Geforcelan 3

[Mister_Webmaster]

This kind of goes into a lot of forums on here, so I put it in here cause it was FOR the 8800s, mods may move it if it's not right.

 

Those of you on IRC already have known this since even before this happened, and have seen the pics (which is why you should visit IRC more ), but November 7&8 I was at the GeForceLAN 3 LAN party in San Jose, California.

 

 

Got there at 7:00 Tuesday morning, and was standing around outside a huge white circus-tent thing, which was sitting in one of San Jose's parking lots, and waited for registration to open. Once registration opened, ClubSLI members came to find out to their dismay that they didn't get credit for being ClubSLI members! Apparently, the ClubSLI member database and the Registration database was off by one row, giving non-ClubSLI members ClubSLI badges, and making ClubSLI members regular attendees. They ended up giving us just a blank ClubSLI VIP badge to put in front of our other one. Considering how much could have gone wrong, I’m impressed with the PDXLAN staff for this being the only problem. They came out at about 9:15 to give the ClubSLI members their *special* gift, which was a ClubSLI backpack (Which after I came home, I promptly replaced my current side-bag thing that was a $10 target wonder).

 

At 9:30, the ClubSLI members were getting annoyed, because we were supposed to get in a half hour early, and we didn't end up getting to go in till around 9:45. Upon going in, there was nice black carpet covering the floor, and got our registration bags + T-Shirts. Because I had 2 seats (one for me and one for my game server) I got a couple of them and 2 seats. They were stuffed with a random assortment of stuff, and neither of mine were packed with games . Went to setup, reserved a row for buddies that ended up going to another isle, so I had to move my seat. It was a blessing because Vector had given me permission to use the gigabit port on the other table for my server. Once we got setup, we started playing some BF2142, just having fun, then Vector (the LAN admin) announced they were giving away free copies of BF2142! I went over there, and showed both badges, hoping he'd give me 2 copies for my 2 seats, but he ended up just marking both off (darn, but I wouldn’t have felt right going back for a second copy). I went back and played BF2142 for a while, pwning noobs who just got the game, and then we set up the team up for the BF2142 tourney. Once we got that done, we started playing on the LAN’s public servers to practice, then went to have lunch. They had some sweet pizza, sodas, water, and ALL YOU CAN DRINK BAWLS! After lunch, they had a Bawls chugging contest. I didn’t even move out of my seat, because I didn’t want to destroy my health for some prize. I think a lot of others felt the same way because it took a while to even get the 64 players from 350 .

 

A little while later, we were called for our round in the BF2142 tournament. We didn't do too bad, especially for a team who have never played together before, and half the team had just gotten BF2142 as well. We lost the first round, but we were able to at least hold some bases and capture others, for a little while & the second round we held them off till the time ran out (it was still like 18 to 90, but we ran out of time . After the tourney, we just hung out and played some more battlefield, and at one point I cracked out the 360 and played some burnout revenge on one of the 24" LCDs that someone had. (My friends have been poisoning me, we’ve been frequently going to the Gym at our church, and borrowing the projector and playing halo till like 2 in the morning.) Next up was the Tug O War where teams of 10 were pitted against each other. I was the anchor at the back of the line for our team. Our team did well in the first round, but the second round, we were against some big strong guys, and even I was pulled forward, sliding across the asphalt. After that, we had the graphics card shuffle, where the object was to slide the graphics card (or toss, or fling, pretty much anything that didn't involve it bouncing down the line) and I tossed it a little to the side, so I lost in the first round, but still had fun watching others do it. It was pretty lull after that, just more hanging out and games. About 9 that night Antec held a raffle for mod stuff, cases, PSUs, etc. I was surprised when I won an Antec TruePower Trio 650 watt PSU (my PSU in my server was dying, so this was a decent replacement for it). After most people went to hotels to sleep, they had musical chairs, which was fun, cause it was just a group of about 20 people or so. I went to my car to sleep at around 3:00 in the morning, and slept to about 6:30 and went back, found out the guy next to me one a ThermalTake 750 watt PSU and G15 keyboard at musical chairs and another Motherboard shuffleboard they had.

