GI: Sean Gibson of Gaming Illustrated and I’m here at the Zotac booth at CES 2012. I’m with Hansel von Muller. Can you talk about what you do at Zotac?

HVM: Sure. I’m the Tech Support Lead. I’m here in a sense as a Product Manager since I’m actually going to be explaining to you all of the products that we have available. We’ve got mini PCs, we’ve got motherboards, we’ve got high-end graphics cards.

GI: We’re looking here at some of the small form factor MiniPCs and the motherboards. One of the things that I’ve noticed here at CES is that gamers are getting into the small form factor PCs for their home theater system perhaps or just for something to take to their LAN party. It looks like you’re really going to be leveraging that momentum in the industry.

HVM: Exactly. We have our H67 motherboards as well as our Z68 enthusiasts motherboards where you can let’s say overclock the CPU. We’re coming with up to 16 GB of memory and PCI Express 2.0. So you basically can have an overclocked IS7 2600K to like 5 GHz if you like. As well we have the AMD variants, the A75 chipset wearing the latest FM1 socket. And for let’s say the home theater, the latest product available is our Fusion 350 BU. It has an HDMI display port, DVI; and for the power supply it’s actually going be an A/C power adaptor so you actually don’t have to purchase your own power supply.

GI: Very cool. Yeah, it’s just amazing that even the integrated graphics nowadays are pretty good.

HVM: I completely agree. The Fusion, AMD’s APU – the CPU and graphics card basically on one chip – can perform and play Blu-Ray movies with no problem, and it’s also good for casual gaming as well.

GI: You and I are both StarCraft II players. If I wanted to just all of a sudden play StarCraft II on my 1080p system, I mean that’s not a super high-resolution to be honest – 1920×1080. Is this thing going to handle it pretty well?

HVM: I would recommend low settings if you want the most fluid gameplay. I believe the Fusion, it may be a little slower let’s say, even at the lowest settings where playable frame rates I’m going to say is 30 frames, all low-detail 1080p. But you’ll be able to play the campaign. You might not have all the eye candy but you’ll be able to play it smoothly.

GI: I think that’s pretty cool. I mean, we’re looking at a motherboard that’s the size of my hand with integrated graphics. The bar is pretty low so the fact that I can do that much is pretty cool.

HVM: I understand in previous generations they didn’t have anywhere near the graphics to play even older games, let’s say Counter-Strike 1.6 for example. Integrating graphics from Intel in there really cut out. Now with this integrated solution you can play Counter-Strike: Source, so the Source games maxed out without any problems.

Zotac Video Cards

GI: Very cool. Let’s move on to the GeForce line of video cards here for the PC. I’m seeing the mid-range GTX cards. What else do we have?

HVM: We have something that’s probably a little bit different. We have the Multiview series. It’s basically the 550 Ti and the GTX 560 Ti Multiview. Showcased here is our 550 Ti. Basically you can actually run up to three monitors; as long as you connect the two DVIs along with a display port or DVI and you can have a spanned image over three monitors at once from one card.

GI: Very nice. Now can you talk about this? It’s a gorgeous looking design honestly but in terms of function, what are we looking at cooling here?

HVM: Cooling is going to be close to the basic from the reference design as well as a little bit different on our side where we can actually manufacture the cards ourselves since we have a factory over in Hong Kong. It’s going to be pushing air inside and out in this case. I understand some people may not like having it blowing inside the case which is strange in let’s say the 460 and the 560 series. People would want everything shooting out of the case.

But it’s actually been doing really, really well and I actually haven’t heard of many overheating issues except for let’s say dual 575 SLi-Ready, and that’s really the only time we actually get some complaints. Other than that it runs almost flawlessly on our side here with the latest drivers, and with older drivers it works pretty well in my opinion.

Zotac - Submerged Computer

GI: Now over your left shoulder here I’m seeing something really bizarre. It looks like a computer filled with water. What are we showing up here with ZOTAC?

HVM: One of our guys here, Zach, he can actually explain more. It’s weird because we’re using this Novec 7000 liquid made by 3M. You can tell already it’s already cooling the whole system. It’s nonconductive. You can see the boiling temperature is actually much lower going around, I believe 30C to 40C for the boiling temperature so that’s why you see the bubbles coming out of the CPU, and some of the portions of the motherboard as well as the graphics card and GPU.

It’s completely submerged and it’s cooling the system. The graphics card I believe is a 560 Ti and it’s only running around 50C. We’re running three instances of [FirmRock] and two instances of Prime95. The CPU does not even have any kind of cooling on it. It’s just bare and it’s running at 70C. It lacks the settings on the 2600K but being that it is only submerged and there’s no cooling pace as well as the heat synch I believe it’s actually running really well.

GI: It looks pretty cool. So we also have the small PCs right behind me here.

