- Joined
- Jan 18, 2001
- Location
- Daytona Beach, Florida!
Well, let me start by saying it was a little better than last year's event, even though the chances of winning were a lot lower, BUT, AMD got really stingy on this too.
8:30 in the evening, ok, that lets people not miss work.
Having it at a place it took some effort to find (and then to find the way home), well, that could use a little work.
Having it indoors was a good idea, although it did get a little warm a little quick.
So I pre-register and I get my confirmation email and it says to print it out and so on, so fine, I print it out and bring it and the directions (which I had to find myself) and 3 friends with me, and when we get there an hour ahead of opening time (you never know how 80/94 is going to be), the girl at the door takes my invitation, and then wants my 3 friends to also produce them.
Uh, hey, isn't this open to the public? Fortunately, I didn't have to whine too long and she saw the wisdom of letting us all in, and I didn't have to threaten legal action or scalding reviews in every tech-site known to man. Nonetheless, since I already filled out the exact same thing on the web, why do I have to do it again?
So we're standing around for about half an hour, and they decide to go ahead and let us come up to where the show is. I was a bit surprised, after having read some of the horror stories elsewhere about being over-strict with the clock, and last year's event proved it to me first hand too. But they let us up, and the 3 boxes you put your tickets in weren't all that hard to find.
The machines they had set up were running UT2003, that Star Wars game (looked pretty neat too), and GTA3. There were a couple dozen machines of about 3 or 4 configs, but they all used crappy on-board video, and you could see that they were jumpy with any serious action, even at the low resolutions they were running at. The Intel boxes (there were a couple) were doubly poor video, but they used 845 chipsets, so I'd have to say that was Intel's fault for making such a lousy onboard video controller.
I managed to talk to the show's MC (before I knew that's who he was; sorry I don't remember anyone's name but my own) and ask about the website "booths" that were there. I saw 4 of them, all from loser sites, and wanted to know if there were any others. He mentioned a couple more that were not as bad, and then I asked about an Overclockers "booth", and he said "You're it!" So he announced abot them and had me be the center of attention for Overclockers.com.
He only mentioned us a couple times total (no matter how loud or often I screamed for more), and only about a dozen total people came over to where we were. Unfortunately, we had little to say to each other, except to agree the other sites represented were lamers, and that if any of us got called up there, we'd be sure to plug the site, but alas, we were foiled in that.
Well, we did talk about a few other things, but nothing really earth shattering. One of the guys had a VIP badge, and I asked him about what they showed him behind the curtains, and he will be posting later to tell you what that was. Maybe he'll even notice this post and append it here...?
There looked to be about a 1 in 10 chace of winning (40 giveaways and 400 or so people), and of course, I didn't win, nor could I catch any of the stuff that was thrown (not that I woulda wanted a hat or shirt anyway). You woulda thought that MC guy might-woulda called me up to the stage like he did a few other people and have me extoll the virtues of AMD.
Well, there were drawings, and of course, everyone booed when their numbers weren't called, but it's not like it was a madhouse or anything. It was good-natured booing.
So they have the Jeopardy thing, and it's hard to hear the questions, and they did get at least one of the answers wrong. The contestants were not too bad; they occasionally knew answers that the whole crowd didn't! But the crowd seemed to like shouting out what they thought was the right answer, or a really ridiculous wrong answer.
Finally, they do the system build-off, and this is where AMD really dropped the ball. Apparently they didn't like the idea of awarding $500 to the guy that smoked a power supply, because now the had a rule that if your computer doesn't power up and boot up without any problems, you are out. Surely you all know the one thing you are 50% likely to screw up, no matter how good you get.
Go ahead, take a guess.
Even a seasoned professional like me makes this mistake occasionally, because FLOPPY DRIVES do not always conform to the standards that other devices conform to. How often do you get keyed cables? How often is the drive's connections proerly keyed? And how often does pin1 go next to the power lead, like it always does for IDE or SCSI?
And both contestants got screwed out of their priizes because of this. They got just $100 (and maybe a processor), instead of the $500 or $2500 they should have been able to compete for.
HOW FROGGING LAME IS THAT, AMD????!!! Are you so broke that you have to rip off two of your fans, and make the rest of us, who so obviously know more about computers than probably anyone you sent to that show, feel like we too have been cheated? This is totally inexcuseable! I feel like I was the one up there who got his drawers dropped and had something placed someplace it didn't belong! This is an outrage!