 

I Ate breakfast, which was coffee, bagels, Danishes, etc. and then went back to my computer. I was still way tired, so I decided to sleep some more on my cart that I use to go to LANs (lets me take everything in one trip, makes life much easier. You can see it in the first couple pictures in my album. Anyway, back to the story) after waking up from that, more lull time, watching the finials for the BF2142 & company of Heroes tourneys (one of the guys I was with got in the finials for company of heroes, but got cheated out of first place but the other player using cheap moves). Then was time for the fun part – the NVIDIA G80 release. They talked about how current computers will be swamped with the new technologies – DirectX 10, Blue-Ray, Vista. They went over the new C50 first, showing how they have dual-gigabit Ethernet ports. They also showed a close-up on the 12, count them TWELVE SATA ports, which they say supports 8 TB (EIEGHT TERABYTES!) of storage (if you have 12 750GB drives, that is)

 

The C0 has full support for QuadSLI (though their picture for it had 2 8800GTX and 2 (what looked like) 7950GT GPUs. They say it’s the most overclockable mobo ever (w00t!), and they played a video showing kingpin crushing the 3dmark world record with 8800GTXs. They moved on to the new 8800GPU. They went over why this chip is so much better than the 7900GTX cards, showing the new technology that sounds promising – dynamically allocated pixel and vertex shaders (where shader units can either be pixel or vertex, not having statically set pixel or vertex shaders. They can either be mostly vertex shaders, for rendering complex objects, or mostly pixel shaders for more simple shapes, like waves. They showed some of the new technology, with some of the nvidia demos (namely a demo of water falling over rocks, and their “froggy” demo). And then went to the Geek’s favorite part, showing some cold hard benchmarks of the new cards. They are anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 times the power of the 7900GTX, depending on the game (I have a picture of that slide in the gallery). The fact that they got 1,000 higher score with ONE 8800GTX from TWO 7900GTX cards was impressive. They then went on to the unveiling of the new mascot, which was a woman who won America’s Top Model.

 

Being in the ClubSLI section, they were passing out signed pictures of the model to all the people in the section, before she even walked up onstage. The AMD president was there, to quickly talk about the 650a (the AMD version) of the C50 chipset, showing the Quadfather, where it had WoW open on one monitor, rendering Premiere on another, rendering After Effects on a 3rd, and playing an HD Movie on the 4th. They actually haven’t released Quadfather yet, but man... it’s impressive. Near the end, after they brought up the new computer, they brought up a couple people, who in the NVIDIA president’s mind, had the sorriest computers in the LAN and told them they’d be receiving brand-spanking new computers. Right before they let everyone go to the reception, they told everyone that they had a event T-Shirt that only people sitting in the tent would have stuck under each chair, and that 5 of them had the phrase “AND I WON” on it. I was chatting with the people sitting around me about the new cards and pulled out my shirt, and opened it up… and froze. I had a winning shirt! Turns out I won a complete Quadfather system with dual 8800GTXs in SLI!!!

I sent an e-mail asking for more specs, but I haven’t gotten a reply back yet. Walked back to have lunch, put my camera back under my table and went to have lunch, people congratulating me on getting a winning T-Shirt, asking what we got. The reception lunch was a fancy lunch because there was members of the press there and other important people, and I really didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there (I’m used to the cheap stuff). The afternoon was sitting back and watching the “The Way It’s Meant to Be Played” showcase (I tried BF2142, but I was too stunned from winning to be able to play well). During the showcase, I won a copy of FPS creator (a WYSIYG FPS game creator, nice for when you’re bored). After the showcase, they had a raffle for all sorts of stuff. ClubSLI members were supposed to get 2 raffle tickets, but because of the problem Tuesday morning, they decided the best way to do it was hold a private raffle for clubSLI members, where they would be guaranteed to win something. They gave out mobos, a case, a G5, and then they pulled out an 8800GTX, the only 8800GTX in the ClubSLI raffle.