HVM: Sure. This one’s going to be more of our mainstream line right here. We have the ZBOX line, ZBOX ID81 AD04. We have different flavors of them. For the mainstream ones we have Intel- and AMD-based ones. This one here, the ID80 is going to run the Atom D525 1.8 GHz Dual-Core as well as NVIDIA next-generation ION. Just to let you know, all of our mainstream minis will be able to run HDMI without any problem. Every single one will have HDMI-out. Something a little different about let’s say our AD04, it’s going to be latest AMD APU, the E-450 with a 1.66 GHz Dual-Core as well as the AMD Radeon HD 6320. It can also play Blu-Ray just fine.

We have our Nano and our Giga series, which are our latest ones. Here we have our AD10. It’s actually a much smaller design than our mainstream mini PCs. It’s also going to be running the AMD variant but we’ll be running the AMD E350 1.6 GHz with the 6310. It’s going to be running a little bit slower than the AD04 which will be out on the market soon but when it comes to again running Blu-Ray, not a problem at all. It has an IR receiver; that’s a USB remote for a media center dongle; audio in the front, power in the front; a display port, HDMI-out as well as USB3, a 2GB Ethernet E7 as well as a Wi-Fi antenna that comes with the product itself.

GI: It’s pretty cool.

Zotac Zbox Giga ID70 Plus

HVM: Yeah. The latest addition is going to be our Giga model. It’s going to be called the ZBOX Giga ID70 Plus running an Intel Core i3 2100T, basically like the i3 2100 with the laptop processor version; the GeForce GT430. It has a Blu-Ray optical drive as well. It comes with a USB dongle for IR for the media center remote. It has 4 GB of memory and plenty of storage as well as a display port, HDMI-out, DVI-out – you name it. And this thing can pump out anything you wanted for a media center, for home office use. It’s really our general all-purpose machine right now.

GI: Yeah, that’s very impressive to have those kind of hardware specs in what you would traditionally figure would just be your home theater PC and you wouldn’t expect much performance out of it. I mean that’s a decent system.

HVM: I completely agree. It may be the heaviest machine we have available but it’s going to be the most powerful ZBOX we have available right now.

GI: Well, I know you have a lot of dedicated users out there, PC gamer enthusiasts that are big fans of ZOTAC. Any words back to them, to your fans?

HVM: Yeah, sure. You can always expect the highest performance from our video cards – low-end, high-end, mid-range, the casual to the heavy gamer. We have our ZOTAC Cup where we have the tournaments going on every month, almost every week and there’s cash prizes and whatnot. And you can always take a look at that on our website.

GI: Alright, great. Thanks so much.

HVM: Thanks for having us.

Gaming Illustrated would like to thank Hansel von Muller, the Zotac PR team and the rest of the Zotac staff for being so accommodating for this interview. Stay tuned to our site for more information and upcoming looks at Zotac products.

GI: This is Sean Gibson at the Zalman booth at CES 2012. I am with Jeff Lu. Jeff, could you introduce yourself and what you do at Zalman?

JL: Hi, my name is Jeff. I am a Sales Account Manager here with Zalman USA.

GI: We’re standing right in front of the CPU coolers. It was the first thing that drew me over here. I mean, you have some amazing products that you’re debuting here, and let’s first talk about that 12X cooler that we saw. Why don’t you talk about the design, the lightweight form factor that I saw – just really introduce us to that product overall?

Zalman X12

GI: Also right next to it here we have the liquid cooler that attaches on the fan; this is directly to the CPU. I have a similar unit on my home rig. I’ll be honest with you it’s not a Zalman, but I love this kind of design because it’s quiet and it’s like the best between quiet and cooling. What are you guys doing specific to your model?

JL: So for this one, this all-in-one is actually just for us to stick our toes in the water and find out how warm the market is. What’s so special about this is again the Zalman fan. We spin at 3000 RPM versus regular fans which spin at 2400 RPM, and then our DBA is still around 17. So with the higher RPM is lower noises and we’ve just accomplished our mission.

GI: Yep. And I’m seeing “All New Three-Way Digital Power.” Are these new products here?

JL: [Some] are not and this [specific] one is. We’re actually coming out with 8900 Quiet and Extreme. The main purpose for these are for people to fit into their Mini-ITX or Micro-ITX. So these fans are no taller than 60mm so you will definitely have no clearance issue.

GI: I know in the gamer market, we love the small form factors, either to take it on the road or just as a media center PC. I’m looking at getting or building one, and I want to actually build it myself, so something like this product as a cooling solution specific to a miniPC – are you seeing a big market for the small form factor for people who still want performance?

JL: Yes, of course. Again, this fan is made out of true copper. It enhances the quality of it; it’s definitely exceeding the traditional small coolers. In addition these are direct touch as well, so again, there’s no other extra layer of obstacle between the CPU and the fans.