Is it really so hard to put on a good show? Do you think these pep rallies are going to convert anyone? I came away feeling quite disillusioned with AMD. So much so that I may make my next processor purchase from some other company. I may even do the unthinkable, and just give up computers altogether! You guys really need to get your act together, and you need to give your contestants a chance to compete, and not to try so hard to make them look like fools.
Other than that disgrace, and the brief huzzaw getting in, it was not a terrible show, but it WAS just a pep rally. There was nothing to be learned there by anyone, except maybe the VIPs. And that I didn't win anything (Ok, I was given some mints, a dangly badge, and could've gotten a CD that looked rather useless, and had a couple snack-looking things.) and that they kept bringing out Diet Coke when no one wanted to drink it, and the food disappeared way too quickly.
I don't see how these pep rallies are doing anything favorable for AMD. The turnout is "small" (about 400), they only contacted people who were part of the previous contest and didn't want people from off the street, they didn't educate anyone about anything, and that's SOP for these things. Throw in the bogus excuse for a contest, and you've got to wonder who's running the show at AMD?
But the girls were all cute (especially "Sticker Girl").
No one else on any other forum I found wanted to tell people what kind of hardware was available for the choosing. They had the XP2000 and XP2200. They had 256M of PC2700 and 128M of.... couldn't tell, but it was probably PC2100. And they had 3 video cards, a GF MX (worthless), a GF4200, and I don't know what the third was, but it might have been a GF4400.
The prices were ridiculously high, but it looked like you would want to put together the 128M RAM with the GF4200 and the XP2200. If that went over budget, then use the XP2000 instead. You go with that faster RAM and the tiny speed gain you get means you gotta go with the MX card, which will toally end your game.
There were 3 benchmarks they were going to use. PCMark2002, UT2003, and Serious Sam. They would pick 1 of them, and then use that to see who the winner was, but they weren't going to tell you which they picked until after the system was built, so it's no good trying to figure out in advance what to pick and scour sites for benchmarks.
Hopefully, this post will help some one to win when otherwise they would get ripped off, and of course, hopefully the winner will be an Overclocker, and of course, hopefully they will be grateful enough to me to send me some of the money they win.
8:30 in the evening, ok, that lets people not miss work.
Having it at a place it took some effort to find (and then to find the way home), well, that could use a little work.
Having it indoors was a good idea, although it did get a little warm a little quick.
So I pre-register and I get my confirmation email and it says to print it out and so on, so fine, I print it out and bring it and the directions (which I had to find myself) and 3 friends with me, and when we get there an hour ahead of opening time (you never know how 80/94 is going to be), the girl at the door takes my invitation, and then wants my 3 friends to also produce them.
Uh, hey, isn't this open to the public? Fortunately, I didn't have to whine too long and she saw the wisdom of letting us all in, and I didn't have to threaten legal action or scalding reviews in every tech-site known to man. Nonetheless, since I already filled out the exact same thing on the web, why do I have to do it again?
So we're standing around for about half an hour, and they decide to go ahead and let us come up to where the show is. I was a bit surprised, after having read some of the horror stories elsewhere about being over-strict with the clock, and last year's event proved it to me first hand too. But they let us up, and the 3 boxes you put your tickets in weren't all that hard to find.
The machines they had set up were running UT2003, that Star Wars game (looked pretty neat too), and GTA3. There were a couple dozen machines of about 3 or 4 configs, but they all used crappy on-board video, and you could see that they were jumpy with any serious action, even at the low resolutions they were running at. The Intel boxes (there were a couple) were doubly poor video, but they used 845 chipsets, so I'd have to say that was Intel's fault for making such a lousy onboard video controller.
I managed to talk to the show's MC (before I knew that's who he was; sorry I don't remember anyone's name but my own) and ask about the website "booths" that were there. I saw 4 of them, all from loser sites, and wanted to know if there were any others. He mentioned a couple more that were not as bad, and then I asked about an Overclockers "booth", and he said "You're it!" So he announced abot them and had me be the center of attention for Overclockers.com.
He only mentioned us a couple times total (no matter how loud or often I screamed for more), and only about a dozen total people came over to where we were. Unfortunately, we had little to say to each other, except to agree the other sites represented were lamers, and that if any of us got called up there, we'd be sure to plug the site, but alas, we were foiled in that.
Well, we did talk about a few other things, but nothing really earth shattering. One of the guys had a VIP badge, and I asked him about what they showed him behind the curtains, and he will be posting later to tell you what that was. Maybe he'll even notice this post and append it here...?
