The above time line shows just a few of the more important changes in computer and console hardware and software over the past 5 years. Just a couple noticeable things about this:

1. When the XBox 360 came out in November of 2005, most PCs were running Windows 2000 or Windows XP with DirectX 9.0c for graphics. The 360 incorporates a DirectX 9.0c GPU with about 48 Shader Processors and a 3-core PowerPC chip at 3.2GHz.

2. The PlayStation 3 launched about one year later, also with a PowerPC chip at 3.2GHz, however this one has 1 main CPU and 7 little ones instead of the unified 3-core design of the 360. It also has a DirectX 9.0c GPU with about 32 shaders (although they are very different and comparable to the 48 in the 360).

3. 2 months after the latest console, Microsoft launched Windows Vista to the masses, alongside DirectX 10 hardware from both NVIDIA and ATI. The GeForce 8800GTX that was available had more than twice the power of the consoles' GPUs, and Intel's Core 2 Duo was a very competitive performer as well, despite the lack of a direct comparison between IBM and Intel's architectures.

4. While console development lay dormant for the next three years, PCs pushed on with the GTX 200 series video cards doubling performance and the Core i7 simply thrashing Core 2 Duo performance with it's 8-thread capability.

5. Roughly 3 years after the DirectX 9.0c consoles were launched, Microsoft released Windows 7 and DirectX 11, alongside hardware from ATI. NVIDIA's hardware showed its face in March 2010, and again doubled performance theoretically with 480 shaders. That's 10x as many as the XBox 360!

Today's PCs are gaming supercomputers when equipped with Intel Core i7 CPUs and either Radeon HD 5800 or NVIDIA GTX 400 series cards. We can easily run all of our games at 1080P resolution, and even crank up anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to the max. On top of that, features like PhysX, DX 11 Tessellation, enhanced shadows, Eyefinity, and 3D Surround make the gaming experience much more immersive than on these ancient consoles.

The 360 and the PlayStation generally run their games at 720p, then upscale the image to fit your screen. This means you're getting less than half the pixels that you would get from a good PC. This matters most on big screen plasmas and LCDs. The consoles also generally use 2x geometry anti-aliasing, whereas PCs are capable now of full-scene 8x AA to help reduce jagged lines, even on blades of grass and the like that are "fake geometry."

Besides image quality being far superior on PCs, the gaming experience is typically more expansive, with player-created mods being available for many titles. Just look at a title like Quake 3 that was turned into everything from a grappling-hook swing fest to a race car driving game.

Also, keeping the games installed on a hard drive makes level load times much faster on PC.

Steam has also turned PC gaming upside down lately. With Valve's software, you never have to worry about misplacing a game's DVD or product key again. You simply download the game and play. Many titles even use either Steam's multiplayer or XBox Live to connect with friends easier than ever.

I was reminded of how much better PC gaming is the other day when a friend and I decided to play some Tiger Woods 2010 on the PlayStation 3. He had lost his DVD some months ago and finally found it, so we were excited to be able to play again. When we got to the Online Play options, we were a bit confused, but eventually one of us created a room and the other searched for it to find it. We connected, but when we tried to play we got "Bad Connection" on the screen every time. Since there are about three ways to go about creating a game, we tried them all, but alas, "Bad Connection" kept coming up.

In a fit of desperation, we both rebooted our consoles, and decided to take it very slow the second time. Amazingly, that worked, but without reason. We got through a first round, and were about 15 holes into the second when my PlayStation's screen went black. I could see the wireless light flicker, but the game was gone, along with any hope of recording a win. Being a console, my only resort was my last one, which meant powering down the console and calling it a night.

For the down-played graphics and all, I should really get a better experience than that a console. I even pay $10 more per game, just for the pleasure of playing it on the PS3. So where's the love?

At the end of the day, I will still play all of the games I can on my PC. It's a better experience across the board, especially when consoles have lost the rock-solid reliability that they used to carry.