While multiboxing costs money - have any of you seen any side benefits of boxing - outside of the game? Conversation starter, crazed roommate looks etc?

For me, I enjoy keeping up with the tech field. I also enjoy investing. During a bullish market, I like to invest in familiar companies that I feel are undervalued and/or have surprising growth potential. Since I follow new developments and trends fairly closely - I tend to know who the major players are and what their overall momentum is.



I have long since been an ardent fan of Nvidia. Their only main competition is not a strong player at this point in time. Their competitor's linux support is HORRIBLE (not that Nvidias open source offerings are any better - but at least their binary drivers work). They make really high quality processors. On a scale that surpasses some CPU designs. Their new CUDA platform, if widely accepted, would allow one to leverage their GPUs for all sorts of processor intense applications. Waiting to see on that one. While they are not powering the Xbox 360 this go around (they did the GPU for the original Xbox) - considering the number of red rings of death out there - that may not be a bad thing.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html

They lead in stereo 3d, their DX 10 boards were available months before AMD/ATIs and AMD is bogged down integrating their chips with AMD - which has its own issues right now as their latest investments will not bear fruit into early to mid 2008 - and they are running low on cash. I still think AMD is compelling but they need to hit some home runs sooner than later rather than just be copied by Intel and sell cheap CPUs. (Which they do very well.)

Nvidia also has some other... interesting things up their sleeve.

Disclaimer. This is not stock advice. You sort of missed this bandwagon anyway. Don't complain to me if you lose money. These are my observations alone. As much as I love Nvidia - their stock is quickly approaching overbought. I do not anticipate a huge increase from where it is now in the near future.

Anybody else have any other interesting developments or other non multiboxing side benefits? It may not get you all of the ladies but surely there are some other "fringe benefits" that come out of it.