Date: January 16 - 19
Where: Holiday Inn Conference Center, Portland, OR
URL: www.pdxlan.com

The dust has settled after yet another phenomenal PDXLAN in Portland, OR. Over 500 gamers showed up, saddled up, and took on the Pacific Northwest's top clans and individual gamers in 6 official tournaments, and countless informal battles in the BYOC area.

Leadtek and NVIDIA teamed up to provide 16 official tournament machines, equipped with NVIDIA's award-winning nForce 2 chipset, and Leadtek's GeForce FX 5950 Ultra-powered graphics cards. But gamers didn't just get to PLAY on the high end hardware—they were competing for a chance to WIN Leadtek graphics cards featuring the GeForce FX 5900, 5700, and 5950 Ultra GPU's!


Many in attendance were veterans of the first PDXLAN, having attended the NVIDIA-sponsored 2003 event in July. In the past 6 months since the summer event, many had ample time to hone their gaming skills, prepare new creations for the case-modding competition, and ready themselves for the Twinkie-eating contest (a follow-up on last summer's popular Pizza-eating contest)!

Case modders, inspired by last summer's event, pulled together some amazing work for this event. Though this design did not win the official contest, check out the crowd-favorite NVIDIA-powered Porsche 911 turbo. The car's creator spent nearly 60 hours putting this masterpiece together. Believe it or not, this computer actually DRIVES, when fully-equipped!


While many in attendance showed up to play titles that had been out for more than 5 years, everyone at PDXLAN was into the unreleased versions of Far Cry and Painkiller. Tomorrow's hottest titles were available to play on today's hottest NVIDIA hardware. Attendees played and waited in line to play some of 2004's most anticipated games at the NVIDIA kiosks all weekend!


NVIDIA supplied all attendees with NVIDIA/Leadtek T shirts. Throughout the event we roamed the floor, looking for attendees wearing the shirt, and in need of a new graphics solution. This winner was stringing his system along on a GeForce 4, sporting 2 aftermarket CASE fans, resting delicately on top of his card... the OEM fan had "broken off." We're sure his computer will welcome the new Leadtek GeForce FX 5950 Ultra he won—just for wearing the right shirt!


NVIDIA hosted 2 presentations at PDXLAN, filled with hardware prizes. On Friday, Product Manager Jason Paul evangelized gamers about the long journey a GPU takes from an idea, to software emulation, to the store shelves. On Saturday, Product Manager Micah Stroud made his PDXLAN return, bringing gamers up to speed on NVIDIA's nForce 3 chipset, and its awesome new features. Both presenters took some excellent questions from the crowd, and gained valuable feedback from some of our most important resources: the gamers! Afterwards, NVIDIA treated attendees to Free Pizza and Bawls!


With 20 cases of Bawls on site, you have to imagine that people would get creative... Check out the 2 designs below. Jesse (his gaming handle is "Wonderbra"), spent 6 Bawls-fueled hours creating the 900-bottle masterpiece seen below!


Several gamers fasted in preparation for the Twinkie-eating contest, held (thankfully) just outside the venue. Though it was a close battle to thee end, "Red Hat" came through in the clutch and took home his second title (and nForce2 motherboard)! Pizza... Twinkies... what's next?!


NVIDIA will definitely be back for the third PDXLAN, held in July 2004. If you want a piece of the action, you'd better act fast—this event sold out its 500 seats a full 2 months ago! Keep checking pdxlan.com for updates this Spring, and get your piece of the action!