Dell Corporation - CES 2008

Dell and Alienware Products

We also saw some other Dell products, as well as some items from Alienware shown at the Dell booth. We can't discuss details of everything we saw (yet), but let's just say the XPS 630 is going to be particularly interesting for those gamers that don't want to build their own PC and prefer not to spend a ton of money. Dell would only let us provide this one image for now, but stay tuned later this month for more details. Imagine what we might recommend for a good quality midrange gaming computer, then get that pre-assembled with the attractive canted XPS case shown above and you'll be pretty close to what Dell is releasing later this month. There are some other noteworthy updates with the XPS 630 that we'll discuss as soon as we're able.

Alienware on the other hand caters to those gamers that have wads of cash to blow. We didn't have pricing on the curved display, but let's just say we don't expect it to come cheap. $3000, $4000, more, less? Well, "less" is probably not correct, but the others all seem feasible. Native resolution is 2880x900 (twice that of your standard 19" widescreen displays), and the color and image quality is very good. Somewhat surprising to us is that the display does not use LCD technology, so it's actually quite a bit deeper than you might think looking at the above image. The display shell extends back around a foot. So how exactly do you project a 2880x900 image onto an approximately three foot wide curved display without getting massive distortion at the outer portion of the display? If you're thinking CRT technology, don't feel bad - that was our initial guess as we were looking at the display. In fact, Alienware is using DLP technology with three separate DLP chips to project a clear, distortion-free image. (Yes, I saw the DLP logo on the placard after asking the rep what sort of display it was, thus ensuring that I looked like a complete imbecile.)

Obviously, you're going to need quite a bit of processing power to drive games at that resolution - especially games like Crysis - and Alienware had a desktop system on hand to do exactly that. It was looping the Crysis GPU benchmark, presumably at medium detail settings given the ~80FPS framerate. Despite the horizontal size, it's worth pointing out that 2880x900 only has 63% as many pixels as 2560x1600, or only 12.5% more pixels than 1920x1200. The other real concern of course is game support. Think it can be troublesome trying to get proper aspect ratio support on Battlefield, Bioshock, or some of the other titles out there? Imagine buying a $3000+ display like this only to be greeted by a 90 degree FOV stretched across what should require something like a 160 degree FOV. Perhaps like the Crystal C22WFP, this curved display is something better reserved for specific situations like an impressive product demonstration as opposed to general usage/gaming.

While there's quite a bit of stuff we're still excited to talk about in regards to Dell's latest products, the rest will have to wait another month or two. Certainly a pre-built Dell computer is never going to offer the same user experience as a DIY rig, but there are millions of people that prefer to avoid some of the headaches and pains that can come with PC assembly. Even computer enthusiasts sometimes reach the point where time is a bigger concern than money, at which point a quality OEM setup is the way to go. Outside of systems and laptops (yes, we saw laptops that we will review as soon as they're launched), every home or office computer needs a display, and that's one area where Dell continues to excel. We may not like the higher prices on some of the new models, but Dell has an extensive display portfolio with many great offerings.