Event: GeForce LAN 3 - LAN Party Event Date: 11/07/2006 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 02/16/2026

On November 7th and 8th 2006 in San Jose California there was a LAN of epic proportions. Another GeForce event was upon us, and promised to once again revolutionize PC graphics… and it did. 

TMC was one of the first to discover the Geforce LAN site, and we quickly proceeded to buy up almost two tables of seating. We had a good showing with about 80% of the entire clan in attendance as well as a lot of good friends.  While there didn’t seem to be a lot of organized gaming going on in the LAN as a whole there seemed to be a good amount of Battlefield going on, especially 2142 as it was given away FREE as a surprise gift to all attendees.  Not to mention some other lucky attendees got other games for free in their party favor bag.

The event itself was held in a large (200 yards!) circus style tent in a parking lot across the street from a large highrise in downtown (the highrise was almost going to be Nvidias new headquarters).  I must admit, when I heard it was going to be in a tent, I had my doubts, but all doubts were put to rest when I first saw the inside of the tent. It was actually very well put together and was climate controlled for the most part.  Behind the LAN area there was a food area where free drinks and snacks were available throughout the event.

Lining one side of the tent were a number of event sponsors including Antec, Intel, AMD, BFG, evga and others. They were all giving away free swag and showing off their latest products.

The rear 100 yards or so of the tent remained blocked off for the first day of the event, as secret preparations were made for the launch of the new product. When launch day arrived, the doors… err…tent flaps… were flung open to reveal a very classy, lounge area, complete with several booths manned by chefs who were serving up appetizers and foods like crab cakes, kabobs, and even an entire leg of beef... QUALITY!

Further down was another chamber in the tent that was set up to be a big auditorium, complete with stage and giant video projector screen.  This is where the launch event was held and we were introduced to people like Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, and other heavy hitters from AMD and Intel.  They talked all about the new architecture and what it was capable of, and showed several tech demos of the card in action.  Previous versions of Nvidia cards have been represented by fantasy characters like fairies, mermaids and the like. This time they decided to go in a different direction and actually use a real life model, such as Adrianne Curry as the card mascot. What better model to use than someone featured on America's Top model TV show, not to mention Playboy and a few other places.  We watched for a couple minutes as the computer rendered Adrianne strutted across the screen showing off the power of the new card.  After the presentation ran, they brought out the REAL Adrianne Curry and her husband (the guy from the Brady Bunch).  They came onstage and talked a bit, and then it was on with the show.

The new 8 series cards look great and have a lot of potential for expanding graphics in gaming to mind blowing levels in the future.

After the presentation, we had an opportunity to talk with Adrianne and take pictures as well as talk to the executives. Jen-Hsun of Nvidia was especially friendly and easily approachable.  

[TMC]Quemine and Voodoo actually went to frys right after the launch and bought two 8800’s as soon as they became available. They even got them signed by the CEO and Adrianne.

The end of the event featured a massive raffle with thousands of dollars in prizes from all of the sponsors, (of which TMC won a good amount) interspersed with developers doing presentations of their latest games.

In all the event was great and I can’t wait to attend another one!

::ADDENDUM::

The very next Saturday Nvidia did a launch event at the local Fry’s Electronic stores. There was a kiosk with three super high end systems showing off the new cards.  They did raffles throughout the day, and there were a lot of nvidia and evga employees on hand to answer questions. Many members of TMC were in attendance to hang out and try and win one of the coveted new cards. At one point Jen-Hsun showed up and Glen decided he wanted to try and get another picture with him.  Jen-Hsun was wheeling his cart toward the checkout, with his daughter, the Frys store manager and what appeared to be a high level Nvidia exec. He was buying one of the new $300 dollar motherboards and two $700 8800 cards. Me, Glen and Hawtie got in line behind him and he noticed Glen right away “Hi Glen! How are you doing?” he said has he shook all of our hands. One of the execs recognized Glen as well “yeah, we saw your picture in our board meeting, you’re the guy that stayed up for 44 hours straight!”

