We came, we saw, it was awesome - all the action and pics from Atomic's latest Brisbane visit.
Well, the final leg of Atomic's Power to the PC Tour has come and gone, and we've said goodbye to the show in style. On a stormy night in Brisbane we have over 200 Atomicans show up at QUT's Garden Theatre - they walked away informed, entertained, well-fed and with a few beers in their bellies.
The doors to the Tour opened at four in the afternoon, but keen Atomicans were already braving the rain and waiting outside - we just had to let them into someplace dry! They found waiting for them displays from Gigabyte, Kingston and Samsung, an Alienware LAN from QUT's own games lab, and an auditorium waiting to be filled.
Once everyone had filed in and taken their seats, we kicked off. Atomic's Editor, David Hollingworth took the stage to thank QUT and to introduce the first of the speakers - QUT's own Dr Peta Wyeth.
Dr Wyeth gave a run down not only of what QUT had to offer those seeking a career in games development, but also outlined the growing focus that gaming will get at the campus, including a whole new set of buildings and labs that she's sure will see some great work in the future. She also made us a little jealous, because she's going to GDC and we're not. Poo.
The next speaker was Kingston's Vaughan Nankivell, who took the room full of rapt Atomicans through Kingston's memory products. He covered everything from top-end performance RAM to Kingston's range of SSDs - and he had an awesome video demo of a 24GB HyperX kit running a literal craptonne of virtual machines. Here's a link, and it's well worth watching.
Second cab off the rank was Billy Lin, from Gigabyte. He had a very Atomic presentation that covered in great detail the entire breadth of what their motherboards have to offer, including an hilarious video that showed off the advantages of USB3.0 - to summise, if you want to impress and influence the gender of your choice, Gigabyte and USB3.0 is the way to go.
Our final speaker was Eddie Jung from Samsung, who had already entertained half of Melbourne with his subtle allusions to 3D porn on that leg of the tour. He didn't disappoint in Brisbane, either, and Samsung's presentation was a wonderful way to end the informative part of the show.
Then, it was time for free stuff!
The biggest prize was 3D monitor rig from Samsung, including a 22in LCD display and glasses from Nvidia. The lucky winner - Tim Yeowart, who will now be watching all the 3D 'adult material' he can stomach. There was more though, including a 6GB kit of HyperX RAM from Kingston and a P55 motherboard from Gigabyte, all won by happy - if somewhat shy at times - Atomicans.
We also had t-shirts and games to give out. The games were Hunter's Edition copies of Aliens Vs Predator courtesy of Sega (who also provided the game for QUT's LAN setup), and the t-shirts... well, we love causing a bit of chaos, so this was a free-for-all. Nothing like chucking free stuff at an auditorium full of people to get a things moving along.
But that's thirsty work, so it was time to retire to the display area for pizza eating (and HUGE thanks to Dominos for supplying 90 (!!!) pizzas), beer drinking, hardware drooling (as usual, Samsung's 3D monitor setup drew a crowd, and the presence of TeamAU overclocker Dino on the Gigabyte stand was very neat), and gameplaying.
In all, it was a perfectly Atomican night, and the BrisAtomicans are a truly awesome crowd to hang out with and share a brew. Thanks again, QUT, for hosting the night, thanks to Samsung, Kingston and Gigabyte for supporting us, and Sega for helping us frag a few Xenomorphs.
And thanks to everyone who came along and made the night so great. We will most definitely return!
Issue: 133 | February, 2012