Graphics processor maker NVidia convened a massive harmonic convergence of maximum geekitude last night at its LAN tournament/product announcement event, which the company held at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

The product announcements were packaged as a slickly-produced stage show in which virtual characters projected on a screen appeared to interact (somewhat robotically) with GeForce product manager Ujesh Desai (see photo). Taking a bow for the final time, NVidia's current "mascot" character Nalu handed the torch to an Asian female action hero named Luna and a pack of scary-looking monster-torsos.

Few were surprised by NVidia's launch announcement for its new 7800 series graphics processor. (Read PCW's review of the hot new 7800 GTX here.)

Graphics boards that use the pricey new chip promise nearly double the performance of boards that used earlier generations of the company's Graphics Processing Units (or GPUs). But the company made a couple of unexpected announcements as well.

One concerned an earlier-generation graphics chip, the GeForce 4 6600, a low-cost, somewhat older alternative. A graphics driver update, released today, enables owners of standard GeForce 6600 boards to connect a pair in tandem using a proprietary technology called SLI. Previously, only special SLI-enabled boards could be connected this way. Using SLI nearly doubles the graphics performance you'd get with a single board, but using two boards puts more cooling and power demands on the computer.

The other surprise announcement came out of left field. During the LAN tournament, while players spent the day engaged in competition with EA's new Battlefield 2 game, judges walked the hall (shown below), looking for the most tricked-out, customized PCs. There were several competitive categories, including best overall case mod, best quiet PC, and best concept PC. There was stiff competition, but the winner of one prize was as surprised as the rest of the audience at the reason he won.



That's because he won an unannounced "Worst PC of Show" award. The poor guy's machine apparently sputtered and crashed throughout the LAN, leaving him unable to play for a substantial part of the day. His prize was a bizarre, tubular metal case that looked like it came out of the Monster Garage.