What frustrates you most when building a system from scratch? Not having enough power perhaps? Or maybe purchasing defective hardware? Or maybe your dog sticking his nose inside the case as you power up the system; and watching him get his nose slashed by the fans. (I thought it was funny…the wife didn’t.)

I’ve built tons of PCs; I enjoy doing in it, especially when everything clicks the first time around. Connect all power and data cables, install the memory, video cards (yes, plural), drives, and CPU; set up and configure the OS, make sure all fans are spinning…you know the drill.

But every once in a while I do something incredibly naïve (for lack of a better word) and find myself wasting hours doing things like troubleshooting memory issues because I simply forgot that you need to have a 64-bit operating system to install more than 4 Gigs of RAM! Believe me I normally don’t make mistakes like this. I even drove back to the store and returned the memory thinking they were bad. I felt so “funny” when I realized what I had done, I spent the rest of the day playing Solitaire on the PC, know what I mean?

But aside from brain cramps like the one I describe above, building PCs has become easier than ever. To prove this, I watched a gamer do the above (connect the basic components and post) in 41 seconds last month at the Newegg Lanfest 2K7. So if you’ve been hesitating about taking the build-it-yourself route, questioning your technical chops go ahead and take the plunge. It’s an inexpensive way to get an awesome gaming rig, and dogs’ noses and brain cramps aside it’s not that hard.

The official GeForce LAN 4 website is now up and running everyone. You can now register and officially prepare for battle. Make sure to visit the FAQ.

I strongly recommend you to avoid using any online Map or Direction sites, instead use the directions provided by AREA 51 Event Center website.

GeForce® LAN 4 will take place at the AREA 51 Event Center located in the Alameda Naval Station in Alameda, California.

For accommodations, the following hotels are nearby:

Hawthorn Suites – 1.8 mi away
Extended Stay America Oakland – Alameda – 1.8 mi away
Waterfront Plaza Hotel – 1.8 mi away
Jack London Inn – 1.9 mi away
Marina Village Inn – 2.4 mi away
Executive Inn – 5.1 mi away
Hilton-Oakland Airport - 9.0 mi away

We will be launching the official GeForce LAN 4 website very soon. The official site will provide you all the information you will need to register and attend the event, stay tuned!

Please note that the LAN party is restricted to age 18 and over only.

Recently, I surveyed a small sample of gamers and learned that more than three quarters of them have not moved onto Vista yet. Personally, I think that Windows XP SP2 is a darn good OS, but Windows Vista gives you such a richer gaming experience, your games come to life. I have a computer with Vista (DirectX 10) installed and it runs great. But I continue to run into people that are still hesitating with the transition. Why? What are you waiting for? You are missing out on some serious World in Conflict DirectX 10 action.

If you haven’t made the switch, leave a comment below why not. If you have, let us know what you think of Vista and DirectX 10.

A few days ago I was one of the lucky people in attendance during the Computer History Museum’s annual Fellow Awards, an award ceremony that honors individuals that have greatly contributed to the development of computing.

This year, among the four distinguished Fellow Award honorees was Morris Chang, one of the most innovative semiconductor pioneers of our time and the founding chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known to most as TSMC. TSMC was a revolution in the world of semiconductors because it was the world’s first independent silicon foundry. Any company with an integrated circuit design could have their chips built at TSMC, eliminating the billion-dollar investment a company had to make to build its own semiconductor factory. TSMC allowed a new class of fabless semiconductor companies, like NVIDIA, to form, and the computer industry hasn’t been the same since.

After his induction into the Computer History Museum’s Hall of Fellows, Mr. Chang sat down with our co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang in front of a live, 200-person audience to talk about his career in the technology industry. Jensen shared some great personal stories about Mr. Chang with the audience and Mr. Chang gave a candid, first-hand account of the challenges he faced in starting TSMC.

You can check out a video of the entire talk on the Computer History Museum’s website here. (wmv video file, 203 MB)

SAVE THE DATE: November 16-18, 2007

Mark your calendars, gear up your rigs, and hone your skills—it’s time for GeForce® LAN 4!

To celebrate the launch of the most anticipated PC game of the year—Crysis®—and to give you gamers a big “thank you,” NVIDIA and Electronic Arts will host GeForce LAN 4, November 16-18, 2007 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

GeForce LAN 4 will be an action-packed weekend event featuring a BYOC LAN party with tournaments, fun contests with awesome prizes, and of course, Crysis running on the ultimate, PC gaming platform from NVIDIA!

If you’re interested in attending and would like more information on the event, please complete this form.

Please note that the LAN party event is restricted to age 18 and over only.

So many games this summer, so little time to play…till Bioshock. I loved the game, actually I love (present tense) the game—I’m still playing it on my PC. I even bought both the PC and the X-Box 360 version. Why? Because my better half, jealous of all the time I was spending with it, wanted to watch the game and see the story unfold. PC is my favorite platform (because I have SLI™ enabled, two 8800 GeForce® GTX cards…whoa). The shooting is simply fun and once you get to learn all the bio-mods, it only gets better. Setting enemies on fire, electrocuting them, or freezing them is just cool. Hypnotizing the “Big Daddies” was also fun, especially when taking on multiple enemies. But what really impressed me is the setting; the underwater art deco environment is awesome. Bioshock offers hours of entertainment by perfectly blending intense action and story telling. Buy it! Play it! You’ll see.

On behalf of NVIDIA, I would like to welcome you to the official NVIDIA SLIZone blog.  This blog will provide you a window into the world of SLI™ at NVIDIA, and the people that help bring it to you.

Now in case you are wondering what SLI is, it’s NVIDIA’s technology which allows you to combine two combine two graphics cards on an NVIDIA nForce® motherboard to get faster 3D performance on hundreds of games and applications. We want this blog to be about what we are doing for our users, so I don’t want to go into lots of marketing about SLI; if you want more info on SLI, you can get it at: http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_learn.html

This blog will cover lots of topics that we believe our SLI users care about, including:

• New SLI-Ready hardware
• Game of the month
• A day in the life of NVIDIA employee
• What does it take to be a professional gamer
• …and more

As a member of our NVIDIA community, we encourage you to leave comments on the blog, as well as let us know which things (events, stories, pics, etc) you want more.

- - Andrew, Sr. Product Manager, NVIDIA SLI.