GI: I’m seeing SSD drives; I’m seeing some amazing power supplies. Are these products going to be available to us in the United States?

Zalman 2012 Preview

GI: Yeah, I’m seeing a 240 GB SSD on display here. I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

JL: Actually this is something new. As for why we came out with 240 GB I really don’t know, I’d have to ask HQ but definitely 240 GB is I would say good enough for almost anything.

GI: It’s pretty high. I have one that’s 120 GB and that’s the minimum I’m telling people, between your operating system and maybe that one game you have to have on your SSD – you still have to have a ton of space just to let the operating system breathe. So I’m not too big a fan of the 60s but it’s good to see things bigger than 120 come out.

JL: With the given technology right now, 240 or 256 may be the max capacity but we’re hoping to somewhat break through in that coming in 2012.

GI: Something else on display here is that I see an entire PC gaming solution. I mean this rig, I’ll be honest – if I wasn’t a married man I’d fall in love again right here. Talk about what Zalman is doing here in the PC gaming solutions business.

JL: With Zalman we started off in the CPU cooling system and that’s still our core business. But throughout the years we’ve kind of branched off, and now we’re making cases, hard supplies, video cards, SSDs. So anything besides you can say the optical drives, the motherboard, the CPU and RAM – we’re making them and help design as well.

GI: Let’s talk about the manufacturing process. What QA is in place to make sure these products last? Gamers will destroy these products if they’re not well-built.

JL: For all of our products, we make them in Korea. They’re manufactured in Korea and then all the tests are passed through, for example the CE RoHS and everything else.

GI: Okay. Any other big announcements that gamers should be aware of at CES with Zalman?

JL: Just look forward to the end of Q2. Again, we’re going to have a lot of surprises – I’m not going to reveal that right now so definitely look into it. Quite a hint would be maybe a little DIY kits for people who want to maybe put things together by themselves.

GI: Oh, okay, a nice little hint there. Well Jeff, thank you so much, I appreciate it. Thank you for being a guest of Gaming Illustrated.

JL: Thank you guys.

Gaming Illustrated would like to thank Jeff Liu and the rest of the Zalman team for being so hospitable at the CES 2012 booth and for their time with this interview.

Video Review

Gameplay

Battlfield 3′s mixture of great sound, graphics and multiplayer features practically set a new standard. BF3 sets a precedent now and adds to amazing lists of games released in 2011, if you contemplating passing this up because of the plethora of quality games out there recently hopefully I can convince you otherwise, to join the millions who helped make this game one of the biggest sellers of the year.

While I give this game a lot of praise to start there might one minor flaw that shouldn’t detract but is should be addressed. The Campaign follows a lot of clichés and I saw a lot of influence from several military movies such as Black Hawk Down where your character is named Blackburn, named after Orlando Bloom’s character who played a minor role. One of the investigators was also who reminded me of Glenn Morshowerone, who was of the pilots in the film. In the campaign your character is being asked about a series of events in which your chasing down Al-Bashir and as your uncovering the mystery of his location you find WMDs and learn some back story of other characters and lose comrades along the way. I wasn’t blown away by the plot but the voice acting was impressive and helped a rather average story.

What I didn’t like though was how in fights it seems your enemies were focused on your character alone. Heck, your squadmates could run right next to them and they couldn’t give two cents about them. The AI basically forces them to think, “hey, lets get the player hiding behind the giant brick wall.” Some of these glaring hiccups might annoy you but still you’ll probably press on and not think twice about it.

Multi-player

This is where BF3 shines. Whether you picked this game up on launch day or when you get your next paycheck, word spread quickly about how amazing the multi-player was and it’s easy to confirm. You have your team deathmatch and territory games. You also have conquest which offers larger versions of each map you play in other game modes. All I have to say is these maps are huge, I felt like I was at summer camp and it was the end of the season camp-wide water balloon fight – you never knew what you could run into over the next hill, on say, a map like Caspian Border. If you are late to the party and are trying to learn all the nuances about multi-player on the go, as long as you’re familiar with FPS you can surprisingly hold your own. Yes I did find myself in a couple of games where I had crappy K/D rations like 5-11 7-13, but you never felt overwhelmed by the competition all the time. I was also discussing it with a friend and what we agreed upon was if you bring a knife to a gun fight, your supposed to lose that scenario 9-10 times if your charging the guy and he’s looking at you. It didn’t seem that way in OTHER games. Here it’s the opposite. You also get to an array of weapons and upgrades which could take a while to unlock but it doesn’t put you at too much of a disadvantage. Another key aspect is the vehicles. Talk about a good time, players can control tanks, F-18s helicopters and many more that adds so much to the game.

Sound

One of the few games out there where gunfights sounds exactly like you hear it on the news. You know when your being shot at. Explosions come out of nowhere and hearing squad mates curse and swear as you try to get cover from enemy RPGs is well done.

