Sponsors and Exhibitors
Sponsors and Exhibitors
Quakecon is really made possible by the sponsors that shell out the money for the convention center, the facilities, the network and the prize money. Of course this year again id Software was a major player but NVIDIA took the crown for title sponsor. They donated a lot of money to this cause and to the community for it and they should be commended for their efforts. Other hardware sponsors included AMD, VIA, Linksys and Chenbro.
NVIDIA had both a resting area for Quakecon attendees to rest and relax while watching some movies or playing games (seen above) but they also had a booth with lots of games being run on NV40 hardware.
Games like Far Cry and Doom 3 were of course there, but other titles such as the unreleased Stalker were playable as well.
The now classic Doom 3 room that has seen its fair share of Quakecons, E3s and more was on hand to show off the working Doom 3 console demo. After playing it again this year, the console version is playing remarkably well with remarkably impressive image quality. This is definitely not going to be a Halo port type of situation.
The new Call of Duty: United Offensive was also being shown to the public in the Activision booth seen here.
The VIA booth was showcasing their latest chipsets as well as small form factor machines and interesting case designs. The VIA Envy 24 chipset for sound cards was being displayed as well on a running Doom 3 system.
AMD had a booth as well with various systems running on Athlon 64 processors playing Far Cry. They also had a little theater going in the back as you can see in the above image.
Abit was an exhibitor at Quakecon as well showing off their line of products for both AMD and Intel processors. Of course, as Abit has done at every show recently, they had a Fatal1ty Shootout being run as well.
At the shootout, anyone that could score even a single point on Fatal1ty (who did win the Doom 3 tourney and $25,000 at this year’s Quakecon) would get a prize and anyone that beat him got several system components. These shootouts always draw a great crowd and this one was no exception.
Abit also had the first mock up of the Fatal1ty motherboard that they are designing in conjunction with the Fatal1ty team. For more information on this motherboard, check out the news post I made about it earlier in the week.
Finally, Creative labs was on hand demonstrating their latest gaming sound cards.
NVIDIA 6600 Launch
On Thursday, the first day of Quakecon, NVIDIA used the show to officially launch their 6600 graphics chip to the world. You can read our full preview that will give you more detail as to the technical issues and performance on this chip by clicking here.
NVIDIA set up the standard press release setting, but with three of these enormous screens playing Doom 3!
Cat Schwartz, formerly of TechTV fame, was the MC for the evening event. Here she is speaking with Todd Hollenshead of id Software about Doom 3 and NVIDIA’s performance in the game.
Our buddy Ujesh gives the presentation on the 6600 graphics cards to the crowd describing all the features and performance.
Finally, the event was summed up with a round table Q&A with questions from the crowd to two reps from both NVIDIA and id Software.
If you want the full scoop on the 6600 graphics chip, check out my preview.
