Event: GeForce LAN 1 - LAN Party Event Date: 04/13/2004 Written By: Honestplayer Date Written: ??/??/2004

Once in a great while, a LAN party comes along that seems to almost be perfect. I didn't expect that I would have gone to this LAN. When I first heard of it, the first thing that I told myself like everyone else was, "Why the heck have a LAN party on a Tuesday?' "Hey, I gotta be at work, right?'

But then, I started getting alot, and I mean alot, of IMs from [TMC]Dima, telling me how he was hoping to get a team together that would play in the tournaments. My first reaction, after hearing how luminary gaming clans like Team 3D and Cyberglobe and players from U5 like C-Pense were going to be in attendance was, "What kind of drug is Dima on?' But yea, this LAN was special, Nvidia, maker of fine video cards and the greatest AMD motherboards ever, was going to pull off a great LAN party. Even, if they had to sponsor and fly over the world's best video game players to do it as well.

I was hooked and signed up.

First off, I did not originally know what the fuss was all about. I kinda lost track of the new Nvidia video card releases since the ATI Radeon 8500 came out. ATI has pretty much dominated the hard core video gamer market with that card, then the 9700 PRO follow up, and then the 9800 series. In fact, before all this, I was a huge Nvidia fan and have fond memories of my Asus GeForce Ti4200, which I overclocked beyond the Ti4600 Ultra specs. I still think that it was the greatest video card I ever owned given the technology at that time.

But the LAN party was part of a bigger event, Nvidia was releasing it's "greatest” flagship video card ever. A 16 pipe, 222 million transistor, GPU monster of a card, with DDR 3 and able to run stuff like Pixel Shader 3.0, and Microsoft DX9c, which no other video card could match. Heck, the minimum specs required a 480 watt PSU and supposedly the GPU generates 90 watts alone. You could probably keep a small city powered with its requirements.

So, getting the last minute details from the PDXLAN guys via email, they same guys who run LAN parties in Oregon and were running this event, both I and [TMC]Aftermath headed out on a chilly Tuesday morn in the wee early hours to get to San Francisco, and to the Masonic Center where the party would be. BTW, carpooling is important in the SF Bay Area!

We arrived and lo' and behold, got free parking, courtesy of the LAN. This alone paid for the reg costs, given that parking in 'Frisco often required a small IPO fortune in itself. Dragging our rigs to the LAN entrance, we wandered upon LAN’ward souls from Florida and Oregon who came for the event. It was really cool hanging out with like-minded fanatics, talking shop, and generally looking like hi-tech homeless people out on the cold streets of San Francisco. "Buddy, can you spare a video card?"

The entry was problematic. Whoever designed this Center didn't think of 250 peeps carrying at least 50 pounds of computers and monitors down a flight of stairs. But whoa, the energy and excitement made everyone kinda forget this lil thing; And before you knew it, you were at the registration tables with the really nice Nvidia chicks in no time, getting our release forms and table assignments. They were really nice. I don't think I ever saw them without a smile. Funny thing also, they were probably the only women I saw at the LAN, except for a few guys who brought their girl friends, hehe.

We also met up with Wireballz and Morpheus from Monsterfrag LAN which was totally cool who joined us for the day at our table.

I really had to take the whole LAN environment in. I mean this was serious LAN'ing. As soon as you entered the LAN, they had this huge 5 feet tall and wide NVidia lighted logo to your left side. And, the buildings posts all had these huge vinyl posters for Unreal Tournament 2K4 and Battlefield Vietnam. The place was decked out, they even had lights flashing the Nvidia logo on the floors. And the setup was great, seriously heavy tables and enough power to supply a small country for a year on deck for our needs.

The first place I went to was to the tournament area. Whoa, two huge plasma screens on both sides of the area for in-game spectator viewing and a huge projection screen displaying the tourney brackets. And, next to the black curtains of the stage area, there were 20 state of the art gaming machines with spanking new Nvidia 6800 Ultra cards, the kind of rig that would melt like butter any game in the world, all housed in shiny new Coolermaster cases with the Nvidia logo on the front. Total sweetness.

There was even more. In the area where Team 3D and U5|C-Pense were playing, they had beautiful customized Shuttle rigs for testing the new cards. And as for food and drink, a limitless supply of sodas, BAWLS, and other goodies in bright orange pails to keep you tweaked for hours and hours - this was serious gaming faire. And, of course, two pizza runs during the day before the huge catered unlimited evening buffet and booze-in at dinner time during the reception.