There looked to be about a 1 in 10 chace of winning (40 giveaways and 400 or so people), and of course, I didn't win, nor could I catch any of the stuff that was thrown (not that I woulda wanted a hat or shirt anyway). You woulda thought that MC guy might-woulda called me up to the stage like he did a few other people and have me extoll the virtues of AMD.
Well, there were drawings, and of course, everyone booed when their numbers weren't called, but it's not like it was a madhouse or anything. It was good-natured booing.
So they have the Jeopardy thing, and it's hard to hear the questions, and they did get at least one of the answers wrong. The contestants were not too bad; they occasionally knew answers that the whole crowd didn't! But the crowd seemed to like shouting out what they thought was the right answer, or a really ridiculous wrong answer.
Finally, they do the system build-off, and this is where AMD really dropped the ball. Apparently they didn't like the idea of awarding $500 to the guy that smoked a power supply, because now the had a rule that if your computer doesn't power up and boot up without any problems, you are out. Surely you all know the one thing you are 50% likely to screw up, no matter how good you get.
Go ahead, take a guess.
Even a seasoned professional like me makes this mistake occasionally, because FLOPPY DRIVES do not always conform to the standards that other devices conform to. How often do you get keyed cables? How often is the drive's connections proerly keyed? And how often does pin1 go next to the power lead, like it always does for IDE or SCSI?
And both contestants got screwed out of their priizes because of this. They got just $100 (and maybe a processor), instead of the $500 or $2500 they should have been able to compete for.
HOW FROGGING LAME IS THAT, AMD????!!! Are you so broke that you have to rip off two of your fans, and make the rest of us, who so obviously know more about computers than probably anyone you sent to that show, feel like we too have been cheated? This is totally inexcuseable! I feel like I was the one up there who got his drawers dropped and had something placed someplace it didn't belong! This is an outrage!
Is it really so hard to put on a good show? Do you think these pep rallies are going to convert anyone? I came away feeling quite disillusioned with AMD. So much so that I may make my next processor purchase from some other company. I may even do the unthinkable, and just give up computers altogether! You guys really need to get your act together, and you need to give your contestants a chance to compete, and not to try so hard to make them look like fools.
Other than that disgrace, and the brief huzzaw getting in, it was not a terrible show, but it WAS just a pep rally. There was nothing to be learned there by anyone, except maybe the VIPs. And that I didn't win anything (Ok, I was given some mints, a dangly badge, and could've gotten a CD that looked rather useless, and had a couple snack-looking things.) and that they kept bringing out Diet Coke when no one wanted to drink it, and the food disappeared way too quickly.
I don't see how these pep rallies are doing anything favorable for AMD. The turnout is "small" (about 400), they only contacted people who were part of the previous contest and didn't want people from off the street, they didn't educate anyone about anything, and that's SOP for these things. Throw in the bogus excuse for a contest, and you've got to wonder who's running the show at AMD?
But the girls were all cute (especially "Sticker Girl").
No one else on any other forum I found wanted to tell people what kind of hardware was available for the choosing. They had the XP2000 and XP2200. They had 256M of PC2700 and 128M of.... couldn't tell, but it was probably PC2100. And they had 3 video cards, a GF MX (worthless), a GF4200, and I don't know what the third was, but it might have been a GF4400.
The prices were ridiculously high, but it looked like you would want to put together the 128M RAM with the GF4200 and the XP2200. If that went over budget, then use the XP2000 instead. You go with that faster RAM and the tiny speed gain you get means you gotta go with the MX card, which will toally end your game.
There were 3 benchmarks they were going to use. PCMark2002, UT2003, and Serious Sam. They would pick 1 of them, and then use that to see who the winner was, but they weren't going to tell you which they picked until after the system was built, so it's no good trying to figure out in advance what to pick and scour sites for benchmarks.
Hopefully, this post will help some one to win when otherwise they would get ripped off, and of course, hopefully the winner will be an Overclocker, and of course, hopefully they will be grateful enough to me to send me some of the money they win.
and 5 hours of sleep. I recognized Thelemac and SpeeDj so I gave them my raffle tickets and bolted for the door. I was damn tired and just wanted to get out of there.
![url]](http://[url]http://www.amdmb.com/images/comdex2002/day1/opteron-soyo&fic.jpg[/url])
![url]](http://[url]http://www.amdmb.com/images/comdex2002/day1/opteron-tyan&ali.jpg[/url])
