Introduction:

PDXLAN 12!

There are LANs. And, then there are LANs! This weekend, I had a really good time attending PDXLAN in Portland, Oregon. This is one of the larger LAN parties that sold out on 500 seats. As a matter of fact, they tend to sell out every LAN event due to the really cool swag and prize raffles.

PDXLAN happens about every six months. If you think that's too close together, you're mistaken. The LAN even sells out every time and there's always a packed hotel because of it. You get complimentary pizza and Bawls energy drinks Saturday night, but can order pizza and pastas from the same pizza parlor pretty much anytime for delivery. How's that for service?

There are event room rate discounts as well. If you buddy up with a couple people, the cost of the room is well worth the expense so you can at least sleep in a decent bed. Unless the venue changes, it's always held at the Holiday Inn by the airport on Columbia Way. If you fly in to Portland, it'll be nice driving a mere 5 to 10 minutes to the hotel.

Bring your 'A' game and poker face. There's lots of tournaments using the latest big game titles with prizes for the winners. Or if you don't like to play in tournaments, you at least have a chance at winning something really nice out of the raffle piles. Who knows, could be an actual top end graphics card, processor, or computer memory worth upgrading.


Sponsors:

Some of the sponsors included Intel, Patriot Memory, Zotac, Palit Multimedia, Antec, DangerDen, Crucial, West Coast Custom Computers, bGears, ATI Radeon, FSP Group, Xilence, Aero Cool, Nvidia, Seagate, iZ3D, Novint, Western Digital, Trendnet, Primary Target, Bawls, Maximum PC, and CPU.

Intel gave us some preliminary insight in to Nehalem and all of its anticipated glory. We didn't get to see any actual benchmarks results, but we did see that it scales across 8 threads as it's designed to do. Strictly based on technical predictions, the performance boost should be very noticeable. We're looking forward to offering you much more content in the near future. And, yes, Nehalem is expected before Christmas, so start your lists early.

What a toy box!!!!

A new separate utility, Desktop Control Center, will soon be available that Intel has designed to help new and experienced users tune or overclock their systems. What we saw looks extremely promising since the utility reaches down in to the BIOS rather than just Windows like NTune. Voltages and timings can automatically, or manually be tuned as you get extreme with your new Intel system.

Antec's booth displayed the Mini P180, P182, Three Hundred, and brand new Twelve Hundred enclosures. This is their best line which was only missing the Nine Hundred. There were also a couple EarthWatts, TruePower, and brand new Signature series power supplies on display. We should be receiving one very soon to compare to the TruePower Quattro. Also on the table were two very brand new Multimedia products, the Multimedia Station Elite and E-Z powered by iMON. The E-Z was temporarily installed in the Antec Twelve Hundred demo system.

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