Graphics

While the Frostbite engine isn’t the newest out there that doesn’t stop from this game looking gorgeous, watching the streaking like of gun shot painted over a nighttime backdrop, or watching your tanks gunfire blow up a bunch of dirt next to your intended target to gas stations blowing up the game is easy on the eyes. My only hiccup was every once in a while going through the campaign the game would freeze but that was far and few between.

Overall

This is a must own title. Though you can be distracted with all the great titles out there now its just to figure out how to invest your money. Plain and simple invest in this game. Even if your picking it up late your not to far behind in the multi player curve. This game alone could keep you busy for months.

Battlefield 3 – Game Ratings

Campaign Video

Multi-Player Video

GI: I’m a the Sennheiser booth at CES 2012, and if you can give me your name and what you do at Sennheiser.

EP: My name is Eric Palonen and I am a Product Specialist.

GI: You had a big announcement with the x320, the XBOX 360 headset, tell us everything that’s new here at CES 2012.

EP: That’s correct. Sennheiser’s long done PC gaming headsets and of course we’re pretty famous for microphones and headphones. And we said “Alright, we’ve got to get into this Xbox category and let’s make a big splash.” So the x320 is everything you’d expect out of a Sennheiser headphone and microphone but optimized of course to connect directly to the Xbox 360.

GI: The first thing I noticed when I picked it up is that the thing weighs like less than a feather – it’s crazy. How do you marry weight with sound quality?

Sennheiser x320 Headset

EP: Exactly. If it’s not comfortable you won’t wear it, and if it doesn’t sound good you won’t wear it either for that long. So it is difficult to do but our team of engineers is fantastic of course working with the existing headphone technology we have. And then of course you want to port it to a lightweight chassis. The x320 is a great example of what we’re absolutely capable of, and that is in fact high quality but still being lightweight and sounding good. One of the key secrets here is the open design. It’s a ported design that breathes and circulates air, and you reduce a lot of weight that way as well.

GI: Yeah, it allows you to certainly wear them a lot longer. I’ve had my 555s for a number of years. I still use them, swear by them, and I like that open air design just because I can wear them longer because they breathe. It’s good to see that the console market gamers aren’t so different from us PC gamers.

EP: Exactly. And in fact console gaming has really come a long way. It used to be only PC gamers at the LAN tournaments, but Xbox 360 has such a huge thriving online gaming community we want them to use our products. So we said “Hey, let’s bring them to the trade shows and show people what they’re all about,” and they’ve embraced them with open arms.

GI: One cool thing that I was showed was the piece that attaches that allows you to raise or lower both the music and the gamer-to-gamer speech volumes.

EP: We actually call this a mixer. If you want to look it up and get a visual of it, it plugs into your USB port in your Xbox and there’s a lead of cable, and that comes out and allows you to mix the amount of in-game audio as well as in-game chat audio. So you can fine tune if you want to hear more of your teammates’ voices or less, or more in-game audio. And there’s also a selectable bass boost so if you want to add a little excitement, a little spice to the games you listen to you can certainly do that at the touch of a button.

GI: Yeah, it’s really convenient that just with my thumb here, I want more game audio – I flip that up; if I want more chat audio, whatever I want. I love the customization. I was also looking at the mic – up, down. I was actually told that the ESPN broadcast headset technology there was put into place: when you flip that mic up it auto mutes.

EP: That’s correct. We have a very long lineage in broadcast headsets. If you ever watch a sports broadcast you’ll see Sennheiser headsets at work – that’s what all the color commentators wear. And one of our more recent designs we decided to make mic muting very easy – simply flip the microphone up to mute it and flip it down when you want to be able to speak. You can feel a quiet click and that indicates that you’ve either muted it or unmuted it. And it’s really quick; you don’t have to fumble and reach for an inline control or hit a hot key or pause the game. It allows you to, at the flip of a switch to control it.

GI: It’s great to see Sennheiser just jumping into the console market. On the PC side, any big announcements? I’m seeing the PC 360, a gorgeous line of headsets, here as well.

EP: The PC 360 was launched last year right at the same time and it’s been still a big hit for us. So we like to show it at the shows because by all means, the audio quality coming out of that piece is just phenomenal.

GI: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Great to see you guys and I appreciate your time.

EP: Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.

Gaming Illustrated would like to thank Sennheiser and Eric Palonen for this interview.

GI: Sean Gibson of Gaming Illustrated here at the ESPN 3D booth at CES 2012. If you could introduce yourself and your relationship with ESPN.

BB: My name is Bryan Burns. I effectively for the company run ESPN 3D. It’s about 30 of us that actually do that but it’s one person that has to bring it all together in that space, so I’m effectively in charge of ESPN 3D.

