EDMONTON, ALBERTA—Harsh thunderstorms and menacing lightning strikes didn’t stop over 700 gamers from showing up to Canada’s largest 4-day LAN event. Coming off a record weekend hail storm that left many basements flooded and cars damaged, western Canada’s gamers gleefully set up shop at the Mayfield Inn Convention center, and fragged for 4 straight days.

Aside from the 4 official tournaments, gamers were in for a treat from sponsors. NVIDIA and Gigabyte together gave three presentations—Gigabyte covered its current motherboard and graphics card lineup, and NVIDIA enlightened gamers about updates in its nForce technology, as well as its brand-new SLI technology.

Fragapalooza attendees were lucky to be the first people in the western hemisphere to see NVIDIA’s new SLI technology on display, and to experience it first hand! NVIDIA product manager Chris Daniel, an Edmonton native himself, gave the attendees a first-hand look at SLI technology, running demos of the Unreal Engine 3.0, as well as Unreal Tournament 2004. Seeing the Unreal Engine demo on one GeForce 6800 Ultra was breathtaking—seeing it played on TWO GeForce 6800 Ultras was indescribable—SLI technology allows for a performance increase of up to 1.87X over a single card solution!

After the nForce presentation Friday night, NVIDIA provided Pizza for all attendees, along with a bottle of Bawls for every attendee (thanks again, Bawls!). Though we didn’t see much Canadian Bacon, Pepperoni and cheese seemed to be a favorite among the crowd!

What would a LAN party be without prizes? NVIDIA and Gigabyte both chipped in to provide 20 GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and 5900 XT graphics cards for prizes. These cards were awarded to tournament winners, raffle winners, contest winners (be sure to check out the rock-paper-scissors pictures), along with a couple lucky people in need of a graphics card upgrade, who happened to be wearing the right NVIDIA T-shirt at the right time!

NVIDIA also gave away additional prizes during its presentations—3 lucky people walked away with a motherboard featuring NVIDIA’s latest nForce 3 250 chipset, while one gamer ended up with a GeForce 6800 GT during our SLI presentation. Needless to say, he appreciated the upgrade from his previous 32 MB video card! In its seventh year, Fragapalooza continues to grow and attract Canada’s gamers from all over. They come for the games, prizes, experience, and great company. Though not something we usually note at events, Fragapalooza is one of the friendliest events we’ve ever attended, and we can’t wait to be back next year! Thanks Fraga!