed to run away from them if you can't hear them, and if you see them, it's too late?

The Via link below takes you to where you can download a beta version of ALchemy.

Creative Labs announced two new Sound Blaster cards that meet the audio demands of the most finicky gamer. In fact, the Sound Blaster X-Fi was named as the official sound card for the Grand Final of the World Cyber Games in Monza, Italy later this month.

The cards, which harness the power of the X-Fi chip, are available in two formats - one for PCs and the other for full-size gaming rigs. Both the Fatal1ty Professional Series (for serious PC gamers) and Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer (for small form factor or full-size PCs) delivers surround sound over stereo headphones for gaming, movies and music.

Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, winner of eleven world championships in five different games swears by the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty soundcard. "When I'm competing I need the best performance and the most realistic sound from my equipment...there is nothing faster or better."

Creative Labs says once you go X-Fi, there’s no going back to conventional audio. Some available titles with X-Fi support include Battlefield 2142, Prey, Quake 4 and Doom 3.