Well, since the tourneys were starting at 11 AM, we had very little time in setting up. Literally, by the time you got in and set up, the tourneys began. Out team consisted of myself [TMC]honestplayer, with [TMC]Aftermath, and [TMC]Dima, and two players with the Doom Patrol [DP] clan, [DP]Fill and [DP]Paranoid Jack. Well I expected slaughter since we never played as a team - but, we really surprised ourselves by beating the full-up Swine Clan team in the first round. And no small victory, we won both of the 2 rounds in the tourney by 200 points in BFV - I placed first in Round 1 - taking on 3 or 4 of them Swine at a time and wiping them out, and placed lower in Round 2 because I focused on defensively holding flags.

So our spirits high, we went back to our strategy plans (lovingly put together by Fill), and planned out the second round. We were playing the IoG clan, Instruments of God, a clan that focused on America's Army and Battlefield 1942. We got pwned, those guys were good - literally they never missed a shot - and most times, we never even got one off against them. Well unfortunately, we had played a team that made the finals in the early rounds.

After a good afternoon of pwnage in the tourney and playing UT2K4 and DC with others, the LAN organizers really made our day by having spots in the schedule for talking about games and technology in the tourney area. They really kept everyone entertained non-stop which was super cool. And, everybody couldn't keep their eyes off some of the Nvidia women who were really cute as well, I think a few LAN gamers hearts must have been broken that day, and not from gaming, hehe.

They next held the best case mod award contest. I thought [TMC]Dima had a chance, they placed the use of non-OEM parts as criteria, and as everyone knew, [TMC]Dima's case was insane, 70 pounds of hand crafted steel. Heck, he even cut his own water blocks. Well, [TMC]Dima made the final 3 but lost a close one to someone even more insane than him - some guy who sucked up to the Nvidia judges. He was from hitechmods.com and put a huge Nvidia logo on his rig. But, yea if you see the pics, it was a nice job.

In addition, the guys from NovaLogic, the guys who brought us Black Hawk Down, came with a new beta demo of Joint Ops. It was a new online game, and they wanted to create a new world record for a LAN game, by having 100 peeps on it at the same time. We all installed the game, and although it was super buggy and played weird, the graphics were nice and everybody wished they had turned on FF so we could play TK the guy you spawned next to. After hitting 100 and establishing a new world record for them, they thanked all of us. It was a great idea, but darn, that game is still really buggy.

Well before we knew it, everyone went upstairs for the main event, the launching of the new GPU. Stepping into the hall, I was blown away by the stage set up, they had this screen that must have been 40 or so feet high with 6 huge plasma monitors as well surrounding it. They played vids that were supposed to 'drench our senses' and yea, it sorta worked. Well, we saw presentations from Nvidia and gaming luminaries from Sony, EA, Epic, etc. And in a photo I took, of the people sitting right behind me, were the entire 100 people from the Nvidia engineering department that created the new 6800 Ultra which was totally cool.

The real show was demonstrating how the GPU makes cutting edge gaming software blow away current video cards - but while we were impressed by Nvidia's 6800 Ultra, we also saw EA unleash sneaks at the upcoming Lords of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth game and EPIC for the first time publicly showing the new Unreal Tournament 3.0 engine. Wow, the next few years for gaming look really exciting given these previews of things to come.

After the show, we all went outside for a feast, tables upon tables of sirloin steaks, asian foods, italian pastas, deserts, and yes, even open bars with booze/beer. And, in between all this richness - were over a dozen new rigs that everyone can try with the new 6800 Ultra video cards. Pretty impressive for a LAN party.

I made it my mission to get a look at the actual video card and was literally given a run around - for some reason they didn't publicly display the card? Even the rigs with windows had been frosted over so you couldn't peek in. But, the MSI rep was great, he gave us a peek at what we all wanted to see - and I got one of the first pictures ever of a 6800 Ultra card that was not reference green. Heading back to the LAN party after this lucky break, I also got a chance to say hello to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who was talking to folks. The guy is really nice and laid back, I would think he was a true gamer at heart himself considering he was from Oregon and Stanford U. He is cool and I hope he gets to meet more gamers and listen to us and what we hope for the future of gaming.

Well, the finals of the Battlefield Vietnam tourney was made up of the Camel Clan versus IoG Clan. No match, the Camel guys pwned. In one spectacular display of l33tness, a Camel player stealthily parachuted on the high and inaccessible roof of a temple with the flag on a map. The IoG Clan player defending this flag was utterly confused and n00bed, he kept running around trying to find who was 'capping' the flag, checking corners, etc. but NOT thinking he could be on top of him. It was hilarious. The audience went nuts, laughing and applauding the tactics. And, at the right moment, the Camel Clan player jumped down, parachuted on the floor of the temple, and smoothly and efficiently put a beautiful headshot at the IoG player before he even knew what was happening. It was brilliant. Totally l33tn355.