We asked Jen-Hsun what he was up to and he told us he was buying parts to build a new system for home. Glen asked him what CPU cooler he was going to use and Jen-Hsun stopped, and thought for a second “I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about it. What kind do you think I should use?”  Glen recommended a specific Zalman cooler, and Jen-Hsun turned to one of the guys in his entourage and requested said cooler. Minions were dispatched via radio to retrieve the cooler and within moments it was in his hands. Glen even offered to build his PC for him (at special TMC discount pricing). Jen-Hsun then asked the cashier if he could get a third 8800, and they brought one up for him. He turned to Glen and told him that he was going to buy it for him as a gift.

[TMC]Kuyaglen, now a proud owner of a brand new GeForce 8800, purchased for him by the CEO of Nvidia himself!

If that wasn’t enough, Hawtie ended up winning the final raffle for one of the uber leet gaming systems they used for the demo’s.  The winning doesn’t stop!

__ RE WRITTEN_

This was before the days of Facebook and Twitter, so from my recollection, it took us all until 2008 to discover this page. It would be the focal point of another interesting story that took place at Nvision 08. 

In addition to the product launch, many other tech companies were on hand. Most of them were hardware partners, such as Antec, who I worked for at the time.  I was there partly to game and partly to work the booth (from what I remember it was mostly working the booth).  Months prior to the event we at Antec received a document from Nvidia; the document was pitching the company to sign up as an event sponsor.  The document outlined what the event was about and how it would be good exposure for our company and at the end of the document were links to and summaries of various reviews of past Nvidia GeForce LAN events. As I was sitting at my desk reading through it, I almost spewed my coffee out all over my screen because lo and behold one of the reviews featured prominently in the document was none other than one of our TMC reviews of an early GeForce LAN event.  I was amazed, and a bit flattered that a TMC review would be featured so prominently in a marketing document that was no doubt sent out to all the marketing departments of all the Nvidia tech partners.  Not only did it confirm that people were indeed reading the content on the TMC site, but TMC’s opinions and influence were reaching to the insides of the many companies we held in high esteem. 

In addition to hardware partners, there were also a few software partners as well. There was a stage presentation for an upcoming game called World in Conflict, which looked pretty cool. There were also hands-on demos with an early build of the game. This build may or may not have found its way onto the portable hard drive of a particularly sneaky Russian that was in attendance. 

Speaking of sneaky Russians... our old friend Dima was there. As per usual he was busy looking for ways to bend rules and/or beat the system for his benefit. As part of this he discovered a flaw in the raffle prize system. Basically, the raffle system worked as such: all attendees received raffle numbers that were printed on sticky labels that were applied to the attendees badges. When a winning number was called, the person with the matching number on their badge would walk up to the front and claim their prize. 

Dima found out that the raffle numbers were printed on regular store bought labels, and the raffle numbers themselves were sequential within a certain range. This meant that all he had to do was go to the store, buy the same labels, and print out the same sequence of numbers that the raffle was using (which he did). All he had to do was sit and wait for an unclaimed number to be called; he would then have to find that number in his pile of home printed labels, stick that label on his own badge and then claim the prize. It was another diabolical plan from the mind of Dima. 

One of the few redeeming parts of Dima’s twisted code of moral conduct is that he never rips off friends. Dima considered himself a friend of Vector, the LAN organizer. As part of his show of friendship, instead of using his plan to get himself free prizes, he warned Vector of the flaw that he had discovered. Dima made suggestions on how to fix this flaw, but Vector didn’t listen to Dima. I’m sure Vector probably thought that no one other than Dima would dream up and follow through with such a scheme (also, it was probably much too late in the event planning process to be changing the whole raffle system). Dima insisted that it was a problem, but again Vector brushed him off. Dima also looped in Phil, the Nvidia rep, but apparently was still unable to gain traction with either one.  As a last ditch effort to be taken seriously, Dima then produced his home made printed sheets of raffle labels and showed it to Phil and Vector. While Dima’s intention was to show them how easy it was to defeat their system, Vector and Phil saw it as a bold threat. Fearing that Dima was going to sabotage the entire raffle they immediately escorted him out of the event, and pronounced him banned from all future GeForce events.  While I don’t think Dima had any real malicious intent in mind, it was still not a good thing for Dima to have done; and I can’t say I blame Vector or Phil for kicking him out. (also worth noting, I was not made aware of these going’s on until long after the event was over).  

