Quakecon 2009 – Day 1 coverage

Vendors – Intel, NVidia, AMD, MSI, Kingston

Many hardware and software vendors were on hand to showcase their some of their newest products to Quakecon’s gaming and enthusiast community members. Some of the vendors who attended the event included Intel, AMD/ATI, Ventrilo, NVidia, In Win, MSI, ASUS, Bawls, Barefoot, Kingston, CoolerMaster, Cyberpower, Antec, GameSkulls, and many others. We visited each of their booths to see what products they were highlighting at Quakecon 2009.

Intel

Intel had several of their upcoming P55 motherboards on display including a couple mini ITX P45 boards that have already been released. The new P55 motherboards support Intel’s next CPU platform dubbed Lynnfield or most know it as the i5, which is considered a part of Intel’s i7 family of processors. Intel said consumers can expect to see the new P55 boards on the market in September.

NVidia

NVidia’s booth is located in the BYOC and gamers are able to check out their 3D Vision technology and play a few games in 3D on their high-definition displays. This technology is a combination of wireless glasses and advanced software that transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D.

This little gamer was having a blast playing games in 3D. I think his older brother was a bit sad that he couldn’t play. Wait your turn young man.

AMD

AMD had a massive booth on display that was geared around their their “Dragon” platform. Dragon is merely their marketing brand for the combination of their chipsets, video cards, and processors working in tandem to deliver budget and high-end gaming to the masses. This isn’t really new to our readers or the enthusiast community, but is definitely something worth noting at events like Quakecon. They had several gaming booths set up with Wolfenstein and other demos for event participants to try out.

MSI

MSI was out in full force showing off their newest P55 board called the MSI P55-GD80. This board has a host of new features including support for four x86 processing cores with HyperThreading technology, 8MB of L3 cache, and support for TurboBoost technology.

The P55-GD80 also has some unique items on board that we haven’t seen before like a touch panel for the power button, reset button, and to enable their Green Power technology. Our readers will also notice other buttons for overclocking and clearing the CMOS. They also included a handy post code LED display for troubleshooting.

MSI also brought out some of their newest notebooks, including the GT725 displayed in this photo. This portable gaming machine sports an Intel Q9000 processor, 17″ TFT-LCD screen, ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, and a nine-cell battery. It’s a bit hefty at 5.9 lbs, but should be more than enough to play Crysis Warhead at decent resolutions.

MSI also brought one of their newest netbook offerings called the U123. Netbooks have becoming extremely popular for their price and performance, and the U123 is no different. This netbook has an Intel Atom N280 processor, 10.2″ LCD display, 160GB hard drive, 1.3MP web cam, bluebooth, and 802.11b/g/n support. It weighs in at 3.2 lbs with a nine-cell battery.

Kingston

Kingston had a modest booth that included showing off their new HyperX Fan that’s designed to be used with their HyperX memory line. It’s constructed from anodized aluminum and uses two 60mm fans that produce 25dBA during normal operation. The fans are also illuminated by blue LEDs, which should match many gamers’ case lighting schemes and is a popular choice among many consumers.