Anatomy of a 3D game linked to modern PC hardware

Modern PC hardware has advanced so much in the last decade. I guess that probably the number one usage of very powerful home PCs is to play modern 3D games games well, whether individually, over a LAN or the internet.

I would love to see an article here that conveys at a reasonably high-level the major components of a modern 3D game engine (Unreal 2, Quake 3, Serious Sam, Aquanox, Duke Nukem Forever, Max Payne etc) mapped to the major components of a modern PC system. Even if this where high level, if you could get a 3D game engine designer to give a one page picture of how the software architecture ties to the modern PCs hardware architecture I'd be thrilled.

Most of all I'd love an overview schematic of how it all works, what are the key technology constraints and where leading game developers see hardware developments are most needed. Particularily for the GF3, with games like Max Payne and Aquanox comming out real soon.

Whilst I really enjoy reading about benchmarking all your GeForce 3 video cards in direct comparision, I would love you to take this a step further and get inside the minds of the ID software's of this world and investigate what they are doing to develop their 3D game engines tuned for the GF3. With all this incredible PC hardware available today I would appreciate a game developers perspective (a good game developer) on how they intend using GHz+ CPUs, PCs with 256MB+ memory, excellent 3D sound cards and GF2s and GF3s to their fullest advantage. Where are the key technical roadblocks for these folk that give us all our game candy!!! Is it that they must program for all the masses or older TNT2 or Voodoo boards out there to maximise sales?

Who recently has benchmarked 3D game engine systems to compare and contrast what the 5 best can and can't do and where the developers are extending them next?

What new advances will we see on the 3D game engine front, how well will they use the new capabilities of a GeForce 3 and where to from here for the developers (and how soon)?

Not much of an ask for my first post is it? But seriously who has taken a look from a holostic level at where 3D game engines are going and what major gaming houses and Nvidia and ATI have up there sleeves.