Daily Reviews Summary 03/31/07

After receiving an invite to a talk with LG, we wandered over to their rather small stand in the middle of Hall 19. Their main attraction was their new 24" widescreen flatscreen monitor promising 1000:1 contrast ratio, 178 degree viewing angel, 8ms response time, a huge 1920x1200 resolution and HDMI input.

I have to say I was impressed at the ability of the box stock PNY 8800 GTS 320MB to chug along playing Oblivion at these settings. The only time I noticed any lag or a frame rate problem was during fights when I was moving around quickly. Otherwise the game chugged along beautifully.

In this review, we put the Instant Video To Go - the first USB H.264 external encoder - through a series of tests, including a video conversion of a 30min VOB from MPEG-2 to iPod-friendly AVC format in 640x480 at highest allowable bitrate at 1.5Mbps The result was nothing short of breathtaking. Our 3-year old Celeron 2.2Ghz was able to finish the encoding almost in real-time. Without the ADS USB encoder, Videora could only accomplish the same task in 4 hours. However, after we repeated the same test on a Intel Duo Core 1.83Ghz, Videora was able to make use of the extra core, and was able to match the speed that of the Video To Go.

Covering over 300 desktop graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison allows you to easily compare 18 different specifications for each and every card. If you need to find out about the specification of any card, just come over and check out our Desktop Graphics Comparison Guide.

We hope it will prove to be a useful reference. We will keep this guide updated regularly so do check back for the latest updates.

Here are the updates:-

- Added the ATI Radeon X1950 GT graphics card.
- Total cards : 302

CoolIT Systems has really impressed us lately with their water cooling. The RAM Fan definitely does what it claims. It cools your memory modules but only a single degree at idle and seven degrees at load. These few degrees can equate out to another percentage gained, in overclocking, in some situations. CoolIT is on the right track with this accessory, but the unit still needs some finest before it's ready to be a Kickass solution.

The JJ-23VB2 not only looks great, it works great too. Jou-Jye Computers have come up with a beautiful solution to external / and portable storage. The installation is of course real easy, and performance was great if you consider that USB 2.0 does not reach speeds that it should theoretically. The Built quality of the JJ-23V2 is alright and the fan is pretty much dead silent. Overall a really nice product. Definitely a good choice if your looking for a stylish portable hard drive casing.

One of the coolest features of this keyboard are the included "gaming keys". These extra keys can be swapped out with the standard letter keys. The included tool is very easy to use. Just slide it down over the existing key, then lift up. The key pops right out, allowing you to put the alternate key in its place. I was very impressed with how well the tool worked. It takes only a few seconds to swap out each key. This would also be very useful when cleaning the keyboard, as you can remove the majority of the keys without risk of breaking them.

Today we'll be looking at the Silverstone TJ09 Full-Tower Case. It sports a handful of innovations such as a separate hard drive section and unique video card cooling. The accolades for the TJ09 are already piling up, and Maximum PC is calling this their 2006 Dream Machine case. For the price, it might just be dream-worthy, too. There's not much doubt that the TJ09 will live up to Silverstone's reputation for quality, but does it actually merit the acclaim? Is it a steal for a mere three hundred United States dollars?