Not only did they turn me away at the door due to my age, but they forgot to put Break and Weezer on the list. So even being of age, they weren't able to get in.
But we didn't feel that much of a loss, since the party we went to before that, the eFocus party, was fucking awesome. Comic book themed, with gourmet food provided, the party revolved around the exhibits set up by over two dozen companies. ATI, VooDoo, Logitech, Intel, all kinds of shit was shown off.
VIA's booth was at the top of my cool list, showing off their dual video card PC, running Doom 3 in dual video mode. Using a specialty motherboard and a video bridge, the system works to have one card handle the top of the screen, and the other card handle the bottom. The two white lines on the left is an indicator of how hard each card is working. Playing in 1280×1028, with all the eye candy on, the rig handled the most intense of firefights without even a sigh.
Next on the cool list was a company called Razer, which produces mice and mousepads, marketing to the PC gamer, and giving as much competition to Logitech as possible. The red mouse on the left is their top-of-the-line optical mouse, with Logitech's competing mouse on the right. But what's really cool is the one in the middle; an infrared mouse, supposedly offering even more precision than an optical mouse, but having the same price as the optical version. Underneath all three is their gaming pad, offering a rougher surface on one side for fast paced FPS players, and a smoother surface for those who need a little more precision, both mounted on a solid aluminum plate. The bundle, pad and gel wrist rest, is $35. Pricey, you might say, but after using one, I can honestly say its well worth every cent.
VooDoo didn't really have anything new or revolutionary to show, just their work-of-art PC's. The paint job on the first one was deep, but the stand out was their water cooled rig. Guys like me could only pray that we could get a water cooled rig to be as clean inside, and outside, as this rig.
I still wonder why Kingston showed up with a custom rig, simply to show off a piece of RAM, but it was sexy nonetheless.
If you've been to a Target or Wal*Mart lately, then you've probably seen "TV games" in the toys section; stand alone games which plug into your TV via RCA jacks and usually have a combination of old school games. Jakks Pacific is taking the same concept, but doing Star Wars specific games, using cool controllers and games developed from scratch. The games don't compare to Jedi Knight, of course, but are fun enough on their own. Expect them to sell in all major retailers, at $20.
Logitech set up one of their PlayGear Amp systems set up, essentially giving your PSP stereo sound. Overkill, if you ask me, but could be worth it for audiophiles like Break.
Speaking of Break, one ATI product caught his eye: an LG phone, which possesses an ATI graphics chipset, being the first true 3D gaming phone. I wonder if the ATI involvement is worth it, seeing that the screen is so tiny, but I'll wait till Thursday, when it'll be playable, before I pass final judgment. It also has stereo sound and force feedback. Break plans to buy one as soon as they go on sale.
Finally, and without pictures, is the most far out product I saw there. Aegia is hoping to sell a new kind of peripheral card to gamers, physics processors. They call it the PhysX processor, and the idea is this: With games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3, the CPU gets overloaded with physics calculations, causing frame rate problems. Aegia figures, there are audio cards, video cards, why not physics cards? They had a few tech demonstrations available, and what I saw was impressive. Hell, in a few years, a physics card might be the norm among PC gamers.