GI: I know a lot of the people behind 3D technology were really excited when ESPN announced that they were jumping into the space, pretty much as the first major player. How much of a leap of faith is it for ESPN to jump into dedicating an entire channel for 3D technology and programming?

BB: Well, leaps of faith are not foreign to us. I can recall very vividly almost ten years ago when we announced ESPN HD and people said “Are you crazy?”. Then I would say “Look to all your houses now and see what you’ve got in your house.” So this is not foreign territory to us. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a leap of faith but it’s something that we normally do, because our whole mission in life is to serve sports fans, and as we’ve certainly seen this week when sports fans see what we do in 3D, what we hear is “Wow! Awesome! I’ve got to have that! I can’t believe this!” So we know we’re on the right track here.

GI: Now, I have AT&T U-verse, we get ESPN 3D so I’m familiar with it. Would you talk about the relationships you have with the cable networks and the adoption rate that you’ve had?

ESPN 3D Camera

BB: Well, the actual adoption rate, which to us is who we have contracts with, is running faster and higher and farther than HD at this stage. We have what we call 60 million “available to” households, and what that literally means is that we have deals in place with cable operators, satellite companies and telco operators that have 60 million available homes. In my case what that means, I live in Connecticut and we have a deal with Comcast, so the feeds and the wire are going by my house. I chose to go out to Best Buy and buy a TV, brought it home and I can get it. And that’s the big step that you have to take to get distribution – you have to first get it in the wire.

GI: Talk about the partners you have – college football, pro football, all the different sports. Certainly there’s new cameras to be installed in some of these stadiums. How much of a logistical nightmare or has it been easy to get the 3D cameras in place and making sure the cameras look up to ESPN’s quality?

BB: It’s been terribly hard but we’ve made some significant changes. The difficulty at first was that we were sending two trucks, two sets of cameras, two producers, two directors, two talents, two everything out into the field and to your point, many stadiums said “I just can’t go kill another 200 seats to put in cameras.” Our productions people, our operations people and technical people have basically invented something in the last six to eight months that we laughingly call “5D.” It’s kind of a joke – we call it 5D. What that means is we can now in some locations go in and take a 3D unit in, just one unit, and then pull the left-eye feed out of the truck and make that into our 2D HD feed for ESPN HD. We are doing our entire college basketball schedule, about 45 games, in 5D for both 2D and 3D and that’s a really significant change for us as far as the economics are concerned.

GI: 3D technology overall, I’m not quite sure what the adoption rate is for home consumers. For me, I’m a gamer, I’m a tech nerd – certainly we should be the highest pinnacle of your demographic. But can you speak to the demographics you’re really trying to reach at this point?

BB: Well, I think the demographics are almost going to be dictated to us. I think that when this first came out a couple of years ago that pretty much most of the consumer electronics industry was at “Buy a 3D TV.” That confused consumers because consumers thought they had to buy a 3D TV to get 3D programming of which there wasn’t very much. The reality of the situation is, is that you’re going to buy a good high-end HD TV with 3D inside and that’s a sea of change as far as perception’s concerned. We believe that there’s going to be an increasingly large percentage of sets that are going to have the 3D chip inside anyway. You might walk into a store to buy a screen for gaming or to fit a particular space in your house or some totally other reason, and then lo and behold there’s going to be a 3D chip inside; instead of coming onto us or Comcast or AT&T or DirecTV or whoever that convince you as a consumer that you should do whatever the plan is to get the 3D service when you have a 3D set.

GI: I’ve got a hard question for you – this is going to be like picking against your children here – but what of the sports that you cover would you say offers the best 3D experience?

BB: I get asked that question all the time and I’m not going to answer it specifically but somewhat generally because the best stuff for us is our own products, the Winter X and Summer X Games, and the reason for that is we own the events – we can put cameras where we want. And we can build the camera plan into the structure of the facilities rather than going into somebody else’s stadium and use what’s there. That gives us tremendous flexibility to get the most exciting shots for 3D and therefore the footage for our X products is probably the best we have.

GI: Once upon a time I used to do work with Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee over with ESPN Poker, and I sat with them at the World Series Main Event one time, and I did get an opportunity to also talk to Norman Chad who thought poker in HD was ridiculous. But I’ll be honest – I would love to see the World Series of Poker in 3D. I would love to see those cards and chips fly right at me!

BB: We’re finding out that things happen that we don’t expect to happen that really brings sports to life, and that’s been the biggest thing we’ve found – it brings a presence as if you’re really there and that makes it really, really cool.

GI: Any final words here for all the big ESPN fans that have quickly adopted this 3D technology and are just really geeked about what ESPN is doing right now?

BB: Watch for more. I think we need to get our television situation solved and then start to work more on can we stream to a tablet, can we get in the gaming business, things of that nature that are important to you. And I think we’re on the verge of really starting to think about those things to make 3D a broader opportunity going forward.