 

Everyone wanted to win, but MY ClubSLI badge came out. Needless to say… people were like WTH! I went back to sit down, and a bunch of people came by and pretended to steal it. The raffles ended and then we went back to pack up. They had taken all the network switches while we were in the raffles so there was no way to play anymore , but it was already like 8:30 at night, and everyone had stuff to do the next day. I packed up, hiding the GTX in the middle of my cart, so no one would steal it. I went with another guy to help him jump his car, because it wasn’t starting, and when we went, he tried one last time to jump it and it started up just fine, but it let me bring my car back to the tent so that I wouldn’t have to drag the cart as far. People kept congratulating me as I was packing up my car, and then I went home, the car a little more full than when I left. Looking back on it, I think that a Camry might not be the best car to take a computer and server to a LAN party

 

PHOTO GALLERY

 

 

Now you can see why it's taken me a week to write this Feel free to post questions/comments.

 

EDIT: Thanks to Andrewr05 for making it paragraphs.

Edited November 17, 2006 by Mister_Webmaster

[SMeeD]

Now you sir, are the luckiest man alive.

 

You owe me a new keyboard, I drooled all over mine.

[romeo55]

EDIT: misread, disregard

 

Awesome dude! Looks like you had an awesome time! ...with awesome hardware too

Edited November 17, 2006 by The Unforgivin

[kingdingeling]

damm, thats gotta be one of the longest posts ever to be written on OCC, but interesting non the less. Congratz on the 8800GTX anyway, post some benchies mate!

[Mister_Webmaster]

paragraphs, what are these paragraphs you speak of

 

I might go through it someday and put it in paragraphs, but I just wanted to get it up.

 

As for the gallery, I figured that'd be the easiest way to show the pictures.

 

word says it's 1,968 words long. I might bench the 8800GTX, but I half want to wait for the quadfather to come in so I can try a combo of single 7950 in both, 7950 SLI in both, single 8800GTX in both, and SLI 8800GTX in both.

 

I'm really curious weather my A64, which already bottlenecks the 7950s will work better with the new cards, and how the quadfather will run with 7950s.

Edited November 17, 2006 by Mister_Webmaster

[Andrewr05]

HERE YOU GO!!

 

Got there at 7:00 Tuesday morning, and was standing around outside a huge white circus-tent thing, which was sitting in one of San Jose's parking lots, and waited for registration to open. Once registration opened, ClubSLI members came to find out to their dismay that they didn't get credit for being ClubSLI members! Apparently, the ClubSLI member database and the Registration database was off by one row, giving non-ClubSLI members ClubSLI badges, and making ClubSLI members regular attendees. They ended up giving us just a blank ClubSLI VIP badge to put in front of our other one. Considering how much could have gone wrong, I

[sdy284]

Dude have you herd of this thing called paragraphs?

 

you know your grammar is bad when ijagwalaafq comments on it

 

paragraphs, what are these paragraphs you speak of

 

I might go through it someday and put it in paragraphs, but I just wanted to get it up.

 

As for the gallery, I figured that'd be the easiest way to show the pictures.

 

yea...that enter key is SO hard to use

 

If it wasn't for Andrewr05 i wouldn't of read more than 2 sentences

 

but congrats on the hardware

[Mister_Webmaster]

edited for paragraphs, thanks Andrewr05

 

And more OCCers need to come to the next one.. the guys that ran this LAN are also doing one up in portland in Feburary, if people want to go, http://www.pdxlan.net/website/e107_plugins...t.php?content.4

Edited November 17, 2006 by Mister_Webmaster

[Gremlin]

I was there as well Mister. Were you the one who bought the gears of war? Congrats on winning the system from the tshirt. One person still did not win the system by the end of the lan. Btw man those pizzas sucked They do not deserve to be called pizzas. And in a tug of war, you lost to my friends I won logitech Z5425 speakers, Logitech G15,G7,G5, Corsair 620 PSU and thermaltake Bigwater 745. Sold everything except for bigwater and G15. Anyone wants to buy the G15

 

Did you watch any of the developer presentations??

[kingdingeling]

if I wasn't over in Germany i would come definetly!

[capthowdy575]

how much for the G15