I'm very excited to post the first blog entry for this year's game and provide some of the latest news on the game this year. AMD is officially back as the main sponsor and they have donated some of their latest Phenom II processors to be used. Microsoft is onboard as well and has helped fill in the other H/W items along with licenses for the new Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Super excited to have In-Win chassis's back this year and we'll have some of their latest PC cases to show off and use during the games.
We have changed up the game again this year in an attempt to make the game far more exciting to watch and to participate. In years past this game was all about the overclocking but we found that overclocking a computer is quite boring to spectate and is not something that helps students get real jobs. With that said, we've broken the game into 3 smaller games the first of which is the Build it Fast - it will be the same as last year only we will be moving this event out into the main computer area at UAT so we can get far more spectators as this was the most exciting part of the game last year. Students raced to build a computer as fast as they could - last year's fastest team did it in 15 minutes!
The second game is the Troubleshoot it the fastest and this is new for 2010 and will have teams racing to find the problems and correct them. Lastly the tune section will be limited this year to a single shot at tuning the system with focus more on making it an all-around faster system - not just graphics or gaming. We've opened it up for 9 teams this year and the slots are almost filled - registration closes March 2nd I believe.