GI: Well, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

BB: Alright, Sean, thanks so much.

Biggest Wow Factor – 4k HDTVs

Much has been made of the new “4k HDTVs” that have been developed by all the major television manufacturers. We saw the ones made by both Toshiba and Samsung and they were both jaw-dropping insane in quality. The best analogy I can give is to imagine the sharp resolution of the iPhone 4S with the retina display and put that level of quality in a 85” television. These televisions have the most amazing sharpness and brightness of anything you’ve ever seen. The only problem with all this is that the resolutions supported by cable companies, bluray discs and even the top-end PC computers is nowhere close to taking advantage of the resolution of these TVs. So without the content to run at this level, one has to wonder how practical these televisions actually will be in the consumer market.

Straight Out of Star Trek

Samsung probably was the buzz of the show with their window screen. Basically imagine a see-through touchscreen monitor that looks like a window in your house. When you touch it, it lights up and gives you things to do and just looks and feels like it did when you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. Again, how practical? Not sure. How cool? Very.

3D – With or Without Glasses

We saw 3D HDTV technology from both Toshiba and Samsung that didn’t require the use of any sort of glasses. In order to get the 3D view, viewers have to sit at particular angle in order to get the effect to work. At the top of the television on the Toshiba model there are green circles that will line up when you are sitting at one of the angles that works. From there, the 3D takes over and looks pretty legit. It reminded us of how the Nintendo 3DS technology works, but again, we have to wonder how practical 3D technology is for the home theater.

If there was one thing we heard from not just people in the crowd at CES 2012, but also at the vendor booths, was that adoption of 3D technology strictly for home theater users is very low. It’s low to the point where people are still wondering about its viability and everyone to a point has accepted that home users do not want to wear glasses. What was fortunate for us, being from Gaming Illustrated, is that gamers are actually adopting 3D.

PC Peripheral and Gaming Companies

While I can’t exactly say that PC peripheral companies were out and about, we did meet with quite a few companies that were showing off some amazing bleeding edge technologies. We conducted interviews with Zalman, Zotac, Razer and NVIDIA and talked to them all about technologies that us gamers find awesome. Zalman had some really crazy heatsinks on display that looked as big as a fat gamer’s head but weighed less than 5 ounces. We talked to them about these crazy heatsinks as well as their new line of SSDs and PSUs. Zotac is a company we were excited to meet for the first time and we saw their existing line of NVIDIA video cards but came away most impressed with their line of mini-PCs which pack some significant power. At the Razer booth we got some hands-on time with the new Blade line of high performing gaming laptops and also got to check out the new Star Wars: The Old Republic branded peripherals including the keyboard that boasted an LCD panel that doubles as a trackpad. Finally, at the NVIDIA booth we got not one but two interviews – one regarding NVIDIA’s 2012 desktop graphics strategy and the other about their new line of tablet-based graphics technologies. With the latter, you’ll really see that NVIDIA is touting “console graphics on a tablet” aren’t just marketing jargon, it’s really legit.

Overall Impression of the Show

CES looks like an extremely healthy show and overall had a really good, positive vibe. Vendors were all really excited about what they were showing off and there were some serious “wow” moments with a lot of people in a variety of vertical markets. There’s a ton of great electronics coming out in 2012 and 2013 that all boast some serious cool.

Video Review

Gameplay

You take the form of a Tim Burton reject looking character from the movie 9, armed with a biological gun you can modify you must take out the Orb which is poisoning planets with other smaller orbs and your have to clear stages, earn as many points as possible while killing mobs and avoiding hazardous objects. Yes this is a shooter but, compared to other FPS like MW3, you can exhaust your trigger finger faster in one level in the game then maybe 2-3 straight hours of its counterparts. You use special skills to fly temporally or reach higher planes in each level but the mechanics are iffy and they are tough to use during fights. You can modify your weapon into a shotgun or rocket launcher in the form of shooting insects and firefly’s as well as your character to have more health and energy to use special weapons. My suggestion if you do play this title, upgrade your character first then weapons, you die fast and don’t get a whole lot of energy to use secondary weapons at the start. In the end though its about accumulating points and there’s plenty of combos to help you get the most out of each level but this didn’t motivate me to shoot for the highest score possible as there’s no real rewards to keep your interest.

Presentation

No multi-player, you compete against the highest score on the community leader boards. It took WXP games maybe a couple of hours to put the menus together. The levels themselves are quite forgettable bigger levels would have helped add to the experience.

Graphics

This would pass for an Xbox launch title back in the day but its the 360 and its 2012. Frame rates go down with multiple enemies enter screen which is unacceptable since most levels wont have more then a half dozen of them. Weapon animations don’t get you excited when your blowing through mobs either.

Sound

Other then the title screen nothing memorable here, the music soundtrack is nothing special. You can get paranoid when you hear gunfire from mobs and you have no clue where its coming from.

