Maximo LAN drew 300 of Argentina’s most avid computer gamers to Buenos Aires this March. If you thought gamers at LANs in the US and Canada were a friendly group, these guys redefine the term “community!” It’s not often that gamers at a LAN break out into song, but that’s exactly what happened (more than once) when the crowd of gamers gathered for one of the 2 lucky drawing giveaway sessions. Chanting ”ooooleeee-ole-ole-oleeeee” over and over, the LAN party sounded more like a World Cup Soccer match than a computer gaming party!

Since new high end computer hardware is hard to come by in these parts, many gamers get creative, taking yesteryear’s technology and squeezing every last bit of performance out of it, in the way of overclocking, and home-made liquid cooling devices. Check out the photos to see what we’re talking about!

Both Gigabyte and NVIDIA were on site to showcase the latest GeForce 6-series technology, running today’s most popular games, like Painkiller, Doom 3, and Need for Speed Underground 2. Attendees were wowed by the power of the GeForce 6600 PCIE cards from Gigabyte, and were able to play these titles at frame rates and resolutions never before possible!

NVIDIA and Gigabyte both gave presentations about current and upcoming technologies to South America, like Turbocache and SLI. Immediately following, some lucky gamers picked up prizes from NVIDIA for answering questions about the presentation.

Gaming down south is unique – the hardware and methods for performance may be different from up north, but nothing holds a candle to the passion for fun!

Check out our photos of the event.