AMD has launched GAME!, a new hardware certification program aimed to discern whether a collection of hardware could play the latest in PC games or not.

Formerly  thought to be a service where PC gamers could meet, GAME! appears to be the company's answer to concerns regarding PC game platforms being too varied and yet underpowered for today's high-end games.

"We're trying to help people identify PCs that are really ready to play the latest games," said AMD's Brent Barry. The company's desktop gaming strategist told Shacknews that the label, like Games for Windows, was to certify that a certain hardware package would meet the company's set standards for gaming.

"Basically, to bring a little bit of that console-like simplicity to the mainstream gamers," added Barry.

GAME! comes in two basic flavors, each one representing an acceptable requirement level for the current generation of games.

The ordinary GAME! standard is meant to provide a minimum of 30 FPS performance at 1280 x 1024 resolution (likely at 32-bit depth) at currently an unknown graphic setting. This flavor seems to be aimed at recommended requirements, just a couple of levels above minimum.

Taking these into consideration, the current 2008 level of GAME! is generally spec'ed to at least a dual core Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8 GHz, 2 x 1 MiB L2 cache), an ATI Radeon HD 3650 (~725 MHz core, ~1.6 GHz memory, 512 MiB DDR3), an AMD 770 chipset (possibly even an nForce 500 series chipset), and 2 GiB DDR RAM.

GAME! Ultra, for its namesake, is designed as the standard for acceptable performances at higher resolutions. This standard aims to have games perform at least 30 FPS minimum for their range of test games at resolutions as high as 1600 x 1200 (32-bit depth).

So to get a GAME! Ultra certification, a computer package must house at least a quad-core AMD Phenom X4 9650 (2.3 GHz, 512 KiB x 4 L2 cache, 2 MiB L3 cache, an ATI Radeon HD 3870 (~775 MHz core, ~2.25 GHz memory, 1 GiB DDR3), an AMD 770 (or an nForce 500) chipset, and 2 GiB of DDR2 RAM.

For the first iterations of the GAME! standard, the following titles have been used to determine the hardware requirements: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Sins of a Solar Empire, Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Sims 2 Deluxe, and Zoo Tycoon 2.

Hardware packages matching the specifications mentioned above will start being sold in North America, though they will be available only at select retailers. Find the list of select retail at AMD's official website, provided at the source link below. More updates on the re-evolution of mainstream PC gaming as we get them.