In the Unreal Tournament, a guy with some serious UT2K4 skills called infinite, despite no Clan affiliation, won first place. Prizes were a complete dream system for all the tourney first place winners as well as $500 cash. All the second place winners got a new 6800 Ultra card and $250 cash. In addition, they gave away new cards for best case mod, best use of nNvidia logos, etc. and a raffle at the end of the LAN party.

The last highlight of the LAN party was when raffle winners had a chance to demonstrate their skills against Team 3D in Battlefield Vietnam and against U5's C-Pense in UT2K4. Demonstrating world class skills, only one player managed more than 1 kill (he got 3) against C-Pense, who looked like he was toying with the challengers in UT2K4. C-Pense is a great world class player.

But, the lack of BF skills was readily apparent in Team 3D, a team more known for their CPL skills in CS and COD. The first team of challengers, including late fill-in [DP]Fill who played with us in the tourneys, beat them by 75 points, utilizing Team 3D's lack of air skills on a helicopter map in BFV. But, that was just a prelude to a worse 79 point loss by them against the second team of challengers. For their efforts, including the 3-42 record against C-Pense, the high scorers all won spanking new 6800 Ultra cards as well.

How do you summarize a LAN party like this? Well, it was fun and action packed. The PDXLAN organizers really put some serious thought and planning towards making sure everyone would have something to do for the entire LAN day, there was even a schedule in your entrance packet. And, the minimum requirements were lavishly covered, food and drink were non-stop sodas and BAWLS and snacks with two pizza runs to stuff you till you could not take anymore. They kept it going with non-stop smiles and witty talk till even the most hard core gamer could not help crack a smile himself or herself at the LAN. And, they kept the high energy flowing so that you really didn't want to leave and begged for more.

And, finally the sound and light show by Nvidia was world-class itself, they wanted to create an event geared toward us gamers, and invited us for their wild ride. From the moment Nvidia CEO Huang came leaping on the stage, you could feel he was energized by the 500 hard gore gaming enthusiasts who came out to help him celebrate. Heck, when you put 100 Nvidia engineers and hundreds of gamers together, you are guaranteed to have a great event. I would congratulate Nvidia for making the Northern California LAN community feel so welcomed by them. And, wow did EA and EPIC blow us away as well, they knew that we have high expectations of them and they consistently deliver the goods.

I can't wait for the next LAN. I can’t wait to buy the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra either. Who said you can't LAN on a Tuesday anyway?

ADDENDUM - 02/08/2026 By Warhawk

On April 13th 2004, The Nvidia Corporation (known for producing 3D graphics cards for PC’s) hosted their first ever GeForce LAN. It was held in San Francisco and was part LAN event and part press conference where Nvidia execs would unveil their latest hardware to the gamer enthusiast crowd. To my knowledge it was the first event of its kind in the Bay Area and in the years to come many more Corporate style LAN events would take place. 

Unfortunately for me I was in the midst of college and the day of this particular event fell on what turned out to be an important Tuesday (I think we were having midterms or something like that). Several members of TMC attended and brought back reports of the event.  Dima was able to secure near front row seats with a photographer friend of his and they were able to get some very high quality pics of the announcements (to this day I still don’t know who his friend was, I only know his name was Kelly). Honestplayer wrote a review of the event which was posted on the TMC website along with the pics. 

The following morning after posting the review and pics on our site I was awoken from a deep sleep by a frantic call from Honestplayer. He was talking very fast and my brain was still in the process of waking up; I didn’t catch everything but I remember him saying things like “oh my god, its gone world wide! Our servers have crashed from all the traffic, we need to up the bandwidth!” Honestplayer tended to be prone to hyperbole from time to time, and the gears were still grinding in my groggy brain so I had no idea what he was going on about. I dragged myself out of bed and to the computer to discover that, yes indeed our TMC website was down. In place of our page was some kind of notification that we had exceeded some kind of bandwidth limit. Honestplayer was adamant that we absolutely had to get the site back up immediately. It was looking like this would require purchasing some kind of higher bandwidth package from whatever provider we had at the time. This was in the midst of my poor college days so I had zero extra funds for such a thing. After explaining this to Honestplayer he told me he was going to try and figure something out and quickly hung up; and I just as quickly went back to bed. 

I awoke a few hours later to a message from Honestplayer saying he had called the provider and sorted everything out and we were back online, and were getting tons of traffic. At the time I did not quite grasp how important driving web traffic to our site was, but looking back at it now, we made quite a splash because we had some of the first and best pictures of the Nvidia announcements. It turned out, Honestplayer was overstating it when he said the story went worldwide. Tech sites in several countries and in several languages were were linking to our site and mentioning us and our pictures. 

Pics by Kelly::

 

Pics by Honestplayer:

News Coverage linking to TMC: