X-bit labs

E3 Show in Los Angeles: All About Gaming (page 7)

Category: Editorial

by Anna Filatova

[ 05/17/2004 | 05:28 PM ]

Also at the VIA booth you could see a new VIA PT890 based mainboard.

This version of the board features a VT8237 South bridge, but by the release time these solution will feature VT8251 South Bridge supporting Azalia sound and Command Queuing. The board should be launched at Computex, so hopefully we will be able to offer you more details about its features and performance pretty soon.

I would like to draw your attention to the most remarkable feature of this board: it is equipped with both: an AGP 8x slot and a PCI Express slot at the same time. As far as I know this is the only solution so far offering such functionality. They even had a DeltaChrome PCI Express graphics card installed (so far it is only a dummy, but the mere fact that S3 is working on a PCI Express solution is really pleasing).

The last interesting thing about E3 I would like to tell you about is the Unreal Tournament 2004 contest carried out by ABIT at their booth at the show. That was a lot of fun! The World Champion PC gamer, Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel was beating all the contenders in a wink of an eye. However, even knowing that there is hardly any chance to win (ABIT was sponsoring a 1,000-dollar prize to the winner), people were crowding around the podium with two large monitors enjoying another killing session.

  
Ok, that's me completely defeated by the champion :)

I like Unreal Tournament a lot. I play it myself and with friends from time to time, just for a change, you know. And of course I couldn’t help taking the challenge. And that was a hilarious round, I should say. I sit down, put the headphones on and we get started. At first I couldn’t find the guy. Yes, I just couldn’t see him anywhere. I would run and turn and move sideways: he wasn’t there! Then I noticed people laughing. Ok, I was also having fun trying to find the guy, but the funny thing was (which I didn’t see) that he was right behind me all the time! He would run after me, turn with me, move with me. Oh, man, that was just great that he did it, because my score didn’t look too poor this way (I was killed only 10 times, which could have been killed over 30 times, if he didn’t play this trick being right behind my back and following me everywhere). :)

Well, I really enjoyed the show: a lot of interesting stuff to see, a lot of great people to meet, and of course, a lot of fun playing games. Yes, this is all about games, anyway, isn’t it?