Patriot memory had an eye-catching display that was showcasing their latest memory products. “The World’s Fastest DDR2” was what particularly struck our fancy. Patriot had this memory running at 1302 MHz in system on display. They said that no special cooling was being used in the system, but that when the product starts shipping to the public it will more likely than not have some sort of cooling solution included or recommended. Patriot was one of several companies that had full DDR3 modules on display. As we mentioned in our “Memory of the Future” article in the past, DDR3 is essentially the same design as DDR2, but operates on even less power and can reach significantly higher clock speeds. We have heard reports on the net that Intel and AMD plan to have DDR3 integration some time in 2008 or thereabouts. Until some solid information comes our way all we can do is guess as to when DDR3 motherboards will be out there. Nevertheless, it is nice to see so many companies already up to date with the still-young DDR3 technology.



Of the memory manufacturers in attendance, the more notable ones that we visited were Geil, Patriot, Transcend, and Super Talent. It made us feel warm and fuzzy inside that every one of these manufacturers has some sort of “extreme” product that is clocked higher, looks cooler, and unfortunately costs more than the rest of the product line. The reason it made us feel warm and fuzzy is because we know unequivocally that the reason this type of product was created in the first place is gamers. Gamers demand that there games play great. In order to play games great, your computer has to be cutting edge in every way possible. High quality RAM that is capable of running faster than any other sort is always an integral part of cutting edge gaming machines. It is absolutely fantastic to see companies across the board start and continue to recognize gaming as its own market and target audience.



We then took a bit of a detour from the main floor and visited a place very close to home for us: the Gaming TechZone. CES has set up market-specific areas throughout the venues where people can go to get a really good taste of a certain type of thing. The Gaming TechZone was full of things from gamer-specific hardware to furniture that shakes, rattles, and rolls in sync with certain games. Being from GotFrag, we would feel kind of odd if we weren’t able to run into someone we knew in the Gaming TechZone. After checking out some of the cool gaming chairs and a remote controlled helicopter robot toy thing (that was totally awesome) we, sure enough, actually ran into a familiar face. Bob Grim of Bigfoot Networks (KillerNIC) was hanging out at some sort of “Ultimate Gaming Experience” type of booth. This booth was like a congregation of a lot of the big names in gaming hardware and gaming in general, and was apparently being operated by PC Magazine. It was very nice to meet Bob Grim in person and he gave us some very interesting information about Bigfoot Networks, none of which I am allowed to share with you all, but very interesting information nonetheless.

=page= advertisement=34 Near the aforementioned booth was Wolfking’s setup. We first heard of Wolfking when we stumbled into their booth at E3. They had a challenge set up that pitted visitors to their booth against resident gamers. Should you be victorious playing Quake 4 against these gamers, you would win a free Wolfking Warrior game pad. Being from GotFrag we know a few things about playing games and ended up taking home the prize rather handily. We were somewhat disappointed to see that they had done away with the challenge part of their booth for the 2007 International CES. However, Wolfking did have some new products out that we took a look at. One of their new products was simply a “special edition” of the Warrior game pad we had already reviewed. This particular Warrior was a special Counter-Strike Edition pad. From what we could see, the physical layout of the pad was identical, it was just aesthetically different. Besides that, Wolfking also had a 2200dpi laser gaming mouse called the Trooper on display. The mouse is shaped very similarly to the Logitech MX500 series of mice. It looks to have several interesting features, including a “1 click, 4 shots” functionality. Whether or not we’re willing to test it out in a public server and get banned for having a rapid-fire script is up for debate, but we will certainly be taking a close look at this mouse in the near future, as they sent us home with one on the spot.

Case of the Cases
Although our friends at Thermaltake and Cooler Master aren’t located there, the Sands Expo seems to be the main location for computer enclosures. There are many different booths with many different styles in cases, and we were not able to get around to them all. We did, however, manage to stop by two big ones: Chieftec and Lian-Li.


Chieftec has been a big name in enclosures for a long while now. They are always well received in the server industry and they have started to produce gaming-oriented cases. To be perfectly honest, the cases looked fairly bland and lacked the flair that we typically see with gaming oriented cases. Inside the case was some solid engineering as is typical from Chieftec cases. There was a tiny 60mm Blue LED fan in there that left us kind of unimpressed. Chieftec cases are always readily available and are quite inexpensive which makes them a top choice for many gamers, regardless of the aesthetic values. Chieftec also had their line of power supplies on display.


Lian-Li’s booth was well positioned between two major thoroughfares in the middle of the hall. Lian-Li’s cases are almost always regarded as the very pinnacle in craftsmanship and design. After getting a hands-on look at some of their cases, we would be hard pressed to disagree. We exchanged business information with them for a while, the result of which will hopefully be a few Lian-Li reviews on GotFrag Hardware. We can’t wait!