Overall

This game was made for cell phones, despite its lack of content, depth, and graphics I could see this succeeding on the iphone. On console though, therse less to be desired, if your a points guy though, finding hidden zones and a fan of Tim Burton movies try this out, otherwise, I say skip it.

OVERALL SCORES

GTA3 for iPhone and iPad Review

GTA3 for iOS

A lot of people would have to wonder about the entire GTA franchise porting over to iOS devices. Let us quell those worries by saying that GTA3 is an amazing port for the iPhone 4S or iPad2 – the two devices we played the game on. The game looks amazing and plays extremely smooth without any hangups. There’s all the features including game saves that you would want. Short synopsis – great game for iOS.

GTA3 for iOS

Cost

Right now the normal price is a fair $4.99 but Rockstar had the game on sale recently for a paltry $2.99 which is an absolute steal. Why? It’s an awesome game! Plus, the one purchase isn’t just for the iPhone, it’ll work also on the iPad so you don’t have to purchase this game twice. Great deal.

Gameplay

Taking a chaotic stroll down memory lane with GTA3 on an iOS device is an absolute thrill. Sure, you might have already played through it a few times before but being able to play on your mobile device is just as fun. Chances are it’s been a while since you’ve played last, so don’t worry about the game being too style. It’s a heck of a lot of fun!

The controls are really simple as you handle your device much like you would a controller. One thumb works as the means of movement and the other will handle things like running, putting on the gas/brake, firing your weapon and more. The controls are really intuitive and while it may not fit in your hands like a PS2 controller once did, Rockstar did a heck of a job making this really easy to play in the palm of your hands.

Graphics

GTA3 for iPhone and iPad Graphics

Overall Impression

Overall, Grand Theft Auto 3 for the iPhone and iPad is an absolute must-buy if you are a fan of the GTA series of games. It’s very affordable and the gameplay and graphics are spot on. The sounds are great too with all your favorite sound effects and radio stations right there in the game like it used to be. At $4.99 this game is definitely a bargain and at the occasional sale price of $2.99 it’s an absolute must-have.

Wild Card Round

(6) Cincinnati Bengals over the (3) Houston Texans

It’s a real shame what’s happened to the Texans, losing not just their starting Quarterback in Matt Shaub, but also their backup and being forced to play a fifth round rookie. The defense is playing at a high level and there’s always Arian Foster, but Cincinnati is no pushover this season. Houston still should win this game, but we’re going with the upset since the Bengals come in much healthier and sharper.

(3) New Orleans Saints over the (6) Detroit Lions

This will be the headliner for this wild card weekend with two amazing offenses battling it out against defenses that boast some talent but ultimately, will each surrender 30+ points. This will definitely be a shootout, but in the end we have a Saints team that has a bunch of guys that have Super Bowl rings facing off against a team of young guns who’ve never been to the playoffs.

(5) Atlanta Falcons over the (4) New York Giants

The Falcons have looked very sharp over the last month of the season and the Giants have been up and down all year. Thanks to a weak division the Giants get in and are definitely dangerous thanks to a passing attack and great defensive front. However, Atlanta is just playing at a different level and Matt Ryan should expose New York’s secondary.

(5) Pittsburgh Steelers over the (4) Denver Broncos

The Broncos don’t look like they have much of a chance at all. They’ve lost three straight while playing for their lives and the magic of Tim Tebow looks long gone. While the Steelers aren’t scaring anyone right now having lost their running back and sporting a gimpy Roethlisburger, they should still easily handle the Broncos.

Divisional Round

(1) New England Patriots over the (6) Cincinnati Bengals

This one will actually be a pretty fun game to watch, as we should see a feisty Bengals team go out there and give a great effort against the Patriots. However, we seriously can’t ever pick the Bengals over the Pats in a playoff game and Tom Brady will finally get a playoff win after many years of playoff futility in recent years.

(2) Baltimore Ravens over the (5) Pittsburgh Steelers

Talk about your good old fashioned slobberknocker matchups. These two teams always seem to meet up when the stakes are the highest and this time around it’s Baltimore that comes in with the edge. They played so hard for homefield advantage JUST for this one specific game – so if they faced the Steelers, it’d be in Baltimore. That should payoff in the playoffs for the Ravens in this one.

(1) Green Bay Packers over (5) Atlanta Falcons

It’s hard to pick against the defending champs, playing at home, who will go in healthy and rested. The Falcons will look like world beaters one day and get dominated the next. But with Rodgers, Jennings, Finley and more on offense, who can keep up with the Green Bay Packers? Not the Falcons.

