Dallas, Texas, a happening city, a place where you can't possibly be bored during the night. As long as you've got the will to party and the means to get out of the house you should be just fine. Unfortunately AnandTech was 30 minutes outside of Dallas in Mesquite, hanging out with around 1000 of the most dedicated, Quake 3 fanatics alive some of which included your favorite webmasters whom we have wonderfully incriminating pictures of for you all to see ;)

For those of you that don't know, Quakecon is an annual event that essentially pits the Quake players that think they have what it takes to rule all when it comes to, you guessed it, Quake. The "convention" itself is one big tournament, you are allowed to bring your own system to practice on, but for the actual tournament all participants use a preconfigured system that is designed to eliminate any hardware advantages one user may have over another. By doing that, you prevent anyone with better Quaking skills from being beaten by an inferior player simply because they were playing on a horrendously slow computer. The tournament (from what we were able to gather) proceeded with a couple of free for all elimination rounds, the winners of which proceeded on to the one-on-one tournament brackets that eventually pit the two best players out of the bunch against each other. While all this is going on, the rest of the massive LAN party is pretty much sitting around practicing and messing around by playing multiplayer games of Quake 3 Test and we even noticed some users switching over to Quake 2, Half-Life, SiN, Unreal, and Need for Speed High Stakes, so it wasn't entirely Quake from the perspective of the users that didn't make it all the way in the tourney.

Mike and I decided to attend Quakecon not because we simply rock at Quake (which we absolutely don't, although we love the game), but because it gave us a chance to see the hardware we'd been reviewing and testing in lab, in action. Quakecon was a completely different experience from the Comdex and E3 conventions we're used to at AnandTech, and I can honestly say that it was a very refreshing one. Not only did we get to meet a lot of AnandTech fans in person (all of which were very cool guys to hang out with) but we got to take a look at the systems you all are building and tweaking for your games, among the most popular items seen were overclocked Celerons, TNT2s, the ABIT BH6, unique cooling contraptions (no Kryotech systems though), and the high end users had fun showing off their Tyan Thunder 100 setups which were quite impressive for a gaming system. We even got a chance to take a peek at some more unique systems, such as a particularly small NLX based system, and even a user that willingly brought a G3 to play on (it seems like Mac users are as dedicated as PC users).

Although we'd love to be able to fly each and every one of AnandTech's readers down to Mesquite to experience Quakecon first hand, we can't, so we're giving you the next best thing, pictures. So without further ado let's get to the pictures of AnandTech at Quakecon '99...

Imagine going over to your friend's house for what you expect to be a little LAN party and finding 1000 people, each with their own system essentially camped out in your friend's living room. That's pretty much how we felt upon entering the convention hall of the Hampton Inn where Quakecon '99 took place.

This is how the players practiced (above), you can see that the lights are turned down and that the place is packed with different types of systems sitting right next to each other. A plethora of trash talking, laughing, and random noises filled the air as the gamers did their thing.

The tournament itself took place on some very powerful systems with some very not so powerful video cards, while most of you probably expected TNT2s and Voodoo3s to populate the tournament systems, it turns out that Quakecon '99 was the perfect example of how far you could push beta hardware running a beta game.

Each tournament machine was an AMD Athlon 550 (some later machines were actually 600MHz Athlons) using the AMD made Fester motherboard, which won't be made commercially available, 128MB of SDRAM, a Western Digital HDD, running Windows 98 SE and Quake 3 Arena Test v1.08. Quakecon '99 was centered entirely around Quake 3 Test and the tournament itself took place on two of the three currently available maps, Q3TEST1 and Q3TOURNEY neither of which are the dreaded "pit" level that Mike seemed to hate so much when playing on AnandTech's private Q3Test server. The systems used Aureal Vortex 2 sound cards coupled with Logitec speakers which unfortunately didn't sound all that great, however the fact that every set of speakers was no more than 2 feet away from the next setup didn't help improve the sound experience too much (many users decided to stick to headphones).

The video card present in each one of the systems was ATI's new Rage Fury Pro which is based on the ATI Rage 128 Pro chipset, a tweaked version of the old ATI Rage 128. The Rage 128 Pro chipset used on the 32MB Rage Fury Pro that was present on these Athlon systems is essentially a Rage 128 clocked at 133/133MHz (core/memory) and offers performance similar to that of a regular TNT2 clocked at 125/150MHz. Although the Rage Fury Pro was no TNT2 Ultra killer, it definitely got the job done. The 16-bit dithering still looked a little on the poor side under Q3Test however we were informed that the problem has been fixed and will experience a noticeable improvement in image quality with the next revision of the card/chip (the cards that were used were of the first spin of the silicon which is two revisions away from the final product due out in Q4 99). The image quality of the Rage Fury Pro in 32-bit color was very crisp and clear, easily comparable to the TNT2 and other cards in it's class of image quality.

The Tournament Athlon 550 Systems

Surprisingly enough, the Athlon (running on a non-production motherboard) combined with the Rage Fury Pro (a beta product in itself) did turn out to be a very stable setup. Kudos to AMD and ATI for putting all that together for such a smoothly run operation at this year's Quakecon, although there were a few hiccups, overall the hardware had no problem making these gamers happy. For those of you that are more interested in the video card, the response from a few of the gamers that tried out the Athlon systems was generally positive, and a few users even thought that the video cards used in the machines were TNT2s. If you're judging solely on 32-bit color image quality, telling the difference between the Rage 128 Pro and the TNT2 is next to impossible.

