PAX East 2011: Gaming and Tech Mosh Pit
PAX East 2011: Gaming and Tech Mosh Pit
The PAX East show has really started to gain traction with a number of major brand manufacturers and this year's event had, dare we say, stellar support and turn-out from the community. We've grown pretty fond of its smaller, more manageable venue, with its casual, laid-back atmosphere sans the stuffed shirt marketing pitch that gets a bit old, at the larger shows like CES, after you've heard it day in and day out. This year's show was held at the new Boston Convention Center with over 500,000 square feet of floor space to get your geek on, virtually any way you want it. From tabletop and handheld gaming, to consoles and of course PC power rigs, PAX East offered a ton of hands-on access with some of the latest hardware and of course the hottest gaming titles on the market, some of which aren't even released yet.
Make sure you check out our recent coverage of game-play footage of the finally, soon-to-be-released Duke Nukem Forever, as well as Valve's upcoming Portal 2. What we have here for you is a quick tour of the show floor as well as some of the highlight reel we recorded while checking in with our friends at manufacturers like Asus, MSI, EVGA, Maingear and Alienware.
Roving HH Reporter Marco Chiappetta shows us around the floor a bit, when he's not goofing off...
LN2 Overclocking - Approaching 6Ghz and an Asus-powered monster
Asus' Danger Den encased, water-cooled, quad-SLI monster based on the Rampage III Extreme mobo
Asus G73SW 17" Gaming Notebook - Core i7 Sandy Bridge and GeForce GTX 460M - nice
EVGA's SR2 Classified-powered dual six core Xeon killer gaming rig with quad-SLI - sooo tasty
MainGear's SHIFT - Dual GTX580s and check out the airbrushed side panel. Got a problem with that?
Alienware M17x, Duke Nukem Booth Babes and randomness. PAX had it going on...
Gigabyte Was Showing Off Their G1 Motherboards and Giving Plenty of Stuff Away
Make sure you check out our recent coverage of game-play footage of the finally, soon-to-be-released Duke Nukem Forever, as well as Valve's upcoming Portal 2. What we have here for you is a quick tour of the show floor as well as some of the highlight reel we recorded while checking in with our friends at manufacturers like Asus, MSI, EVGA, Maingear and Alienware.
Roving HH Reporter Marco Chiappetta shows us around the floor a bit, when he's not goofing off...
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LN2 Overclocking - Approaching 6Ghz and an Asus-powered monster
;)
;)
Asus' Danger Den encased, water-cooled, quad-SLI monster based on the Rampage III Extreme mobo
;)
;)
Asus G73SW 17" Gaming Notebook - Core i7 Sandy Bridge and GeForce GTX 460M - nice
;)
;)
EVGA's SR2 Classified-powered dual six core Xeon killer gaming rig with quad-SLI - sooo tasty
;)
;)
MainGear's SHIFT - Dual GTX580s and check out the airbrushed side panel. Got a problem with that?
;)
;)
;)
;)
Alienware M17x, Duke Nukem Booth Babes and randomness. PAX had it going on...
;)
;)
;)
;)
Gigabyte Was Showing Off Their G1 Motherboards and Giving Plenty of Stuff Away
Highlights for us were EVGA's and Asus' water-cooled quad-SLI rigs. If we were scoring for points in performance, EVGA's system, with it's dual six-core Xeons, 24GB of DDR3 RAM (12GB per Xeon) and four GTX580s (all water-cooled including the CPUs), definitely stole the show. In terms of style and performance combined, the Asus machine definitely had the best bling factor, with its stainless steel water blocks, fluorescent colored tubing and custom lighting. The overclocked Core i7 980X and quad GeForce GTX 580s were nothing to sneeze at either.
In terms of game titles, we were given a preview of Portal 2, which looks like Valve has buffed out nicely in terms of its game engine, along with the humorous jabbings of J.K. Simmons as Cave Johnson. Duke Nukem Forever and Crysis 2 were also looking pretty spiffy, though we were a bit disappointed to only see the console version of Duke running. And we should mention that Shift 2 Unleashed (check the video), which is scheduled for release later this month, was also looking rather graphically stunning.
Good times all around at this year's PAX East show. We hope the folks at Penny Arcade continue to build on the obvious momentum the show has been building over the years.
In terms of game titles, we were given a preview of Portal 2, which looks like Valve has buffed out nicely in terms of its game engine, along with the humorous jabbings of J.K. Simmons as Cave Johnson. Duke Nukem Forever and Crysis 2 were also looking pretty spiffy, though we were a bit disappointed to only see the console version of Duke running. And we should mention that Shift 2 Unleashed (check the video), which is scheduled for release later this month, was also looking rather graphically stunning.
Good times all around at this year's PAX East show. We hope the folks at Penny Arcade continue to build on the obvious momentum the show has been building over the years.