(3) New Orleans Saints over (2) San Francisco 49ers

A lot of people like San Francisco in the NFC this year and it’s easy to understand why. They’re tough, play amazing defense and have a great record. Here are reasons to not like the 49ers – for most of these guys this is their first playoff experience, they have a very low scoring offense that relies on a kicker that had a career year and they have a hot head rookie coach. We hate picking teams that come out of ultra-weak divisions that only have one or two impressive wins while racking up a deceiving regular reason record, especially over such an experienced team like the Saints.

Conference Championships

(2) Baltimore Ravens over the (1) New England Patriots

It’s a little crazy to pick the Ravens with Joe Flacco to win on the road. We know that. But considering how terrible the Patriots defense is and how good the Ravens defense is (especially in bad weather, potentially) we think this is finally the Ravens year. Ray Rice should run all over the field and Baltimore will win in a close one, thanks to a porous Patriot defense that simply can’t be relied upon.

(3) New Orleans Saints over (1) Green Bay Packers

Upset special here, with the Saints rolling into Green Bay and shocking the Packers at Lambeau Field. The Packers have some serious holes on defense that an offense lead by Drew Brees can absolutely feast on. We simply can’t see the Packers stopping the Saints in any way, shape or form if the Saints come in healthy with all those weapons. The Saints defense, while not to the level of Baltimore or Pittsburgh, is better than Green Bay’s and will be the determining factor in getting New Orleans to the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl

Drew Brees and the Saints

The Saints will play the Super Bowl in a Dome and have enough firepower to offset Baltimore’s defense. Usually when a top offense plays a top defense, the team with the defense wins out. But Joe Flacco simply has never been a super clutch Quarterback and is mistake prone. Against a savvy defense in New Orleans, he might be exposed if asked to do too much. Brees, meanwhile, will lead the Saints to their second Super Bowl victory in three years in what should be a very competitive game.

The Specs

Dell U2711 27" Monitor Review

The monitor has a 16:9 aspect ration and 109 pixels per inch, with 6ms response time and a maximum dynamic contrast ratio of 80,000:1. There’s a ton of connectivity options via HDMI port, DisplayPort (with audio), DVI-D, USB and VGA ports. Note that some of these ports do not support the full 2560×1440 resolution level. In fact, only the DVI-D and DisplayPort options will allow for that and we did all of our testing with the DVI-D port and cable (included!). If you’re a snob that doesn’t know what DVI-D even is, look it up, it’s great and will work fine for 99% of you PC gamers out there.

The monitor also has In-Plane Switching Technology, also known as IPS, which allows for amazing color consistency no matter what angle you are sitting at. There’s also factory-tuned Adobe RGB and sRGB modes that minimize the time for color calibration and every single monitor (including ours) ships with a factory certified color-calibration report.

The 27” U2711 offers the ability to adjust the height of the stand with tilt and swivel features. You can also detach the panel from the stand for wall mounting. Finally, the monitor also has four side USB ports and a media-card reader that makes plugging things in a lot easier.

The Guarantee

Dell offers a “Premium Panel Guarantee” which states that you will receive a free panel exchange should even one bright defective pixel appear on the screen during the warranty period. The warranty is a 3-year limited hardware warranty with three years of Dell Advanced Exchange service.

For the MMO / RPG / RTS Gamer

U2711 27" Review

The colors and brightness are absolutely amazing, coming from a solid Samsung 24” model that was a few years old. It’s seriously a world of difference and everything else you’ll stare at will look silly in comparison. This monitor absolutely holds up for these types of games just fine. No ghosting, no lag, no problems at all.

For the FPS Snob

For the FPS gamers that are snobbish about their monitors and response times out of necessity, this is where the U2711 may not be the absolute best choice. Frankly, we haven’t seen a 27” monitor yet that truly stacks up to the high performing 1ms 24” IPS monitors from Dell or other vendors. If you aren’t that snobbish about how your monitor performs, then this monitor is great. Playing CoD MW3 played just fine and I certainly didn’t notice lag or ghosting, but to say I’m even at a casual level for FPS games on a PC would be generous.

What’s This I Hear About Coating?

Dell puts on this anti-glare coating that some people have said “destroys the image quality” which is frankly a gross exaggeration. Yes, there is anti-glare coating and it does seem to be put on a little thick. You’ll notice it most when putting your face about 6” away from the monitor and staring at a completely white screen. When playing games however, you shouldn’t notice it one bit if you sit at a reasonable distance. It absolutely does not destroy image quality or warp text – that’s just plainly false.

Overall Gamer Impression of the Dell U2711 27” Monitor

Overall, the Dell U2711 27” Monitor is an absolute winner. The price tag currently sits at $999 retail from the Dell.com website, but third party vendors have it well below that price. Trolling sites like SlickDeals (forums) will occasionally alert you to sales at Dell along with stackable coupons that bring the price of this monitor to about $800 – SHIPPED. For that price, if you’re a PC gamer that wants to have one hell of a visual experience, then this monitor is about as good as you can possibly buy.