Talk about a tight fit. Silverstone was at CES to show off their new line of cases (including the highly-anticipated Fortress 2 mid-tower case), but what caught our eye was their Sugo SG07 mini-ITX case. Last year's SG06 was a respectable gaming chassis, but didn't account for the massive videocards that came out in the second half of the year. The new model is built with those cards in mind, and as you can see from the photo below, snuggly houses a 12.6-inch Radeon 5970 videocard!

The SG07 also comes bundled with a Silverstone custom single-rail 600W power supply to provide ample power to a single-GPU system, and has a beefy 180mm fan on top. There's also a specially-designed ventilation area that's sectioned off on the base of the machine to funnel hot air away from the videocard without heating up the entire chassis.

But does it make sense to put the world's fastest videocard into a mini-ITX system? With a new batch of P55 mini-ITX motherboards just coming out, the answer is yes. In fact, the rig that Silverstone had set up included a DFI LANParty MI P55 motherboard and Intel Core i7 860 CPU. And from the photo below, you can tell that the case is tall enough for a sizable CPU heatsink.

The only thing that seemed to be missing was a handle at the top of the case for easy portability, but Silverstone's rep told us any handles mounted on top would warp the relatively thin aluminum casing. A GearGrip-style case carrying harness will have to do for now.

As PC games continue their eternal march onward, many a laptop is left in the dust shockingly fast. What’s usually holding them back is the poor graphics solution. Even laptops with dedicated cards find themselves unable to run newer games inside of a year. A new AMD product called ATI XGP could solve all that. The AMD 5000 Series Mobility External GPU would provide the power for a real 3D gaming experience.

The new cards will require a full PCI-e pinout, which isn’t currently standard. However, the existence of MiniPCI-e means this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The new system was demoed on an old Acer Ferrari running a Radeon X1270. The difference was quite clear. The external GPU was able to run Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. on a triple monitor system using the Eyefinity system.

The external box itself has one DVI connector, one HDMI, three display port, two USB 2.0 ports, and a 35W power adapter. No word yet on when you’ll be able to get a laptop that supports ATI XGP, but keep an eye out.

High-end laptops are lucky to squeeze 3 hours of run time out of a single charge, and if you're looking for ultra long battery life, your best bet is a netbook. Or is it?

Asus had on display at CES a performance-oriented laptop the company hopes will redefine the high-end genre. The UL80JT, as it's currently called, can switch back and forth between a high-end Nvidia GeForce 310 and Intel's lowly GMA graphics. Combined with a Core i7 CPU capable of re-clocking itself on a second-by-second basis and other micromanagement tricks, Asus claims users can expect up to 12 hours of run time.

Even cooler, the whole process is transparent to the user, meaning you don't have to fiddle with power settings. The laptop decides for itself when to clock the dual-core Core i7 chip up or down and when to switch between graphic chips, and while we're skeptical we'd actually see 12 hours of run time, we would expect the UL80JT to run a lot longer than a typical high end notebook.

As a so-called “Future Soldier,” we can only assume you’ll be working with the latest, greatest technologies in an effort to get an upper hand on the battlefield. And where’s the latest, greatest real-world gaming tech these days? On the PC, of course! So where’s the newly announced Ghost Recon: Future Soldier making its biggest push? Why, on consoles, naturally.

Wait, what?

Yep, sure enough, the game apparently “features cutting-edge technology, prototype high-tech weaponry, and state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes,” but – via Twitter -- Ubisoft senior community developer Kimi Matsuzaki pegged the game for a holiday 2010 release on consoles, adding that “We will tell more about the PC version later."

When’s “later”? We have no idea. You’ll remember, however, that Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter’s PC version was its own beast, designed specifically for our favorite platform. We can only hope Ubisoft is giving Future Soldier’s PC tour of duty similar consideration.

(Aside: an “Advanced Warfighter” is nothing like a “Future Soldier.” God. Why would you even think that?)