AnandTech wasn't able to get a board in lab before Quakecon '99 but we were able to run a few benchmarks (literally a few) on the card while we were in ATI's suite waiting for a chance to get on the Athlon systems to have an AnandTech vs ATI Q3Test match (we won both rounds ;)...). On a Pentium II 450 the Rage Fury Pro comes away with 56 fps in Quake 3's Normal Image Quality setting (16-bit color, 16-bit Z) and 41 fps in Quake 3's High Image Quality setting (32-bit color, 32-bit Z). On a Pentium II 300 the scores were 38 fps and 22 fps respectively.

The Rage Fury Pro is going to be available in 4 distinct versions, the two we took a look at were distinguished by the presence of the Rage Theater chip, a multipurpose TV in/out controller that ATI has been working on. The top picture features VGA out, S-Video in/out, and composite out, however the final production board will only feature S-Video out and composite in/out in addition to the VGA out.

The bottom picture depicts the Rage Fury Pro with the DVI flat panel connector, which should be the way of the future as far as flat panel interface standards are concerned (Tom's Hardware has an excellent guide on Digital Flat Panels). Take a look at the traces going from the Rage 128 Pro chip to the DVI connector (the top connector), the digital interface will put an end to the subject of 2D image quality as there is no Digital/Analog conversion taking place, everything is digital.

Here (below) is a closer picture of the Rage Theater chip.

...and finally, a picture of the DVI flat panel connector sitting next to a standard analog VGA connector.

For those of you that are interested in the processor's performance, to tide you over until AnandTech's Athlon review debuts shortly, the Athlon systems performed just fine under Q3Test and with the exception of slight drops in frame rate at the "high" image quality setting (due to the video card) the systems handled the game with a level of finesse only the fastest overclocked Pentium III users have been able to experience...until now.

The majority of the network setup for Quakecon '99 was done by Linksys, a manufacturer of home networking products as well as a few entry level high end networking products such as switches and hubs. The wiring job done here was amazing, the backbone itself was powered by Lucent with all the switches and everything else handled by Linksys. Below you can see the wiring job involved with it all...

And here is David from Lucent who was helping out with the network. While we were talking to him, he helped use the network setup to find the MAC address and then the actual port of a user that was caught cheating within a few minutes. The response time of the team down there was very commendable, if only our server guys were that quick :)

John Carmack & the Macs

Deserving of no less than his own paragraph header, idSoftware's John Carmack was obviously present at Quakecon '99 and we even got a chance to play him in a game of Quake 3 Test. As you can imagine Carmack taught both Mike and myself a lesson, although Mike worse than myself (losing 10 to -1 is worse than 10 to 2, but not much worse) but Carmack is truly a man worth respecting, very few individuals in his position would be as level headed and dedicated as he is. Not only is he, in my opinion, a brilliant programmer but he's also a good guy to top it off, I was very impressed.

The Techman's ill fate

When Mike and I found out we'd be competing in the press tournament against other webmasters and editors we kind of liked the idea, but when we found out that we were too late to register we decided to go elsewhere while the rest played :) With all the Athlon systems just sitting around, you'd expect that we'd be able to play a few games of Q3Test without much trouble, right? Wrong.

Our first complaint (our only compliant, we loved the show) was that at any given time, we couldn't hop on a system and frag the people around us, we usually had to wait around until someone got tired of playing and jump on their system where the press tournament was to be held. The press tournament machines were unfortunately not the Athlon 550 machines we were expecting, what were they? See for yourself.

Here we have Mike (in the lovely cowboy hat...don't laugh, I had one too, we were such tourists :)...) and John Carmack going at it on a pair of G3-400s, the machines the press tournament and the general free for all was played on. I'm in the blue shirt watching Carmack's screen hoping to pick up a few pointers, I had a brief chance to talk with Carmack while Mike was configuring his controls and then after Mike crashed the machine and had to reboot. For those of you that are interested, Carmack has visited AnandTech a couple times which is an honor I am very pleased to have, the guy is amazing.

Back to the Macs, luckily we didn't play on the stock G3 mice that we all "love" to use. Logitec supplied the tournament with their 3-button USB mice, which were plugged directly into the Macs and used USB to PS/2 converters on all the PCs. The mice weren't bad, but they didn't have the wheel we were so incredibly used to so they weren't perfect. Q3Test on the Mac looks very nice courtesy of the Rage 128 that powers the 3D graphics in the systems, the gameplay was generally smooth and there were very few times when the systems couldn't handle all the action on the screen, the times that it did start to slow down were obviously due to graphics card limitations.

We also had the opportunity to look at the iBook, Apple's latest in laptops. While we didn't have the opportunity to play Q3Test on it, the iBook is powered by a Rage Pro (not the Rage Fury Pro, the regular Rage Pro) which should translate into some very low but playable frame rates. Once ATI pushes the Rage 128 into laptops things should begin to move forward for gamers that use laptops.

Want the opportunity to see your editors all over the floor at Quakecon? Too bad, you're getting it regardless :)

Here we are (above) after snagging too systems and attempting to go at it in the Q3TOURNEY map, the system Mike (left) is on was a custom built system that was using the Tyan Thunder 100 motherboard. I (right) was just happy to find a computer with a wheel on the mouse.

From left to right we have Mike, Anand (that's me in the white), the random girl from AGN, and two of the coolest AnandTech fans at Quakecon.

Brian Hentschel from ATI couldn't help but put Mike and I in a picture with the Quakecon babes, notice the focus of attention of the guy just entering the picture to the right ;)

Stephen aka Blue of Bluesnews was obviously present at Quakecon. Although I've met Stephen before, Quakecon was the first time I was able to sit down and really find out what kind of a guy Stephen really is, and for those of you that don't already know, Stephen is another very down to earth kind of guy and a lot of fun to hang out with.

Here is another very cool AnandTech fan we had the pleasure of hanging out with.

The glow from the monitors is eerie isn't it?

That's about it from this year's Quakecon, our flight leaves tonight so we'll be hard at work back in the AnandTech lab before you know it. Take care everyone.