Who would have thought that it's now speed-hungry gamers who are pushing the development of today's best graphics technology?

Doubt that? Consider these developments over just the last few months: at the consumer-oriented CEBIT 2006 conference in March, Nvidia announced that its dual graphics card SLI technology will be available in notebooks for on-the-road gamers. Two of Nvidia's new GeForce Go 7800 GTX GPUs will deliver speedy, anti-aliased 1920×1200 operation.

Also in March, ATI unveiled its CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset. The technology not only enables dual graphics card-bearing motherboards ala Nvidia, but also allows users to overclock the CPUs' chipset by up to 60 percent, something only hard-core computer jocks usually attempt. (Overclockers fiddle with chip timing settings to tweak performance beyond the more conservative — and stable — manufacturer's stock settings.)

New products from the two graphics card vendors have tumbled out so quickly over the past year that a reviewer on the Tom's Hardware enthusiast website remarked that it is now possible to buy significantly upgraded products every other month. He contrasted that with an earlier period, when tech heads had to wait up to six months to get their hands on the latest graphics gear.

Nvidia continued the GPU March Madness by announcing quad-SLI technology — that's right, four graphics cards — for those gamers who can't seem to get enough of a good thing. (SLI is Nvidia's technology for lashing together two cards to function synchronously.)

OEMs are charging in, too. While it's unclear if they've taken on that old Texas line that “too much ain't enough,” Dell thinks $10,000 won't be too much for gamers desperate for speed and bragging rights. That's the price of its fully loaded XPS 600 Renegade system, which debuted at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March.

What do those many zeroes get you? A dual-core Pentium processor “factory overclocked” to 4.62GHz, four Nvidia 7900 graphics cards sporting a total of 2GB of memory, a standalone physics processor chip (manipulates game dynamics in hardware), custom aluminum casing with hand-painted flaming skull design, and one of Dell's 30in. widescreen displays.

What's behind that extravagance? It's an attempt by Dell to change the perception of the company as the low-cost supplier to the corporate world. As computer technology continues to commoditize to a point where even Dell sweats the margins — something its direct sales model became famous for exploiting — the company is realizing it needs new growth markets.

One solution is to push into higher-end corporate sales such as servers and storage, which delivered some of the strongest growth in the company's otherwise humdrum fourth quarter. Next, create excitement and street — or maybe studio — cred, in another market. In the past year, Dell has created the hardcore XPS product line, designing it to appeal to gearheads willing pay a premium for top tech and service.

But changing perceptions isn't a quick or easy process. Will creatives and gamers really turn to the world's largest computer manufacturer to stay on top? Dell decided it didn't want to wait to find out. At the same GDC show where the XPS 600 Renegade debuted, Dell announced that it would buy out tiny Miami-based Alienware, one of the top makers of high-end, spare-no-expense Windows PC systems, which will continue to operate as a separate subsidiary.

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