Another troubling turn of events was when Metalslug got drunk and belligerent toward the end of the LAN. This was becoming an increasingly more common occurrence for him and a source of worry for many in the clan, it was becoming clear that something would need to be done about his behavior sooner than later. Given his volatile personality we all knew we would have to approach it delicately. Since GNR was the Silent Bob to Metalslug’s Jay, we left this delicate task in the hands of GNR.  

Despite these dramas, the LAN was a success and TMC had a great turnout at the event. 

The Nvidia Reality Tour 

In November of 2006, Nvidia hosted GeForce LAN 3. It took place in a giant tent in downtown San Jose. The purpose of the event was not only a LAN party for the PC gaming community, but it also served as a launch event for the GeForce 8800 graphics card. This card marked a big leap in graphics card technology. On hand was Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang as well as model/actress Adrian Curry (and her husband, the guy that played “Greg” in the brady bunch). They all came onstage for a press conference where they showed off a 3D rendered version of Adrian Curry that was apparently rendered with the new 8800 Nvidia cards. The cards were set to go on sale in stores to coincide with this announcement.

During this time Quemine and his buddy Voodoo took off to Frys Electronics to buy the card as soon as they hit shelves (in fact, if I remember correctly, when they got there they weren’t technically supposed to be on sale yet, but somehow they convinced the staff to sell them). They triumphantly returned to the LAN with two cards in hand, much to the amazement of everyone at the event. 

While they were there, Quemine and Voodoo got autographs on the cards and photo ops with Adrian Curry and Jen Hsun.  After the event, video card manufacturer EVGA even put up a website in which they offered a reward to them in exchange for their autographed boxes.

Another related story took place a few days after the LAN event. A few TMC members showed up to the local Frys electronics for what Nvidia was advertising as: The NVIDIA Reality Tour. 

Basically this was a series of promotional days at various electronics stores where Nvidia would setup a kiosk that had demos of their new hardware. This was nothing anyone in TMC had not seen before, but the big draw for us was that there were prize raffles involved. We showed up in hopes of winning some free stuff (If I remember correctly one of our members ended up winning a fully decked out Nvidia system at this event). 

At one point we noticed that Jen Hsun himself was strolling around the store. We started watching him, and it appeared as though he was buying some 8800 cards along with a 680i motherboard (all products that had been launched at the LAN event).  Kuyaglen, walked up to him and started a conversation (while filming the interaction, which was ‘normal’ behavior for him). Jen Hsun remembered Kuyaglen from the LAN event, partly because Kuyaglen became known as the guy that stayed up for 48 hours straight through the entire event, and partly because his PC case was covered in Nvidia stickers. At this point we were all standing in the checkout line, and Jen Hsun explained that he was buying the PC parts for his daughter's PC (but probably more for PR purposes than anything else). Kuyaglen then asked him what type of CPU cooler he was going to use when building this PC. Jen Hsun got a look on his face like he hadn’t even considered this. He asked Kuyaglen for his recommendation. Kuyaglen recommended the Zalman 9700, and Jen Husn immediately turned to a guy in a suit that was standing next to him and said “get that”. The guy in the suit radioed to someone else and it was immediately brought up to him.  When we finally got to the checkout counter, Jen Hsun asked the cashier if there were any more 8800’s and if they could bring him one more. They did, and Jen Hsun turned to Kuyaglen and said “I’m buying this one for you”. Glen erupted in hoots and cheers that could be heard throughout the store and then followed Jen Hsun out to his black Ferrari to thank him. 

 

I don't know where the pics came from but I assume Kuyaglen took them: