/Recent content on BlogVibeHugo -- gohugo.ioenSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/affordable-storage-for-the-sme-part-one.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/affordable-storage-for-the-sme-part-one.htmlSQLIOSQLIO is a tool provided by Microsoft which can determine the I/O capacity of a given disk subsystem. It should simulate somewhat how MS SQL 2000/2005 accesses the disk subsystem. The following tests use RAID 5. You can see a typical SQLIO test command below: sqlio" -s120 -b64 -LS -o16 -fsequential file.tst >> result.txt We ran tests as long as 1000 seconds, but there was very little difference with our standard 120 second testing./news/amd-launches-radeon-7700m-7800m-and-7900m-mobile-gpus.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-launches-radeon-7700m-7800m-and-7900m-mobile-gpus.htmlAMD Launches Radeon Mobility 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M GPUs Late last year, AMD pushed out the first of their Southern Islands GPUs for the desktop, the HD 7970. Around the same time, AMD also announced their first 7000M mobile GPUs. Since then, AMD has gone on to launch the HD 7950, the HD 7750/7770, and the HD 7850/7870. Meanwhile, on the mobile front we’ve had to sit back and wait…and wait./news/an-efficiency-and-performance-divergence.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-efficiency-and-performance-divergence.html2019 was a great year for Arm. On the mobile side of things one could say it was business as usual, as the company continued to see successes with its Cortex cores, particularly the new Cortex-A77 which we’ve now seen employed in flagship chipsets such as the Snapdragon 865. The bigger news for the company over the past year however hasn’t been in the mobile space, but rather in the server space, where one can today rent Neoverse-N1 CPUs such as Amazon’s impressive Graviton2 chip, with more vendors such as Ampere expected to release their server products soon./news/anandtech-storage-bench-2011-sandisk-x300s-512gb-review.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/anandtech-storage-bench-2011-sandisk-x300s-512gb-review.htmlAnandTech Storage Bench 2011 Back in 2011 (which seems like so long ago now!), we introduced our AnandTech Storage Bench, a suite of benchmarks that took traces of real OS/application usage and played them back in a repeatable manner. The MOASB, officially called AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 – Heavy Workload, mainly focuses on peak IO performance and basic garbage collection routines. There is a lot of downloading and application installing that happens during the course of this test./news/apple-announces-the-safari-technology-preview.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-announces-the-safari-technology-preview.htmlToday Apple made an interesting announcement for developers regarding Safari. Safari is Apple's browser across all of their iOS and OS X devices, and the layout engine at its core is WebKit. WebKit was originally started as a project within Apple as a fork of KHTML, a layout engine developed by the KDE project. Today it's widely employed in many browsers on many platforms, with Google and Opera formerly using it and now utilizing a fork of WebKit called Blink./news/asus-announces-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-announces-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition.htmlDuring CES 2022, ASUS unveiled its Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition notebook. Built around the Zenbook 14 OLED series of compact yet high-performance laptops, the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition takes things to the next level. Some of its features include a 3.5" OLED ZenVision screen on the top panel, support for up to an Intel Alder Lake Core i9-12900H processor, Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, as well as a 2800 x 1800 OLED HDR display./news/books-newsstand-amazon-kindle-fire-review.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/books-newsstand-amazon-kindle-fire-review.htmlBooks This being the Kindle Fire, the Kindle experience is the central focus here (other than making boatloads of money for Amazon). Hit the Books library, and you see an option at the top for Cloud and Device. All of your purchased books are located on the cloud, and you can download them to your Kindle Fire's local storage as necessary. The Fire has roughly 5.5GB of free space to use for content, so some content management will be required over time, particularly if you download a lot of videos to local storage./news/efficiency-comparison-and-how-to-choose-your-psu.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/efficiency-comparison-and-how-to-choose-your-psu.htmlEfficiency Comparison and How to Choose Your PSU We wanted to explain to you how much power your system should actually use so you can make the best use of your new power supply. Of course you can load these power supplies up to the limit and still have around 87% efficiency - a result that many cheaper power supplies cannot reach even at their ideal load. However, these graphs show you where these power supplies reach their best efficiency./news/features-software-electrovaya-scribbler-sc500-tablet-pc.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/features-software-electrovaya-scribbler-sc500-tablet-pc.htmlFeatures: Software Naturally the Electrovaya SC500 is available with only one operating system choice preloaded: Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. It would not make much sense to produce and sell a tablet PC without Windows XP Tablet PC Edition support being that it is the operating system that really enables the tablet concept to become reality. Trust us, a regular copy of Windows XP with a 3rd party handwriting recognition program is simply not the same./news/hp-and-msi-demonstrate-backpack-pcs-for-vr-gaming.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-and-msi-demonstrate-backpack-pcs-for-vr-gaming.htmlVirtual reality gaming promises to drive demand for higher-performance graphics cards as well as richer game content. But even before the first AAA VR games make their debut, computer manufacturers are inventing a new PC form-factor specifically for virtual reality gaming: backpack PCs. Truth to be told, the concept of such systems sounds somewhat odd, but HP and MSI think it's worth investigating ahead of any attempts at commercialization. Virtual reality gear changes the way we perceive games, whereas specially designed controllers (e./news/hp-chromebook-14-combines-amd-and-chrome-os.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-chromebook-14-combines-amd-and-chrome-os.htmlWhen the first Chromebooks were released in 2011, they were aimed at the lower end of the market and carried matching price tags. After Google launched its Pixel laptop in 2013 and proved that it was possible to address the premium segment, other makers of PCs followed on with more advanced Chromebooks that were more expensive. Eventually, Chromebooks somewhat moved away from being exclusively in the low end of the market, and towards a broader market covering multiple price ranges./news/htc-invests-300m-in-beats-electronics-audio-is-a.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-invests-300m-in-beats-electronics-audio-is-a.htmlEarlier tonight HTC announced, via AllThingsD, that it would be investing $300M in Beats Electronics, LLC, creators of the famous Beats by Dr. Dre brand. Beats is still a privately held company so there's no indication exactly how much of the company will be in HTC's control, although Beats mentioned it would continue to operate independently of HTC and alongside current partners including HP.  It's unclear exactly how much Beats contributes to the audio path of products that carry its brand./news/huawei-readies-windows-10-laptop-based-on-qualcomm-snapdragon.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-readies-windows-10-laptop-based-on-qualcomm-snapdragon.htmlBeing a relatively new maker of laptops, Huawei is trying to address high-end and niche markets to gain share, avoid direct competition with numerous rivals at the same time, and preserve its profit margins. With numerous ultra-portable Intel Core-based notebooks in its arsenal, Huawei is working on a Windows 10 on Snapdragon 2-in-1 PC for those who want an always-connected machine. The Huawei Matebook E 2019 is actually even more portable than the company’s existing offerings./news/intel-s-core-i7-970-reviewed-slightly-more-affordable.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-core-i7-970-reviewed-slightly-more-affordable.html  I ran into an old friend of mine who happens to work for Intel at an industry event last month. We were naturally talking about Intel when he pointed out that the company was doing very well. I agreed, but argued that Intel’s progress was being artificially limited by the fact that it wasn’t facing much competition at the high end. It’s true. AMD’s entire desktop product line exists below $300, and we won’t see a real push for the high end crown until next year with Bulldozer./news/kensington-sd7000-surface-pro-docking-station.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kensington-sd7000-surface-pro-docking-station.htmlEarlier this year, Kensington announced their new docking station specifically designed for the Microsoft Surface Pro. The SD7000 transforms the Surface Pro into a miniature version of the Surface Studio, and offers some unique features as well. Looking at the design and it is very clear where Kensington is getting their inspiration. The two chrome arms on the side are a definite nod to the Surface Studio, and with the grey base, Kensington has done a great job to match the aesthetics of Microsoft’s all-in-one PC./news/packaging-final-words-inside-ocz-s-factory-how-ssds.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/packaging-final-words-inside-ocz-s-factory-how-ssds.htmlPackaging Once the drive has exited the validation station without any errors, it's considered to be fully functional and is ready to be packaged. Before the drive is put inside the retail package, the labels are put on the metal chassis. Currently this is done manually and requires extreme precision from the worker, but this is an area OCZ is looking to automate to reduce costs and increase the throughput of the factory./news/performance-benchmarks-lexar-armor-700-portable-ssd-review-power.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-benchmarks-lexar-armor-700-portable-ssd-review-power.htmlPerformance Benchmarks Benchmarks such as ATTO and CrystalDiskMark help provide a quick look at the performance of the direct-attached storage device. The results translate to the instantaneous performance numbers that consumers can expect for specific workloads, but do not account for changes in behavior when the unit is subject to long-term conditioning and/or thermal throttling. Yet another use of these synthetic benchmarks is the ability to gather information regarding support for specific storage device features that affect performance./news/sony-launches-xperia-z2-z2-tablet-and-m2-at.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-launches-xperia-z2-z2-tablet-and-m2-at.htmlSony Xperia Z2 Sony has just announced the Xperia Z2, which is the direct successor to the Xperia Z1 that released in the fall. While quite a bit stays the same, there’s also quite a bit that has changed. I’ve listed the differences below:   Sony Xperia Z1 Sony Xperia Z2 Display 5”, 1080p “Triluminos” display 5.2”, 1080p “Triluminos” display Video Recording 1080p 2160p/4K SoC MSM8974, 2./news/sony-teases-playstation-5-design.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-teases-playstation-5-design.htmlToday during Sony’s “The Future of Gaming” show where the company and its partners revealed a slew of next-generation game titles, we also had a first glimpse of the physical design of the new PlayStation 5. The new console is a significant departure for Sony’s console hardware which has retained a standard black design aesthetic ever since the PlayStation 2 (Although different colour scheme variants have been available). The new PlayStation 5 immediately stands out with its white-black design, as well for the fact that Sony is seemingly presenting the new console in a primarily vertical standing position./news/the-silverstone-strider-gold-s-1500w-psu-review.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-silverstone-strider-gold-s-1500w-psu-review.htmlIntroduction SilverStone is one of the most reputable PC chassis and PSU manufacturers worldwide. The company is no stranger to AnandTech as we reviewed a plethora of their products during the years. However, it has been a long time since we reviewed one of their high-end power supply units; as a matter of fact, ever since the review of the Zeus 1200W PSU seven years ago, we have only been reviewing their least powerful PSU models./news/17-3-inch-144-hz-with-g-sync-i7.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/17-3-inch-144-hz-with-g-sync-i7.htmlASUS on Thursday launched its new ultra-high-end gaming laptop that combines an overclocked CPU with a 17.3” display featuring a 144 Hz refresh rate. The ASUS ROG G703 (aka the ROG Chimera) is not as sleek as the Zephyrus launched earlier this year, but is a new nearly top-of-the-range DTR system that is meant to deliver gaming desktop-like performance. The machine is already available in the US, but its price is higher than that of advanced desktop PCs due to the display and portability./news/3nm-production-node-accounts-for-6-of-revenue.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3nm-production-node-accounts-for-6-of-revenue.htmlAlthough Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. formally started production of chips using its N3 (3nm-class) process technology back in late 2022, the company did not recognize any meaningful N3 revenue in Q1 and Q2. This week as part of the company's Q3 earnings announcement, the foundry finally recognized its first N3-related revenue, with N3 accounting for 6% of TSMC's Q3 revenue. Meanwhile, advanced nodes now account for 59% of TSMC's earnings./news/a-dual-display-smartphone-with-no-selfie-camera.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-dual-display-smartphone-with-no-selfie-camera.htmlNubia, a ZTE brand, this week introduced its new range-topping smartphone outfitted with front and rear displays and Qualcomm’s high-end SoC. The new Nubia X features a rare 93.6% screen-to-body ratio on the primary LCD, maximizing its screen real estate while also offering a serious performance. The phone will certainly catch some eyes, but what remains to be seen is how useful the second display is and how will it affect battery life of the device./news/battery-life-gateway-and-acer-netbooks-wonder-twin-powers.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-gateway-and-acer-netbooks-wonder-twin-powers.htmlBattery Life Pine Trail was a huge boon for battery life in netbooks, with 8 hours being the minimum for runtime on a netbook with a 6-cell battery. Both of the netbooks here have 6-cell 5600 mAh batteries and offer great battery life as expected. Under web-browsing and other processing-light tasks, you can expect 8 hours of runtime, slightly longer than the 1001P (which has a slightly smaller battery). The absolute maximum battery life under ideal conditions is around 11 hours, and HD video battery life is somewhere between 5 and 7 hours, depending on the type of video being played./news/battleforge-dx10-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-460-the-200.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battleforge-dx10-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-460-the-200.htmlBattleForge: DX10 Up next is BattleForge, Electronic Arts’ free to play online RTS. As far as RTSes go this game can be quite demanding, and this is just at DX10. BattleForge switches things up some. No longer are we RAM/L2/ROP dependent as much as we are on raw shader power. This gives the 1GB GTX 460 only the slightest advantage over the 768MB card, while the factory overclocked cards clearly dominate here./news/budget-turing-for-149-available-today.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/budget-turing-for-149-available-today.htmlA bit over 8 months after it all began, the tail-end of NVIDIA’s GeForce Turing product stack launch is finally in sight. This morning the company is rolling out its latest and cheapest GeForce Turing video card, the GeForce GTX 1650. Coming in at $149, the newest member of the GeForce family is set to bring up the rear of the GeForce product stack, offering NVIDIA’s latest architecture in a low-power, 1080p-with-compromises gaming video card with a budget-friendly price to match./news/build-and-power-consumption-hp-z420-workstation-review-competition.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/build-and-power-consumption-hp-z420-workstation-review-competition.htmlBuild and Power Consumption Where I think the HP Z420 winds up really losing step with the Dell Precision T3600 (and where HP's current workstation lineup loses step with Dell's pending update) is build quality. The Z420 isn't badly built, but not much seems to have changed in some time. It's easy to rest on your laurels when you're on top, and that seems to be the case with the./news/conclusion-two-ranks-and-1dpc-for-thee-ddr5-demystified.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-two-ranks-and-1dpc-for-thee-ddr5-demystified.htmlConclusion When selecting a memory kit for a new system, the market is littered with many choices ranging in speed, heatsink design, RGB or no RGB, and capacity. In terms of DDR5 memory, the only platform that can utilize this at the moment is Intel's 12th Gen Core series, with its premier offerings coming in conjunction with the Z690 chipset. This is likely to change later on this year if AMD's Zen 4 architecture launches, but right now, the DDR5 market and the Alder Lake market are one in the same./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-legacy-and-web.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-legacy-and-web.htmlIn order to gather data to compare with older benchmarks, we are still keeping a number of tests under our ‘legacy’ section. This includes all the former major versions of CineBench (R15, R11.5, R10) as well as x264 HD 3.0 and the first very naïve version of 3DPM v2.1. We won’t be transferring the data over from the old testing into Bench, otherwise, it would be populated with 200 CPUs with only one data point, so it will fill up as we test more CPUs like the others./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-power-office-and-science.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-power-office-and-science.htmlOur previous set of ‘office’ benchmarks have often been a mix of science and synthetics, so this time we wanted to keep our office section purely on real-world performance. For the remainder of the testing in this review of the Core i7-12700K and i5-12600K, we are using DDR5 memory at the following settings: DDR5-4800(B) CL40 Power Comparing power draw to other competing CPUs, both the Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K are noticeably more power-efficient than previous generations including both Intel's 11th Gen and 10th Gen Core./news/deep-learning-and-ai-on-a-79-usb-stick.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/deep-learning-and-ai-on-a-79-usb-stick.htmlToday Intel subsidiary Movidius is launching their Neural Compute Stick (NCS), a version of which was showcased earlier this year at CES 2017. The Movidius NCS adds to Intel’s deep learning and AI development portfolio, building off of Movidius’ April 2016 launch of the Fathom NCS and Intel’s later acquisition of Movidius itself in September 2016. As Intel states, the Movidius NCS is “the world’s first self-contained AI accelerator in a USB format,” and is designed to allow host devices to process deep neural networks natively – or in other words, at the edge./news/display-performance-and-battery-life.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-performance-and-battery-life.htmlDisplay and Performance If you’ve never used an E Ink display for reading before, you’re likely wondering what all the fuss is over. You can read books on your phone right? Yes, of course, but the benefits of this display technology make it well suited to a dedicated E-Reader. First, the displays are not backlit like an LCD, but instead they rely on reflected light, just like a book. The electronic ink itself also requires no power to hold a static image, which helps with long battery life without a heavy device./news/doom-3-performance-nvidia-s-geforce-6200-6600-non.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/doom-3-performance-nvidia-s-geforce-6200-6600-non.htmlDoom 3 Performance While the Doom 3 frenzy isn't nearly as bad as it was a month ago, the performance seen under id's latest engine is quite important as there are a number of games in development right now using the Doom 3 engine. We have two sets of benchmarks here to look at - playable resolution benchmarks, as well as a chart of performance vs. resolution to see how the cards compare at sometimes not-so-playable resolutions./news/final-words-cooler-master-geminii-performer-or-poser.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-cooler-master-geminii-performer-or-poser.htmlFinal WordsOne look at the attractive Cooler Master GeminII and it is easy to understand why computer enthusiasts swoon over the possibilities of putting this cooler to work in their system. The GeminII combines an innovative design with the additional promise of cooling all the components on your motherboard. With the ability to use two 120mm fans side-by-side, blowing down from above the cantilevered heatpipe tower, your first thought is surely this is as good as cooling can get./news/final-words-conclusion-the-epicgear-defiant-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-conclusion-the-epicgear-defiant-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlConclusion I always try to use every keyboard that we review as my personal keyboard for at least a week. My typical weekly usage includes a lot of typing (about 100-150 pages), a few hours of gaming and some casual usage, such as internet browsing and messaging. The EG MMS Purple switches that our Defiant sample came with were very good for such tasks, as tactile switches are great for typing./news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-asrock-b360m-itx-ac.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-asrock-b360m-itx-ac.htmlConclusion Any user looking to buy Mini-ITX motherboards are quite obviously looking for a small footprint and still would like to have at least some of the latest features included on the board. When users are looking at a mid-range chipset, they should expect that perhaps not all the features will make it on the board or in the quantity wanted, but such as it goes in the market. The ASRock B360M-ITX/ac includes a lot of what users are looking for in this platform including USB 3./news/functionality-conclusion-cambridge-soundworks-desktop-theater-dtt2500-digital-speakers.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/functionality-conclusion-cambridge-soundworks-desktop-theater-dtt2500-digital-speakers.htmlFunctionality As usual, Cambridge has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into the box. You can mount the speakers on the wall or on your desk, and mount the rears on some very nice stands. Here is another thing I would like to comment on. In my FPS2000 review, I mentioned the stands were a little short. Well, either I influence Cambridge SoundWorks decisions (Yah right!), or they realized that the old stands were inadequate./news/gigabyte-ga-ep45-ud3p-p45-at-its-finest.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-ga-ep45-ud3p-p45-at-its-finest.htmlIt seems like ages ago when Intel released the P45 Express chipset. In fact it was just last June, but that is normally an eternity in the personal computer market. After our first look at the chipset, we were not convinced that it could be successful. The P35 Express chipset was mature, less expensive, and a very popular choice for the first time buyer and enthusiast alike. Anyone needing high-end performance for a CrossFire setup had numerous options to choose from with the X38/X48 based motherboards./news/gigabyte-ga-x79-ud3-review.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-ga-x79-ud3-review.htmlOver the years, Gigabyte has given us some interesting products.  More recently in the past 18 months, Rajinder gave their H55N-USB3 motherboard a well deserved recommendation, and more recently, I have scrutinized their Sandy Bridge range.  For X79, Gigabyte is uncharacteristically launching only a few motherboards, of which we are looking at their cheapest model, the X79-UD3.  We are also for the first time introduced to what Gigabyte believe should be a graphical BIOS compared to their competitors./news/inwin-launches-95-origami-like-case-that-diyers-get.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/inwin-launches-95-origami-like-case-that-diyers-get.htmlInWin, popularly known for its extravagant PC cases, has developed an interesting idea for a computer case that allows avid DIY users to construct a case from the ground up. Hailing from the company';s iBuildiShare series, the POC case arrives unassembled and will have consumers crimping and folding its 0.8 mm SECC steel panels into it together. The manufacturer ships the POC in a compact box that represents 1/5th of the volume of typical packaging for a mini-tower./news/japan-display-secures-0-92-billion-bailout-from-japan.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/japan-display-secures-0-92-billion-bailout-from-japan.htmlIn recent weeks, Japan Display Inc. (JDI), which absorbed LCD production of Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba in 2011, has been losing money, has most of its business with Apple. Sales have been dropping of late, to the point of putting the company in jeopardy. Late last week JDI inked a deal to get up to ¥100.8 billion JPY (USD$918.87 million) from Ichigo Asset Management, a Japanese investment company. To that end, the company terminated its memorandum of understanding with Suva Investment Holdings, a group of investors from China and Taiwan, it signed last year to get $715 million./news/mid-quality-performance-the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mid-quality-performance-the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd.htmlMid Quality Performance Since our evaluation so far has been focused on performance with Star Swarm’s most resource intensive Extreme setting, we wanted to shake things up by trying a lower quality setting. In this case Star Swarm’s various quality levels adjust both the CPU and GPU workload, with the Mid quality setting reducing both the number of draw calls generated and the amount of work generated per frame for the GPU./news/miscellaneous-aspects-and-concluding-remarks.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/miscellaneous-aspects-and-concluding-remarks.htmlOne of the more impressive aspects of the Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK is the reappearance of Thunderbolt in a mini-PC. We have already covered Thunderbolt 3 in good detail. From the perspective of a Skull Canyon evaluation, the Thunderbolt 3 port does deserve a bit of attention. It must be noted that this USB Type-C port can also act as a USB 3.1 Gen 2 host port. Our evaluation of this feature is in two parts - we first hooked up a SanDisk Extreme 900 1./news/nvidia-gpus-price-guides-october-2003-video-cards.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-gpus-price-guides-october-2003-video-cards.htmlThe good thing about NVIDIA right now is at least their branding is not overly confusing.  Product lines are a lot like menus at a restaurant.  Too many choices can be a bad thing.  If you’re a gamer and insist on NVIDIA, right now you only have four choices (ATI has about 10).  NVIDIA’s new GeForce FX 5700 and 5950 cards will increase the product line, but we naturally do not know and cannot say when to expect those creatures./news/nzxt-nemesis-and-nemesis-elite.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nzxt-nemesis-and-nemesis-elite.htmlIntroduction A while back, NZXT came out with their first mid-tower chassis, the Guardian. Many of our long-time readers recall that the Guardian was not taken in very well because of its transformer-like bezel. We did receive a few emails from some who just loved the look of the chassis and asked when NZXT would come out with an update to the Guardian. Well, to those few people, your day has come!/news/performance-at-queue-depth-1.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-at-queue-depth-1.htmlQD1 Random Read Performance Drive throughput with a queue depth of one is usually not advertised, but almost every latency or consistency metric reported on a spec sheet is measured at QD1 and usually for 4kB transfers. When the drive only has one command to work on at a time, there's nothing to get in the way of it offering its best-case access latency. Performance at such light loads is absolutely not what most of these drives are made for, but they have to make through the easy tests before we move on to the more realistic challenges./news/performance-over-time-trim.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-over-time-trim.htmlMy biggest issue with Samsung SSDs in the past has been their extremely poor performance over time. Samsung doesn't do a lot of active garbage collection while writing in order to maintain ultra high write speeds, instead it prefers to clean up the drive during periods of little to no IO activity. Unfortunately this approach can result in pretty poor performance over time. In the old days the Samsung controllers would hit single digit write speeds, often slowing down to sub-HDD speeds./news/quantenna-announces-development-of-10g-wi-fi-802-11ac.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quantenna-announces-development-of-10g-wi-fi-802-11ac.htmlAt the beginning of 2012 Broadcom announced its first 802.11ac chipsets under the banner of 5G (5th generation) WiFi. Since then we've seen the latest high end notebooks adopt 802.11ac, as well as a handful of flagship smartphones and tablets. The first generation of 802.11ac devices brought 80MHz channels and 256-QAM to a 5GHz interface that enabled real transfer speeds of as much as 600/900Mbps (TCP/UDP) for a 3-antenna/3-stream solution./news/raja-koduri-head-of-amd-s-rtg-to-go.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/raja-koduri-head-of-amd-s-rtg-to-go.htmlLate last night, PC Perspective confirmed rumors that Raja Koduri, AMD's Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, is to go on sabbatical. Sourcing Raja’s internal letter to the RTG team, he will be taking leave from September 25 until an unspecified date in December, to spend time with his family. Dr Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, will lead RTG in the interim. As reproduced by Ryan Shrout, Raja’s letter is as follows:/news/rambus-develops-hbm2e-controller-phy-3-2-gbps-1024.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rambus-develops-hbm2e-controller-phy-3-2-gbps-1024.htmlThe latest enhancements to the HBM2 standard will clearly be appreciated by developers of memory bandwidth-hungry ASICs, however in order to add support of HBM2E to their designs, they are also going to need an appropriate controller as well as physical interface. For many companies developing of such IP in-house does not make financial sense, so Rambus has designed a highly-integrated HBM2E solution for licensing. The HBM2E standard supports 12-Hi DRAM stacks as well as memory devices of up to 16 Gbps, thus enabling to build up to 24 GB stacks using a 1024-bit bus./news/rock-band-2-cheap-electronic-drum-kit.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rock-band-2-cheap-electronic-drum-kit.htmlRock Band 2: Cheap Electronic Drum Kit? Aside from the great tutorials and the drum trainer, Rock Band 2 offers another mode that is pretty interesting. Freestyle mode allows the gamer to just play the drums. There are multiple options for different sounding kits, and what you end up with is essentially a cheap electronic drum kit. And when I say cheap I don't just mean inexpensive, I mean not all that great as well./news/software-ui-oxygenos-5-1.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-ui-oxygenos-5-1.htmlAs noted in the introduction, I haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time with OnePlus devices in the past so OxygenOS is also naturally something I haven’t had much experience with. OnePlus is known to have excellent software support with quick and frequency updates. Indeed my review device was very quick in getting the latest July update to 5.1.9 and most interesting for users living on the bleeding edge, OnePlus takes part in the Android P beta program and it’s available for the OP6./news/ssd-expresscard-for-those-on-the-go.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ssd-expresscard-for-those-on-the-go.htmlIntroductionAs the price/performance ratio of solid state memory continues to improve, so does the list of companies looking to find new uses for devices built around the technology. While some of the implementations of the technology have been obvious (memory for small portable devices like cameras and phones, for example), some of the other uses for solid state memory are only now becoming practical. One such implementation has been realized recently, in the form of ExpressCard-based portable storage./news/synthetic-benchmarks-atto-and-crystaldiskmark-usb-3-2-gen.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synthetic-benchmarks-atto-and-crystaldiskmark-usb-3-2-gen.htmlSynthetic Benchmarks - ATTO and CrystalDiskMark Most USB 3.2 Gen 2 NVMe-based SSDs claim read speeds of up to 1050 MBps and write speeds of up to 1000 MBps. Most of these claims are backed up by the ATTO benchmarks provided below. Unfortunately, these access traces are not very common in real-life scenarios. Drive Performance Benchmarks - ATTO The 2TB OWC Envoy Pro EX USB-C tops the write charts at close to 935 MBps, with the rest clustered between 850 MBps and 900 MBps./news/the-acomdata-e5-s-construction-acomdata-e5-320gb-external.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-acomdata-e5-s-construction-acomdata-e5-320gb-external.htmlThe AcomData E5’s Construction AcomData has taken a regular consumer level hard disk drive, the Western Digital 320GB Caviar SE with 8MB of cache and 7200RPM spindle speed, and slapped it in a 3.5” external case with two methods of connectivity: USB and FireWire. Still, the E5 is not just that. If we were to look at external devices from a few years back, we would see the same off-white colored plastic cases with serial port connectivity and no other features, but the power connection and a few flashing LEDs./news/the-asus-rog-strix-z270g-gaming-motherboard-review.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asus-rog-strix-z270g-gaming-motherboard-review.htmlAsus ROG Strix Z270G Gaming BIOS The BIOS of the Asus ROG Strix Z270G Gaming is graphical and multilingual, with mouse support. The default BIOS state is the “EZ Mode”, a single screen with very few tweakable options. From here the user can adjust the boot order, enable the RAM X.M.P. profiles (if applicable) and access the programmable QFan Control. One very interesting feature here is the “EZ Tuning Wizard”, an automatic overclocking option that is accessible via the “EZ Mode” screen./news/the-msi-gaming-booth-tour-with-dgpus-in-aios.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-gaming-booth-tour-with-dgpus-in-aios.htmlIt has been held as fact that for the past couple of years, gaming is helping to prop up a slowly decreasing desktop PC market. While many casual PC users have transitioned to tablets, laptops or 2-in-1s, the gaming community, and particularly the rise of eSports, has been accredited as filling that void. MSI’s current raison d’être across almost all of its product range is towards the gamer, and I was given an extensive tour of the products on display./news/the-top-to-bottom-factory-overclock.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-top-to-bottom-factory-overclock.htmlNVIDIA’s GF104 and GF114 GPUs have been a solid success for the company so far. 10 months after GF104 launched the GTX 460 series, NVIDIA has slowly been supplementing and replacing their former $200 king. In January we saw the launch of the GF114 based GTX 560 Ti, which gave us our first look at what a fully enabled GF1x4 GPU could do. However the GTX 560 Ti was positioned above the GTX 460 series in both performance and price, so it was more an addition to their lineup than a replacement for GTX 460./news/the-xserve-server-platform-no-more-apple-mysteries-part.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-xserve-server-platform-no-more-apple-mysteries-part.htmlThe Xserve Server Platform The most surprising and even astonishing results of the previous article were, of course, the MySQL and Apache server benchmarks. A powerful Windows XP based client (see above: "Client Configuration: Dual Opteron 250") fires off an enormous amount of Select, grouping and ordering read intensive queries and simulates 1 to 50 concurrent clients. All that query data is sent over a direct Gigabit Ethernet link to the tested server; in this case, a PowerMac Dual G5 2./news/ultra-m-2-x4-tested-with-xp941.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ultra-m-2-x4-tested-with-xp941.htmlASRock has a history of bringing new features to motherboards where others can tread conservatively. In recent generations, this means the Extreme11 range with an onboard LSI3008 for SATA ports, or the C2750D4I, an octo-core Atom platform with 64GB DRAM support and 12 SATA ports on a mini-ITX. For the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 we have an M.2 slot that runs at PCIe x4, with lanes taken direct from the CPU. We test the motherboard, the performance of this slot, and the effect of dual-GPU gaming with four CPU PCIe lanes tied up in storage./news/why-fix-what-isn-t-broken.htmlFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/why-fix-what-isn-t-broken.htmlLast year Western Digital overhauled their WD Black NVMe SSD with an upgrade to 3D NAND and a new in-house SSD controller, transforming the product line from one of the slowest NVMe drives to one of the top high-end competitors. Now the third generation WD Black SSD is here, with the model number SN750 to avoid confusion with its predecessors. (Internally, last year's model was known as the SN700, and the OEM version was the SN720./news/a-3dnow-primer-amd-s-k6-2-350-something.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-3dnow-primer-amd-s-k6-2-350-something.htmlThe K6-2 & 3DNow! You have probably heard many "techno-geeks" complain about how we don't really need all of this power in our computers today, ever wonder why that topic comes up so frequently?   Consider this, your CPU has the power to process millions of commands in a single second, but how much of your CPU's full potential do you imagine is being completely utilized by simply clicking on the Start Menu?/news/a-look-back-at-pci-and-other-buses.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-look-back-at-pci-and-other-buses.htmlIntel proposed the original PCI 1.0 specification back in 1991. The PCI Special Interest Group (which took over development of PCI), produced revision 2.0 in May 1993. Its rival at the time was the VESA Local Bus (VL-bus or VLB). Introduced by the Video Electronics Standards Association, VL-bus was a 32-bit bus that involved a third and forth connector appended to the end of a regular ISA slot. It ran at a nominal speed of 33MHz and offered significant performance over ISA./news/abit-kg7-raid-socket-a-amd-760-motherboard-roundup.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/abit-kg7-raid-socket-a-amd-760-motherboard-roundup.htmlABIT KG7-RAID Click to Enlarge ABIT KG7-RAID CPU Interface Socket-462 Chipset AMD 761 North Bridge VIA 686B South Bridge Form Factor ATX Bus Speeds 100 - 200MHz (in 1MHz increments) Core Voltages Supported 1.100 - 1.850 V (in 0.025V increments) I/O Voltages Supported 3.5 / 3.6 V/news/asus-rog-strix-x570-e-gaming.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-x570-e-gaming.htmlASUS's Strix brand represents its more mid-range gaming focused offerings and the ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming is one of two ATX sized Strix branded boards, with the X570-E being the more premium of the two models; the other being the slightly lower spec ASUS ROG Strix X570-F Gaming. Included is support for two-way NVIDIA SLI and up to three-way AMD CrossFire multi-graphics cards configurations, 2.5 Gigabit networking, and a Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface./news/asus-x99-a-software-asus-x99-a-motherboard-review.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-x99-a-software-asus-x99-a-motherboard-review.htmlASUS X99-A Software The software stack comes under the AI Suite 3 naming convention, where ASUS’ main play in this area comes from the Dual Intelligent Processors 5 (DIP5) interface. The dual intelligent processors part refers to the onboard EPU and TPU ICs which are an ASUS custom designed IC for monitoring and adjusting both the energy and turbo parts of the system. The 5 at the end of the name refers to both the version and the number of sub-apps within the DIP5 interface./news/asus-zephyrus-g14-ryzen-9-vs-razer-blade-core.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-zephyrus-g14-ryzen-9-vs-razer-blade-core.htmlCPU Benchmarks Comparison of these two CPUs is going to be interesting. Both laptops being tested excel in different ways: ASUS Zephyrus G14 vs Razer Blade 15 ASUS Zephyrus G14 AnandTech Razer Blade 15-inch Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU Core i7-9750H 8 / 16 Cores / Threads 6 / 12 1400 MHz Idle Frequency 1100 MHz 3000 MHz Base Frequency 2600 MHz 4300 MHz Rated 1T Turbo 4500 MHz 4500 MHz Measured 1T Turbo 4200 MHz 35 W TDP Listed 45 W - TDP Measured 35 W - PL2 Listed 60 W - PL2 Measured 45 W 16 GB DDR4-3200/news/asus-s-new-rog-crosshair-viii-impact-motherboard.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-s-new-rog-crosshair-viii-impact-motherboard.htmlOn the back of AMD's X570 chipset reveal, ASUS has launched a wave of new 3rd generation AM4 models to complement the impending Ryzen 3000 series processors. Not seen since Intel's Z170 chipset, the Impact represents a comeback of one of the most premium mini-ITX motherboard ranges for desktop. We now have the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact. The biggest surprise of the unveiling of the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact it's based on the mini-DTX form factor which is similar to mini-ITX, but with a slightly longer frame with the intention of adding an extra expansion slot onto the PCB./news/basemark-releases-vrscore-a-vr-vr-headset-benchmark-suite.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/basemark-releases-vrscore-a-vr-vr-headset-benchmark-suite.htmlBack in 2015 as the development of the first generation of modern VR headsets was coming to a close, benchmark developer Basemark announced that they would be applying their talents to the field of VR. The benchmark, now named VRScore, was to be developed in conjunction with Crytek and would serve as a multi-faceted VR test suite for VR headsets and computers, covering everything from rendering performance to display latency. At the time Basemark was expecting to launch the benchmark in mid-to-late 2016, and while development has taken a bit longer than expected, they are finally releasing version 1./news/blackberry-acquires-cylance-gets-ai-ml-security-technology.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/blackberry-acquires-cylance-gets-ai-ml-security-technology.htmlBlackBerry Limited has announced that it had completed acquisition of Cylance, a company developing machine learning and artificial intelligence-based security tech. The move adds valuable IP and technologies to BlackBerry’s vast portfolio of security solutions for the connected world. Cylance uses sophisticated AI and ML algorithms to predict, detect, and prevent, known and unknown threats. Such technologies will enhance BlackBerry’s QNX and Spark platforms for connected cars (and not only) as well as various IoT devices./news/board-features-and-visual-inspection.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/board-features-and-visual-inspection.htmlBoard Features The B350 Tomahawk is a solid option given the component choice and offers virtually everything you would expect from a $100 offering. One of the defining features of this particular B350 model is that it does technically support two-way CrossFireX multi graphics cards configurations. The top PCIe 3.0 slot, which has been reinforced with MSI’s Steel Armor, operates at x16 with a single GPU, whereas the second slot operates at x4, but is only PCIe 2./news/board-features-test-bed-and-setup.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/board-features-test-bed-and-setup.htmlBoard Features The MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI is a mid-ranged ATX motherboard that represents MSI's Performance Gaming series. As expected from a motherboard aimed at gamers, it has a relatively premium feature set that conforms to what other companies offer in the mid-range with their Z690 offerings. The MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI has a good variety of storage options, including three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, one PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA M.2, and one PCIe 3./news/cpu-and-system-performance-the-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-performance.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-and-system-performance-the-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-performance.htmlCPU and System Performance Snapdragon 820 included Qualcomm’s first fully-custom 64-bit CPU cores. The unique microarchitecture’s floating-point IPC was very good, but integer IPC was no better than ARM’s older A57 core. Its power efficiency was lower than competing cores as well. Instead of using a revised quad-core Kryo arrangement for Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm decided to go in a completely different direction. The new Kryo 280, despite the similar name, shares no design DNA with the original Kryo./news/design-and-the-zero-gravity-hinge.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/design-and-the-zero-gravity-hinge.htmlMicrosoft has built a brand around Surface, and that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. The Surface Studio fits in very well with the design ethos of the rest of the Surface lineup, and there has been quite a bit of attention to details paid in the creation of their first desktop computer. The first, and most obvious, is the finish, which matches perfectly with the other Surface devices, despite being made from aluminum rather than the magnesium alloy used on the portable products./news/gpu-performance-power-the-huawei-mate-30-pro-review.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-power-the-huawei-mate-30-pro-review.htmlGPU Performance & Power In terms of 3D gaming and GPU performance, we expect the Kirin 990 and the Mate 30 Pro to do quite well. The GPU itself is not only a large step up from the MP10 configuration on the Kirin 980, but also larger than Samsung’s Exynos 9820 MP12 implementation. Huawei also claimed to be able to achieve better performance than the Snapdragon 855, which seems quite plausible./news/honor-launches-the-honor-9-lite.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/honor-launches-the-honor-9-lite.htmlToday Honor officially launches the Honor 9 Lite for western markets. The launch follows that of the Honor 7X and V10 last month which were the company’s first models to sport 18:9 screen aspect ratios. The Honor 9 Lite follows the trend and also introduces itself as a slightly smaller 5.65” diameter variant. New Honor 9 Lite   Honor 9 Lite Honor 9 SoC HiSilicon Kirin 6594x Cortex-A53 @ 2./news/how-does-the-via-pci-agp-lock-work.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/how-does-the-via-pci-agp-lock-work.htmlHow Does the VIA PCI/AGP Lock Work? As we talked to more manufacturers at Computex, we became concerned about what might become a serious problem for many of our readers - a VIA AGP/PCI lock on the K8T800 PRO that either does not work at all or one that does not work as intended, providing only very limited overclocking abilities. Anand contacted VIA and talked with engineers to try to find out how the lock was constructed and to try to determine what might be wrong with the K8T800 PRO chipsets that were starting to find their way to manufacturers./news/hp-moonshot-x-gene-1-atom-c2000-and-xeon.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-moonshot-x-gene-1-atom-c2000-and-xeon.htmlHP Moonshot We discussed the HP Moonshot back in April 2013. The Moonshot is HP's answer to SeaMicro's SM15000: a large 4.3U chassis with no less than 45 cartridges that share three different fabrics: network, storage, and clustering. Each cartridge can contain one to four micro servers or "nodes". Just like a blade server, cooling (five fans), power (four PSUs), and uplinks are shared. Back in April 2013, the only available cartridge was based on the anemic Atom S1260, a real shame for such an excellent chassis./news/intel-publishes-plans-to-wind-down-shipments-of-7th.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-publishes-plans-to-wind-down-shipments-of-7th.htmlWith Intel’s announcement this week that they will be releasing a new generation of Core X-series high-end desktop (HEDT) processors this fall, the company has also begun working on their plans to phase out the previous generation of HEDT processors. Revealed this week in a product change notification on Intel’s website, the company will soon be winding down production and shipment of their 7th Gen Core “Skylake-X” processors, with the final chips shipping next spring./news/intel-s-haswell-ep-xeons-with-ddr3-and-ddr4.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-haswell-ep-xeons-with-ddr3-and-ddr4.htmlJohan’s awesome overview of the Haswell-EP ecosystem showed that the server processor line from Intel is firmly in the track for DDR4 memory along with the associated benefits of lower power consumption, higher absolute frequencies and higher capacity modules. At that point, we all assumed that all Haswell-EP Xeons using the LGA2011-3 socket were DDR4 only, requiring each new CPU to be used with the newer generation modules. However thanks to ASRock’s server team, ASRock Rack, it would seem that there will be some Xeons for sale from Intel with both DDR3 and DDR4 support./news/kt400a-north-bridge-via-responds-with-kt400a-five-months.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kt400a-north-bridge-via-responds-with-kt400a-five-months.htmlKT400A North Bridge In their very motherboard-manufacturer friendly nature, VIA has once again made the 'A' update to their latest chipset pin-compatible with its predecessor; the KT400A North Bridge is a drop in replacement for the KT400, which isn't really a surprise considering that the basic feature set of the North Bridge remains unchanged. The KT400A still boasts support for AGP 8X, 266/333MHz FSB, DDR200/266/333/400 and features a 533MB/s link between the North and South Bridge./news/miniature-professional-workstation-with-xeon-and-quadro.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/miniature-professional-workstation-with-xeon-and-quadro.htmlThis week HP has announced its new Z2 Mini G3 workstation, which weds a small form-factor with workstation-grade capabilities, along with rated reliability and performance. The new system can integrate Intel’s current and next-generation Core i7 or Xeon CPUs, NVIDIA’s Quadro GPU, two storage devices and up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory. One of the desktop PC categories that is actually growing these days is SFF PCs. Such systems are faster than many outdated desktops and are designed to be subtle and discreet./news/msi-b550-a-pro-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-b550-a-pro-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlMSI B550-A Pro The last in an interesting B550 product stack from MSI is the brands professional-focused budget model, the B550-A Pro. In recent years, the A-Pro model has been one of MSI’s most basic designs and cheapest with the B450-A Pro costing just $90 at launch. The MSI B550-A Pro builds upon a basic all-black design with some notable inclusions including two M.2 slots, six SATA ports, a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller and a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec./news/new-e-core-only-xeons-in-2024.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-e-core-only-xeons-in-2024.htmlIt’s no secret that Intel’s enterprise processor platform has been stretched in recent generations. Compared to the competition, Intel is chasing its multi-die strategy while relying on a manufacturing platform that hasn’t offered the best in the market. That being said, Intel is quoting more shipments of its latest Xeon products in December than AMD shipped in all of 2021, and the company is launching the next generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon Scalable platform later in 2022./news/opengl-es-3-2-opengl-extensions-announced.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/opengl-es-3-2-opengl-extensions-announced.htmlKicking off this week in Los Angeles is SIGGRAPH 2015, the computer graphics industry’s annual professional conference. As the biggest graphics event of the year this show has become the Khronos Group’s favorite venue for delivering news about the state and development of OpenGL, and this year’s show is no exception. This week will see Khronos delivering news on both OpenGL and OpenGL ES, along with the formation of the OpenGL SC 2./news/osd-speakers-scaling-sceptre-x270w-1080p-review-a-value.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/osd-speakers-scaling-sceptre-x270w-1080p-review-a-value.htmlOSD, Speakers, Scaling The X270W’s OSD is relatively utilitarian. I feel like I’ve seen this OSD style on other monitors as well - there isn’t anything wrong with it, it’s just a bit basic and sometimes cumbersome to get used to [1] being exit and [2] being select, with up and down in-between. There are settings like you’d expect for contrast, brightness, color temperature, dynamic contrast ratio (DCR), an “Eco mode” that boosts contrast way up and brightness way down, and “opticolor” settings for some presets if you so choose./news/overall-system-performance-using-pcmark-vantage.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overall-system-performance-using-pcmark-vantage.htmlNext up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite./news/performance-a-huge-improvement.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-a-huge-improvement.htmlThere's no need for an introduction. Arrandale is going to deliver the single largest performance improvement we've seen from a new mobile processor in years. Hyper-Threading brings the many of the benefits of having a quad-core processor without the added power consumption. Turbo is also extremely useful in mobile since it's one of the most TDP-constrained environments you can imagine. First up we have SYSMark 2007. There just isn't a better way of summing up the performance improvement:/news/power-temperature-and-noise-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-and-noise-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660.htmlPower, Temperature, and Noise As always, we'll take a look at power, temperature, and noise of the GTX 1660 Ti, though as a pure custom launch we aren't expecting anything out of the ordinary. As mentioned earlier, the XC Black board has already revealed itself in its RTX 2060 guise. As this is a new GPU, we will quickly review the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti's stock voltages and clockspeeds as well./news/processing-and-input-latency-apple-27-inch-led-cinema.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/processing-and-input-latency-apple-27-inch-led-cinema.htmlProcessing and Input Latency Processing and display lag are very important for gamers, and it’s most often nebulously reported if at all. We’ve discussed this in previous display reviews, but what matters most is how the display acts in real world testing. I’ve been doing previous tests by comparing LCDs with first a 17” CRT. To measure input and processing lag we're sending the same frame data to both the LCD tested and a 17"/news/spotlight-sms-and-new-settings.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/spotlight-sms-and-new-settings.htmlSpotlight Exclusions Make Your Phone More People-Friendly As the iOS and devices that run it become more PC-like, so will the options that the iOS offers. The best example in iOS 4 is the ability to control what the Spotlight search feature is allowed to search: You now have the ability to exclude contacts or emails among other things from appearing in your search results. This is an important feature if you let other people use your phone from time to time and don’t want something sensitive accidentally popping up when your friend searches for something innocent like snowballs on your phone./news/synopsys-demonstrates-cxl-and-ccix-1-1-over-pcie.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synopsys-demonstrates-cxl-and-ccix-1-1-over-pcie.htmlSynopsys, one of the leading developers of chip development tools and silicon IP, demonstrated its CXL over PCIe 5.0 as well as CCIX 1.1 over PCIe 5.0 solutions at ArmTechCon 2019. The showcase indicates that the company’s IP is up and running, and is ready to be licensed by interested parties. CXL and CCIX are chip-to-chip interconnect protocols for connecting processors to various accelerators that maintains memory and cache coherency at low latencies./news/system-performance-ul-and-bapco-benchmarks.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-ul-and-bapco-benchmarks.htmlOur 2022 Q4 update to the test suite for Windows 11-based systems carries over some of the standard benchmarks we have been using over the last several years, including UL's PCMark. New additions include BAPCo's CrossMark multi-platform benchmarking tool, as well as UL's Procyon benchmark suite. UL PCMark 10 UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation)./news/the-2018-gpu-benchmark-suite-and-the-test.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-2018-gpu-benchmark-suite-and-the-test.htmlThe 2018 GPU Benchmark Suite & the Test Another year marks another update to our GPU benchmark suite. This time, however, is more in line with a maintenance update than it is a complete overhaul. Although we've done some extended compute and deep learning benchmarking in the past year, and even some HDR gaming impressions, our compute and synthetic lineup remains largely the same. But before getting into the details, let's start with the bulk of benchmarking, and the biggest reason for these cards anyhow: games./news/the-asrock-z490-phantom-gaming-4sr.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asrock-z490-phantom-gaming-4sr.htmlOne of the biggest legacy characteristics of the modern PC is how the power supply connects to the motherboard – not only is it one big chunky 24-pin power connector in to the board, but it has to supply all of the relevant voltages, including 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V. Over the last two decades, standards that used 5 V and 3.3 V have almost disappeared, except for a last few legacy applications./news/the-corsair-strafe-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-corsair-strafe-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlExternally, the STRAFE is a completely different design than any of the RGB family keyboards that we reviewed in the past. Although the design remains modern and is rather elegant, the flat metallic body is now gone, as the STRAFE has a low profile plastic frame without a wrist rest or support for one. The keys are installed on a red support plate for increased visual contrast and mechanical strength. It is noteworthy to mention that the controversial "/news/the-dock-experience-asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-review.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-dock-experience-asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-review.htmlThe Dock Experience The dock experience is better than I had originally written, but I still have issues with the setup. Typing on the dock is a non-issue, in fact I'd call it a pleasure, as long as you're fine with the short travel of chicklet style keyboards. Other than some slight differences in keypress sound, the dock's physical keyboard is very similar to the MacBook Air keyboard. Given how closely ASUS learns from Apple, this is a decision I'm not surprised by./news/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.htmlThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Bethesda's epic sword & magic game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our RPG of choice for benchmarking. It's altogether a good CPU benchmark thanks to its complex scripting and AI, but it also can end up pushing a large number of fairly complex models and effects at once, especially with the addition of the high resolution texture pack. Even at 1920 Skyrim’s performance breaks cards down into one of two general categories: cards that have enough RAM, and cards that don’t./news/the-huawei-mate-9-review.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-huawei-mate-9-review.htmlDisplay The Mate 9 still uses an FHD (1920x1080) IPS LCD like the Mate 8, but this is an entirely new panel with a different backlight assembly and a small reduction in screen size from 6 inches to 5.9 inches. This is more than just a rounding error: The Mate 9’s screen is definitely smaller, although it’s difficult to notice unless the two phones are sitting side by side. Pixel density increases to 373ppi, up from the Mate 8’s 368ppi, but again this is not really noticeable./news/the-steelseries-arctis-pro-gaming-headset-lineup-gamedac-or.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-steelseries-arctis-pro-gaming-headset-lineup-gamedac-or.htmlGameDAC The other half of the Arctis Pro + GameDAC is, of course, the GameDAC, and this small USB device is truly where a lot of the magic happens. SteelSeries has put a lot of thought, and experience, into this little marvel. This is the key to being able to offer the first High Resolution Certified gaming headset. So first, what is the GameDAC? SteelSeries built their own audio device for the Arctis Pro, allowing them to bypass the onboard audio of the PC, laptop, or PlayStation 4./news/the-ultimate-gpu-air-cooling-solution.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-ultimate-gpu-air-cooling-solution.htmlGraphics cards and PCIe cards come with a limited set of cooling options. Some of the low TDP models are passive, before going up to active cooling on higher TDP models. Air cooling comes with one, two, or three fans, and even moves to triple-slot coolers. Beyond this is liquid cooling, either with a dedicated pump and reservoir per card, or a water block in a combined water cooling system. What if you want to deafen your neighbors with noise?/news/visual-inspection-the-gigabyte-z390-aorus-pro-wifi-motherboard.htmlThu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-gigabyte-z390-aorus-pro-wifi-motherboard.htmlVisual Inspection The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI positions itself in a highly contested price bracket at $200 and looks to stand out as one of the most unique styled ATX sized Z390 motherboards. It has stiff competition from models such as the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 6 ($196), the ASUS ROG Strix Z390-H Gaming ($190) and the MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon ($200).  Nestled onto a fully black PCB is a nicely contrasting Aorus Falcon logo coming from the bottom left and the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI uses a black and silver heatsinks with a black glossy plastic rear panel cover./news/16-000-dpi-interchangeable-grips-leds.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/16-000-dpi-interchangeable-grips-leds.htmlCorsair this week released its latest flagship gaming mouse, the new Glaive RGB. The company's latest right-handed mouse incorporates a new sensor, interchangeable grips, programmable RGB lighting as well as on-board storage for profiles. And, as you'd expect for such a mouse, Corsair is aiming solidly at the high-end market, going after gamers looking for a high-end wired mouse. With the rise of PC gaming in the recent years, multiple companies have entered the market of gaming peripherals with mice, keyboards, headsets and other gear./news/2x8-gb-at-ddr3-2800-12-14-14-1.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2x8-gb-at-ddr3-2800-12-14-14-1.htmlThe final kit in our current run of DDR3 on Intel reviews falls at the feet of a kit that blends a high rated speed with density.  When it comes to high MHz numbers, we typically see 4 GB modules as the standard, due to a higher density kit being more difficult to push in frequency.  ADATA sampled us two of their DDR3-2800 C12 kits in 2x8 GB form, representing perhaps one of the final hurdles before DDR4 reaches the market, as long as your wallets are deep enough./news/3d-vision-surround-nvidia-s-eyefinity.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3d-vision-surround-nvidia-s-eyefinity.html3D Vision Surround: NVIDIA’s Eyefinity During our meeting with NVIDIA, they were also showing off 3D Vision Surround, which was announced at the start of CES at their press conference. 3D Vision Surround is not inherently a GF100 technology, but since it’s being timed for release along-side GF100 cards, we’re going to take a moment to discuss it. If you’ve seen Matrox’s TripleHead2Go or AMD’s Eyefinity in action, then you know what 3D Vision Surround is./news/abit-ab9-pro-board-layout-and-features.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/abit-ab9-pro-board-layout-and-features.htmlAbit AB9 Pro: Board Layout and Features Click to enlarge Abit designed a board that has one of the more interesting layouts we have seen in a long time. While the board was very easy to install in our mid-size ATX case we did have some issues with utilizing our Optical drive in the top bay due to the location of the JMicron powered IDE port that is located in between the number two PCI Express x1 slot and the number one PCI slot./news/alldocube-x-android-tablet-quick-look-low-cost-oled.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/alldocube-x-android-tablet-quick-look-low-cost-oled.htmlBack in August we first talked about the Alldocube X tablet, launching with Android 8.1. The company sent us one to check out, so I’ve run some tests on it to kick the tires a bit. This isn’t going to be a full review, but some first impressions along with some performance levels. The Android tablet market hasn’t really worked out the way Google likely expected, and we don’t really see a lot of high-end tablets launching with Android, and even Google has launched their latest tablet with Chrome OS./news/amd-widens-availability-of-ryzen-ai-software-for-developers.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-widens-availability-of-ryzen-ai-software-for-developers.htmlFurther to the announcement that AMD is refreshing their Phoenix-based 7040HS series for mobiles with the newer 'Hawk Point' 8040HS family for 2024, AMD is set to drive more development for AI within the PC market. Designed to provide a more holistic end-user experience for adopters of hardware with the Ryzen AI NPU, AMD has made its latest version of the Ryzen AI Software available to the broader ecosystem. This is designed to allow software developers to deploy machine learning models into their software to deliver more comprehensive features in tandem with their Ryzen AI NPU and Microsoft Windows 11./news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5850-the-other-shoe-drops.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5850-the-other-shoe-drops.htmlAMD’s Radeon HD 5850: The Other Shoe Drops “For those of you looking for the above and a repeat of the RV770/GT200 launch where prices will go into a free fall, you’re going to come away disappointed. That task will fall upon the 5850, and we’re looking forward to reviewing it as soon as we can.” -From our Radeon HD 5870 Review Today the other shoe drops, with AMD launching the 5870’s companion card: the slightly pared down 5850./news/battery-life-and-charge-time.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-and-charge-time.htmlBattery Life Every mobile device with a battery is going to be held back by it’s battery life, and there’s always trade-offs to be had. Larger batteries cost money, and add weight, so smaller batteries with higher efficiency can be the way to go. Chuwi has only outfitted the LapBook 12.3 with a 37 Wh battery, compared to the larger 45 Wh battery in it’s larger LapBook 14.1 sibling, so expectations are that it won’t be able to live up to that device for outright battery life./news/cat-s61-smartphone-hands-on-first-impressions.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cat-s61-smartphone-hands-on-first-impressions.htmlEarlier this month Bullitt Group and Cat introduced the new Cat S61 ruggedized smartphone for workers and first responders who have to operate in harsh environments. These 'ruggedized phones' have to be able to work in areas such as industrial sites, disasters, or conflict zones, and also require special features to assist the users. The phone was being displayed at Mobile World Congress last week, and since this is the first handset to be outfitted the combination of a FLIR thermal camera, a laser-assisted distance meter, and an air quality analyzer, I could not miss an opportunity to check it out in real life./news/clevo-xmg-prepare-notebooks-w-12-core-amd-ryzen.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/clevo-xmg-prepare-notebooks-w-12-core-amd-ryzen.htmlAMD attracted a lot of attention at CES 2020 with its launch of the Ryzen 4000-series Mobile APUs with up to eight cores in a 15W TDP form factor. The processors enable AMD to compete for all segments of the notebooks market, from ultra-portables to high-end gaming machines for the first time in years. But when it comes to gaming, there are people who always want more and for them Clevo and its partner XMG are preparing a desktop replacement laptop with an AMD Ryzen 3000-series processor featuring up to 12 cores./news/cold-test-results-room-ambient-temperature.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cold-test-results-room-ambient-temperature.htmlCold Test Results For the testing of PSUs, we are using high precision electronic loads with a maximum power draw of 2700 Watts, a Rigol DS5042M 40 MHz oscilloscope, an Extech 380803 power analyzer, two high precision UNI-T UT-325 digital thermometers, an Extech HD600 SPL meter, a self-designed hotbox and various other bits and parts. For a thorough explanation of our testing methodology and more details on our equipment, please refer to our How We Test PSUs - 2014 Pipeline post./news/display-quality-nexus-7-2013.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-quality-nexus-7-2013.htmlThe real highlight of the new Nexus 7 is of course the much higher resolution display. At 1920x1200 the Nexus 7 is now the highest resolution 7-inch tablet. This new IPS panel is made by JDI (Japan Display Inc) and boasts better viewing angles, 30 percent more gamut than the previous one, and of course better dot pitch of 323 PPI. Alongside that the new Nexus 7 also doesn’t have the always-on dynamic brightness and contrast (NVIDIA Prism / smartdimmer) that many including myself found frustrating with the original Nexus 7./news/gaming-at-3-ghz-grid-autosport.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-at-3-ghz-grid-autosport.htmlGRID: Autosport at 3 GHz No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version./news/gaming-performance-1440p-the-amd-ryzen-9-7950x3d-review.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-1440p-the-amd-ryzen-9-7950x3d-review.htmlGaming Performance: 1440p In our Ryzen 7000 series review, we saw users commenting about testing games for CPU reviews at 1440p, so we have duly obliged here. Those interested in 1440p performance with minimal image quality – particularly the esports crowd – will be glad to know that we will be testing at this resolution going forward into 2023 and beyond. We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the other Ryzen 7000 series we've tested./news/hp-dreamcolor-z27x-g2-display-qhd-dci-p3-usb.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-dreamcolor-z27x-g2-display-qhd-dci-p3-usb.htmlHP DreamColor Z27x G2 Display HP's new professional monitor is the DreamColor Z27x G2 Studio Display. The new LCD features automatic calibration techmp;pgu and supports the key color spaces used in DCC today. In addition, the DreamColor Z27x G2 has all modern inputs and even a KVM keyboard connection, ensuring compatibility with various systems and easy switching between connected PCs. The HP DreamColor Z27x G2 display is based on a 27-inch 8-bit + FRC IPS panel featuring a 2560×1440 resolution, 250 nits brightness*, a 1500:1 typical static contrast ratio, a 10./news/htc-s-windows-phone-8x-windows-phone-8-and.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-s-windows-phone-8x-windows-phone-8-and.htmlFor the past few days I’ve been trying out WP8 on an HTC 8X and running it through its paces. My time has been pretty limited, so I hesitate to call this a full review of either WP8 or the 8X, but it’s worth going over basic impressions of the device and how the 8X stacks up as a smartphone. I played with an 8X a while ago and thus had a great feeling for its form factor, but couldn’t make it past the lock screen./news/intel-discontinues-wigig-cards-antenna-and-sink-set-to.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-discontinues-wigig-cards-antenna-and-sink-set-to.htmlIn a surprising move, Intel has announced plans to discontinue a number of their 802.11ad products. The company intends to cease shipments of the majority of its WiGig devices by late 2017. Intel has not announced any replacements for the 802.11ad parts and says that it would focus on WiGig solutions designed for VR applications. Intel is formally initiating the EOL program for the Wireless Gigabit 11000 and Tri Band Wireless-AC 18260 controllers, the Wireless Gigabit Antenna-M M100041 antenna and the Wireless Gigabit Sink W13100 sink today (September 8)./news/intel-haswell-e-overclocking-the-intel-haswell-e-cpu.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-haswell-e-overclocking-the-intel-haswell-e-cpu.htmlIntel Haswell-E Overclocking One of the burgeoning questions relating to overclocking over the past couple of years has been the quality of Intel’s construction under the heatspreader relating to thermal interface material and adhesives. This caused enough of a talking point for Intel to release Devil’s Canyon (read our review here) which featured an upgraded interface and essentially reduced the thermal pressure restricting the overclock. Thankfully Intel has not decided to play around with the extreme edition platform too much since Nehalem./news/intel-s-long-awaited-btx-form-factor.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-long-awaited-btx-form-factor.htmlIntroducing BTX Intel released news of their Pentium 4 570J just yesterday when they lifted the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) on it.  Check out our benchmarks here. Today, a day after they released their 3.8GHz Prescott, Intel lifts their NDA on the longed for details of their new BTX form factor. At Computex this past summer the technology on the minds of the attendees was the new reengineered PC form factor that was said to change the way we look at desktop systems and the way they are to be cooled./news/intel-s-core-i5-9400f-hits-amazon.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-core-i5-9400f-hits-amazon.htmlAmazon has started to list Intel’s six-core Core i5-9400F desktop processor that lacks integrated graphics, belongs to the Coffee Lake Refresh family, and is produced using the company’s 14 nm process technology. The CPU is aimed at mainstream PCs and generally expands availability of Intel’s six-core processors. The Core i5-9400F CPU features six cores without Hyper-Threading operating at 2.9 – 4.1 GHz, packs 9 MB of L3 cache, supports DDR4-2666 memory, and is rated for a 65 W TDP./news/micron-announces-32gb-ddr4-nvdimm-n-modules.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/micron-announces-32gb-ddr4-nvdimm-n-modules.htmlMicron is announcing today their next generation of NVDIMM-N modules combining DDR4 DRAM with NAND flash memory to support persistent memory usage models. The new 32GB modules double the capacity of Micron's previous NVDIMMs and boost the speed rating to DDR4-2933 CL21, faster than what current server platforms support. Micron is not new to the Non-Volatile DIMM market: their first DDR3 NVDIMMs predated JEDEC standardization. The new 32GB modules were preceded by 8GB and 16GB DDR4 NVDIMMs./news/msi-addresses-cpu-voltages-on-am5-motherboards-for-ryzen.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-addresses-cpu-voltages-on-am5-motherboards-for-ryzen.htmlIn response to recent reports of AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D processors being damaged, MSI has announced a wave of firmware updates to address potential issues. The highlight of MSI's new wave of BIOS versions for its AM5 motherboards is that the company is further locking down the voltage controls for X3D chips, removing support for positive offset voltages. Going forward, it will only be possible to use negative offset voltages on X3D chips, ensuring that the sensitive V-Cache-equipped X3D chips can't be overvolted and put at risk of damage./news/msi-gt63-gt83-titans-upgraded-with-six-core-cpus.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-gt63-gt83-titans-upgraded-with-six-core-cpus.htmlAmong the many laptops getting a refresh this month alongside Intel's new 8th gen Core processors are the 15.6-inch GT63 and the 18.4-inch GT83 desktop replacement laptops, both of which are receiving hex-core CPUs along with faster Samsung SSDs and DRAM. Designed to offer ultimate performance at any cost, these laptops are MSI's no-compromises devices, meaning the best CPUs, the best GPUs, and the best storage that can be reasonably fit into a luggable computer./news/msi-p55-gd65-mid-range-p55-for-the-masses.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-p55-gd65-mid-range-p55-for-the-masses.htmlOverview/Conclusion- One of the more interesting boards we have tested is the MSI P55-GD65. This particular motherboard is aimed straight at the enthusiast/gaming audience who wants CrossFireX or SLI capabilities at a midrange price of $160. Like our recent review of the Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, we purchased the MSI P55-GD65 motherboard and tested the board and applications without any contact with MSI in order to approximate a true user experience./news/new-15-6-inch-carbon-fiber-chassis.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-15-6-inch-carbon-fiber-chassis.htmlLenovo has introduced its second-generation ultra-thin ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation. The new 15.6-inch laptop promises to be faster than its predecessor launched last year because of the new CPU and GPU, yet it will use a new carbon fiber chassis that is actually thinner and slightly lighter. Lenovo’s ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 is based on Intel’s 9th Gen Core or Xeon processor that is paired with up to 64 GB DDR4 memory with or without ECC (up to two SO-DIMMs), NVIDIA’s Quadro T1000 or Quadro T2000 graphics on higher-end SKUs, and up to two M./news/nvidia-announces-gameworks-sdk-3-1.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-announces-gameworks-sdk-3-1.htmlInnovation is hard work. Doing work that has already been done elsewhere can be satisfying, but also annoying - no-one wants to reinvent the wheel every time. In the realm of 3D graphics, we are not limited to creating our wares from scratch - toolsets such as NVIDIA GameWorks are provided to developers allowing them to include advanced graphics rendering and physical simulation features into their products. The latest version, NVIDIA GameWorks 3./news/osd-controls-menus-and-audio-out.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/osd-controls-menus-and-audio-out.htmlOSD Controls and Menus I didn't mention OSD controls on the previous page because they're somewhat interesting on the U3011. Remember that HP stipulated that their ZR30w has no OSD because there's currently no control SoC for it. Well, Dell has one, and they definitely use it and provide an OSD for the U3011.  First up, the buttons are very understated and are located in the bottom right. The power button glows steady blue when powered, and pulses orange when in standby./news/peeking-inside-the-new-precision-line.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/peeking-inside-the-new-precision-line.htmlPeeking Inside the New Precision Line Dell held a press event in San Francisco, California on Friday, April 20th to unveil their revised Precision line-up and featured guest speakers from both the mechanical engineering industries and the motion graphics industries as well as guests from NVIDIA and Intel. The new Precision line is a very big deal to Dell, and it's clear they went back to the drawing board after their last generation./news/performance-consistency-intel-ssd-dc-s3500-review-480gb-part.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-consistency-intel-ssd-dc-s3500-review-480gb-part.htmlPerformance Consistency In our Intel SSD DC S3700 review I introduced a new method of characterizing performance: looking at the latency of individual operations over time. The S3700 promised a level of performance consistency that was unmatched in the industry, and as a result needed some additional testing to show that. The reason we don't have consistent IO latency with SSDs is because inevitably all controllers have to do some amount of defragmentation or garbage collection in order to continue operating at high speeds./news/playstation-3-e3-2006-playstation-3-and-nintendo-wii.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playstation-3-e3-2006-playstation-3-and-nintendo-wii.htmlPlayStation 3 We also had some game time with the PlayStation 3 as well as a chance to speak with an associate developer of the game Warhawk. While the controller of the PS3 is very similar to the PS2 controller, one of the additions is that it now has a gyroscope inside. This allows you to control games by tilting the controller as opposed to just pressing buttons. In some ways, it's similar to the Wii controller, but in a more limited fashion./news/qnix-qx2710-led-dpmulti-true10-review.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qnix-qx2710-led-dpmulti-true10-review.htmlConclusions Nothing in the QNIX took me by surprise when I reviewed it. The menu system, while basic, allows for some adjustments to be made to the display. The monitor stand is like most other entry-level displays and has very little you can adjust on it aside from the tilt. The inputs are nicely side-mounted, which I wish more companies would do. It's not a particularly stylish display, but then we wouldn't expect that from a budget QHD LCD./news/raidmax-atx-268wsp-value-case-roundup-a-look-at.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/raidmax-atx-268wsp-value-case-roundup-a-look-at.htmlRaidmax ATX-268WSP Our first contender, the 268WSP from Raidmax, is based on the design of Raidmax's Astro 268 PC case. Raidmax has a decent number of products under their belt and has a very strong position in the industry. Their products range from gaming chassis, power supplies and accessories as most case companies do, as well as budget-priced cases like the 268WSP that we have in our hands today./news/razer-reveals-their-triple-monitor-gaming-laptop-concept-project.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-reveals-their-triple-monitor-gaming-laptop-concept-project.htmlWhat do you do after you’ve launched one of the thinnest and lightest gaming laptops featuring the new NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU? Razer found itself in this situation after announcing the long anticipated update to their large gaming laptop last year, with the launch of the Razer Blade Pro. At 7.8 lbs and 0.88 inches thick, it’s one of the most interesting gaming laptops announced last year, and our full review is coming soon./news/samsung-s-exynos-5422-the-ideal-big-little-exynos.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-s-exynos-5422-the-ideal-big-little-exynos.htmlSamsung announced two new mobile SoCs at MWC today. The first is an update to the Exynos 5 Octa with the new Exynos 5422. The 5422 is a mild update to the 5420, which was found in some international variants of the Galaxy Note 3. The new SoC is still built on a 28nm process at Samsung, but enjoys much higher frequencies on both the Cortex A7 and A15 clusters. The two clusters can run their cores at up to 1./news/setup-notes-and-platform-analysis.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/setup-notes-and-platform-analysis.htmlOur review sample of the GEEKOM A5 came with all necessary components pre-installed - including the OS. Prior to setting up the OS on first boot, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface. Unlike the GUI-based UEFI interface offered by tier-one vendors, the BIOS here is a vanilla one with keyboard-only navigation. There are plenty of configurable options, and the video below presents an overview of the features./news/sure-sense-endpoint-security-controller.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sure-sense-endpoint-security-controller.htmlAntivirus software is getting more robust, but so does malware. In a bid to make its PCs more secure, HP is introducing a set of hardware and software-based methods that include use of deep learning AI. HP's Sure Sense A key part of HP’s security push initiative is the company’s Sure Sense technology that is designed to protect computers both from known and unknown malware. To a large degree, HP’s Sure Sense resembles an antivirus, yet the manufacturer claims that it is considerably more sophisticated./news/synology-launches-rangeley-based-ds415-dsm-5-1-beta.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synology-launches-rangeley-based-ds415-dsm-5-1-beta.htmlSynology has been relatively quiet over the last couple of months (barring the responses to various security issues), but, today, they are coming out with a couple of expected announcements. Seagate has the bragging rights for being the first vendor with an off-the-shelf NAS based on an Intel Rangeley SoC (the storage platform integrating Silvermont CPU cores). Today, Synology is introducing their first NAS model utilizing one of the Silvermont-based SoCs, the DS415+./news/the-best-smartphone-for-video-playback.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-best-smartphone-for-video-playback.htmlI’m always surprised when I see someone watching a movie on an iPhone. The screen seems too small and you have to either hold the phone or hunch over it to watch. On top of that you need to transcode your content into an iPhone friendly format to get it to work. While you still need to do the latter to watch videos on the EVO 4G, the screen and the kickstand make it a much better experience./news/the-msi-z170a-sli-plus-review-redefining-the-base.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-z170a-sli-plus-review-redefining-the-base.htmlMSI Z170A SLI PLUS Software A large portion of this page will be identical to the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 review, updated for specific features for the Z170A SLI PLUS. In line with everything else in the motherboard space, MSI’s software package also gets an iterative update with the new Z170 platform. In previous years, we have heralded MSI for providing some of the best automatic update software available for motherboards with Live Update 6, which continues in the Z170 package./news/total-war-warhammer-ii-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/total-war-warhammer-ii-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660.htmlTotal War: Warhammer II (DX11) Last in our 2018 game suite is Total War: Warhammer II, built on the same engine of Total War: Warhammer. While there is a more recent Total War title, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, that game was built on the 32-bit version of the engine. The first TW: Warhammer was a DX11 game was to some extent developed with DX12 in mind, with preview builds showcasing DX12 performance./news/western-digital-demonstrates-4tb-usb-c-thumb-drive-prototype.htmlWed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-demonstrates-4tb-usb-c-thumb-drive-prototype.htmlAt CES 2019, Western Digital is demonstrating a prototype of a 4TB thumb drive with a Type-C interface. To be more precise, the form factor is that of a thumb drive, but the Type-C connector currently hangs off a wire. Given that it is a prototype, and has little chance of hitting the market at reasonable price points in the imminent future, this is expected. The main intent is to showcase the technological prowess of SanDisk's flash solutions./news/15-1-megapixels-iso-12800-6-3-fps.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/15-1-megapixels-iso-12800-6-3-fps.htmlCANON U.S.A. HAS ANNOUNCED THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CANON 50D. The replacement for the prosumer 40D, with a 15.1 Megapixel APS-C size sensor and a 1.6x lens multiplier, will begin shipping in October at a street price of $1399. Below is the Canon Press Announcement with details of the new 50D. We will be posting a review of the 50D when we can get our hands on a production sample, most likely in October./news/a-cheaper-chip-for-premium-phones.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-cheaper-chip-for-premium-phones.htmlWith the launch of their flagship Snapdragon 8 SoC firmly behind them now, Qualcomm this morning is turning their collective head towards the premium market with the launch of another new Snapdragon 8 family SoC, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. The first of Qualcomm’s ‘s’-subseries of down-market parts to be released under the Snapdragon 8 banner, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (8sG3) is intended to be a bridge part between the last-gen flagship 8 Gen 2 and current-gen flagship 8 Gen 3, offering a not-quite-flagship experience at a lower price point than Qualcomm’s top SoC./news/acer-s-predator-x27-g-sync-hdr-display-listed.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-s-predator-x27-g-sync-hdr-display-listed.htmlAfter previously being listed in Europe last month, G-Sync HDR monitor listings are finally showing up in the US, answering by far the biggest outstanding question on the new monitors: pricing. As of today, Newegg has started to take pre-orders on Acer’s Predator X27 G-Sync HDR display, listing the monitor at $1,999.99. Meanwhile, Acer has introduced a couple of last-minute changes to the specs of the monitor. Pre-orders on the highly-anticipated G-Sync HDR-supporting Acer Predator X27 were previously expected to start at the end of this month, but it look like Newegg and Acer have moved things forward a bit./news/asrock-rack-offers-rome-matx-motherboard-with-only-6.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-rack-offers-rome-matx-motherboard-with-only-6.htmlOne of the items that makes a motherboard immediately standout is the amount of memory slots it has. For mainstream platforms, having two or four memory slots, for dual channel memory at one DIMM per channel (1 DPC) or two modules per channel (2 DPC) respectively is normal. If we saw a motherboard with three, it would be a little odd. We’ve seen high-end desktop platforms have three (Nehalem) or four (almost everything else) memory channels, so we see either 3/4 or 6/8 memory slots respectively for 1 DPC and 2 DPC./news/asrock-z170-oc-formula-and-gaming-atx.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z170-oc-formula-and-gaming-atx.htmlThe motherboard lines from ASRock fall into three categories: overclocking (OC Formula), mainstream channel (Extreme, Pro) and gaming (Fatal1ty Gaming). ASRock is also historically a motherboard manufacturer that likes to do things a little bit differently, trying out new combinations and designs regardless of widespread appeal. For the Z170 launch there are no serious surprises to begin with (like an Extreme11 with onboard LSI controller), but there are a few smaller form factor products in the mix./news/asrock-s-high-end-vision-3d-252b-htpc-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-s-high-end-vision-3d-252b-htpc-review.htmlThe small form factor (SFF) HTPC market has been steadily growing over the last few years. As mobile processors become more and more powerful, it is becoming easier for users to be satisfied with their performance even in desktop configurations. The DIY HTPC crowd has a marked preference for mini-ITX motherboards and cases. However, the excessive TDP of desktop CPUs results in complicated thermal designs and noisy results. Thermal designs for systems with mobile CPUs with 35W TDPs are fairly straightforward and not very noisy./news/best-motherboards-for-100-200-april-2013.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/best-motherboards-for-100-200-april-2013.htmlA quick look at the motherboard market and there is plenty to choose from under the $200 mark from both Intel and AMD.  For Intel this marks the mid range Z77, whereas we can cover the whole of FM2 with AMD.  Below $100 of course we get to the cheap-as-chips range of products, whereby selection can be purely based on what features (HDMI, PCI, two PCIe slots) are on the board./news/camera-daylight-evaluation-the-oneplus-7-pro-review-outstanding.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-daylight-evaluation-the-oneplus-7-pro-review-outstanding.htmlCamera - Daylight Evaluation Having covered the OnePlus 7 Pro’s main feature, the 90Hz screen, the other major selling-point of the phone is its triple-camera setup. The main camera is a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor with an f/1.6 aperture lens and OIS. It’s to be noted that OnePlus does one thing right with the new sensor: It largely ignores the 48MP mode and is generally inaccessible besides in the Pro Mode./news/cellular-wifi-speaker-gnss-motorola-moto-g-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cellular-wifi-speaker-gnss-motorola-moto-g-review.htmlCellular The cellular side of the Moto G is an interesting one, at least for those who have kept constantly abreast of wireless banding configurations and the state of mobile RF. At the high end, pentaband WCDMA is now essentially ubiquitous, with parity LTE banding (given the shared nature of ports on the transceiver) and at least a handful more bands for whatever’s appropriate to the region. There’s no global LTE band combination equivalent to quad band GSM or pentaband WCDMA that has emerged quite yet, but it’s getting there, and in the next generation or two we’ll undoubtedly finally see it come to fruition./news/closing-on-a-profitable-2018.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closing-on-a-profitable-2018.htmlAMD announced their fourth quarter earnings for their 2018 fiscal year today, and the company has continued its upward trajectory, with revenue gains of 6% year-over-year to $1.42 billion. Gross margin, which was long a burden for the company, is now right in the sweet spot at 38%, up 4% from a year ago. Operating income for the quarter was $28 million, compared to an operating loss of $2 million last year, and net income is now in the black as well at $38 million, compared to a net loss of $19 million a year ago./news/cpu-gaming-performance-grand-theft-auto-1080p-4k.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-gaming-performance-grand-theft-auto-1080p-4k.htmlGrand Theft Auto The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU./news/dell-s-introduces-ultrasharp-27-inch-4k-monitor-up2720q.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-s-introduces-ultrasharp-27-inch-4k-monitor-up2720q.htmlJust in time for this week's Adobe MAX conference, Dell has introduced an updated version of its popular 27-inch 4K UltraSharp professional display. The latest iteration of Dell's pro monitor, the UltraSharp 27 4K PremierColor Monitor (UP2720Q) is shaking things up by taking the already factory-calibrated monitor family and integrating a colorimeter for even further calibration options, as well as Thunderbolt 3 support. At the same time, however, Dell is also dropping HDR support, making this (once again) a purely SDR display./news/dr-kevin-zhang-and-dr-maria-marced.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dr-kevin-zhang-and-dr-maria-marced.htmlIn the past week, TSMC ran its 2021 Technology Symposium, covering its latest developments in process node technology designed to improve the performance, costs, and capabilities for its customers. In this event, TSMC discussed its increasing use of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography for manufacturing, enabling it to scale down to its 3nm process node, well beyond that of its competitors. TSMC also addressed the current issues surrounding demand for semiconductors, along with announcing that it is building new facilities for advanced packaging production./news/eurocom-launches-a-780-w-external-psu-for-laptops.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/eurocom-launches-a-780-w-external-psu-for-laptops.htmlThe world is getting mobile and many things that used to come in full-tower desktop chassis are now available in mobile form-factors. For example, high-performance notebooks from companies like Eurocom, Clevo or MSI can easily leave mid-range mainstream desktops behind in terms of performance - and yet these are laptops (albeit, not very portable ones). These machines typically come with a single large power adaptor, or in the case of a couple of models, two adaptors./news/final-words-micron-m510dc-480gb-enterprise-sata-ssd-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-micron-m510dc-480gb-enterprise-sata-ssd-review.htmlFinal Words I'll start with the positive sides of the M510DC. First off, the M510DC delivers higher endurance than the most read-focused drives. Samsung 845DC EVO and Intel's DC S3510 both come in at only 0.3 DWPD with SanDisk's CloudSpeed Eco being rated at 1 DWPD, so at 2 DWPD (1 for 960GB SKU), the M510DC is more durable than its direct competitors. Whether the extra endurance is beneficial depends on the workload because I would argue that for the most read-intensive workloads (such as media streaming and cloud storage) 0./news/fsp-oem-400w-apn-230v-version-and-ghn-1.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fsp-oem-400w-apn-230v-version-and-ghn-1.htmlFSP OEM 400W APN and GHN -1 FSP doesn't sell these OEM versions directly in the market. Instead, they find their way through various distributors and e-tailers to end-users. They come without any packaging because the companies want to keep this extra strictly to their retail version of the product. Therefore customers get a 2-year warranty. With 120W the 3.3V and 5V rails are rated somewhat lower than we're used to, but there's nothing to worry about since modern systems don't place a huge load on these rails anymore./news/geekom-mini-it13-packs-core-i9-into-4x4-nuc.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/geekom-mini-it13-packs-core-i9-into-4x4-nuc.htmlWhile Intel's classic 4x4 NUCs have been pretty powerful systems capable of handling demanding workloads, the company never cared to install its top-of-the-range CPUs into its compact PCs. GEEKOM apparently decided to fix this and this week introduced its Mini IT13: the industry's first 4x4 desktop with an Intel Core i9 processor, offering with 14 CPU cores inside.  The Mini IT13 from GEEKOM measures 117 mm × 112 mm × 49.2 mm, making it as small as Intel's classic NUC systems./news/gigabyte-ga-z77x-ud5h-software-gigabyte-ga-z77x-ud5h.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-ga-z77x-ud5h-software-gigabyte-ga-z77x-ud5h.htmlGigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Software Gigabyte motherboard software has been stagnant for a couple of generations now - nothing new to the plate, and the same interfaces greet us every installation.  The only item that ever changes is the stability, and the ability of these programs to work with new chipsets.  Alas, that remains true of the Z77X-UD5H. The default CD installer gives the user the one-click option to install all drivers, and offers users to install relevant software as well./news/gpu-performance-power-the-apple-iphone-11-11-pro.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-power-the-apple-iphone-11-11-pro.htmlGPU Performance & Power We covered the CPUs of the A13 in detail, but there’s also the GPU we have to consider. Apple’s performance improvement claims for this year have been a little more conservative, with the company promising a 20% performance increase or a 40% decrease in power at the same performance as the A12. Last year’s jump was a rather large one, and we don’t expect Apple (or any vendor for that matter) to repeat it any time soon, especially as we saw both major microarchitectural changes as well as the adoption of the new 7nm manufacturing node at the same time./news/imovie-garage-band-the-apple-ipad-2-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/imovie-garage-band-the-apple-ipad-2-review.htmliMovie by Vivek Gowri Apple launched two new content-editing apps along with the iPad 2 - GarageBand and iMovie. iMovie is a $4.99 app available exclusively for iPad 2 (an updated iPhone 4/iPod touch 4 equivalent was launched simultaneously), so I'll start there. iMovie basically lets you do a decent amount of video editing on the iPad itself. You can edit videos shot on the iPad, or video content imported from SD card using the camera connection kit./news/memory-subsystem-latency-quite-different-the-snapdragon-888-vs.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/memory-subsystem-latency-quite-different-the-snapdragon-888-vs.htmlMemory Subsystem & Latency: Quite Different The memory subsystem comparisons for the Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 are very interesting for a few couple of reasons. First of all – these new SoCs are the first to use new higher-frequency LPDDR5-6400 memory, which is 16% faster than that of last year’s LPDRR5-5500 DRAM used in flagship devices. On the Snapdragon 888 side of things, Qualcomm this generation has said that they have made significant progress in improving memory latency – a point of contention that’s generally been a weak point of the previous few generations, although they always did keep improving things gen-on-gen./news/msi-prestige-ps42-laptop-made-for-business.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-prestige-ps42-laptop-made-for-business.htmlWhen thinking of MSI laptops, one probably picture the company's powerful gaming rigs. However, the company that makes heavy-hitting notebooks, with names like the Titan and the Dominator, is out to show that's it not an all-play, no-work brand. Announced here at Computex 2018 and due out later this year, the MSI Prestige PS42 is a super-light, 14-inch business notebook that's designed to make you a productivity champion. Clad in silver aluminum, this 0./news/oneplus-launches-the-oneplus-3.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/oneplus-launches-the-oneplus-3.htmlToday OnePlus announced their newest flagship phone, the OnePlus 3. The OnePlus 3 replaces the OnePlus 2, while the OnePlus X stays around as the less expensive OnePlus device with a smaller display. I reviewed the OnePlus 2 at the end of last year, and unfortunately I was forced to conclude that it actually represented a significant downgrade from its predecessor in many ways. Some of this was due to choices OnePlus had made with the product design, such as the very poor display calibration./news/physical-impressions-from-the-huawei-ascend-d-quad.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/physical-impressions-from-the-huawei-ascend-d-quad.htmlWe headed over to the Huawei booth to check out the Ascend D Quad and get some photos of the device and some physical impressions. The device includes Huawei's own HiSilicon K3V2 SoC which consists of a quad core Cortex A9 running at 1.2 GHz (4 cores), 1.5 GHz (1 core), and "16 core" graphics from an unknown IP vendor. The phone also packs a 720p 4.5" LCD display which looked awesome in person./news/razer-blade-switchblade-the-razer-blade-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-blade-switchblade-the-razer-blade-review.htmlAnd so, we arrive at the Switchblade panel, which resides to the right of the keyboard. This is Razer’s crown jewel, the Blade’s pièce de résistance, and probably the coolest feature we've seen on a notebook computer in a very long while. And I truly mean that. Switchblade starts with 10 LCD tiles arranged in a five by two grid above the LCD touchpad. Razer calls them Dynamic Adaptive Tactile keys, a fancy way of saying that the keys have individually customizable LCDs that users can change as they see fit./news/samsung-galaxy-tab-s-review-10-5-8-4.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-tab-s-review-10-5-8-4.htmlSamsung’s tablet lineup can be confusing to follow. There’s the regular Galaxy Tab lineup which is on its 4th generation and is available in three different screen sizes (7, 8 and 10.1-inches), all with 1280 x 800 displays. If you want a higher resolution panel there’s the newly announced Galaxy Tab Pro line, also available in three sizes (albeit different ones at 8.4, 10.1 and 12.2-inches) at 2560 x 1600. If you’re dying for an active digitizer there are the Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Note models as well./news/samsung-unveils-intel-based-galaxy-book-s-intel-s.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-unveils-intel-based-galaxy-book-s-intel-s.htmlSamsung this morning is taking the wraps off of the long-awaited Intel (x86) version of the company’s popular ultraportable, always-connected laptop, the Galaxy Book S. First teased by Samsung late last year, the Intel-based version of the laptop is set to join their existing Qualcomm 8cx-based model, swapping out the Arm SoC for Intel’s latest foray into ultra-mobile processors, Lakefield. The Intel Galaxy Book S will be the first device to ship with Lakefield, putting the new processor to the test in seeing if Intel can match the kind of all-day battery life that the existing Galaxy Book S is known for./news/silverstone-sg01b.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-sg01b.htmlIntroduction With the special niche market that Shuttle has created pretty much on their own due to the release of the XPC series, a myriad of other small form-factor PCs have sprung up all over the place. Not long ago, we examined the well-designed X-QPack by Aspire, and found that for people interested in the portability and flexibility of a smaller PC, there was really a lot to appreciate in that enclosure./news/software-interface-xbmc-and-jriver-media-center-18.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-interface-xbmc-and-jriver-media-center-18.htmlSoftware Interface: XBMC and JRiver Media Center 18 The combination of MPC-HC and LAV Filters enabled us to play back all our media files without issues. However, the user interface is not really amenable to a media center experience. XBMC, undoubtedly, has set the gold standard for the HTPC user interface. It is possible to go through hoops to make XBMC use MPC-HC and LAV filters for media playback, but the XBMC UI is lost during playback./news/system-performance-the-msi-z370-a-pro-motherboard-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-msi-z370-a-pro-motherboard-review.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested./news/testing-methodology-the-deepcool-ak620-digital-cpu-cooler-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-methodology-the-deepcool-ak620-digital-cpu-cooler-review.htmlTesting Methodology Although the testing of a cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. Proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers, as the hardware changes every several months./news/testing-results-maximum-fan-speed-12-volts.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-results-maximum-fan-speed-12-volts.htmlMost of the stock coolers were tested with a maximum load of 150W, lest we start a fire. These products were not meant to handle thermal loads way higher than the stock specifications of the CPUs they were being shipped with. Looking immediately at the average thermal resistance and we see three main coolers out in front, and it is no surprise that these three are the beefiest - the EVO 212, the Wraith and the BXTS15A./news/the-2020-browser-battle-surfing-with-speed.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-2020-browser-battle-surfing-with-speed.htmlAccessing the internet is one of the most basic tasks for any computer, but webpages in 2020 are incredibly complex so how the browser interprets the code and renders it as a viewable webpage is no simple task. Modern browsers have both a rendering or layout engine, as well as a scripting engine, and both factor into how well the browser can handle any particular task. When the web first evolved, it was more or less a static affair, with webpages laid out in HyperText Markup Language, otherwise known as HTML, but as time passed websites became more and more complex, with it not uncommon today to run applications that would have been compiled programs several years ago./news/the-arctic-cooling-freezer-36-argb-cpu-cooler-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-arctic-cooling-freezer-36-argb-cpu-cooler-review.htmlAs modern high-performance CPUs generate more heat, there's been a noticeable increase in the demand for powerful air coolers capable of managing these thermal challenges. Traditional stock air coolers, while sufficient for regular use, are typically designed to be cheap and relatively compact, leaving further improvements to noise control and peak cooling efficiency on the table. This gap has long prompted advanced users and system builders to opt for high-quality aftermarket coolers that designed to better handle the heat output from top-tier processors./news/the-dell-xps-15-9560-review-infinity-edge-part.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-dell-xps-15-9560-review-infinity-edge-part.htmlNear the end of 2015, Dell rolled out their new XPS styling cues, that were so successful on the XPS 13, to its larger sibling, the XPS 15. Thanks to the Infinity Edge display, Dell’s new XPS 15 packed a full 15.6-inch display into a notebook closer to the size of a 14-inch model. Perhaps the size reduction is not quite as dramatic as the XPS 13 when it first launched with the thin-bezel design, but Dell also kept the performance heart of the XPS 15 intact with the change, keeping a quad-core 45-Watt CPU, and NVIDIA GTX 960M graphics./news/the-killer-app-multitasking-performance.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-killer-app-multitasking-performance.htmlHere's where things get interesting. I ran two tests, in one I extracted a 5GB archive and tried to run Photoshop after 30 seconds of extraction and in the second test, I extracted a 5GB archive and tried to scan my system for viruses using NAV 2008. Simple enough, right? I'm reporting the times of each task individually. The extraction task took the longest to complete but the standings speak for themselves:/news/the-riotoro-prism-cr1280-case-review.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-riotoro-prism-cr1280-case-review.htmlToday we are having our first encounter with Riotoro, a manufacturer of personal computer cases, power supply units, cooling-related products and peripherals. Riotoro is a company that came to be from former NVIDIA and Corsair employees. The current number of products they offer is small, consisting of just a couple of cases and mice, but we expect that to change rapidly in the not so distant future. Introduction Riotoro is somewhat of a new company, as they came into business in 2015, however they originally made their products available into South America first./news/the-upgrade-upgrading-the-ssd-in-chromebook-mydigitalssd-super.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-upgrade-upgrading-the-ssd-in-chromebook-mydigitalssd-super.htmlThe Upgrade Upgrading the storage in the Acer C720 Chromebook is surprisingly easy. While Chrome OS does not give the user full system access, there is an integrated (albeit hidden) tool for creating recovery media that can be used to clone the old drive. To open the tool, all you need to do is to open Chrome (i.e. the web browser) and type "chrome://imageburner" to the address bar. Once you have done that, you should see the following:/news/tuning-alder-lake-for-performance.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tuning-alder-lake-for-performance.htmlThe topic of overclocking has been an interesting one to track over the years. Over a decade ago, when dealing with 2-4 core processors, an effective overclock gave a substantial performance uplift, often allowing a $200 processor to perform like the one that cost $999. However, core counts have increased over the last couple of years, but also companies like Intel are getting better at understanding their silicon, and are able to ship it out of the box almost at the silicon limit anyway./news/united-states-ftc-files-lawsuit-to-block-nvidia-arm.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/united-states-ftc-files-lawsuit-to-block-nvidia-arm.htmlIn the biggest roadblock yet to NVIDIA’s proposed acquisition of Arm, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced this afternoon that the regulatory body will be suing to block the merger. Citing concerns over the deal “stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies”, the FTC is moving to scuttle the $40 billion deal in order to protect the interests of the wider marketplace. The deal with current Arm owner SoftBank was first announced in September of 2020, where at the time SoftBank had been shopping Arm around in an effort to either sell or spin-off the technology IP company./news/up-to-48-tb-1-6-gbps.htmlTue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-48-tb-1-6-gbps.htmlPromise has introduced three new storage systems using the Thunderbolt 3 interface and aiming users of the recently introduced Apple MacBook Pro notebooks. The new Pegasus3 Symply Editions can accommodate up to eight hard drives with up to 48 TB capacity and deliver up to 1.6 GB/s read performance (with HDDs), which will be beneficial for those working with large amounts of data, such as video professionals dealing with UHD content./news/adrenalin-enhancements-2-new-toggles-linux-more.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/adrenalin-enhancements-2-new-toggles-linux-more.htmlAdrenalin Enhancements Part 2: New Toggles, Linux & More The next set of Adrenalin updates has even shorter descriptions. Among them, FreeSync can be toggled per game, while the Radeon Settings UI has three new themes, though not user customizable. The release notes specified support for HDR10 titles with Radeon FreeSync 2 displays as well. AMD also mentioned their “GPU Workload” Radeon Settings toggle between graphics and compute, intended for improved cryptocurrency mining performance, which was introduced in October’s 17./news/ageia-physx-technology-and-gpu-hardware.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ageia-physx-technology-and-gpu-hardware.htmlFirst off, here is the low down on the hardware as we know it. AGEIA, being the first and only consumer-oriented physics processor designer right now, has not given us as much in-depth technical detail as other hardware designers. We certainly understand the need to protect intellectual property, especially at this stage in the game, but this is what we know.PhysX Hardware: 125 Million transistors 130nm manufacturing process 128MB 733MHz Data Rate GDDR3 RAM/news/all-black-4-gb-of-ram-64-gb-nand.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/all-black-4-gb-of-ram-64-gb-nand.htmlTCL's BlackBerry Mobile imprint has introduced a revamped BlackBerry KEYone smartphone at IFA trade show last week. The new KEYone Black Edition comes in all-black chassis and has more DRAM and storage space than the original KEYone model introduced at MWC earlier this year. The product will be available in multiple countries, but the U.S. is currently not listed among them. Traditionally, Research in Motion and then BlackBerry Limited developed most of their smartphones with business customers in mind and this prompted them to use strict designs and colors./news/am2-motherboards-cont-d-live-from-taiwan-cebit-2006.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/am2-motherboards-cont-d-live-from-taiwan-cebit-2006.htmlAbit KN9 SLIAbit claims to have returned to their enthusiast roots with their upcoming KN9-SLI. Click to enlarge. The new Abit AM2 board was designed for both outstanding overclocking capablities and outstanding stability - even at high overclocks. Biostar GeForce 6100-AM2 To survive and flourish in a tough motherboard market, Biostar has decided to specialize in integrated graphics/HTPC motherboards. Not surprisingly, that means that their AM2 offering is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 chipset./news/amazon-aws-offers-another-amd-epyc-powered-instance-t3a.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amazon-aws-offers-another-amd-epyc-powered-instance-t3a.htmlAmazon Web Services has further expanded its usage of AMD EPYC-based machines for its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. Last week the company started to offer its new EPYC-powered T3a instances, which enable customers to balance their instance mix based on cost and the amount of throughput they require at a given moment. AWS’s T3a instances offer burstable performance and are intended for workloads that have low sustained throughput needs, but experience temporary spikes in usage./news/assembling-the-silverstone-fortress-ft02.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-silverstone-fortress-ft02.htmlAssembling the SilverStone Fortress FT02 While installing the testbed into the FT02 was much easier than the RV03, it's still not a walk in the park compared to more "normal" cases. This is still very much in line with the sort of "special needs" I've come to expect from assembling SilverStone hardware. The nonstandard internal layout results in some odd clearance issues, but part of the problem is that SilverStone in general seems to be allergic to tool-less designs./news/asus-mx299q-monitor-review.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-mx299q-monitor-review.htmlThe panel does not make the monitor. As I saw in my last 21:9 monitor review, even if you have the exact same panel in two displays, a whole lot more makes the display good or bad. One might assume that all the 21:9 displays now hitting the market are likely to be similar, or even the same, since they all use the same panel, but they would be greatly mistaken as that is but a small part of the overall display./news/asus-rog-zenith-ii-extreme-conclusion.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-zenith-ii-extreme-conclusion.htmlThe ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme has a price tag of $850 and sits at the top of the TRX40 product stack from ASUS. With the addition of the two new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X, and the 3990X with 64-cores expected next year, the quality of the boards needs to follow suit to match users expectations from a HEDT platform such as TRX40. The second iteration of the ROG Zenith Extreme models brings a few new things to the plate for users to utilize including a nifty LiveDash 1./news/asus-windows-8-and-rt-products-revealed.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-windows-8-and-rt-products-revealed.htmlASUS has spent the last few years showing how good design can yield big dividends in the Windows notebook and Android tablet markets. With today’s announcement of their Windows 8 and RT line-up, they marry the two efforts to show off some innovative and impressive new approaches to the traditional PC. Most of the products revealed today are Intel-based, but we’ll start with the lone ARM device, the ASUS VivoTab RT./news/battery-life-outstandingly-good.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-outstandingly-good.htmlBattery Life With a 6000 mAh battery, the ROG Phone II already promised out of the gate to have some substantial staying power. The big battery is meant to compensate for having additional features like the 120 Hz display and X Mode which might consume more battery during gaming. Nonetheless, in our standard Wi-Fi battery test, it smashes new records. Setting the display to 200 nits, our web battery test simulates accessing webpages with a variety of features with scrolling – standard operation for any smartphone./news/battery-life-and-charging-nokia-lumia-900-review.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-and-charging-nokia-lumia-900-review.htmlBattery Life and Charging First things first, the Lumia 900 has none of the charging issues or problem behavior that initially plagued the Lumia 800. In the course of our battery life testing, I’ve repeatedly discharged and charged the phone completely and the Lumia 900 charges up from completely empty like a champ. It seems those initial growing pains are now squarely behind Nokia. In addition, Nokia has gone with a compact 5W charger (5V 1A) that the Lumia 900 takes full advantage of during a charge cycle - I repeatedly saw the Lumia 900 draw over 800 mA during the charge cycle in its diagnostics menu, which is awesome./news/battlefield-4-the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-review-feat.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battlefield-4-the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-review-feat.htmlBattlefield 4 Kicking off our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer./news/cisco-linksys-e4200-dual-band-obstructed-performance.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cisco-linksys-e4200-dual-band-obstructed-performance.htmlCisco/Linksys E4200 Dual-Band Obstructed Performance Moving to our obstructed testing with the router at the other end of the house, we shifted locations. (If you must know, my wife wasn’t particularly pleased about the mess in our upstairs bedroom. Sorry!) This test location is actually very useful for me as the router is located in my office while I’m testing the laptops in my living room—right next to my HTPC./news/closing-thoughts-hp-lp3065-a-new-contender-for-the.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closing-thoughts-hp-lp3065-a-new-contender-for-the.htmlClosing ThoughtsA large 30" LCD is definitely a luxury that only a few people are willing to afford, but if you have the money and other hardware necessary, using a computer takes on a whole new dimension with such a display. Games can feel even more immersive, but truthfully we find the extra screen size to be more useful outside of gaming situations. The ability to have numerous applications open without the need to overlap windows can increase productivity for example, and it's also possible to have two or three different versions of a document open at the same time for easy side-by-side comparisons./news/cortex-a15-webxprt-2013-community-preview-1.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cortex-a15-webxprt-2013-community-preview-1.htmlObviously since we don't have an Android version of TouchXPRT we can't run that, but we can use PT's WebXPRT test on all of the platforms here. Exynos 5250 manages the best score we've seen thus far (246), although since we are using different browsers it's entirely possible that its performance is still being held back a bit. The performance advantage over Atom is around 9%, however the power expended to get here is significant./news/dark-mode-ipados-files.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dark-mode-ipados-files.htmlAt today’s WWDC event in San Jose, California, Apple unveiled the newest update to its iOS operating system, iOS 13, as well as its forking of iOS for tablet devices into a new dedicated OS: iPadOS. We’ll be quickly covering the most important updates this year and see what’s to expect of this year’s newest features introductions. System-wide dark mode Most interesting visual change for iOS 13 is the addition of a new dedicated dark mode that switches the UI to a darker colour scheme that is easy on the eyes./news/encryption-support-evaluation-synology-ds1812-8-bay-smb-soho.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/encryption-support-evaluation-synology-ds1812-8-bay-smb-soho.htmlEncryption Support Evaluation Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume./news/evga-geforce-gtx-760-superclocked-acx.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/evga-geforce-gtx-760-superclocked-acx.htmlOur other card for this roundup is EVGA’s GTX 760 Superclocked ACX. This card is a fully custom card, utilizing a custom EVGA PCB in conjunction with EVGA’s recently launched ACX cooler. All of this is then wrapped up with a moderate factory overclock that sees EVGA ship the card at 1072MHz core, 65MHz (9%) over the GTX 760 reference clockspeeds. Like the 780SC ACX and 770SC ACX cards we’ve looked at previously, the 760SC ACX marks the first time we’ve seen EVGA’s new ACX cooler in this category of product./news/gaming-civilization-6-dx12-the-amd-threadripper-2-cpu.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-civilization-6-dx12-the-amd-threadripper-2-cpu.htmlGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12) Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master./news/half-life-2-performance-anandtech-exclusive-crossfire-benchmarks-revealed.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/half-life-2-performance-anandtech-exclusive-crossfire-benchmarks-revealed.htmlHalf Life 2 Performance This is one of those games that CrossFire will be able to push beyond 1600x1200 with ease. The performance numbers that we see here put ATI's solution in a much better position than NVIDIA's 6800 Ultra SLI. In this case, the x850 CrossFire even competes with the 7800 SLI solution as they both reach near the CPU limit of the system at 1600x1200. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZH54f5hobQ%3D%3D/news/hp-s-business-notebook-hat-trick.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-s-business-notebook-hat-trick.htmlComing in March: HP Updates in a Big Way It's fair to say the refreshes HP announced for their consumer computers earlier this month seemed fairly lackluster. While nobody can complain about improved notebook speakers and the triumphant return of dedicated mouse buttons, there wasn't anything else remarkably fresh or exciting about their spring line. When we got a chance to meet with HP representatives in San Francisco to see their new business lineup, however, we saw very nearly the complete opposite./news/humble-bundle-origin-edition-updated.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/humble-bundle-origin-edition-updated.htmlIn case you missed it, there's a new Humble Bundle going on right now (since two days ago). Over the years we’ve seen a variety of games offered up on the Humble Bundle; some have been pretty ho-hum, while others have been well worth the price of admission; many of the games have been indie affairs. Of course, the price of admission is practically free: it’s whatever you want, starting at a whopping $1 – yes, that's an entire dollar rather than the original starting point of a penny for the Humble Bundle./news/installation-and-setup-hp-dx5150-oem-plus-amd.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/installation-and-setup-hp-dx5150-oem-plus-amd.htmlInstallation and SetupIt should come as little surprise that installing this computer is extremely simple. I don't know if my mother could do it, but just about anyone else in the family would have no difficulty. You unpack the box, plug in the keyboard, mouse, LAN and power connectors, connect a display, and power up the system. At that point, you'll be prompted for the Windows product key. A quick reboot, go through the activation wizard, and you're done./news/iphone-does-music-recognition-anand-reviews-the-apple-iphone.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/iphone-does-music-recognition-anand-reviews-the-apple-iphone.htmlShazam One of the most useful applications I’ve downloaded from the App store is something called Shazam. The iPhone 3G continues to be a fundamentally consumer-focused phone, making Shazam exactly the type of application Apple needed to have in the App store at launch. Shazam is a music recognition utility. It’ll sample whatever is playing wherever you are through the iPhone’s mic, send the data to Shazam’s servers, and within a matter of seconds send back the name of the song, the artist, what album it’s from and even links to the song on iTunes and YouTube./news/mediatek-subsidiary-to-acquire-intel-enpirion-business-for-85.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mediatek-subsidiary-to-acquire-intel-enpirion-business-for-85.htmlToday an agreement between MediaTek subsidiary Richtek and Intel has been made for Richtek to acquire Intel’s power management solutions and controller product line known as Enpirion. The agreement will enable the sale of the division, subject to regulatory approval, for $85 million, and is expected to close in Q4. Intel’s Enpirion business has been part of the company under the Programmable Solutions Group, formerly known as Altera, which was acquired by Intel in December 2015 for $16./news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-adata-xpg-sx6000-pro.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-adata-xpg-sx6000-pro.htmlMixed Random Performance Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%./news/playing-your-music-windows-xp-media-center-edition-exposed.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playing-your-music-windows-xp-media-center-edition-exposed.htmlOnce you've found the song you want, playing it will bring you to this screen; you can select an entire album to play or just one song, either way you'll be greeted with the same screen. If you hit the Media Center button on the remote (big green button) it will take you back to the main media center menu but your music will continue to play, what you're listening to will appear in the lower left hand corner as you can see from the screenshot above./news/power-management-the-mainstream-phoenix-rises-samsung-s-970.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-management-the-mainstream-phoenix-rises-samsung-s-970.htmlPower Management Features Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle. For many NVMe SSDs, the closely related matter of thermal management can also be important./news/power-supply-quality-conclusion.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-supply-quality-conclusion.htmlPower Supply Quality The electrical performance of the Be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 650W PSU is laudable within its category, offering a competitive edge in its segment. Voltage regulation is impressively tight, with the 12V rail demonstrating around 1% variance, and even better performance observed on the 3.3V and 5V rails, underscoring the PSU's meticulous attention to maintaining stability across all outputs. This precision is particularly notable, considering the tendency of some manufacturers to prioritize the 12V rail over the secondary rails./news/qualcomm-tech-summit-day-2-live-blog-starts-at.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-tech-summit-day-2-live-blog-starts-at.html01:43PM EST - Here we are on day two of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Tech Summit, and today is going to be all about Snapdragon 855, the next generation smartphone SoC expected to power a large number of flagship devices in 2019. Follow our live blog for all the details. It starts at 9am HST, 2pm ET, 7pm UTC. 01:57PM EST - Doors just opened and I'm now sat down/news/record-revenue-despite-flat-iphone-sales.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/record-revenue-despite-flat-iphone-sales.htmlToday Apple announced their quarter 1 earnings, and once again Apple had record revenue of $75.9 billion, and a record quarterly profit of $18.4 billion. Revenue is up 2% compared to Q1 2015, and 66% of the quarter’s revenue came from International sales. Gross margin for the quarter was 40.1%, or $30.4 billion, up from 39.9% and $29.7 billion last year. Operating income was down slightly to $24.171 billion, but net income was $18./news/software-miui-6-the-xiaomi-mi-note-pro-and.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-miui-6-the-xiaomi-mi-note-pro-and.htmlSoftware: MIUI 6 When it comes to Android, there are a wide range of opinions on what the “best software” is. One common opinion is that stock Android is the best for the end user. This is probably the most common one, but there are others that prefer some of the more complete reskins like TouchWiz. Given how intensely subjective this aspect of user experience is, I think it’s worth saying right now that while I don’t have a problem with AOSP UI/stock Android, I don’t think it’s the best Android experience possible./news/testing-with-the-chroma-ate-programmable-load.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-with-the-chroma-ate-programmable-load.htmlTesting with the Chroma ATE Programmable Load Our test equipment consists of two Chroma programmable DC Loads that enable us to test power supplies with an output of up to 1500W. The biggest advantage of the Chroma DC Loads is simply the high precision it provides. It can measure differences as small as 0.001V and 0.0001A, which will provide us with best-in-class results. When programming the Chroma with specific amounts of load calculated according to the ATX norm, we are able to load power supplies to an exact percentage./news/the-fx-9590-and-asrock-990fx-extreme9-review.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-fx-9590-and-asrock-990fx-extreme9-review.htmlWhile AMD’s FX-9590 CPU has been in systems for over a year, it suddenly comes to market as a retail package for end-users to buy with a bundled liquid cooling system. This 220W CPU that has a turbo speed of 5.0 GHz still sits at the top of AMD’s performance stack, despite subsequent improvements in the architecture since. We have decided to grab ASRock’s 990FX Extreme9 and an FX-9590 for a review to see if it still is the AMD performance CPU champion./news/the-n8-s-camera-12-mp-of-awesome.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-n8-s-camera-12-mp-of-awesome.htmlThe N8’s 12MP centerpiece As I had briefly mentioned earlier, the Nokia N8 has what is probably the best camera to make home in a mobile phone. And Nokia is making no bones in letting people know about this. While Apple may talk about letting in more photons with a backside illuminated sensor, Nokia has actually gone ahead and done something about it—both with the optics and sensor size. At the heart of the N8’s camera is a 1/1./news/the-test-ati-radeon-x700-xt-more-pcie-midrange.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-ati-radeon-x700-xt-more-pcie-midrange.htmlThe Test The same general guidelines apply to this review as applied to our previous 6600 GT review. We are still comparing many PCI Express Intel system numbers to AGP 8x AMD based systems. Numbers for cards other than the 6600, X700, and X600 are run with older drivers as they are taken from previous reviews we have done. We are in the process of trying to update all our performance numbers with the latest drivers (and then some), but we were unable to do so before this review./news/thin-light-done-just-right.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thin-light-done-just-right.htmlA standard cooler is supplied with nearly all retail boxed CPUs, which guarantees adequate cooling performance under normal operating conditions. Enthusiasts however are rarely satisfied with the performance of stock CPU coolers, seeking either better overall performance or lower noise levels. This is especially true for those who are planning to overclock their systems, as the supplied coolers usually don't have the extra performance required for handling overdriven processors. However, the selection of a CPU cooler is a complicated matter./news/understanding-gates-understanding-the-cell-microprocessor.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/understanding-gates-understanding-the-cell-microprocessor.htmlUnderstanding Gates The fundamental building blocks of any microprocessor are gates.  Gates are collections of transistors that electrically mimic a particular logic function.   For example, a 2-input AND gate will take two input signals and output a 1 only if the two inputs are both 1s.   An XOR gate will output a 1 only if the two inputs are different.   A NOR gate will output a 1 only if all inputs are 0s./news/workstations-and-displays-for-professionals.htmlMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/workstations-and-displays-for-professionals.htmlAcer this week introduced its new ConceptD brand that will be used to market computers and other equipment designed primarily for content creators and engineers. The initial family of products includes high-end desktop and mobile workstations, professional displays, and an AR/VR headset. Performance to the Max Because of engineering prowess of its Predator division, Acer has become one of the world’s largest supplier of gaming desktops and laptops in the recent years./news/a-good-lcd-okay-temperatures-and-noise-levels.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-good-lcd-okay-temperatures-and-noise-levels.htmlStill Lovin’ the 1080p Upgrade The XPS 15 L501x garnered our Gold Editors’ Choice award largely on the merits of the upgraded 1080p LCD. Without a beautiful display, it would probably rate as a Bronze award at best. Six months later, at least on the LCD side nothing noteworthy has changed. Dell is still using an AU Optronics B156HW1 panel, and performance is roughly the same as before. There’s a certain amount of variance among LCD panels, and the L501x actually comes out slightly ahead in the tests, but you’re not liable to see the difference with the naked eye./news/a-single-slot-water-cooled-geforce-rtx-2080-ti.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-single-slot-water-cooled-geforce-rtx-2080-ti.htmlUltra-high-end graphics cards these days all seem to either come with a very large triple fan cooler, or more exotically, a hybrid cooling system based around a large heatsink with fans and a liquid cooling block. Naturally, these cards use two or more slots to fit all of their mass, making them look bulky. What we don't see much of these days are smaller cards designed purely around liquid cooling system, and instead those often require an aftermarket conversion./news/a-tablet-running-google-s-chrome-os.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-tablet-running-google-s-chrome-os.htmlThis week Acer introduced its first tablet running Chrome OS, a tablet positioned primarily for the education market. Chrome OS runs Android applications from Google Play store and is growing in popularity with convertible PCs, but nothing stops hardware makers form using the OS for tablets. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 (D651N) is based on the Rockchip OP1 processor which incorporates two high-performance ARM Cortex-A72 cores, four energy-efficient Cortex-A53 cores, supports hardware decode/encoder for UHD 4K video, and has a number of Chrome OS-specific optimizations designed to improve user experience (and brought in by Google)./news/amd-dynamic-switchable-graphics-vs-nvidia-optimus-technology.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-dynamic-switchable-graphics-vs-nvidia-optimus-technology.htmlSwitchable Graphics - Meet the Contenders Before we get to the actual meat of this review, we have a disclaimer to make: both laptops we’re comparing came to us via NVIDIA. Now, before anyone cries “foul!”, let me explain. First, we asked AMD for just such a laptop back in May, and they haven’t been able to get us one yet (though it’s likely as much the fault of OEMs as AMD)./news/anandtech-storage-bench-2013-intel-ssd-530-240gb-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/anandtech-storage-bench-2013-intel-ssd-530-240gb-review.htmlAnandTech Storage Bench 2013 When Anand built the AnandTech Heavy and Light Storage Bench suites in 2011 he did so because we didn't have any good tools at the time that would begin to stress a drive's garbage collection routines. Once all blocks have a sufficient number of used pages, all further writes will inevitably trigger some sort of garbage collection/block recycling algorithm. Our Heavy 2011 test in particular was designed to do just this./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-rendering-and-encoding.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-rendering-and-encoding.htmlRendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power. If a system is not properly configured to deal with the thermal requirements of the processor, the rendering benchmarks are where it would show most easily as the frequency drops over a sustained period of time./news/device-operation-sdram-as-a-simple-state-machine.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/device-operation-sdram-as-a-simple-state-machine.htmlSDRAM can, in many ways, be best described as a simple state machine (Figure 2) which is either idle, active, or precharging one or more open banks. As with any machine, transition from one state to another requires a minimum wait time before the system is ready to respond to subsequent requests to do additional work. These delays have a major impact on SDRAM read and write performance, and more importantly, performance of the system as a whole./news/display-accuracy-revisiting-the-oneplus-3-srgb-memory-management.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-accuracy-revisiting-the-oneplus-3-srgb-memory-management.htmlDisplay Accuracy As I mentioned in my initial review, the OnePlus 3 targets the NTSC color gamut. I really feel the need to reiterate that this choice of gamut target makes absolutely no sense. The actual NTSC gamut was never really relevant, even back in the 1950s when it was created. This is because the phosphors used in CRT displays of the time simply could not produce such saturated colors with an adequate brightness level./news/ek-reveals-all-in-one-liquid-cooler-for-delidded.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ek-reveals-all-in-one-liquid-cooler-for-delidded.htmlHistorically, delidded CPUs have been the prerogative of die-hard enthusiasts who customized their rigs to the last bit. But with emergence of specially-designed delidding tools, removing the integrated heat spreader from a CPU has become a whole lot easier, opening the door to delidding for a wider user base. To that end, EK is now offering all-in-one liquid cooling systems tailored specifically for delidded Intel LGA1700 processors. The key difference with EKWB's new EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 Direct Die D-RGB – 1700 cooler is in the cooling plate on the combined base pump block./news/exterior-overview-gateway-p-6831-fx-best-midrange-gaming.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/exterior-overview-gateway-p-6831-fx-best-midrange-gaming.htmlExterior Overview The Gateway FX chassis is pretty similar to what you see in most other 17" notebooks, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Besides the exterior styling, the most interesting difference is that the entire unit is "flatter" and perhaps slimmer than most of the other 17" notebooks we've looked at recently. Understandably, notebooks like the Dell XPS M1730 are quite large — they need to be in order to provide adequate cooling for the dual GPUs./news/final-words-the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlFinal Words I honestly never thought I’d go back to a Mac Pro. I appreciated the flexibility offered by my 15-inch MacBook Pro as a desktop, and there’s no way I was going to take two steps back in single threaded performance just to get a quieter system. Over the past year I spent a lot of time with the 27-inch iMac as I continued to evaluate Apple’s Fusion Drive. I appreciated the greater thermal headroom, the quieter operation and the better GPU performance (at least with the high-end config) that the iMac offered me above the 15-inch rMBP./news/hands-on-with-asus-1920-x-1200-tablet-running.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-asus-1920-x-1200-tablet-running.htmlI just met with ASUS where I got to play with the newly announced Transformer Prime TF700T. If you missed this morning's announcement the major changes are a new RF transparent plastic strip across the back of the tablet as well as a new 1920 x 1200 display. The rest of the specs remain unchanged.  The demo unit had an early build of Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.3) running although neither the hardware nor the software are final at this point./news/hp-announces-elitebook-laptops-with-on-off-sure-view.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-announces-elitebook-laptops-with-on-off-sure-view.htmlOn Thursday, HP introduced adjustable privacy screens for the EliteBook 840 as well as the EliteBook 1040 notebooks. These are aimed at business users concerned about visual hacking and disclosing sensitive information to onlookers (something a number of journalists have to consider when working on NDA information when flying back from a press event). The protective measures for the screens are based on the Sure View technology jointly developed by HP and 3M, which relies on a number of HP’s proprietary technologies as well as 3M’s optical films./news/intel-developer-forum-fall-2003.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-developer-forum-fall-2003.htmlIntel just announced their first microprocessor aimed at the gaming market - the Pentium 4 Processor Extreme Edition. The Extreme Edition will be available in the next 30 - 60 days and will run at 3.2GHz. The major improvement to the Extreme Edition over the current Pentium 4 is the inclusion of an on-die 2MB L3 cache. This on-die L3 cache is in addition to the 512KB L2 cache, giving the Extreme Edition a total of 2./news/intel-s-ssd-311-20gb-designed-to-cache.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-ssd-311-20gb-designed-to-cache.html  Intel's SSD 311 20GB: Designed to Cache Although SRT supports any SSD, Intel created a brand new drive specifically for use as a cache with Z68 platforms. This is the Intel SSD 311, codenamed Larson Creek: The SSD 311 uses the same controller as Intel's X25-M G2, SSD 310 and SSD 320 drives: The big difference here is the SSD 311 comes with 20GB of 34nm SLC NAND./news/iogear-introduces-usb-c-docking-solutions-and-matrix-kvm.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/iogear-introduces-usb-c-docking-solutions-and-matrix-kvm.htmlIOGEAR has been servicing the computer accessories market with docks and KVMs for more than a couple of decades now. In addition to the generic use-cases, the company creates products that target niche segments with feature sets that are not available in products from other vendors. At CES 2023, IOGEAR is taking the wraps off a number of USB-C docks slated to get introduced over the next couple of quarters./news/lg-34um67-brightness-and-contrast.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-34um67-brightness-and-contrast.htmlMoving on from the FreeSync discussion, we still need to see how the LG 34UM67 fares as a display. We’ve run our usual assessments to look at brightness, contrast, color accuracy, and uniformity. We’ll start with the brightness results. The LG FreeSync 34UM67 is in orange/red while we've highlighted the ASUS PG278Q in cyan/blue. Set to maximum brightness with the default (50/50/50) RGB values, the 34UM67 can output 306 nits, which is just above the rated 300 nits./news/netgear-expands-docsis-3-1-product-stack-with-nighthawk.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/netgear-expands-docsis-3-1-product-stack-with-nighthawk.htmlCable service providers in the US market have been aggressively deploying DOCSIS 3.1 over the last couple of years. Netgear has been selling DOCSIS 3.1-compatible modems and gateways into the service-provider as well as the retail market. At CES 2020, Netgear is launching a new product to augment their product stack in this segment. The Nighthawk Wi-Fi 6 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem Router (CAX80) is an integrated device fulfilling modem, router, switch, and wireless access point functions./news/nvidia-geforce-2-gts-64mb.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-geforce-2-gts-64mb.htmlIntroduction Until rather recently, video cards played a minor role in computer speed. The fact of the matter is that the display of 2D text on a black screen really does not require extensive video card power. With the advent of 3D computer gaming, a whole new weight was placed on the video card. No longer did the video card serve to only display text, but it was called upon to perform complex 3D calculations and draw a realistic 3D world on the screen./news/nvidia-arm-acquisition-officially-nixed-softbank-to-ipo-arm.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-arm-acquisition-officially-nixed-softbank-to-ipo-arm.htmlNVIDIA’s year-and-a-half long effort to acquire Arm has come to an end this morning, as NVIDIA and Arm owner SoftBank have announced that the two companies are officially calling off the acquisition. Citing the current lack of regulatory approval of the deal and the multiple investigations that have been opened up into it, NVIDIA and SoftBank are giving up on their acquisition efforts, as the two firms no longer believe it will be possible to receive the necessary regulatory approvals needed to close the deal./news/passive-glasses-and-polarized-screens.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/passive-glasses-and-polarized-screens.htmlEarlier this year we had the opportunity to check out a new stereoscopic viewing system from NVIDIA called GeForce 3D Vision. Our feelings were a little mixed on the technology, as it isn't always seamless on top of a few other small issues. But, as we saw with Left 4 Dead, when the game doesn't do too many things that get in the way of the stereo effect, the experience can add a feeling of realism that it is simply impossible to achieve otherwise./news/power-and-thermals-the-xbox-series-x-review-ushering.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-and-thermals-the-xbox-series-x-review-ushering.htmlPower and Thermals Packing all this performance into the new Xbox Series X was most certainly going to be an engineering challenge to deal with the heat generated. The design of the new console is a clear indication that heat was one of the top priorities when engineering the console. The open-top design creates convection currents which naturally draw heat to the top, and the Xbox also adds in a large fan at the top to encourage the hot air to move out the top of the device./news/power-consumption-amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity.htmlPower Consumption Intel has a full process node advantage when you compare Ivy Bridge and Trinity, as a result of that plus an architectural efficiency advantage you just get much better power consumption from the Core i3 than you do with Trinity. Idle power is very good but under heavy CPU load Trinity consumes considerably more power. You're basically looking at quad-core Ivy Bridge levels of power usage under load but performance closer to that of a dual-core Ivy Bridge./news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-r9-290x-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-r9-290x-review.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise. For the 290X we’re going to be seeing several factors influencing the power, temperature, and noise characteristics of the resulting card./news/qualcomm-s-server-team-loses-vp-of-technology-centriq.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-s-server-team-loses-vp-of-technology-centriq.htmlNormally we don’t particularly comment on these sorts of transitions at big companies unless they are C-level (CEO, CTO), however the narrative surrounding Qualcomm’s Centriq product line is still one that is perceived to be in flux. Qualcomm never commented on the rumors about its plans to find a buyer for Centriq, despite Axios and Bloomberg both reporting on them, and as a result never confirmed or denied the proposition: ultimately leading others to speculate./news/razer-updates-the-diamondback-and-orochi-gaming-mice-releases.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-updates-the-diamondback-and-orochi-gaming-mice-releases.htmlToday Razer is updating some of their most classic accessories. The Diamondback mouse was first released way back in 2004, and it was the first gaming mouse to feature an optical sensor, the Orochi is Razer’s mobile gaming mouse, and Razer is also launching an updated version of their Kraken headset. As I mentioned the Diamondback is one of Razer’s oldest peripherals dating all the way back to 2004. For 2015, the Diamondback has kept the ambidextrous design which is going to make left-handed people happy./news/samsung-galaxy-tab-7-0-plus-uses-exynos-soc.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-tab-7-0-plus-uses-exynos-soc.html  In August, at the TouchWiz UX event, we asked a Samsung representative when we would see Exynos in a tablet, he promised it would be within the year. They've kept their promise. Earlier today we confirmed with Samsung that the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus will come with an Exynos SoC, and clocked at 1.2 GHz it will carry the same oomph as found in the Samsung Galaxy S 2./news/sony-introduces-vaio-pro-11-13-ultrabooks-and-vaio.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-introduces-vaio-pro-11-13-ultrabooks-and-vaio.htmlWe’re now on the third iteration of Intel’s Ultrabook strategy, and with Haswell’s launch now behind us we’ll be seeing a lot of new laptops and Ultrabooks with the new CPUs. After some early missteps, we’re hopeful that this will be the proverbially charming third time. Acer and ASUS have shown off some of their offerings, and now it’s time to look at what Sony is up to. Sony has always had a penchant for ultraportables (you know, what they were called before they became Ultrabooks), and laptops like the VAIO Z series have impressed with the amount of hardware crammed into a small chassis./news/stuffing-in-the-kitchen-sink.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/stuffing-in-the-kitchen-sink.htmlStuffing in the Kitchen Sink While I will readily admit I fell in love with the Alienware M17x R3 while I was testing it, using the M18x has left me feeling a bit cold. That may seem unusual given that stylistically it's virtually identical to the M17x R3 (much less the rest of the Alienware mobile lineup), but hear me out. At first glance the M18x is simply a bigger M17x R3, and many of our remarks on that unit apply here./news/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review.htmlDisplay While the display is important on a smartphone, by virtue of its sheer size tablets seem to have a more critical need for a good display. With a tablet there’s a great deal more potential for usage models such as drawing/sketching and photo/video editing. In addition, reading books or watching videos is far more common on a tablet, which means that poor resolution, response time, and/or contrast can be quite visible and painful to live with./news/the-best-nvme-ssd-for-laptops-and-notebooks-sk.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-best-nvme-ssd-for-laptops-and-notebooks-sk.htmlConclusion I've rolled my eyes every time SK hynix uses their "4D NAND" moniker to describe their combination of a peripheral under cell layout and charge trap flash. It seemed like a silly exaggeration of a minor advance over other 3D NAND, especially since Intel and Micron have been doing "CMOS under the Array" since their first generation of 3D NAND. But now that I've tested a SSD using this "/news/the-corsair-rm850x-2018-psu-review-exceptional-electrical-performance.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-corsair-rm850x-2018-psu-review-exceptional-electrical-performance.htmlCorsair may today be one of the largest companies in the PC market, offering literally hundreds of products, but that was not always the case. The company started off as a manufacturer of memory-related computer products and took them many years to even consider diversifying into other segments of the market. Their first significant diversification attempt away from RAM-related products was towards the power supply unit (PSU) market, with the company initially releasing just a couple of PSUs./news/the-gigabyte-x470-gaming-7-wi-fi-motherboard-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-gigabyte-x470-gaming-7-wi-fi-motherboard-review.htmlThe GIGABYTE X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wi-Fi is specifically aimed at gamers looking to make the most of the benefits of AMD’s newest AM4 based chipset, X470. Like most major vendors, GIGABYTE has partitioned its gaming range under the Aorus brand, including waves of RGB enabled components and a more aggressive style than the regular line of products. The Gaming 7 hopes to push Aorus as a brand, retaining the everlasting aesthetics and stylings GIGABYTE offerings have been notable for./news/the-msi-mpg-z690-carbon-wifi-ddr5-motherboard-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-mpg-z690-carbon-wifi-ddr5-motherboard-review.htmlOverclocking When it comes to overclocking on Intel's 12th generation processors, Alder Lake has a new yet important variable to consider. This is because not all of its cores are equal. Intel's latest Alder Lake processors feature a hybrid design with P-cores (performance) and E-cores (efficiency). Focusing on the Core i9-12900K, it has 8 P-Cores, 8 E-cores, and 24 threads in total. While Hyperthreading isn't a new technology, the hybrid nature of Alder Lake combining two different types of CPU core is./news/the-test-intel-core-2-chipset-power-consumption-shootout.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-intel-core-2-chipset-power-consumption-shootout.htmlThe Test We did our best to make this a chipset power consumption comparison, but in reality it is just as much of a motherboard power consumption shootout as a chipset one. All extra features -- things like Wireless LAN and IEEE-1394 support -- were disabled to level the playing field as much as possible between platforms. All memory timings and BIOS settings (where applicable) were set identically across all three systems, and of course we used the same physical CPU, power supply, memory and video card for each system to avoid any variation between components./news/thermal-resistance-vs-sound-pressure-level.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thermal-resistance-vs-sound-pressure-level.htmlDuring our thermal resistance vs. sound pressure level test, we maintain a steady 100W thermal load and assess the overall performance of the coolers by taking multiple temperature and sound pressure level readings within the operating range of the stock cooling fans. The result is a graph that depicts the absolute thermal resistance of the cooler in comparison to the noise generated. For both the sound pressure level and absolute thermal resistance readings, lower figures are better./news/thoughts-on-the-mac-os-x-mountain-lion-developer.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thoughts-on-the-mac-os-x-mountain-lion-developer.htmlGatekeeper Of the Mountain Lion announcements, Gatekeeper has been one of the most discussed. Apple has touted OS X as being a safer, more secure environment than Windows, offering its customers a relatively malware-free experience. In the early days this was often discounted by saying that OS X wasn't a likely target for malware simply because no one used it. Today Apple claims to have a Mac installed base of 63 million users./news/ti-announces-wilink-8-family.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ti-announces-wilink-8-family.htmlIt goes without saying that connectivity is a hugely important part of smartphones. After all, without some sort of network connection, you've basically just got an expensive PDA or PMP. Today, TI is making formal the WiLink 8 family, the newest member of its popular WiLink series of WLAN combo chips, which is built on a 45nm process. WiLink 8 adds support for GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System - GPS + GLONASS) and NFC in addition to WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM receive/transmit like we've seen in WiLink 7 in a number of devices./news/vesa-and-mipi-announce-display-stream-compression-standard.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/vesa-and-mipi-announce-display-stream-compression-standard.htmlFor some time now the consumer electronics industry has been grappling with how to improve the performance and efficiency of display interfaces, especially in light of more recent increases in display resolution. Through the eras of DVI, LVDS/LDI, HDMI, and DisplayPort, video has been transmitted from source to sink as raw, uncompressed data, a conceptually simple setup that ensures high quality and low latency but requires an enormous amount of bandwidth./news/visual-inspection-the-120-msi-x470-gaming-plus-review.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-120-msi-x470-gaming-plus-review.htmlVisual Inspection The MSI X470 Gaming Plus is an ATX gaming centered motherboard designed to offer users a lower cost alternative onto the X470 chipset. The bulk of the aesthetics is dominated by the jet-black PCB which has red lightning like streaks emanating from the top left-hand corner towards the bottom right-hand side. The power delivery heatsinks keep to the same pattern and fit in well with the design with the heatsink covering the X470 chipset also blending in with the printed design onto the PCB./news/1-8-gbps-wi-fi-6-ready-with-bluetooth.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/1-8-gbps-wi-fi-6-ready-with-bluetooth.htmlWith the upcoming ratification of the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard expected in August, a number of companies are gearing up with Wi-Fi 6 ‘ready’ routers and end-points to get the jump on the market. The idea is that the standard won’t change much between now and full ratification, and most companies developing chipsets expect to sail through without issues – the only difference between the companies will be on the ‘optional’ portions of the specifciations./news/1-8-ghz-gpu-hybrid-cooling-4-fans.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/1-8-ghz-gpu-hybrid-cooling-4-fans.htmlColorful has started to sell its highest-performing video card to date, the iGame GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Kudan. The graphics adapter features a large three-wide hybrid cooling system with four fans in total and the manufacturer guarantees that the GPU will hit nearly 1.8 GHz in boost mode once a factory overclocked setting is activated. The Colorful iGame GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Kudan is the company’s flagship card based on NVIDIA’s GP102 GPU and thus is the highest-performing one in its product lineup./news/a-96-core-arm-cpu-with-536-7-gbps.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-96-core-arm-cpu-with-536-7-gbps.htmlNowadays many cloud service providers design their own silicon, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) started to do this ahead of its rivals and by now its Annapurna Labs subsidiary develop processors that can well compete with those from AMD and Intel. This week AWS introduced its Graviton4 SoC, a 96-core ARM-based chip that promises to challenge renowned CPU designers and offer unprecedented performance to AWS clients. "By focusing our chip designs on real workloads that matter to customers, we are able to deliver the most advanced cloud infrastructure to them,"/news/acer-xb280hk-brightness-and-contrast.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-xb280hk-brightness-and-contrast.htmlUsing a full white screen and setting the backlight to maximum, the Acer manages to produce 292 cd/m2 of brightness. That is pretty bright, though not nearly as bright as some displays can get. I don’t think anyone will really have an issue with this level unless there is direct sun on the display (in which case: close your blinds or move the display). The matte finish should cut down on reflections as well./news/ah-ha-dell-s-learning-from-apple-i-can.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ah-ha-dell-s-learning-from-apple-i-can.htmlAh-ha! Dell's Learning from Apple: I Can Has Bags?Remember what I wrote in my MacBook Air review? "If you want to even attempt to carry accessories with the Air, you'll need a standard notebook bag which is designed for much larger systems - partially defeating the purpose of having such a thin and light notebook. While I'd like to see Apple step to the plate and offer a case worthy of the Air, there is a great opportunity for a clever third party manufacturer to make something efficient for carrying the Air and its accessories around./news/airport-utility-and-networking-functions-airport-extreme-5th-gen.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/airport-utility-and-networking-functions-airport-extreme-5th-gen.htmlAirport Utility and Network The only remaining thing to go over is the Airport Utility and general network functionality. I’m not going to go into very much detail at all about the network side of things (routing performance, etc.) since honestly nothing has changed here—the board and SoC are the exact same. To start, all configuration is done through Airport Utility on OS X and Windows. There’s no web-based portal like just about every other attached network device./news/antec-s-performance-1m-mini-itx-chassis-can-house.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/antec-s-performance-1m-mini-itx-chassis-can-house.htmlWith the highly integrated nature of PCs these days, the Mini-ITX form-factor has become a very viable option for high-performance gaming system. With plenty of motherboards available for both AMD and Intel's latest platforms, equipping an ITX system with a CPU is easy enough. But the small size of the form factor means that housing an ultra-wide flagship-level graphics card remains an issue. For this year's Computex trade show, Antec was showing off their solution to the problem of giant video cards: the Performance 1M case, a Mini-ITX case with a separate chamber just for a large video card./news/blackberry-6-messaging-bbm-phone.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/blackberry-6-messaging-bbm-phone.htmlMessaging and BBM RIM has also changed the messaging architecture, adopting an iOS- and Android- like approach by masking the distinction between SMS and MMS. Instead, both are found under text messages and treated like the same thing.  SMS - Sending Location and Virtual Keyboard Frustration The messaging application is threaded and what you’d expect it to be from a modern messaging application./news/camera-low-light-evaluation.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-low-light-evaluation.htmlWe move onto low light shots. This is the part where we have large expectations of the S9 as the new wider aperture and multi-frame noise reduction processing promise great improvements in quality. [ Galaxy S9 ] - [ Galaxy S8 ] - [ Galaxy S7 ] [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Pixel XL ] - [ P10 ]/news/conclusion-the-ultimate-lan-box.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-the-ultimate-lan-box.htmlConclusion: The Ultimate LAN Box There's definitely a compelling product in the Origin Chronos. Origin can pitch their partnership with LucidLogix, and that's certainly a good value add, but I think the one with BitFenix is just as noteworthy. The etched Origin logo on the front of the case is a nice touch, but I'm just happy to see good, inexpensive cases from a boutique that aren't made by NZXT./news/dell-xps-m1730-sli-penryn-and-overclocking.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-xps-m1730-sli-penryn-and-overclocking.htmlIntroduction Apple recently launched their ultra swank, ultra-sleek MacBook Air, a three pound ultraportable laptop potentially capable of running for five hours on a single battery charge. Like most ultraportables, however, performance compromises were necessary in order to meet the size and mobility targets. What does all this have to do with the Dell XPS M1730? Nothing really, except as an interesting contrast. When it comes to mobile computing, there's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat./news/external-design-nzxt-nemesis-and-nemesis-elite.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/external-design-nzxt-nemesis-and-nemesis-elite.htmlExternal Design There are quite a few similarities between both flavors of the Nemesis. The first thing that sticks out is the metal shield bolted onto the bezel of each model. On the steel version, the shield is a brushed aluminum one whereas the Elite aluminum model's shield looks like it has a dark chrome coating. On the left side of the shield of both models is the "Nemesis" name in all uppercase lettering, which lights up when the system is powered on - subtle, yet innovative./news/final-words-crucial-m550-review-128gb-256gb-512gb-and.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-crucial-m550-review-128gb-256gb-512gb-and.htmlFinal Words There are so many reasons why the M550 could be one of the best SSDs in the market. It has the best-in-class encryption support (along with Samsung 840 EVO) and it's also one of the only consumer-grade drives with power loss protection. Heck, it even supports DevSleep to enable low-power states in mobile platforms. Basically it has all the bells and whistles one could hope from a client drive./news/gigabyte-brings-solid-state-storage-to-the-mainstream.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-brings-solid-state-storage-to-the-mainstream.htmlIn an effort to differentiate themselves from other motherboard manufacturers, Gigabyte has introduced a number of interesting add-ons for their motherboards, the most interesting of which is their $50 RAMDISK PCI card. The card is a regular 32-bit PCI card that features four standard DIMM slots on board.  The card also features a custom Gigabyte FPGA that is programmed to act as a SATA to DDR translator, which convinces the SATA controller you connect the card to that the memory you have on that card is no different than a regular SATA HDD./news/gigabyte-trx40-aorus-xtreme-the-amd-trx40-motherboard-overview.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-trx40-aorus-xtreme-the-amd-trx40-motherboard-overview.htmlGIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Xtreme To bolster the release of AMD's Threadripper 3000 series, GIGABYTE has unveiled the largest stack of all the vendors with a total of four new models. Three of GIGABYTE's TRX40 product stack flies the Aorus flag which is its gaming brand, with one model aimed more towards the professional user and content creators. Starting with GIGABYTE's flagship TRX40 model, the GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Xtreme, it shows the potential of what to expect from AMD's new TRX40 chipset./news/gracemont-microarchitecture-e-core-examined-intel-architecture-day-2021.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gracemont-microarchitecture-e-core-examined-intel-architecture-day-2021.htmlGracemont Microarchitecture (E-Core) Examined The smaller core as part of Intel’s hybrid Alder Lake design is called an E-core, and is built on the Gracemont microarchitecture. It forms part of Intel’s Atom family of processors, and is a significant microarchitectural jump over the previous Atom core design called Tremont. 2008: Bonnell 2011: Saltwell 2013: Silvermont 2015: Airmont 2016: Goldmont 2017: Goldmont Plus 2020: Tremont 2021: Gracemont Based on Intel’s diagrams, the company is pitching that the size of its Golden Cove core means that in the space it would normally fit one of its P-core designs, it can enable a four core cluster of E-cores along with a shared 4MB L2 cache between them./news/honor-announces-magicbook-pro-with-16-1-inch-display.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/honor-announces-magicbook-pro-with-16-1-inch-display.htmlHonor has announced its new laptop featuring a rare 16.1-inch display with ultra-thin bezels. The MagicBook Pro notebook packs a quad-core processor from Intel as well as a discrete graphics chip from NVIDIA, yet it remains relatively compact and lightweight. Set to be available in China initially, the notebook will cost less than $1000 in Honor's domestic market. Recent developments of display manufacturing technologies enabled makers of monitors to cost-efficiently produce screens featuring sizes that are different from those primarily used for notebooks today (e./news/htc-announces-the-htc-one-m8-for-windows.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-announces-the-htc-one-m8-for-windows.htmlIt's been a while since we've seen a high-end device running Windows Phone 8 launch from a company other than Nokia. Despite Nokia's dominance, HTC has certainly not given up on the platform and today they're demonstrating that with the launch of a new flagship Windows Phone 8 device that you may already know very well. This new device is named the HTC One (M8) for Windows, and both its design and its hardware are essentially the same as the Android powered HTC One M8 that HTC launched earlier this year./news/htc-squeezes-the-u11-family-adding-the-htc-u11.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-squeezes-the-u11-family-adding-the-htc-u11.htmlToday HTC is expanding its U11 series from one member into three, with the introduction of the U11 life and the U11+. The two new parts are designed to sit above and below the current standard U11 model, with the U11 life aiming at a more price competitive ‘lifestyle’ market, while the U11+ (U11-plus) sits at the top of the pile and is being touted for HTC super-fans who want a little bit more from their U11./news/intel-s-prebuilt-test-system-a-7000-build.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-prebuilt-test-system-a-7000-build.htmlHow we receive test units for review has varied greatly over the years. The company providing the review sample has a range of choices and hands-on solutions. For a regular run of the mill launch, such as Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake/Coffee Lake gen 2, which are second generation launches on the same mature platform as the last generation, we get just the CPU and a set of ‘expected test result notes’ to help guide our testing./news/micron-introduces-9200-series-enterprise-nvme-ssds.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/micron-introduces-9200-series-enterprise-nvme-ssds.htmlToday at Flash Memory Summit, Micron is announcing their next generation of high-end enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new Micron 9200 series is the successor to last year's 9100 series and uses Micron's 32-layer 3D TLC NAND flash and a new generation of Microsemi SSD controllers. As with the 9100 series, Micron's 9200 series covers a wide range of capacities, but adds a third tier of write endurance: ECO joins the PRO and MAX tiers, respectively aimed at read-heavy workloads, mixed workloads, and write-intensive workloads./news/mountain-lion-power-nap-connected-standby.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mountain-lion-power-nap-connected-standby.htmlMountain Lion now features connected standby via a feature Apple calls Power Nap. Even while sleeping your Mac will now fetch new emails, tweets, etc.. as well as download updates while it's plugged in. Power Nap is only supported on the 2nd generation MacBook Air or the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIJ6hJBopKitnqmuqrqMpaCopl2lvLix0WalmqhdmLyvusScq56cXajBorrDm7A%3D/news/nvidia-launches-fermi-based-geforce-gt-610-gt-620.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-launches-fermi-based-geforce-gt-610-gt-620.htmlWhile we were off at NVIDIA’s GTC 2012 conference seeing NVIDIA’s latest professional products, NVIDIA’s GeForce group was busy with some launches of their own. The company has quietly launched the GeForce GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 into the retail market. Unfortunately these are not the Kepler GeForce cards you were probably looking for.   GT 630 GDDR5 GT 630 DDR3 GT 620 GT 610 Previous Model Number GT 440 GDDR5 GT 440 DDR3 N/A GT 520 Stream Processors 96 96 96 48 Texture Units 16 16 16 8 ROPs 4 4 4 4 Core Clock 810MHz 810MHz 700MHz 810MHz Shader Clock 1620MHz 1620MHz 1400MHz 1620MHz Memory Clock 3./news/nvidia-releases-375-63-whql-driver-update.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-375-63-whql-driver-update.htmlUpdate 10/23: NVIDIA has yanked the 375.57 drivers this weekend and replaced them with a new build, 375.63. The updated driver set fixes an especially annoying bug with tiles on Windows 10 that the previous driver introduced. They can be downloaded here. Following suit as this fall's major games hit the (virtual) store shelves, NVIDIA has packaged another bundle of Game Ready updates for the latest releases. In the 375.57 WHQL update we get a few fixes, new game support, and some VR as well./news/nvidia-s-geforce-rtx-3060-gets-a-release-date.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-s-geforce-rtx-3060-gets-a-release-date.htmlNVIDIA this morning has sent over a quick note revealing the release date for their next GeForce desktop video card, the RTX 3060. The mainstream(ish) video card, previously revealed at CES 2021 with a late February release date, has now been locked in for a launch on February 25th, with prices starting at $329. As a quick recap, the RTX 3060 is the next card down in NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture consumer video card stack./news/power-temperature-noise-sapphire-radeon-r9-290-tri-x.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-sapphire-radeon-r9-290-tri-x.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. With the reference 290 the high performance of the card came at the cost of significant noise, so the arrival of customized cards presents board partners with a chance to offer better, quieter cooling solutions than what the reference 290 was capable of. In the case of Sapphire and their Tri-X cooler, we’ve already seen that it has proven to be a very capable cooling solution for the heavily overclocked 280X Toxic, so this bodes well for Hawaii based cards./news/quick-look-at-ia-64-intel-idf-report-3.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quick-look-at-ia-64-intel-idf-report-3.htmlThe Good & Bad of IA-64 As a member of the IA-64 family, the Itanium is obviously geared towards 64-bit application performance that is optimized for the processor’s technology. Unfortunately for the Itanium, most of the applications available at the release of the CPU later this year will still be for the IA-32 family. This brings up the most prevalent concern about the Itanium, its IA-32 performance. The Itanium will most likely be inferior to the Willamette in terms of IA-32 performance, which effects more users that those that would benefit immediately from the IA-64 support of the CPU./news/samsung-ativ-smart-pc-battery-life.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-ativ-smart-pc-battery-life.htmlSamsung ATIV Smart PC: Battery Life The battery life this platform offers is fantastic. The 31Wh battery gives over 10 hours of runtime in our internet browsing test, which is in the same ballpark as the Tegra 3 Windows RT tablets, but also better than the iPad from a power efficiency standpoint. It’s worth noting that the iPad has a much higher resolution display that results in a significantly higher power draw, but offers almost the same 10 hour battery life with a much larger 42./news/silicon-power-demos-phison-e31t-based-ssd.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silicon-power-demos-phison-e31t-based-ssd.htmlAlthough consumer SSDs based on Phison's PS5026-E26 controller have been on the market for almost a year and a half now, the class-leading drives still carry a distinct price premium, and to some degree that's because it's still one of the only options for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. But it looks like the situation is going to change in the coming quarters, as SSDs based on Phison's PS5031-E31T controller are incoming, with at least one Phison customer demoing an E31T drive on the Computex show floor./news/skylake-i7-6700k-dram-testing-ddr4-vs-ddr3l-on.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/skylake-i7-6700k-dram-testing-ddr4-vs-ddr3l-on.htmlDDR4 vs DDR3L on Gaming For this set of tests, we kept things simple for the results – a low end single R7 240 DDR3, an ex-high end GTX 770 Lightning and a top line GTX 980 on our standard CPU game set under normal conditions.  However it is the integrated results that should throw up the biggest difference. Alien: Isolation If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title./news/software-cont-shadowplay-and-reason-flags.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-cont-shadowplay-and-reason-flags.htmlAlong with providing the game optimization service and SHIELD’s PC client, GeForce Experience has another service that’s scheduled to be added this summer. That service is called ShadowPlay, and not unlike SHIELD it’s intended to serve as a novel software implementation of some of the hardware functionality present in NVIDIA’s latest hardware. ShadowPlay will be NVIDIA’s take on video recording, the novel aspect of it coming from the fact that NVIDIA is basing the utility around Kepler’s hardware H./news/some-thoughts-on-lenovo-s-acquisition-of-motorola-mobility.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/some-thoughts-on-lenovo-s-acquisition-of-motorola-mobility.htmlEarlier this evening Google announced the sale of Motorola Mobility to hardware manufacturer Lenovo for a deal valued at just below $3 billion. Given my fondness for the Moto X and Moto G, two of the best ergonomically executed handsets in the Android space from my perspective, I had a bunch of thoughts about this deal that I wanted to get down in writing. I'll start off with a bit of praise for Motorola./news/system-performance-ibuypower-element-gaming-pc-review-i7-8086k.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-ibuypower-element-gaming-pc-review-i7-8086k.htmlSystem Performance Starting things off, let's take a look at low-level system performance. This gives us a look at some of the baser aspects of the system, including power consumption, audio quality, POST time and latency. ***For this specific review, the iBuyPower system hardware is different than the other datasets used. We wanted to test performance out of the box with the factory overclocked Core i7-8086K CPU (in this case iBuyPower set it to 5 GHz all cores) along with the included video card, a reference GTX 1080 Ti running at stock speeds./news/the-13-inch-retina-display-in-numbers.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-13-inch-retina-display-in-numbers.htmlThe latest rMBP features a 13.3-inch, 2560 x 1600 LED backlit IPS LCD panel. Apple maintains a total of four aspect ratios across all of its product lines: Apple Display Aspect Ratio Aspect Ratio 3:2 4:3 16:9 16:10 Apple Product iPhone 4S iPad, iPad mini 11-inch MBA, iPhone 5, iPod Touch (5th gen) 13-inch MBA, MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro I'm not sure if you can read anything into this, other than Apple seems to be fine with choosing a different aspect ratio to fit the form factor of whatever device it's building./news/the-apple-thunderbolt-display-review.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-thunderbolt-display-review.htmlDissection If you haven't gathered by now, the Thunderbolt Display isn't a regular monitor - it has a lot of components inside that you'd typically only find in a full fledged computer. Being the curious cat I am, I wanted to see inside. Apple isn't too fond of us poking around inside their review samples, but luckily the Crabtree Valley Mall Apple Store just got Thunderbolt Displays in so I hopped in the practical-wagon and grabbed one in the name of science./news/the-vmmark-scoring-chaos-vmmark-scores-investigated-should-vmmark.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-vmmark-scoring-chaos-vmmark-scores-investigated-should-vmmark.htmlThe VMmark Scoring Chaos When the new Xeon based on the "Nehalem" architecture launched, there was a lot - and I am being polite - of confusion about the VMmark scores. Scores ranged from 14.22 to 23.55 for dual CPU servers based on the same Xeon X5570 2.93GHz. Look at the published and "non published" VMmark scores we found from various sources: The new Xeon 5570 is between 55% and 157% faster, depending on your source./news/thread-director-windows-11-does-it-best.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thread-director-windows-11-does-it-best.htmlEvery operating system runs what is called a scheduler – a low-level program that dictates where workloads should be on the processor depending on factors like performance, thermals, and priority. A naïve scheduler that only has to deal with a single core or a homogenous design has it pretty easy, managing only power and thermals. Since those single core days though, schedulers have grown more complex. One of the first issues that schedulers faced in monolithic silicon designs was multi-threading, whereby a core could run more than one thread simultaneously./news/u-3-ssds-for-data-center-workloads.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/u-3-ssds-for-data-center-workloads.htmlMicron is taking the wraps off their latest data center SSD offering today. The 9400 NVMe Series builds upon Micron's success with their third-generation 9300 series introduced back in Q2 2019. The 9300 series had adopted the U.2 form-factor with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, and utilized their 64L 3D TLC NAND. With a maximum capacity of 15.36 TB, the drive matched the highest-capacity HDDs on the storage amount front at that time (obviously with much higher performance numbers)./news/video-the-iphone-5s-review.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/video-the-iphone-5s-review.htmlVideo Apple’s new H6 ISP brings with it a modernization of the video recording options for the iPhone 5s. The default video record mode is still 1080p at 30 fps, but there’s also a new 720p 120 fps “slo-mo” mode as well. In the latter, video is captured at 120 fps but optionally played back at 30 fps in order to achieve a high speed camera/slow motion effect. The result is pretty cool:/news/who-is-the-optane-ssd-900p-for.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/who-is-the-optane-ssd-900p-for.htmlWith a price per GB a little over twice that of the the fastest flash-based consumer SSDs, the Optane SSD 900P is an exclusive high-end product. For most desktop usage, drives like the 960 PRO are already fast enough to make storage no longer a severe bottleneck. The most noticeable delays due to storage performance on a 960 PRO are when moving around large files, and the Optane SSD doesn't offer any significant improvement to sequential transfer speeds./news/windows-8-1-battery-life-investigation-1080p-video-playback.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/windows-8-1-battery-life-investigation-1080p-video-playback.htmlA couple weeks back, I posted a short article on battery life with Windows 8.1 looking at whether or not it had changed compared to Windows 8. The short summary is that no, it did not change appreciably, though at least one of the tests I ran showed worse battery life with Windows 8.1 compared to Windows 8. There are quite a few variables, and we try to minimize the impact of other elements on battery life, but since I can’t easily go back and retest the original Windows 8 results it’s difficult to say for certain if the drop is consistent among laptops or something specific to the Sony VAIO Pro 13./news/xigmatek-aio-self-contained-water-coolers-xigmatek-aio-vs.htmlSat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xigmatek-aio-self-contained-water-coolers-xigmatek-aio-vs.htmlXigmatek AIOXigmatek Co., Ltd. is a new name in thermal products, It is a Taiwan company affiliated with the Xinruilian Science & Technology Co. Ltd., located out of China. This company is one of the largest fan and PC power supply makers in the world and produces the well-known X-Fan line of PC system fans. There are six founders and one major investor in Xigmatek - all of whom have many years of direct experience in the PC cooler industry./news/12-ips-with-sandy-bridge.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/12-ips-with-sandy-bridge.htmlWe try not to bring you too much news about product announcements unless there's something particularly intriguing about them; we get inundated by them and most of the time it's the most generic of refreshes. Happily that's not the case with Lenovo's shiny new ThinkPad X220 notebooks. Inexplicably Lenovo is opting to label these two very different notebooks under the same X220 header: one is a tablet clocking in at 3./news/4kp144-monitors-on-sale-at-end-of-may-other.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/4kp144-monitors-on-sale-at-end-of-may-other.htmlWhile NVIDIA's upcoming ultra-premium G-Sync HDR monitors have been in the public eye for some time now, the schedule slips have become something of a sticking point, prompting the company in March to state that 27” 4K 144 Hz models would be shipping and on the market in April. Needless to say, those displays are yet to launch, though preorders for the Acer Predator X27 and ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ were listed in Europe in mid-April./news/4tb-of-tlc-for-680.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/4tb-of-tlc-for-680.htmlWestern Digital markets portable SSDs under different brands, catering to different market segments. The flagships in each brand make use of of very similar platforms - a M.2 NVMe SSD behind an appropriate bridge chip. The industrial design varies from brand to brand to appeal better to the target market. The WD My Passport and SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDs are USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) SSDs using an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip and a WD SN550E PCIe 3./news/analysis-of-a-new-a5.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/analysis-of-a-new-a5.htmlThe Apple TV is an incredibly relevant device today. It’s Apple’s attempt to augment the Netflixes and Hulu Pluses of the world with an on-demand cable TV alternative. Other companies are working on the same problem, with different solutions. Even Intel recently threw its hat into the ring. Apple famously refers to the Apple TV as a hobby, but I view it as more of an experiment. A test for the infrastructure, the delivery mechanism and a test of how to work with content companies./news/asmedia-preps-asm2824-pcie-3-0-switch.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asmedia-preps-asm2824-pcie-3-0-switch.htmlBack in 2016 Avago/Broadcom greatly increased the prices of its PLX-branded PCIe switches, which caused many motherboard manufacturers to cease using them. Avago’s motivation was rather obvious — PCIe switches are needed primarily in servers and should be priced accordingly. Meanwhile, there is still demand for such devices in desktops as well, so other manufacturers are vying to enter the PCIe switch space. Apparently, both ASMedia and Marvell are preparing their own PCIe switches./news/asrock-first-for-b450-ryzen-5000-support-beta-bioses.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-first-for-b450-ryzen-5000-support-beta-bioses.htmlOne of the big unknowns for the newest AMD Ryzen 5000 processors is whether or not there will be support on all 400 series chipset-based motherboards. After initially saying that these motherboards would not be supported, AMD reversed course and said it would work with motherboard vendors to enable support. At the point when the processors were launched, AMD confirmed that the schedule for the first beta BIOSes for 400-series motherboards to support Ryzen 5000 would be in the January timeframe./news/asrock-z490-phantom-gaming-itx-tb3.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z490-phantom-gaming-itx-tb3.htmlFor the launch of Intel's Comet Lake desktop processors and the LGA1200 socket, ASRock has just one mini-ITX model in its arsenal in the way of the ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3. With official support for Thunderbolt 3 via a Type-C port on the back panel, it also includes an 8-phase power delivery, has two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, as well as four SATA ports. Also featured is an Intel Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface with BT 5./news/assembling-the-corsair-carbide-200r.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-corsair-carbide-200r.htmlAssembling the Corsair Carbide 200R I can't believe I'm saying this, but installing our testbed into the Corsair Carbide 200R was actually somewhat fraught. Corsair cases are usually what I work on when I need a break, when I want something relaxing, but the Carbide 200R was surprisingly frustrating. Things started as well as they usually do. The built-in motherboard tray centerpost allows you to easily line the motherboard up with the standoffs, and the tray itself already has the standoffs installed./news/asus-rog-maximus-xi-formula.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-maximus-xi-formula.htmlAnother high-end board on the Z390 chipset from ASUS is the ROG Maximus XI Formula which has a similar rear panel cover as the Maximus XI Code along with what looks to be a near identical PCIe slot layout. Other similarities stretch to the use of a PCB cover which looks to have a little more flair and more RGB than the Code, but from a quick glance, the entirety of what's visible PCB wise looks to be identical to the ROG Maximus XI Code; this is not necessarily a bad thing./news/asus-rog-strix-trx40-e-gaming.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-trx40-e-gaming.htmlMoving onto the ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming and it's the only TRX40 model currently to include the gaming tag line in its model naming. Cut from a similar cloth to the ROG Zenith II Extreme with its blend of black aluminium inspired design, ASUS has also included its LiveDash OLED into the rear panel cover, with support for DDR4-4666 and 256 GB across eight memory slots also featured. The ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming is ATX in size and is designed for the gamer in mind, with plenty of features found on most HEDT boards making it a solid all-rounder./news/asus-to-unveil-first-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-based.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-to-unveil-first-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-based.htmlAsus on Tuesday said that it would announce its first 'AI PC' based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite system-on-chips later this month. The new laptop is set to be introduced at the Next Level. AI Incredible virtual launch event on May 20. The launch of Asustek's new Vivobook S 15 will be hosted by Asus and will be joined by representatives of Qualcomm and Microsoft, who will reveal how they collaborated with PC maker to develop the first notebook based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors./news/atom-vs-cortex-a9-nvidia-introduces-dual-cortex-a9.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/atom-vs-cortex-a9-nvidia-introduces-dual-cortex-a9.htmlAtom vs. Cortex A9 With Atom Intel adopted an in-order architecture to save power. With Cortex A9, ARM went out of order to improve performance. Despite the fundamental difference, Atom and ARM's Cortex A9 appear similar from a high level. Atom has two instruction decoders at the front end, as does the A9. The dual decoders feed an instruction queue that can dispatch out of order: Intel's Atom Architecture Both architectures appear to have a unified instruction queue that feed four dispatch ports./news/battery-life-the-apple-ipad-2-review.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-the-apple-ipad-2-review.htmlBattery Life Testing battery life on a tablet is pretty grueling as these things are effectively smartphones with gigantic batteries. What would last for only a few hours on a smartphone can easily last over ten on a tablet. The iPad 2 is no exception. As iFixit discovered, the iPad 2 features a nearly identical battery to the original iPad (25Wh vs. 24.8Wh). We already established that display brightness hasn't gone up so the only real impact on battery life will be because of the A5 SoC./news/best-tablets-holiday-2013.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/best-tablets-holiday-2013.htmlWe've covered quite a few laptop options last week for those looking for something mobile for the holiday season, but one area we haven't touched on yet is tablet options. There are several ways to break things down, so let's quickly cover the bases first. You need to answer a few questions in determining the best tablet for your needs. First up: what operating system do you want to run? You have four main choices: Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Microsoft's Windows RT and Windows 8./news/between-vdi-and-sbc-killing-the-business-desktop-pc.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/between-vdi-and-sbc-killing-the-business-desktop-pc.htmlBetween VDI and SBCMeet the rock - VDI - and the hard place: SBC. Server Based Computing (SBC) might not be the most exciting technology, but it is exciting from a cost point of view. It requires one large server, which means that you have to maintain only one server OS, which can support - depending on the amount of RAM you put in that machine - up to 100 users or more./news/conclusion-first-impressions-the-2020-mac-mini-unleashed-putting.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-first-impressions-the-2020-mac-mini-unleashed-putting.htmlConclusion & First Impressions Today’s piece was less of a review on the new Mac mini as it was testing out Apple’s new M1 chip. We’ve had very little time with the device but hopefully were able to manage to showcase the key aspects of the new chip, and boy, it’s impressive. For years now we’ve seen Apple’s custom CPU microarchitecture in A-series phone SoCs post impressive and repeated performance jumps generation after generation, and it today’s new Apple Silicon devices are essentially the culmination of the inevitable trajectory that Apple has been on./news/construction-build-appearance-size-voodoo-envy-m-860.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/construction-build-appearance-size-voodoo-envy-m-860.htmlConstruction - Build, Appearance, Size When we first saw this notebook, our first thought was "the Dell Inspiron XPS has another competitor." The last Voodoo notebook that came through our door was the M:855, which also used an Athlon 64 DTR processor (read more), but didn't come with a widescreen display.Opening the M:860 is as simple as sliding the security tab to the right and lifting the display lid. The single security tab actually is hinged to two security clips, which unclip themselves from the notebook base when the tab is slid to the right./news/cpu-performance-encoding-tests-the-intel-9th-gen-review.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-encoding-tests-the-intel-9th-gen-review.htmlCPU Performance: Encoding Tests With the rise of streaming, vlogs, and video content as a whole, encoding and transcoding tests are becoming ever more important. Not only are more home users and gamers needing to convert video files into something more manageable, for streaming or archival purposes, but the servers that manage the output also manage around data and log files with compression and decompression. Our encoding tasks are focused around these important scenarios, with input from the community for the best implementation of real-world testing./news/discussing-core-i9-and-thermal-throttling.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/discussing-core-i9-and-thermal-throttling.htmlOn Monday this week I was invited onto the Vector podcast, one of the popular Apple-focused podcasts, run by iMore’s Rene Ritchie. In the podcast we discuss Intel’s product portfolio relating to Apple’s new MacBook Pro line of products, as well as the issues that come with thermal design limits, decisions in that design, how to benchmark, what benchmarks mean, and how the tools we sometimes use for testing are black boxes./news/ev6-socket-462-overclocking-amd-duron.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ev6-socket-462-overclocking-amd-duron.htmlEV6, Socket-462 & Overclocking Even before looking at the benchmarks we know that the Duron will have an easy time with the Celeron because of the fact that it still uses the 100MHz DDR (effectively 200MHz) EV6 front side bus while the Celeron is limited to its 66MHz FSB.  Only when overclocked to the 100MHz FSB can the Celeron stand a chance against the Duron because the CPU is so clearly limited by its FSB as we demonstrated in our Celeron review./news/features-features-features-gigabyte-gm-m8000-mouse.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/features-features-features-gigabyte-gm-m8000-mouse.htmlI have to preface our article today with the fact that I tend to gravitate to Logitech mice for all of my needs; well not all of them, but that is another story. At this time, we have a bevy of G5, MX518, and MX510 mice spread throughout the labs. In fact, I use the Logitech MX Revolution on my primary work machine and the G5/MX518 products at home. However, I tried a G9 and just did not like it based on how it felt in my hand, but the hardware capabilities were great./news/for-streaming-your-streams-relive-adrenalin.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/for-streaming-your-streams-relive-adrenalin.htmlWhile Radeon ReLive launched a year ago with Crimson ReLive Edition, 17.7.2 brought additional capabilities and features. Today, Adrenalin Edition brings even more, honing in on the needs of video game streaming. For one, ReLive now has an in-game overlay for chat on Twitch, Facebook, Youtube, and Mixer, as it is always nice for streamers to see in real-time all the silly things their viewers might say. Support for mouse button hotkeys was added as well./news/gaming-performance-the-gigabyte-x570-aorus-xtreme-motherboard-review.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-the-gigabyte-x570-aorus-xtreme-motherboard-review.htmlGaming Performance For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review. World of Tanks enCore Albeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky./news/generational-tests-on-the-i7-6700k-legacy-office-and.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/generational-tests-on-the-i7-6700k-legacy-office-and.htmlMoving on to the generational tests, and similar to our last Broadwell review I want to dedicate a few pages to specifically looking at how stock speed processors perform as Intel has released each generation. For this each CPU is left at stock, DRAM set to DDR3-1600 (or DDR4-2133 for Skylake in DDR4 mode) and we run the full line of CPU tests at our disposal. Legacy Some users will notice that in our benchmark database Bench, we keep data on the CPUs we’ve tested back over a decade and the benchmarks we were running back then./news/gigabyte-z87x-oc-bios-and-software.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z87x-oc-bios-and-software.htmlGIGABYTE Z87X-OC BIOS We dissected the new GIGABYTE HD BIOS back with our review of the Z87X-UD3H, including their new HD mode designed to me more informative for enthusiasts and power users.  The Z87X-OC differs initially in the color, moving to an orange hue indicative of the OC range of motherboards from GIGABYTE.  Features worth reiterating include the customizable menus for enthusiasts to pool the important features of the BIOS, the ability to implement changes immediately or after boot, and that classic mode is retained for users that prefer it./news/gpu-performance-iris-pro-in-the-wild.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-iris-pro-in-the-wild.htmlThe new iMac is pretty good, but what drew me to the system was it’s among the first implementations of Intel’s Iris Pro 5200 graphics in a shipping system. There are some pretty big differences between what ships in the entry-level iMac and what we tested earlier this year however. We benchmarked a Core i7-4950HQ, a 2.4GHz 47W quad-core part with a 3.6GHz max turbo and 6MB of L3 cache (in addition to the 128MB eDRAM L4)./news/htc-one-mini-2-announcement.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-one-mini-2-announcement.htmlToday, HTC is launching the HTC One mini 2, a phone that is supposed to be a smaller version of the HTC One (M8), both in price and size. As a direct successor to the HTC One mini, a surprising amount has changed. The camera is no longer the Ultrapixel sensor, the display and overall size increase, NFC shows up, and the SoC has been changed to use a quad core Cortex A7 setup over the dual core Krait setup from last year./news/intel-s-raja-koduri-keynote-2-00pm-pt.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-raja-koduri-keynote-2-00pm-pt.html04:54PM EDT - Hot Chips has gone virtual this year! Lots of talks on lots of products, including Tiger Lake, Xe, POWER10, Xbox Series X, TPUv3, and a special Raja Koduri Keynote. Stay tuned at AnandTech for our live blogs as we commentate on each talk. Intel recently had its own Architecture Day 2020, with Raja Koduri and other Intel specialists disclosing details about process and products. It will be interesting to see if Raja discusses anything akin to roadmaps in this keynote./news/intel-s-6th-gen-skylake-conclusions.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-6th-gen-skylake-conclusions.htmlThe new 6th Generation Skylake platform from Intel has launched today, and as part of the package there are two new processors, the Core i7-6700K and the Core i5-6600K, a new Z170 motherboard chipset with corresponding motherboards, and also a new market for DDR4 DRAM. The purpose of the Skylake platform launch is to update the mainstream PC market segment for the purposes of better performance and enhanced connectivity. What is Skylake?/news/intel-s-whiskey-lake-u-goes-mini-itx.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-whiskey-lake-u-goes-mini-itx.htmlASRock has introduced a new Mini-ITX motherboard based on Intel’s Whiskey Lake-U SoCs, which is aimed at embedded applications. The IMB-1216 mainboard is designed for applications like panel PCs, point-of-sales systems, kiosks, and digital signage, but can be used for regular low-power PCs in a Mini-ITX form-factor. The ASRock IMB-1216 motherboard falls under quite a rare product category, as it brings together a mobile SoC and a desktop form-factor. Such a combination is not completely surprising though./news/mass-production-expected-in-q4-15.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mass-production-expected-in-q4-15.htmlThe SandForce SF3000 series has become the unicorn of the SSD industry. For the past two years there has been a lot of hype about the new controller, but Seagate/SandForce has kept missing deadlines one after the other. Initially the third generation SandForce controller was supposed to ship in mid-2014, but obviously that didn't happen. Next we heard Q4'15, which was then changed to mid-2015 and the latest word I got at Computex is expected mass production in Q4'15, meaning that we could see first products shipping in early 2016./news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-best-nvme-ssd-for.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-best-nvme-ssd-for.htmlMixed Random Performance Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%./news/more-on-new-platforms-intel-developer-forum-spring-2003.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-on-new-platforms-intel-developer-forum-spring-2003.htmlMore on New Platforms In our coverage of the first day of the Spring 2003 IDF we talked about Intel's Powersville concept PC, today we're able to bring you a bit more on the concept PC side: Above we have the 2003 Concept PC called Statesboro, designed to be an attractive digital media PC. This particular machine is Hyper-Threading enabled and sports a very attractive and simple chassis: The more interesting concepts came from the 875 based systems Intel had on display, that showcased the Serial ATA enabled ICH5:/news/nvidia-s-scalable-link-interface-the-new-sli.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-s-scalable-link-interface-the-new-sli.htmlIntroduction The major trend in computing as of late has been toward parallelism. We are seeing Hyperthreading and the promise of dual core CPUs on the main stage, and supporting technologies like NCQ that will optimize the landscape for multitasking environments. Even multi-monitor support has caught on everywhere from the home to the office. One of the major difficulties with this is that most user space applications (especially business applications like word processors and such) are not inherently parallel./news/system-performance-the-msi-b350-tomahawk-motherboard-review-gaming.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-msi-b350-tomahawk-motherboard-review-gaming.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested./news/system-teardown-and-analysis-asrock-s-high-end-vision.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-teardown-and-analysis-asrock-s-high-end-vision.htmlThe ASRock Vision 3D 252B is primarily built out of notebook components, and it is not possible for the average enthusiast to build such a system with off-the-shelf components. Motherboard & Chipset : mini-ITX Intel HM65-MXM The motherboard used in the Vision 3D series is based on the Cougar Point Intel HM65 chipset. The 2 SATA 6 Gbps ports are available as headers on the motherboard, while one SATA 3 Gbps port is made available as an eSATA3 port./news/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2-in-1-review.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2-in-1-review.htmlDesign The latest generation XPS 13 2-in-1 is a stunner. Dell has tweaked the design in all the right areas to create one of the best looking laptops in its class, and it starts with the CNC aluminum chassis. While somehow thinner and lighter than ever, the new design still feels very sturdy. Even with the body ranging from just 7 mm to 11 mm in thickness, there’s very little flex in the chassis at all, even with the laptop open./news/the-epicgear-defiant-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-epicgear-defiant-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlThe design of the Defiant is minimalistic, with the top of the keyboard being a flat anodized black aluminum plate. The bottom half of the keyboard is plastic, with an orange rubber cable support on the back of the keyboard. The company’s logo is engraved onto the rubber support. It is a standard 104 keys ANSI layout keyboard with a 6.25× Spacebar and seven 1.25× bottom row keys. The keycaps are made from ABS plastic and have large, futuristic characters./news/the-google-i-o-2017-keynote-live-blog.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-google-i-o-2017-keynote-live-blog.html12:51PM EDT - Taking place today is Google's annual I/O developer conference. Starting things off as always is the keynote, where we should receive updates on several Google technologies, initiaitves, and other Google-centric projects 12:51PM EDT - Android O will obviously be a big focus 12:52PM EDT - Android Wear and Android TV are also good bets 12:52PM EDT - I'd also be surprised if we don't see something hardware related, though that could be just about anything/news/the-intel-9th-gen-review-core-i9-9900k-core.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-intel-9th-gen-review-core-i9-9900k-core.htmlOverclocking With the upgraded thermal interface between the processor and the heatspreader, from paste to solder, Intel is leaning on the fact that these overclockable processors should be more overclockable than previous generations. We’ve only had time to test the Core i9-9900K and i7-9700K on this, so we took them for a spin. Our overclocking methodology is simple. We set the Load Line Calibration to static (or level 1 for this ASRock Z370 motherboard), set the frequency to 4./news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell-mark-2.htmlFri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell-mark-2.htmlAt the risk of sounding like a broken record, the biggest story in the GPU industry over the last year has been over what isn’t as opposed to what is. What isn’t happening is that after nearly 3 years of the leading edge manufacturing node for GPUs at TSMC being their 28nm process, it isn’t being replaced any time soon. As of this fall TSMC has 20nm up and running, but only for SoC-class devices such as Qualcomm Snapdragons and Apple’s A8./news/3dsmax-9-cinebench-r10-pov-ray-3-7-and.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3dsmax-9-cinebench-r10-pov-ray-3-7-and.html3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering TestToday's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores: Once more we have a situation where the Q8400 and Phenom II 940 are similar in performance, with AMD holding onto a negligible 2% advantage./news/analyzing-the-iphone-5-geekbench-results.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/analyzing-the-iphone-5-geekbench-results.htmlWhile working on our Haswell piece, I've been religiously checking the Geekbench and GLBenchmark results browsers to see if anyone ran either benchmark and decided to tap upload. This usually happens before every major smartphone launch, but in the case of the iPhone 5 the details these applications can give us are even more important. Yesterday we confirmed that Apple is using its own custom designed ARM based CPU cores in its A6 SoC./news/asrock-z690-pg-velocita-ddr5.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z690-pg-velocita-ddr5.htmlASRock Z690 PG Velocita (DDR5) Sitting below the Z690 Taichi in its product stack, ASRock also has a couple of Phantom Gaming series branded boards for Intel's Z690 and Alder Lake launch. The most apparent of the ATX sized versions is the ASRock Z690 PG Velocita, which was introduced back during the launch of Intel's 10th generation Z490 chipset. The ASRock Z690 PG Velocita has an interesting design layout, with elements of black, red, and purple within the rear panel cover, and integrated RGB LEDs built into both the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink./news/assembling-the-lian-li-pc-a76x.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-lian-li-pc-a76x.htmlAssembling the Lian Li PC-A76X If you've kept up at all with my reviews of previous Lian Li cases, there should be very little in the PC-A76X that will surprise you. Most of the design choices I've come to expect from Lian Li, for better or for worse, are present in the PC-A76X. Thankfully the sheer size of the enclosure goes a long way towards making it easy to assemble, provided you have the strength necessary to manipulate it./news/beating-tlc-with-qlc-mram-and-computational-storage.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/beating-tlc-with-qlc-mram-and-computational-storage.htmlTwo years ago we reported on IBM's FlashCore Module, their custom U.2 NVMe SSD for use in their FlashSystem enterprise storage appliances. Earlier this year IBM released the FlashCore Module 2 and this week they detailed it in a keynote presentation at Flash Memory Summit. Like its predecessor, the FCM 2 is a very high-end enterprise SSD with some unusual and surprising design choices. The most unusual feature of the first IBM FlashCore Module was the fact that it did not use any supercapacitors for power loss protection, nor did the host system include battery backup./news/bitfenix-announces-the-prodigy-m-case.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bitfenix-announces-the-prodigy-m-case.htmlOne of my most used cases of last year is the Bitfenix Prodigy (my family own three between us), and Dustin gave it anEditor's Choice award back in June last year.  It offered a slightly larger mini-ITX case with space for several storage drives and a large GPU.  The Prodigy got enough of a following that requests were funnelled back to BitFenix to release a version, either the same size or slightly bigger for micro-ATX motherboards and dual GPU functionality./news/blossom-smart-watering-controller-review.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/blossom-smart-watering-controller-review.htmlIntroduction and Component Analysis Home automation has garnered renewed attention, thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. Many vendors targeting this market look to deliver solutions for aspects appealing to a broader audience. Some examples include lighting, temperature control, security using IP cameras etc. Irrigation control is a niche within the home automation niche. At first glance, it appears to be a limited market, as only those with gardens big enough to require scheduled / automated watering of multiple zones might need it./news/budget-gaming-desktop-and-lan-machine.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/budget-gaming-desktop-and-lan-machine.htmlBudget Gaming Desktop: WarFactory Sentinel I often feel like the number one most underserved market in pre-built desktop machines may very well be the budget gamer. If there were ever a market that needed "that friend who builds computers," this is almost always it. Mainstream vendors like Dell, HP, and Acer are notorious for skimping on graphics hardware even in their high end desktop machines, to say nothing of anything south of a large./news/camera-quick-evaluation-the-iphone-se-2020-review-a.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-quick-evaluation-the-iphone-se-2020-review-a.htmlCamera - Quick Evaluation As noted in the intro, the camera of the new iPhone SE isn’t all that new. It’s essentially the same generation sensor as found on the iPhone 8. The reason for this likely is due to the fact that Apple was limited by the physical form-factor of the phone, particularly the z-height of the camera module, unable to include any of the newer and bigger generation modules./news/consumer-electronics-show-2005-keynote-with-bill-gates-conan.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/consumer-electronics-show-2005-keynote-with-bill-gates-conan.htmlIPTV Quite possibly the most eye catching demonstration during the Gates' keynote was SBC Communication's IPTV demonstration. IPTV, as the name implies, involves broadcasting television over the internet, most likely high speed fiber or some equivalent. The first thing you noticed about the demonstration was that it was flawless, most likely running off of a high speed LAN, but everything just worked and it worked well. If you had seen the demonstration you would've thought that IPTV was here today and working right in front of your eyes./news/fast-charging-note-the-xiaomi-11t-11t-pro-review.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fast-charging-note-the-xiaomi-11t-11t-pro-review.htmlFast Charging Note Xiaomi is focusing the PR of the Mi 11T series on the fast-charging capabilities. Notably, the 11T Pro comes with a 120W fast charger: It’s a USB-A connector on the power brick, and we can see that to achieve 120W the phone uses 20V and 6A transmission. The 6A is the rather special part as this requires a special thicker cable that’s included – otherwise any other generic cable will not allow to these kinds of power levels./news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-logitech-g910-orion-spectrum.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-logitech-g910-orion-spectrum.htmlConclusion I always try to use every keyboard that we review as my personal keyboard for at least a week. My typical weekly usage includes a lot of typing (about 100-150 pages), a few hours of gaming and some casual usage, such as internet browsing and messaging. I personally prefer Cherry MX Brown or similar (tactile) switches for such tasks, but I do not consider linear switches to be inconvenient either./news/google-posts-cdma-lte-galaxy-nexus-4-0-4.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/google-posts-cdma-lte-galaxy-nexus-4-0-4.htmlA few days ago Google started rolling out the CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus 4.0.4 IMM76K update en-masse to Verizon subscribers. I mentioned a relatively well known trick to improve your odds of getting the OTA in our pipeline piece about it, and today Google (courtesy JBQ) has rolled out the full factory restore image on its factory images for nexus phones page. This comes as a very welcome step towards rebuilding the reputation of the CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus device, even after the CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus lost AOSP support and following its massively delayed 4./news/intel-to-launch-8th-generation-intel-core-vpro-notebook.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-to-launch-8th-generation-intel-core-vpro-notebook.htmlOne of the bigger parts of Intel’s product portfolio that rarely gets a mention is the vPro product line. vPro consists of a specific combined processor and chipset portfolio that offers Intel’s commercial customers the ability for commercial stability, extra administration options, and extra hardware security. Today Intel is announcing its latest mobile vPro processors, which will form part of the company’s 8th Generation Intel Core line-up. The two new processors are a single Core i7 offering and a Core i5 offering./news/internet-explorer-10-the-windows-rt-review.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/internet-explorer-10-the-windows-rt-review.htmlInternet Explorer 10 There are two distinct versions of Internet Explorer 10 - one that runs in the desktop and looks very similar to the IE9 and IE10 experiences that we’ve been used to on the Windows 7/Windows 8 desktop, and another that runs within the framework of Modern UI and looks like an upscaled version of IE9 Mobile from Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Both use the same rendering engine and perform identically, so we’ll keep that in mind when looking at performance numbers./news/interview-with-msi-vp-ted-hung-vp-of-motherboard.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/interview-with-msi-vp-ted-hung-vp-of-motherboard.htmlOn the left is Ted Hung, the VP of Motherboard Sales based at MSI's headquarters. In the middle is Andy Tung, a long time contact of AnandTech who is deep into the MSI structure and the President of MSI Pan America. On the right is Charles Chiang, the Corporate Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Desktop Platform Segment business unit. The interview was split into two halves, with Charles in the first half (previous page), and Ted in the second half (this page)./news/live-panels-and-hubs-samsung-touchwiz-ux-review-honeycomb.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/live-panels-and-hubs-samsung-touchwiz-ux-review-honeycomb.htmlWidgets and MiniApps (cont.) All of the skins we can expect to see on Honeycomb will include widgets that offer added functionality - or rather, that’s what they intend to do. The concern is that the performance penalty for running these applications can be worse than the value they add. The interesting thing is that with sales of Honeycomb tablets less than startling, app developers haven’t exactly filled the app store with high quality tablet optimized apps the likes of which populate millions of iPads./news/meet-the-geforce-gtx-780.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-geforce-gtx-780.htmlAs we previously mentioned, the GTX 780 is very much a Titan Mini in a number of ways. This goes for not only the architecture, features, and performance, but as it turns out it will be the case for the design too. For the reference GTX 780 NVIDIA will be straight-up reusing the GTX Titan’s board design, from the PCB to the cooler, and everything in between. As a result the reference GTX 780 inherits all of the great things about the GTX Titan’s design./news/microsoft-details-the-xbox-one-fall-update-available-today.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-details-the-xbox-one-fall-update-available-today.htmlThere’s a lot going on in Xbox land, with the launch of the new Xbox One X console due for November 7th, and, thanks to the biannual Windows update schedule, Xbox is also getting the Fall Update starting today, a day before Windows 10 gets the Fall Creators Update. The Xbox UI has changed dramatically since the console first shipped with a Windows 8 based GUI way back in 2012, with its side to side navigation./news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-team-group-mp34-512gb.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-team-group-mp34-512gb.htmlMixed Random Performance Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%./news/motherboard-cpu-memory-future-power.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/motherboard-cpu-memory-future-power.htmlMotherboard, CPU & Memory The Power Series is built around the ABIT BH6, which was the overclocker's motherboard to get last year. The key word there is "was" since the release of the BH6, ABIT as well as a number of other companies have produced successors to the BH6 offering the same features with new tweaks and options. From a cost perspective, going with the BH6 instead of the newer BE6-II or the AOpen AX6BC Pro Gold just meant that the overall cost of the system would be brought down by around $10 - $20./news/nzxt-debuts-h1-mini-itx-case-for-big-gaming.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nzxt-debuts-h1-mini-itx-case-for-big-gaming.htmlSmall form-factor gaming PCs are on the rise these days, but because leading-edge components like CPUs and GPUs tend to produce a lot of heat and therefore require bulky cooling systems, it is not easy to build a truly compact PC with top-of-the-range components. Some makers of chassis attempt to design compact cases for gaming desktops, and this week NZXT introduced its Mini-ITX case for systems with leading-edge hardware. Alongside the Mini-ITX case, the company also unveiled its NZXT BLD H1 Mini PC that packs Intel’s Core i9-9900K and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2070 Super./news/olympus-e-420-world-s-smallest-digital-slr.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/olympus-e-420-world-s-smallest-digital-slr.htmlEvery time a mention of the Olympus 4/3 camera system is made in articles we get comments that there is no promised size and weight savings with the 4/3 line. That ignores the E-410, which is currently the smallest DSLR made, but it is certainly true of the Pro-oriented E-3 whose construction and weather-sealing yield a solid camera that is both large and heavy. Perhaps to remind users that small is also beautiful, Olympus has just announced the world's smallest DSLR and a new 25mm f2./news/packing-your-order-and-the-peanut-gun.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/packing-your-order-and-the-peanut-gun.htmlWith your order now complete, your tub heads down this high speed rolling conveyer but you will note that the conveyer has a row of metal links on the right side. The purpose of these links is to push your tub into the appropriate ramp for boxing when the system tells it that one is free. The picture below shows the metal links in action: Click to Enlarge After your tub is sent down the ramp, everything is removed from the tub, scanned and compared against your order./news/quad-cortex-a72-single-board-computer-for-35.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quad-cortex-a72-single-board-computer-for-35.htmlThis morning the Raspberry Pi Foundation took the wraps off of their next generation hobbyist project computer, the Raspberry Pi 4. The eagerly anticipated update to the Raspberry Pi lineup – which is actually arriving a bit ahead of schedule due to some good fortunes in SoC development – offers a significant upgrade to the family thanks to its new 28nm Broadcom SoC, which among other things incorporates a more powerful quad Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cluster./news/qualcomm-announces-x65-x62-5g-modems-on-4nm.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-announces-x65-x62-5g-modems-on-4nm.htmlQualcomm yesterday has announced a slew of new 5G communication platforms, representing their next-generation modems, and RF front-end solutions that will be powering the next flagship devices later in 2021 as well as 2022. This includes two new 5G modems in the form of the new Snapdragon X65 and X62, a new RFFE portfolio with new envelope trackers, new antenna tuners, and new power amplifiers, alongside a 4th generation mmWave antenna module that supports more frequency bands and a larger frequency bandwidth./news/qualcomm-launches-wi-fi-7-networking-pro-series-for.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-launches-wi-fi-7-networking-pro-series-for.htmlThe last few months have seen multiple vendors launch products in the Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) space. Mediatek demonstrated working 802.11be-compliant silicon under the Filogic lineup earlier this year. Concrete technical details and part numbers were not announced during the event. Last month, Broadcom introduced a comprehensive Wi-Fi 7 portfolio, detailing multiple 802.11be radios for access points, a networking SoC built keeping 802.11be bandwidth in mind, and a client radio for mobile applications./news/samsung-galaxy-s20-ultra-snapdragon-exynos-battery-life-preview.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-s20-ultra-snapdragon-exynos-battery-life-preview.htmlLast week we brought you a quick performance preview of the Snapdragon 865-based Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, showcasing that the phone has some outstandingly good performance and power efficiency statistics. Since then, we’ve been able to get our hands on an Exynos 990 based Galaxy S20+ and S20 Ultra, putting the trio of phones through our usual extensive review process. We’re still working on the full big article which is still a week or more away, but we wanted already to cover one largest talking points about the new devices: battery life./news/silverstone-preps-ip68-water-and-dust-proof-enclosure-for.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-preps-ip68-water-and-dust-proof-enclosure-for.htmlRugged as well as water/dust-proof hardware usually comes in specially designed factory-sealed enclosures and is sold at a premium. SilverStone believes that if an enclosure is made right, it is good enough not only for factory assembly, but also for DIY builders. Interest towards rugged water and dust-proof storage hardware is rising these days as people tend to carry more external storage devices with them when travelling and realize value of their data./news/silverstone-s-1000w-sfx-l-psu-when-less-is.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-s-1000w-sfx-l-psu-when-less-is.htmlBack in the day, 1 kW PSUs were a prerogative of rather extreme high-end desktops carrying an overclocked CPU, a couple of graphics cards, several hard drives, and loads of other parts. Although there is a trend towards miniaturization of high-performance PCs, there is also a trend towards increasing their performance. Trying to strike a balance between smaller dimensions and higher power delivery, SilverStone has developed a 1 kW SFX-L PSU./news/sony-announces-xperia-p-and-u-joining-xperia-s.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-announces-xperia-p-and-u-joining-xperia-s.htmlBack at CES, then Sony Ericsson announced the Xperia S. Today at MWC 2012, the newly acquired Sony Mobile Communications announced two more Xperia NXT series devices - the Xperia P and Xperia U.  The Xperia P features a 4" reality display with Sony's Mobile BRAVIA and WhiteMagic enhancement engines, the latter of which is new for Xperia. I originally suspected WhiteMagic would be RGBW PenTile, this actually turns out to be an RGBW stripe, as in (RGBW,RGBW for two pixels, not RG, BW like in PenTile RGBW), The Verge has a good photo here until we can get a macro./news/streaming-services-netflix-and-vudu.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/streaming-services-netflix-and-vudu.htmlThe NTV200 solely concentrates on online streaming services and we have plenty of apps to choose from. Netflix, Vudu and YouTube are bound to be the most popular, and in the next few sections, we will take a look at those in detail. Netflix Streaming Netflix users looking for 1080p as well as multi-channel HD audio (Dolby Digital Plus) will have to wait for a firmware update in the future to enable those features./news/tempered-glass-panels-plus-rgb.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tempered-glass-panels-plus-rgb.htmlLian-Li has announced the release of a new series of cases, the Alpha series. The Alpha line of cases brings users steel internal frame and tempered glass surfaces allowing for a better look at what is going on inside the Mid-Tower chassis. The Alpha 330 has a total of three glass panels while the Alpha 550 RGB comes with all four sides made of tempered glass. New to Lian-Li cases are integrating RGB LEDs./news/the-adata-xpg-sx950-480gb-ssd-review-in-search.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-adata-xpg-sx950-480gb-ssd-review-in-search.htmlADATA likes to produce a broad range of SSDs, sampling from all the controller and NAND manufacturers. To that end, they have wholeheartedly embraced the use of 3D MLC NAND even as most brands are using the 3D NAND transition to entirely remove MLC from their consumer product lines or relegate it to niche models instead of treating it as the mainstream default. ADATA is selling multiple SATA and NVMe models using Micron's first-generation 3D MLC NAND./news/the-i-rocks-pilot-k70e-capacitive-gaming-keyboard.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-i-rocks-pilot-k70e-capacitive-gaming-keyboard.htmlPhysically, the i-Rocks Pilot K70E will appear peculiar to experienced users. The keyboard has a very tall and heavy body, yet low profile keycaps. Aesthetically, the transparent acrylic exterior of the keyboard is likely to appear kitschy at first sight, yet it has its distinct advantages as well. One of these advantages is that it diffuses the lighting from the switches and creates beautiful lighting effects. The other main advantage is that the top acrylic cover is removable and the users can replace the grey sheet beneath it with whatever they choose - another color, an abstract design, a wood/carbon-like vinyl sticker, pictures, or anything else./news/the-ice-lake-benchmark-preview-inside-intel-s-10nm.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-ice-lake-benchmark-preview-inside-intel-s-10nm.htmlIntel's new Ice Lake platform is the company's second attempt at producing a 10nm chip for the mass market, and follows on from the Cannon Lake platform. Using 'the same but different' 10nm process, Ice Lake holds inside a new 10th Gen Core microarchitecture called Sunny Cove, Gen11 graphics, and support for LPDDR4X-3733 as well as Thunderbolt and Wi-Fi 6. In advance of systems coming onto the market, Intel gave a small number of press a day of hands-on time with its Software Development Systems so we could get a taste of performance of Sunny Cove, Gen11, and Intel's newest 10nm product./news/the-mali-g510-g310-attacking-the-low-end.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-mali-g510-g310-attacking-the-low-end.htmlIn the mid-range, the new Mali-G510 and Mali-G310 are generational improvements over the market predecessors, the G57 and G31. Representing new major jumps in the microarchitectures, these new designs are unnaturally large performance jumps for Arm’s mid-range and low-end offerings. From a very high view, the G510 scales up from 2 cores to 6 cores, but offers differentiation through changing the number of clusters within one of the execution units per core, or also changing the type of texture units in use, either a 4x throughput unit, or an 8x unit./news/the-nzxt-manta-mitx-case-review.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nzxt-manta-mitx-case-review.htmlAs Mini-ITX systems are moving away from the old slow systems they used to represent and are becoming more powerful with high-end hardware, they become more and more appealing to enthusiasts and gamers. Many companies design cases for Mini-ITX motherboards, with the usual design approach being the minimization of their external dimensions, as designers are striving to fit them into modern living rooms alongside gaming consoles and home cinema equipment./news/the-pegasus-performance-promise-pegasus-r6-mac-thunderbolt-review.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-pegasus-performance-promise-pegasus-r6-mac-thunderbolt-review.htmlThe Pegasus: Performance A single 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 is good for sequential transfer rates of up to ~150MB/s. With six in a RAID-5 configuration, we should be able to easily hit several Gbps in bandwidth to the Pegasus R6. The problem is, there's no single drive source that can come close to delivering that sort of bandwidth. Apple sent over a 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 256GB Apple SSD. This was the first MacBook Pro I've ever tested with Apple's own SSD, so I was excited to give it a try./news/the-test-stock-gaming-performance.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-stock-gaming-performance.htmlThe Test & Stock Gaming Performance For our testing we’re using the 6800 series launch drivers: AMD Catalyst 10.10. CPU: Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme Chipset Drivers: Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) Hard Disk: OCZ Summit (120GB) Memory: Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) Video Cards: AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5870/news/toshiba-sells-95-of-its-tv-business-unit-to.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/toshiba-sells-95-of-its-tv-business-unit-to.htmlToshiba on Wednesday announced plans to sell 95% stake in its TV business unit to Hisense Electric for approximately $114 million. The transaction will strengthen Hisense’s positions as the world’s fourth largest supplier of TV sets after Samsung, LG and TCL. Hisense will continue to use the Toshiba brand for TVs designed and made by the assets it acquires. Under the terms of the agreement, Hisense will pay ¥12.9 billion ($114 million) for 95% of Toshiba Visual Solutions Corp./news/trim-performance-power-consumption.htmlThu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/trim-performance-power-consumption.htmlTRIM Performance In our Vertex 3 preview I mentioned a bug/performance condition/funnythingthathappens with SF-1200 based drives. If you write incompressible data to all LBAs on the drive (e.g. fill the drive up with H.264 videos) and fill the spare area with incompressible data (do it again without TRIMing the drive) you'll actually put your SF-1200 based SSD into a performance condition that it can't TRIM its way out of. Completely TRIM the drive and you'll notice that while compressible writes are nice and speedy, incompressible writes happen at a max of 70 - 80MB/s./news/2015-15-inch-retina-macbook-pro-s-dgpu-r9.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2015-15-inch-retina-macbook-pro-s-dgpu-r9.htmlEarlier this week Apple announced their 2015 15” Retina MacBook Pro. Though Apple didn’t make any CPU changes, they did make some GPU changes on the high-end model, swapping out NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 750M for AMD’s Radeon R9 M370X. Since the M370X was not a published part number in AMD’s recently-announced 2015 Radeon M300 series refresh lineup, there have been some questions over just what M370X really is. At the time of the rMBP’s launch, we suspected that it was an AMD Cape Verde GPU, based on the fact that this GPU is also in the M375, which is the next part above M370X./news/asrock-rack-c2750d4i-and-u-nas-nsc-800-a.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-rack-c2750d4i-and-u-nas-nsc-800-a.htmlIntroduction and Testing Methodology Small businesses and power users in a home setting have begun to face challenges with managing large amounts of data. These are generated either as part of day-to-day business operations or backing up of multimedia files from phones / tablets / TV recordings etc. One option is to use a dedicated COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) NAS from a vendor such as Synology or QNAP. Sometimes, it is also necessary to have a file server that is much more flexible with respect to programs that can be run on it./news/asrock-z390-pro4-z390m-pro4.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z390-pro4-z390m-pro4.htmlASRock Z390 Pro4 & Z390M Pro4 The ASRock Z390 Pro 4 and Z390M Pro 4 are so similar in terms specification, design and aesthetic, the only real core differences between both models are the form factor, PCIe layout including M.2 compatibility and through the rear panel. Both Z390 Pro4 boards feature a black PCB with a similar grey colored patterning to the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 model. Neither board has a rear panel cover and both also disregard a power delivery heatsink for the SoC sections; both boards seemingly incorporate the same 10-phase power delivery as per ASRock's marketing resources./news/asus-tuf-gaming-z690-plus-wifi-d4-z690-plus.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-tuf-gaming-z690-plus-wifi-d4-z690-plus.htmlASUS TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WIFI D4 & Z690-Plus D4 (DDR4) As it currently stands at the time of writing, ASUS's more wallet-friendly TUF Gaming series is limited to support for DDR4 memory. Whether ASUS intends to launch TUF Gaming models in the future with DDR5 support remains to be seen, however. The ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WIFI D4 and Z690-Plus D4 share the same core feature set, PCB, aesthetic, and layout, with the only difference being that the Wi-Fi model is using an Intel Wi-Fi 6 CNVi./news/bios-and-software-the-msi-x299-tomahawk-arctic-motherboard.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-msi-x299-tomahawk-arctic-motherboard.htmlBIOS MSI's Click BIOS 5 is the latest version of their UEFI and what is used on their X299 based motherboards. The version for the Tomahawk is black and red, while others will change the color/theme depending on the motherboard. When booting to the BIOS users are greeted by the EZ-Mode version which displays high-level system information such as CPU and memory speed, motherboard and CPU temps, installed memory amount and speed, enough to have a complete 'state of the union' view of the system./news/buffalo-ministation-thunderbolt-review-an-external-with-usb-3.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/buffalo-ministation-thunderbolt-review-an-external-with-usb-3.htmlBack when Thunderbolt (then Intel Lightpeak) was optical, I was actively involved in covering the interface, partly out of professional curiosity due to my optical background, partly because I sincerely believe optical interfaces are an inevitable part of the future. When Lightpeak became Thunderbolt and lost the optical layer, it fell under Anand’s beat and the Mac umbrella. I acquired a MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt somewhere around the same time, but never acquired any Thunderbolt peripherals or drives./news/build-noise-heat-and-power-consumption.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/build-noise-heat-and-power-consumption.htmlBuild, Noise, Heat, and Power Consumption The build and build quality of the HP Z210 SFF are probably the most striking aspects of it right off the bat. I personally love smaller computers, but there's a real benefit to going with a workstation from HP or Dell as well: they're vastly easier to service than a garden variety desktop build. Despite the small case, HP has designed the Z210's chassis to be incredibly easy to work inside./news/concluding-thoughts-motorola-droid-3-review.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/concluding-thoughts-motorola-droid-3-review.htmlConcluding Thoughts So here we are, one year after the Droid 2, and now we have the Droid 3. Dual core smartphones are now pretty much the norm, and overall smartphone adoption shows little to no signs of slowing down anytime soon. On its own, the Droid 3 is a considerable upgrade over the Droid 2. You get a vastly better keyboard, higher resolution display, better cameras, higher resolution and better quality video recording, much better CPU and GPU performance, a better baseband with GSM/WCDMA compatibility out of the box, and Android 2./news/dell-adamo-13-culv-goes-upscale.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-adamo-13-culv-goes-upscale.htmlWhen it debuted at CES 2009, the 0.65” Dell Adamo 13 gave the notebook world a Windows equivalent to the MacBook Air. With the ultrathin body, the brushed aluminum unibody, and Apple-like attention to detail, the Adamo was truly stunning to behold. Unfortunately, at $1999, it was extremely pricey given the lackluster specifications – with a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo ULV processor, 2GB of non-upgradable memory, and Intel’s GMA 4500MHD, it was slower than the 1./news/display-uniformity-asus-pq321q-ultrahd-monitor-review-living-with.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-uniformity-asus-pq321q-ultrahd-monitor-review-living-with.htmlUniformity is tested by using 25 locations across the screen and measuring the color checker chart at each of them. From there we can pull out contrast, black and white uniformity, and color uniformity. This review is the first to utilize the newest measurement available in CalMAN 5.1.2: dE From Center. Now instead of measuring the dE2000 at every location, we measure it relative to the center measurement. This gives us a true uniformity measure./news/first-approved-runtimes-now-available-openxr-coming-to-minecraft.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/first-approved-runtimes-now-available-openxr-coming-to-minecraft.htmlAmong the many technologies to come under the purview of the Khronos consortium have been augmented reality and virtual reality. Looking to fulfill the group’s mandate to develop open standards for new technologies, the group set about creating an open API for use with AR and VR devices, which culminated in the OpenXR standard. The initial version of that standard was released last summer, and now that the wider technology industry has finally had a chance to develop software for it, this morning Khronos is offering a status update on the state of OpenXR, along with a few choice announcements relating to projects using the new API./news/gaming-tests-gta-5-intel-core-i7-11700k-review.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-tests-gta-5-intel-core-i7-11700k-review.htmlGaming Tests: GTA 5 The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is./news/gigabyte-x570-aorus-ultra-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-x570-aorus-ultra-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlGIGABYTE X570 Aorus Ultra The GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Ultra sits in between the X570 Aorus Master ($359) and the X570 Aorus Pro WIFI ($269) in its current product stack. The X570 Aorus Ultra is however more similar to the X570 Aorus Pro WIFI in terms of feature set with a Realtek ALC1220-VB audio codec, an Intel I211-AT Gigabit NIC, while it shares the same three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots as its more expensive brother in the X570 Aorus Ultra./news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-nuc-box-n97.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-nuc-box-n97.htmlGPU Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks The integrated GPU in Alder Lake-N is a pared-down version of the one used in Alder Lake. Both the N97 and N100 have the 24EU version, but the N97 clocks it at 1.2 GHz compared to the 750 MHz N100 configuration. However, DDR4 vs. LPDDR5 may also impact GPU performance. Keeping these aspects in mind, the GPU performance has to be evaluated in the context of each workload./news/hands-on-and-benchmarks-of-two-msm8x60-phones.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-and-benchmarks-of-two-msm8x60-phones.htmlYesterday evening I met up with HTC, who let me take a quick look at a number of their upcoming unreleased phones, including the HTC Sensation 4G and HTC EVO 3D. Naturally, the first thing I did was sit down and run a couple of benchmarks during our limited time with the phones, and get an overall feel for the devices. I also spent some time with the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa - the two Facebook phones - though my focus was more look and feel for the form factor of the ChaCha given the fact that both are just MSM7x30./news/hardware-nokia-lumia-630-review.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hardware-nokia-lumia-630-review.htmlHardware The first thing that anyone will ever do with a smartphone is hold it, so we will start with the design of the phone. If you have ever seen or held any Lumia phone, then you will instantly recognize the 630 as a Lumia. The polycarbonate back is much thinner and more flexible than the 620, but has an excellent matte texture to it which makes it easy to grip and hold./news/high-performance-mobile-core-i9-and-xeon-e-at.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-performance-mobile-core-i9-and-xeon-e-at.htmlThe Flagship Mobile Core i9-8950HK with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost The peak of Intel’s mobile binning strategy for the Spring 2018 launch is the new Intel Core i9-8950HK. It sits atop the mobile CPU stack with six cores, a high base frequency, a high turbo frequency, an even higher turbo based on thermals, and support for overclocking. Intel calls this its highest-performance mobile 8th Gen Intel Core processor, focused on no-compromise gaming, VR, and content creation./news/htc-unveils-final-specs-availability-date-of-cosmos-vr.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-unveils-final-specs-availability-date-of-cosmos-vr.htmlHTC this week announced final specifications as well as availability date of the Vive Cosmos, its next-generation tethered VR headset, which promises numerous improvements along with modularity for further upgrades. Among the key features of the Vive Cosmos are higher resolution displays, full 6DoF inside-out tracking built around six cameras and integrated sensors, a lower weight, as well as all-new knuckles-style controllers. The headset is available for pre-order now and will ship in early October./news/intel-rocket-lake-14nm-review-core-i9-11900k-core.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-rocket-lake-14nm-review-core-i9-11900k-core.htmlConclusion For anyone buying a new system today, the market is a little bleak. Anyone wanting a new GPU has to actively pay attention to stock levels, or drive to a local store for when a delivery arrives. The casual buyers then either look to pre-built systems (which are also flying off the shelves), or just hang on to what they have for another year. But there is another way. I find that users fall in to two camps./news/league-of-legends-logitech-g-pro-keyboard-drops-to.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/league-of-legends-logitech-g-pro-keyboard-drops-to.htmlToday at Amazon, the League of Legends edition of the Logitech G Pro keyboard is discounted to its lowest price yet. It’s been going for around $90 lately but right now is available for $60. The keyboard is offered with optional free shipping for Amazon Prime members. So far, the vendor hasn’t specified an expiration for the discount so we’re not certain for how long it will be made available./news/msi-mpg-x570-gaming-plus.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-mpg-x570-gaming-plus.htmlThe MPG X570 Gaming Plus is MSI's entry-level gaming model and It's equipped with a modest feature set which includes with one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and two-full length PCIe 4.0 slots with support for two-way AMD CrossFire multi-graphics card setups. Firstly the aesthetic is based on a traditionally recognized red and black theme; this design extends from the heatsinks onto the PCB. The chipset heatsink cooling the X570 chip includes a cooling fan for optimal performance, while the power delivery heatsinks are separated from each other to provide cooling to the CPU VCore./news/msi-s-27-inch-4k-gaming-aio-with-full.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-s-27-inch-4k-gaming-aio-with-full.htmlBack at Computex in 2015 we saw and reported on MSI’s first design ideas surrounding an all-in-one computer (where the PC is essentially in the frame of the monitor and not a separate ‘machine’) with a discrete GPU attached. At that time, it was more a proof of concept – they housed a mini-ITX system in the monitor chassis using a custom PCB and heatsink arrangement, and then extended the PCIe 3./news/nvidia-announces-native-sli-support-for-the-intel-x58.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-announces-native-sli-support-for-the-intel-x58.htmlOf course NVIDIA would wait until I physically left NVISION 08 to actually make an interesting announcement, but there’s no bitterness, I swear :) The big, no, huge news from today? NVIDIA is enabling native support for 2 and 3-way SLI on Intel X58 based motherboards...without the use of any nForce 200 chips. It’s not as simple as simply enabling SLI support on X58, NVIDIA wanted to both ensure compatibility and additional revenue, so there’s a certification program./news/nvidia-releases-android-7-0-update-for-shield-tablet.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-android-7-0-update-for-shield-tablet.htmlA couple of weeks back NVIDA released their Android 7.0 “Nougat” update for their original SHIELD TV. Now this week their other SHIELD devices are getting in on the action, with the release of the Android 7.0 update for the SHIELD Tablet and its Tablet K1 sibling. Android 7.0 brings a few major changes to tablets, particularly the implementation of split-screen application mode for improved multitasking. But arguably what makes this update so noteworthy is that Android 7./news/ocz-files-for-bankruptcy-toshiba-offers-to-buy-the.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ocz-files-for-bankruptcy-toshiba-offers-to-buy-the.htmlOCZ has just issued a press release announcing their filing for bankruptcy, which was expected since Nasdaq had halted the trading of OCZ stock earlier today. OCZ has had financial issues for quite a long time and it was just a matter of time before the inevitable happened. While OCZ did try to change its course by reforming their product portfolio when Ryan Petersen, the former CEO of OCZ, stepped down, it seems that the efforts weren't enough to make the business profitable./news/olympus-e-620-press-release-pma-2009-panasonic-gh1.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/olympus-e-620-press-release-pma-2009-panasonic-gh1.htmlOLYMPUS E-620 DIGITAL SLR INSPIRES CONSUMERS TO ‘COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES’   Have Fun and Free Yourself with In-Camera Art Filters and Multiple Exposures; Travel Freely with the Smallest DSLR with Built-In Image Stabilization CENTER VALLEY, Pa.  – As children, our imaginations run wild and finger-painted artistic creations are proudly displayed on our family refrigerators. But as we grow older, we learn to color inside the lines, and have less and less time for art./news/performance-metrics-i-logic-supply-ml100g-50-fanless-skylake.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-metrics-i-logic-supply-ml100g-50-fanless-skylake.htmlPerformance Metrics - I The Logic Supply ML100G-50 was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2014 SE, as well as some of the Futuremark benchmarks./news/power-delivery-thermal-analysis-the-msi-meg-x570-godlike.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-delivery-thermal-analysis-the-msi-meg-x570-godlike.htmlPower Delivery Thermal Analysis One of the most requested elements of our motherboard reviews revolves around the power delivery and its componentry. Aside from the quality of the components and its capability for overclocking to push out higher clock speeds which in turn improves performance, is the thermal capability of the cooling solutions implemented by manufacturers. While almost always fine for users running processors at default settings, the cooling capability of the VRMs isn't something that users should worry too much about, but for those looking to squeeze out extra performance from the CPU via overclocking, this puts extra pressure on the power delivery and in turn, generates extra heat./news/power-temperature-and-noise-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-580.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-and-noise-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-580.htmlPower, Temperature, and Noise Last but not least as always is our look at the power consumption, temperatures, and acoustics of the GTX 580. NVIDIA’s performance improvements were half of the GTX 580 story, and this is the other half. Starting quickly with voltage, as we only have one card we can’t draw too much from what we know, but there are still some important nuggets. NVIDIA is still using multiple VIDs, so your mileage may vary./news/razer-announces-the-leviathan-sound-bar.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-announces-the-leviathan-sound-bar.htmlRazer has traditionally been a gaming peripheral company, which started with the Boomslang mouse in 1998. Over the years, they have expanded their portfolio to cover more of a gamer’s needs, adding keyboards, keypads, mouse mats, and headphones as well as complete systems. Today, Razer has expanded their product family again with the launch of the Razer Leviathan sound bar. The Leviathan is able to produce 5.1 virtual surround sound using Dolby Virtual Speakers and accepts Dolby Digital and Pro Logic II multichannel audio./news/sapphire-launches-mining-focused-radeon-rx-570-with-16.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sapphire-launches-mining-focused-radeon-rx-570-with-16.htmlSapphire has introduced one the industry’s first Radeon RX 570 graphics cards that carry 16 GB of GDDR5 memory onboard. The board is designed primarily for cryptocurrency mining, but it still has a display output and therefore can theoretically be used for other applications too. Officially, the manufacturer positions its Sapphire RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain graphics card for Grin coin mining, as Grin's underlying algorithm benefits from the amount of onboard memory./news/silverstone-fortress-ft01.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-fortress-ft01.htmlIntroduction When it comes to high-end aluminum chassis, a few names come to mind. One name that should definitely be on your short list if you're interested in such a case is Silverstone. The Taiwanese manufacturer formed when a group of rogue engineers left Cooler Master to go their own way in 2003, and they have been building high-end cases and power supplies (and a few other products) since the split./news/sk-hynix-to-build-3-87-billion-memory-packaging.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sk-hynix-to-build-3-87-billion-memory-packaging.htmlSK hynix this week announced plans to build its advanced memory packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana. The move can be considered as a milestone both for the memory maker and the U.S., as this is the first advanced memory packaging facility in the country and the company's first significant manufacturing operation in America. The facility will be used to build next-generation types of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stacks when it begins operations in 2028./news/software-raid-vs-hardware-raid-behind-the-scenes.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-raid-vs-hardware-raid-behind-the-scenes.htmlOne of the first questions we felt needed to be answered was what exactly hardware RAID cards do. Although we knew that hardware RAID cards perform the parity bit calculations on the card itself, some debate surrounded over where other RAID calculations occur. Some thought that it was only the XOR calculations that occur on the coprocessor and that other calculations are passed to the CPU just as in software RAID./news/the-exterior-of-the-nzxt-manta.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-exterior-of-the-nzxt-manta.htmlWith a postmodern design sporting curved panels and smooth surfaces, the NZXT Manta is designed to stand out from the crowd. As we will see in the following sections, the curved panels are not just for show, adding to the functionality of the case. However, they also increase the width of an already significantly large Mini-ITX case. Measuring 42.6 cm tall, 24.5 cm wide and 45 cm deep (16.8 × 9.7 × 17./news/the-mk-2-s-display-mp3-meets-car-audio.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-mk-2-s-display-mp3-meets-car-audio.htmlThe same 128 x 32 x 2-bit color VFD display made its way onto the Mk.2, as well as the ability to swap out faceplates, however the looks of the Mk.2 were much improved over the original Mark I player.  Click to Enlarge Instead of simply sticking a piece of colored plastic over the VFD display, the Mk.2 actually had a plastic faceplate that gave the unit a much more appealing look./news/the-neoverse-v1-microarchitecture-platform-enhancements.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-neoverse-v1-microarchitecture-platform-enhancements.htmlAside from the core-side microarchitectural aspects of the V1, the new design also features some new system-facing novelties that promise to help vendors integrate the CPU IP better in larger scale implementations. MPAM, or Max Power Mitigation Mechanism is a new fine-grained (to around 100 clock cycles) power management mechanism that promises to help smooth out the power behaviour of the core, and allow vendors’ implementations of the chip’s power delivery mechanisms to be so to say, be built to lesser requirements./news/the-new-htc-u12-smartphone-hands-on.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-new-htc-u12-smartphone-hands-on.htmlAfter the latest deal with Google on personnel, the next flagship out from HTC is the U12+, succeeding the squeeze-focused U11 and U11+ from 2017. For this generation HTC will only launch a single model called the U12+, rather than a U12 now and another one later, with the company citing that it felt too many of its enthusiast users would wait for the plus model, so instead they have decided to just go with a singular unit with the upgraded name./news/the-xiaomi-mi-10-pro-review.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-xiaomi-mi-10-pro-review.htmlAmongst the many flagship devices released in this first half of the year, one often overlooked device was Xiaomi’s Mi 10 series. The company’s leading Snapdragon 865 phones were released quite early on, but were largely overshadowed by other competitor devices, with the phone not having official US carrier support or releases also playing a big role. In Europe and other markets however, Xiaomi is an increasingly important player and is quickly filling in the gap that’s being left by Huawei./news/variable-refresh-rate-support-comes-to-nvidia-s-geforce.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/variable-refresh-rate-support-comes-to-nvidia-s-geforce.htmlToday NVIDIA has brought variable refresh rate support to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service. The company initially promised variable refresh support on GeForce Now back in early January during CES, and has seemingly waited so that it could launch alongside GeForce Now Day Passes, which are also now available. Variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies, including NVIDIA's own G-Sync, have been around for around a decade now, and allow a monitor to synchronize its refresh rate to the instantaneous framerate of a game./news/what-amd-taught-me-x86-everywhere.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-amd-taught-me-x86-everywhere.htmlBack when AMD first announced its intentions to extend the x86 ISA to 64-bits I asked Fred Weber, AMD's old CTO, whether it really made sense to extend x86 or if Intel made the right move with Itanium and its brand new ISA. His response made sense at the time, but I didn't quite understand the magnitude of what he was saying. Fred said that the overhead of maintaining x86 compatibility was negligible, at the time around 10% of the die was the x86 decoder and that percentage would only shrink over time./news/zen3-on-6nm-with-rdna2-graphics.htmlWed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zen3-on-6nm-with-rdna2-graphics.htmlThe notebook market is a tough nut to crack with a single solution. People want that mix of high performance at the top, cost effectiveness at the bottom, and throughout there has to be efficiency, utility, and function. On the back of a successful ramp last year, AMD is striking the notebook market hot again in 2022 with the launch of its new Ryzen 6000 Mobile processors. These ‘Rembrandt’ APUs feature AMD’s latest RDNA2 graphics, up to eight Zen3+ cores with enhanced power management features, and it uses TSMC’s N6 manufacturing process for performance and efficiency improvements./news/34-ultrawide-curved-display-with-qi-charging.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/34-ultrawide-curved-display-with-qi-charging.htmlASUS has started to ship its Designo Curve MX34VQ display that was originally announced in mid-2016. At present, a number of retailers are offering pre-orders on the monitor, starting that it is “coming soon." The monitor is based around a UWQHD-class panel and is equipped with a wireless Qi charging device as well as an audio sub-system co-developed with Harman Kardon. In addition, the display has a 100 Hz refresh rate, a feature that should appeal to gamers./news/a-high-performance-arm-server-cpu-for-use-in.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-high-performance-arm-server-cpu-for-use-in.htmlKicking off another busy Spring GPU Technology Conference for NVIDIA, this morning the graphics and accelerator designer is announcing that they are going to once again design their own Arm-based CPU/SoC. Dubbed Grace – after Grace Hopper, the computer programming pioneer and US Navy rear admiral – the CPU is NVIDIA’s latest stab at more fully vertically integrating their hardware stack by being able to offer a high-performance CPU alongside their regular GPU wares./news/adata-launches-microsd-cards-based-on-slc-nand-memory.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/adata-launches-microsd-cards-based-on-slc-nand-memory.htmlADATA has introduced a new lineup of microSD cards that use SLC NAND and are aimed at industrial applications. By incorporating the lower-density and higher-reliability memory type, ADATA's IUDD362 are designed to offer enhanced endurance and a longer lifespans than typical TLC/QLC microSD cards, making the cards a better fit for harsh operating conditions. ADATA’s IUDD362 microSD cards come in capacities of 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8GB. The manufacturer does not disclose the supplier of SLC NAND memory it uses, though the company’s key partners are well known./news/amoled-and-lcd-from-2010-to-2012.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amoled-and-lcd-from-2010-to-2012.html  Introduction For a while now, I’ve realized that there is a massive gap in the continuity of smartphone display history. Until the last few months of 2011 or early 2012, proper testing of smartphone displays was few and far between. Most websites tested peak brightness and contrast, and possibly white point. While some websites did go in depth, they would often only test a few phones. Of course, now things are different./news/analyzing-the-silicon-die-size-estimates-and-arrangements.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/analyzing-the-silicon-die-size-estimates-and-arrangements.htmlDie Size Estimates and Arrangements On the previous page, we showed pictures of ring bus and mesh arrangements. With a ring bus, ultimately the silicon layout of the cores and the interconnects can be regular but are not that stringent. Put the cores in a circle (or overlapping circles) and away you go. With a mesh, things get a little more rigid. The mesh diagrams on the previous page are all presented as rectangles in x*y arrangements./news/basic-features-dell-xps-m1710.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/basic-features-dell-xps-m1710.htmlBasic FeaturesWe've already stated that this laptop comes equipped with some of the most powerful mobile components on the market. Even within the high-end mobile gaming segment, though, there are still options for customizing performance. Dell allows the end user to select parts for their M1710 from a variety of components in all the key areas. The basic platform -- motherboard, keyboard, chassis, and display -- is standardized, but the processor, GPU, memory, hard drive, optical drive, and some networking features can be tweaked to fit your needs./news/complete-bios-tuning-guide-spread-spectrum-control.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/complete-bios-tuning-guide-spread-spectrum-control.htmlComplete BIOS Tuning Guide - "Spread Spectrum Control" Spread Spectrum Control Spread spectrum controls are really added to motherboards for one purpose only - they are sometimes needed so that a device for sale within the US can include a legitimate Declaration of Conformity stating compliance with Part 15 of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Rules. This stipulates that operation of the device (motherboard), (a) may not cause harmful interference, and (b) must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation./news/corsair-ax1500i-power-supply-review.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-ax1500i-power-supply-review.htmlIntroduction A decade ago, the 80 Plus program was introduced with the aim of promoting the development of more efficient and environmentally friendly computer power supplies units (PSUs). When it was officially included in the Energy Star 4.0 specification requirements in 2007, the program really took off, with every manufacturer who had not already certified their units sprinting to do so. In 2008, it was already easy and fairly cheap to produce 80 Plus certified PSUs, making the original 80 Plus program somewhat obsolete, but the original standard was revised to include differing tiers of efficiency, starting with the 80 Plus Bronze, Silver, and Gold certifications./news/creating-a-system-with-the-silverstonetek-ds380.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/creating-a-system-with-the-silverstonetek-ds380.htmlSilverstone was clearly monitoring the forums with regards to the C2750D4I in order to come out with a case designed amound the concept. Our Silverstone contact also became aware that we had the motherboard in for testing and volunteered its DS380 for a quick overview. I installed the motherboard in to the case along with my rag-tag collection of storage drives (four 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, one 2TB Western Digital Green and one 1./news/design-ergonomics-the-samsung-galaxy-s10-snapdragon-exynos-review.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/design-ergonomics-the-samsung-galaxy-s10-snapdragon-exynos-review.htmlDesign & Ergonomics Switching over from internal parts to external features, let’s start with the back of the phone. One interesting thing about the new S10 series right off the bat is their colour scheme. The S10 pictured above is actually the “Prism Black” version, even though it’s glistening in blueish hues. In absence of direct light it does look like a very dark blue, and if there’s any amount of light it has an iridescent sheen to it./news/doom-vulkan-patch-released.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/doom-vulkan-patch-released.htmlBethesda PR has sent over a quick note this morning that the long-awaited Vulkan patch for Doom is now available, allowing the game to be played with either the OpenGL or Vulkan rendering backends. With this release – and although the distinction is somewhat arbitrary – Doom has become the first performance-intensive game released to use Khronos’s new low-level API, and arguably the first game where the rendering path is being implemented for performance reasons rather than proof-of-concept reasons (as was the case with The Talos Principle)./news/ease-of-installation-cpu-air-cooler-roundup-six-coolers.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ease-of-installation-cpu-air-cooler-roundup-six-coolers.htmlEase of Installation After reviewing the Deepcool coolers, the ones I have on hand for this roundup feel like a night and day difference. Deepcool's products seem clearly designed to undercut more expensive propositions like most of the ones found here, but everything about the packages surrounding all the coolers here but but the bargain Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO scream quality. Noctua's mounting system for the NH-D14 and NH-L12 is pretty similar to what Deepcool was doing, and in fact I've found most of the mounts I've tested so far have hewed to the same general designs./news/gaming-tests-gears-tactics-launching-the-cpuoverload-project-testing.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-tests-gears-tactics-launching-the-cpuoverload-project-testing.htmlGaming Tests: Gears Tactics Remembering the original Gears of War brings back a number of memories – some good, some involving online gameplay. The latest iteration of the franchise was launched as I was putting this benchmark suite together, and Gears Tactics is a high-fidelity turn-based strategy game with an extensive single player mode. As with a lot of turn-based games, there is ample opportunity to crank up the visual effects, and here the developers have put a lot of effort into creating effects, a number of which seem to be CPU limited./news/hardware-accelerated-transcoding-for-media-applications.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hardware-accelerated-transcoding-for-media-applications.htmlOne of the often-requested features from NAS units that act as media servers is the ability to transcode existing videos to better fit the requirements of the playback device. The popularity of Plex Media Server (which uses ffmpeg for transcoding) amongst consumers is an indication of the market demand for this feature. SoC companies as well as NAS vendors have been trying to address this problem in multiple ways. Back at CES 2012, I saw Applied Micro's PhiPhi transcoding NAS platform, where the NAS SoC talked to a dedicated Zenverge transcoding chip to achieve the requirements./news/local-media-playback-evaluation-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/local-media-playback-evaluation-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv.htmlLocal Media Playback Evaluation The announcement of the SHIELD Android TV box generated a lot of interest amongst media streaming enthusiasts. It has continued to this date. Given that most of them prefer local media playback to OTT streaming, there has been marked interest in the local media playback capabilities of the unit. In this section, we attempt to set the expectations right on the various relevant aspects. Display Refresh Rate The Android TV framework forces the interface and most apps to run at 60 Hz./news/meet-the-amd-trinity-comal-prototype.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-amd-trinity-comal-prototype.htmlMeet the AMD Trinity/Comal Prototype Laptop So I have to be honest: I’m a sucker for unique laptops. Not so much from the standpoint of actually using such laptops, but just as something cool to show my fellow computer nerds when they visit. The Trinity prototype is quite clearly a design that isn’t going to market without some changes, but unlike the Llano prototype (or the Intel SNB prototype), at least this one tries to stand out from the crowd a little bit./news/meet-the-blackberry-torch-part-1.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-blackberry-torch-part-1.htmlMeet the Torch 9800 I’m going to just up and say it - the BlackBerry Torch is what you’d get if the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm had babies. Obviously the Pre was the better half. The Torch seriously does bear comparison with the Palm Pre though. Like the Pre, the display slides up along a track, revealing the BlackBerry’s distinctly shaped, four row keyboard underneath. Unlike the Pre, the Torch’s mechanism is spring loaded and completely smooth./news/microstar-ms-6195-k7pro-athlon-motherboard-roundup.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microstar-ms-6195-k7pro-athlon-motherboard-roundup.htmlMicrostar MS-6195 K7Pro Microstar MS-6195 K7Pro Review Click to Enlarge Motherboard Specifications CPU Interface Slot-A Chipset AMD 750 Irongate AMD 751 North Bridge AMD 756 South Bridge L2 Cache N/A (on-chip) Form Factor ATX Bus Speeds 90 / 95 100 - 125 MHz (in 1 MHz steps) 133 / 140 / 150 Voltages Supported Auto Detect/news/msi-z97-mpower-max-ac-bios.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-z97-mpower-max-ac-bios.htmlThe basic layout of MSI’s BIOS has been constant over several chipsets with each generation adding in a few new features to improve the user experience. Normally the MSI motherboards I review are in the channel segment, and as such are blue and black, however the yellow and black for the OC series seems more pleasing to the eye (to me, anyway). The basic layout as in previous generations is a top bar featuring the Motherboard name, BIOS version, CPU installed, CPU frequency, DRAM frequency, DRAM size and CPU temperatures./news/much-faster-usb-miracast-support-and-new-receivers.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/much-faster-usb-miracast-support-and-new-receivers.htmlTwo years ago Intel introduced its wireless display technology (Intel WiDi) that uses the host CPU to encode a stream of whatever is on your screen and send it wirelessly to a receiver connected to a TV or other display. As a recap, to support WiDi you need a supported hardware platform (Arrandale/Clarkdale, Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge) and an Intel wireless adapter. On the receiving end you'll need a WiDi receiver of course./news/nvidia-releases-352-86-game-ready-whql-drivers-for.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-352-86-game-ready-whql-drivers-for.htmlWith the highly anticipated The Witcher 3 being released today, NVIDIA has pushed out their requisite launch day Game Ready driver for the game with the release of driver version 352.86. As is typical for a Game Ready driver, the focus on this driver is enabling SLI and GeForce Experience support for The Witcher 3, which along with its high profile nature is also one of the games in NVIDIA’s latest game bundle./news/office-content-creation-performance-windows-98.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/office-content-creation-performance-windows-98.htmlAs a gauge of overall system performance in business and content creation applications, SYSMark 2000 puts the 1.1GHz Thunderbird at about 5% slower than the 1.13GHz Pentium III. As you can tell by the scores above, SYSMark 2000 greatly favors CPUs with a fast L2 cache, as well as those CPUs that have a large L2 cache. Case in point would be the clear 10% performance advantage a 1GHz Thunderbird with its 256KB on-die L2 cache running at clock speed holds over an equivalently clocked K75 Athlon with a 1/3 speed off-die 512KB L2 cache./news/one-small-step-for-chuwi.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/one-small-step-for-chuwi.htmlFor the last several years, Chuwi has been shaking up the bottom end of the PC market with low-cost alternatives to the big manufacturers that offer significantly more PC for the money than you’d typically see. But, until this year, Chuwi has focused only on the lowest cost notebooks. Their signature over the last couple of years has been more RAM, more storage, and a better display than most other notebooks in their price range, making them an easy recommendation in the value end of the spectrum./news/overclocking-the-4200-athlon-dual-core-overclocking-the-4200.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-the-4200-athlon-dual-core-overclocking-the-4200.htmlOverclocking the 4200+ Like other "performance-rated" AMD processors, the 4200+ is locked at the top. In this case the 4200+ multiplier is fixed at a maximum of 11. As with all AMD Athlon64 processors, however, you can select ratios below 11. Only the AMD FX chips are unlocked at both the top and bottom of their range.Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR Processor Athlon 64 x2 4200+ (2./news/power-temperature-noise-amd-s-radeon-hd-5770-5750.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-amd-s-radeon-hd-5770-5750.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise With the 5700 series being built using TSMC’s 40nm process, and with their low target power, we should see some interesting results here. We do need to note however that thanks to some badly timed broken hardware, we’re using our secondary test rig for noise and temperature data, so the results are not directly comparable to our 5800 series reviews. As a result we also only have power data for the 5770; we weren’t able to get power data on the 5750 in time for this article./news/product-comparison-efficiency-power-supply-roundup-eight-1000w-for.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/product-comparison-efficiency-power-supply-roundup-eight-1000w-for.htmlProduct Comparison: Efficiency As 1000W are nothing to play with we expect all of the tested units to have a higher than average efficiency. The efficiency curve shows exactly that with all power supplies reaching 84% to 87% efficiency. We tested the 850W version of the Antec TruePower Quattro last time and we saw similar results with 87% at 230VAC. Enermax, Ultra and Thermaltake show the lowest results of 84%, which is still very good./news/qhd-resolution-but-still-power-hungry.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qhd-resolution-but-still-power-hungry.htmlHigh refresh rate displays in smartphones are all the rage in 2020, but the new exciting feature is still in its infancy in terms of hardware implementations. Currently there’s still a lot of caveats when using the higher refresh rate, particularly a large impact on the battery life of the phone. A few weeks ago we covered the characteristic in Samsung’s Galaxy S20 series, noting how it results in a quite large bump in the power consumption of the device, even when seemingly not actually displaying any dynamic content on-screen./news/roccat-s-power-grid-snaps-the-switchblade.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/roccat-s-power-grid-snaps-the-switchblade.htmlI had a chance to briefly visit with ROCCAT (and hope to get some of their gaming mice and keyboards in for review soon) and walked away a bit stunned by what they were working on. What portended to be a meeting about high quality keyboards and mice turned out to be much more. Their first product on hand was a mechanical keyboard which featured per-key programmable lighting along with assorted lighting effects and, happily, a wrist rest./news/samsung-starts-to-take-pre-orders-on-85-inch.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-starts-to-take-pre-orders-on-85-inch.htmlSamsung this month has started to take pre-orders on its first commercial 8K UHDTV, the Q900, which sports a 7680×4320 resolution. Besides the sheer number of pixels that the Samsung Q900-series UHDTV can display, the family features a plethora of premium technologies from the manufacturer, including QLED FALD-like backlighting, a proprietary 8K upscaling technology, support for a varity of HDR formats, and so on. The price per unit? Well, it is on par with a new Ford Fiesta in the U./news/system-performance-the-asus-rog-phone-iii-review-a.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-asus-rog-phone-iii-review-a.htmlSystem Performance System performance of the ROG Phone III should be interesting given its gaming phone nature, as well as for the fact that it’s the first Snapdragon 865+ device we’ve come to test. As always, system performance doesn’t necessarily just depend on the hardware of a device, but also on the software tuning that a vendor does to its DVFS and SoC scheduler settings.   In the PCMark web-browsing test, the workload is quite sensible to scheduler and DVFS settings./news/system-performance-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review-a.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review-a.htmlSystem Performance From an editorial perspective, the SHIELD Android TV may be one of the most frustrating devices we’ve worked on in recent history. Simply put, the Android TV market is still a tiny market. Google’s Nexus Player is most of the market right now, and only very recently have other Android TV devices such as the Forge TV and SHIELD Android TV reached the market. As a result, figuring out what to compare the SHIELD Android TV to and how to present it has been an interesting challenge./news/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review.htmlCompute Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier in my testing observations, the state of AMD's OpenCL driver stack at launch is quite poor. Most of our compute benchmarks either failed to have their OpenCL kernels compile, triggered a Windows Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR), or would just crash. As a result, only three of our regular benchmarks were executable here, with Folding@Home, parts of CompuBench, and Blender all getting whammied. And "/news/the-chuwi-aerobook-review-one-small-step-for-chuwi.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-chuwi-aerobook-review-one-small-step-for-chuwi.htmlDesign Looking at the Chuwi AeroBook, it becomes clear very quickly that Chuwi has been inspired by the MacBook, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For originality it’s not the best design, but there’s little doubt that it’s a design that works, and looks great. The AeroBook is thin and light, coming in at just 1.26 kg / 2.77 lbs, making it easy to travel with. The exterior is all-metal offering a great in-hand feel, and also helping with the fanless cooling./news/the-intel-graphics-command-center.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-intel-graphics-command-center.htmlMaking their own contribution to this busy week of GPU and gaming news, this evening Intel took the wraps off of their previously teased new graphics control panel. Dubbed the Intel Graphics Command Center, the new control panel – or to be more technically accurate, the new app – is an effort from Intel to modernize a part of their overall graphics infrastructure, replacing the serviceable (but not necessarily loved) current iteration of the company’s control panel./news/the-microsoft-surface-pro-4-review-raising-the-bar.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-microsoft-surface-pro-4-review-raising-the-bar.htmlDisplay From the outside, the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4 displays are deceptively similar. Yes, the new model is slightly larger at 12.3-inches but has the same 3:2 aspect ratio as the 12-inch display in the Surface Pro 3. But what the form factor hides is all of the work that has gone into improving the display at both the panel level and the overall display stack. In fact Microsoft has consistently improved on their displays, starting with their zero air gap laminated displays on the older Surface Pro models./news/toshiba-s-14-tb-hdds-now-available-from-supermicro.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/toshiba-s-14-tb-hdds-now-available-from-supermicro.htmlToshiba was the first maker of hard drives to announce a PMR-based 14 TB HDD last December and apparently it is the first company to start their commercial shipments. As of this week, Supermicro has qualified Toshiba’s MG07-series HDDs with 12 TB and 14 TB capacities for use on select storage server platforms and is now offering the appropriate systems to customers. In addition to servers, the drives will be available from Supermicro’s online store eventually./news/visual-inspection-the-asus-rog-strix-z270g-gaming-motherboard.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-asus-rog-strix-z270g-gaming-motherboard.htmlAsus Strix Z270G Gaming Visual Inspection Asus’s engineers were tasked with making the ROG Strix Z270G Gaming both practical and visually appealing - a combination of which can be difficult to achieve. Aesthetically they went with an all-black PCB with abstract-shaped, gunmetal/black heatsinks. Most of the capacitors are painted black as well, leaving only the golden capacitors of the audio circuitry which stand out. RGB lighting is one of the major features of this motherboard mainly through headers, but its onboard lighting is limited to the logo on the chipset heatsink./news/western-digital-launches-wd-red-sa500-caching-ssds-for.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-launches-wd-red-sa500-caching-ssds-for.htmlWestern Digital has introduced its new WD Red SA500 family of specialized SSDs, which are designed for caching data in NAS devices. The drives are available in four different capacities from 500 GB to 4 TB to satisfy demands of different customers. To maximize their compatibility, the SSDs feature a SATA 6 Gbps interface and come in M.2-2280 or 2.5-inch/7-mm form-factors. Now that many desktop PCs have either been replaced by laptops or are so small that they cannot house a decent number of capacious hard drives, NAS use is gaining traction among those individuals and small businesses who need to store fairly large amounts of data./news/western-digital-shows-off-prototype-1tb-sdxc-card-at.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-shows-off-prototype-1tb-sdxc-card-at.htmlIn recent years we have seen the development of 3D NAND push up the capacity and push down the prices of all sorts of flash devices, from SSDs to phones, and everything in between. Due to startup cost and longevity needs, we’ve seen 3D NAND focused primarily on permanent storage so far, but it looks like that is soon going to change, and 3D NAND will more widely make its way to removable storage./news/windows-rt-microsoft-surface-review.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/windows-rt-microsoft-surface-review.htmlWindows RT I’m not going to go into a super deep look at Windows RT here as we have a separate review for just that purpose. Instead I’m going to talk about the highlights as they apply to Surface. There’s a definite learning curve to Windows RT/8. It doesn’t matter what OS you’re coming from, even if it’s Windows, it’s going to take some time to get used to the new Windows UI./news/xiaomi-media-preview-live-blog.htmlTue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xiaomi-media-preview-live-blog.htmlAdditional: Will go on sale (in China most likely) next week. 04:32AM EST - OK, looks like a wrap. Devices are outside, so we'll have a look. 04:28AM EST - The chinese prices below include 17% tax 04:27AM EST - The cheapest model uses the 1.8 GHz bin of the 820 04:27AM EST - Pricing is $354 for the high end 'Mi 5 Pro' version with top end storage and high CPU bin/news/amd-processors-athlon-64.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-processors-athlon-64.htmlAMD Processors - Athlon 64 With the release of their Athlon 64 lineup, AMD definitely let loose a very powerful and competitive product. It has been able to prove to the computing community at large that AMD can do more than just desktop application work. It is also very safe to say that they have brought these chips to market at very acceptable prices, especially when you consider that they are capable of running 64-bit operating systems and applications./news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5870-bringing-about-the-next.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5870-bringing-about-the-next.htmlConclusion The easiest kind of product for us to write about is the kind that’s clearly superior to its competition. The hardest kind to write about is the kind that’s stuck in the middle. For the 5870, we have the latter case. Let’s be clear here: the 5870 is the single fastest single-GPU card we have tested, by a wide margin. Looking at its performance in today’s games, as a $379 card it makes the GTX 285 at its current prices ($300+) completely irrelevant./news/an-anecdotal-musing-of-brick-and-mortar-amd-notebook.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-anecdotal-musing-of-brick-and-mortar-amd-notebook.htmlFor any technology journalist deeply embedded an analytical content, knowing your field is a key element to how you work. If all the focus goes into the high-end, it is easy to get complacent, or living in a technology hub can feel like a bubble. This is why several times a year I wander through the local Brick and Mortar retailer to see what is on offer to users that simply walk in off the street to buy a tablet, notebook, or a casual £99 Bluetooth speaker purchase, as what happened this week./news/apple-ipad-mini-with-retina-display-reviewed.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-ipad-mini-with-retina-display-reviewed.htmlI suppose there’s only one way to start this review, and that’s by looking back at last year’s iPad mini review. In that review I had a section dedicated to the possibility of an iPad mini with Retina Display. The low resolution display and slow SoC were my only two real complaints about the first iPad mini. I listed a bunch of options that Apple had for the mini going forward:/news/asus-rog-maximus-z690-formula-ddr5.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-maximus-z690-formula-ddr5.htmlASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Formula (DDR5) Another mainstay of ASUS's ROG Maximus series returns for Z690, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Formula. Fabled for its use of water-cooled VRMs, the latest Formula which ASUS actually skipped for Z590, is back for Z690 with a new aesthetic, including a new silver theme which is reminiscent of its Extreme Glacial models. The silver armor and heatsinks cover the majority of the PCB, with a custom milled EKWB heatsink cooling the power delivery, and allowing users to either passively cool them or hook them up to a custom water cooling kit for better VRM thermal performance./news/asus-rog-strix-z370-e-z370-f-gaming.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-z370-e-z370-f-gaming.htmlASUS ROG Z370-E STRIX-E & Z370-F STRIX Gaming Next up from the new ASUS ROG Z370 line-up is a pair of ATX sized offerings which sit within the mid-range separate group of at least four STRIX boards. Both of the Z370-E and Z370-F STRIX Gaming motherboards have a near identical feature set with a few main separating features. Firstly, the Z370-E features a set of silver metallic heat sinks, whereas the Z370-F uses a darker tough plastic./news/chapter-2-why-single-core-cpus-are-no-longer.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/chapter-2-why-single-core-cpus-are-no-longer.htmlCHAPTER 2: Why single core CPUs are no longer "cool" The end of the single core CPU? Right now, the leakage problem is by far the most urgent problem. As profit margins are low and cost is, in most cases, the decisive factor for consumers, expensive cooling systems are not practical. Past experience has shown that complex superscalar CPUs need about twice as many transistors to achieve +/- 40% better performance./news/cpu-tests-synthetic-and-spec.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-tests-synthetic-and-spec.htmlCPU Tests: Synthetic Most of the people in our industry have a love/hate relationship when it comes to synthetic tests. On the one hand, they’re often good for quick summaries of performance and are easy to use, but most of the time the tests aren’t related to any real software. Synthetic tests are often very good at burrowing down to a specific set of instructions and maximizing the performance out of those./news/dell-u2412m-input-lag-and-power-use-dell-u2412m.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-u2412m-input-lag-and-power-use-dell-u2412m.htmlDell U2412M Input Lag and Power Use For testing lag, I am trying a new solution to our previous testing method. I’m trying out SMTT, which is designed specifically for measuring lag in LCD displays. Using DirectX it manages to push over 1,000 frames per second to a display, allowing for millisecond accuracy instead of relying on time demos that often run well below that threshold. Using this method, we can actually determine two different values: The input lag for the LCD to initially respond, and then the total lag from when the new frame is received to when it is completely drawn and at full brightness./news/experience-a-smaller-ipad-pro.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/experience-a-smaller-ipad-pro.htmlA Smaller iPad Pro When the 12.9” iPad Pro was the only iPad Pro, the appeal it had was fairly obvious. Supporting Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard brought the iPad experience to a whole new level, and the large display allowed for an enormous canvas for full screen apps, as well as two essentially full sized iPad apps side by side. Of course, the large display also made the iPad Pro much less portable than Apple’s other iPads./news/final-words-asus-vivotab-rt-review.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-asus-vivotab-rt-review.htmlViewed within a vacuum, the VivoTab RT is a strong first effort from ASUS as part of the new Windows tablet push. It’s a conservative and mature design that has proven itself in the marketplace. It’s a thin tablet with a clean, modern aesthetic that doesn’t push the boundary much. A high quality IPS display, solid performance, decent camera, a well-designed laptop dock, good battery life that becomes awesome when you include the dock - really, there isn’t too much wrong here./news/final-words-nvidia-s-geforce-fx-5600-5200-ultra.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-nvidia-s-geforce-fx-5600-5200-ultra.htmlFinal Words NVIDIA's DirectX 9 strategy is to be commended, they are delivering DX9 compatibility for cards ranging in price from < $100 all the way up to their $400 flagship. This is a move NVIDIA should have made back in the DirectX 8 days with the GeForce4 MX but failed to do so, at least they are listening to the demands of developers and end users alike. When looking at the actual products themselves, you can make a couple of generalizations about their performance./news/fsaa-image-quality-need-for-speed-5.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fsaa-image-quality-need-for-speed-5.htmlFSAA Image Quality - Need for Speed 5 All screenshots were taken using Hypersnap-DX available at http://www.hyperionics.com We've highlighted the key points to look for, but in order for you to see the true difference in the images you'll want to download the uncompressed images by clicking on the images you see below. First we start off with the GeForce 2's first incarnation of FSAA in Direct3D: click the images to download the original (uncompressed) files/news/game-review-minecraft-pc.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/game-review-minecraft-pc.htmlAt this point, it’s a bit weird to review Minecraft. It has been fully available for purchase for a little more than two years, and in spite of its more than four million copies sold it’s still popular enough that you can watch that number continue to inch up on its homepage. It has spawned a company (which in turn is already publishing and developing other projects), a convention, mobile and console versions, a forthcoming documentary, and endless reviews and editorials already./news/gaming-performance-intel-s-core-i7-970-reviewed-slightly.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-intel-s-core-i7-970-reviewed-slightly.htmlGaming Performance If you're building a gaming box there are clearly better options for you. The i7 970 does well here but it's mostly a waste unless you're doing a lot of 3D rendering or video encoding when you're not gaming. Virtually any of these CPUs will do well in today's games as well as tomorrow's. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIB5f5JooKeslaHAbq%2FOq5xmoWdihnh8jKucr6GVrLKledKloKCgpKHGbrnOq5xmmZabvLOwwJujnmVmmLyzsY5u/news/gaming-tests-borderlands-3-intel-core-i7-11700k-review.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-tests-borderlands-3-intel-core-i7-11700k-review.htmlGaming Tests: Borderlands 3 As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within./news/gpu-2012-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-2012-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlProduct Ratings & Comparisons Crysis: Warhead - 2560x1600 - Frost Bench - Enthusiast Quality + 4xAA Frames per Second - Higher is Better 22.6 21.8 Crysis: Warhead - 1920x1200 - Frost Bench - Enthusiast Quality + 4xAA Frames per Second - Higher is Better 35.4 35.2 Crysis: Warhead - 1680x1050 - Frost Bench - E Shaders/G Quality + 4xAA Frames per Second - Higher is Better/news/in-and-around-the-corsair-vengeance-c70.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-corsair-vengeance-c70.htmlIn and Around the Corsair Vengeance C70 While I've generally appreciated Corsair's aesthetics (even the Vengeance branded keyboards have a nice, simplistic design to them), the Vengeance C70 enclosure threw me for a loop. I'm not sure when the military styling became popular, but the C70 looks like an awfully good place to store an ASUS Sabertooth (just like in the reviewer's guide!) or one of Gigabyte's G1 series boards./news/in-and-around-the-rosewill-line-m.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-rosewill-line-m.htmlIn and Around the Rosewill Line-M Working with the Rosewill Line-M made me feel downright nostalgic. It doesn't suffer from the same kind of poor build quality (and comically optimistic price tag) of the Moneual Sonamu G100 I reviewed some time ago, but I couldn't help but want the Line-M in beige, if you catch my drift. The front of the Line-M is all business. It's a black plastic fascia and features two external 5./news/innovation-at-the-keyboard-level.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/innovation-at-the-keyboard-level.htmlI’ve got the same problem with the Inspiron Mini that I had with the Eee PC, it’s simply too small to be ergonomic. With only an 8.9” display you end up looking down at the screen if you’re using it while sitting upright, much more than you would a normal notebook with a larger screen. This is hardly ideal as I find myself over tensioning my neck and upper back. While it’s a great way of getting a backrub from your favorite masseuse/friend it’s not exactly the most comfortable notebook to use./news/intel-core-2-duo-e6300-e6400-tremendous-value-through.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-core-2-duo-e6300-e6400-tremendous-value-through.htmlOver a week has passed since our Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo review and although the dust is finally starting to settle, not all questions have been answered. We're still hard at work on investigating issues like 64-bit performance and comparing performance per Watt across more applications, but today we're here with another piece of the puzzle: a look at the Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400. The E6300 and E6400 are particularly attractive members of the Core 2 family because of their fairly low cost; unfortunately their performance isn't as easy to predict because they are currently the only two Core 2 processors that don't have a 4MB L2 cache./news/intel-developer-forum-2007-day-2-usb-3-asus.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-developer-forum-2007-day-2-usb-3-asus.htmlThe major announcements of IDF have come and gone. The Nehalem demos and Silverthorne were exactly what IDF is known for, but the show does go on after the keynotes and today's coverage gives you a taste of exactly that. Robot Car We ran into Stanford's Robot Car to be used in the DARPA Urban Challenge this November: The Robot Car is entirely autonomous, it will drive itself and avoid any and all obstacles along the way in an urban setting./news/intel-to-create-new-8th-generation-cpus-with-amd.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-to-create-new-8th-generation-cpus-with-amd.htmlToday we have an announcement out of left field. Intel has formally revealed it has been working on a new series of processors that combine its high-performance x86 cores with AMD Radeon Graphics into the same processor package using Intel’s own EMIB multi-die technology. If that wasn’t enough, Intel also announced that it is bundling the design with the latest high-bandwidth memory, HBM2. Intel announced its EMIB technology over the last twelve months, with the core theme being the ability to put multiple and different silicon dies onto the same package at a much higher bandwidth than a standard multi-chip package but at a much lower cost than using a silicon interposer./news/mediatek-labs-and-linkit-platform-launch-targeting-iot-and.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mediatek-labs-and-linkit-platform-launch-targeting-iot-and.htmlCompanies such as Motorola, Apple, Nest, and Fitbit have been targeting the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables market with devices for the past several years. However, if the smartphone revolution was any indication, we are merely at the tip of the iceberg for these devices. Even Apple acknowledged as much by naming the processor inside the Apple Watch the “S1”, clearly planning for future revisions. Today, hoping to capitalize on this next wave of technology proliferation, MediaTek is formally launching their Labs program for IoT and wearables./news/microsoft-s-kin-a-eulogy.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-s-kin-a-eulogy.htmlWhen Verizon first sent me the ONE and TWO for review, I setup both KIN on the same Live account. Much like Android’s dependency on you having a Google account for backing up a list of installed applications, Microsoft used its Live service with the KIN for total device backups and creating a complete user profile. I figured it’d just work fine to have both devices on one account. It didn't./news/next-up-actlabs-force-feedback-wheel-roundup.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/next-up-actlabs-force-feedback-wheel-roundup.htmlAct-Labs Force RS Game Bundle Act-Labs has included UBIsoft's F1 Racing Simulation with the Force RS. Also included is a full version of Immersion's I-Force Studio, which allows you to customize your Force effect settings and save them to profiles. You can then organize these profiles so that you have a different one for each game, user, whatever. Installation Well, no surprises here. The software installs in a snap, reboot the machine, add the controller in the control panel./news/nokia-n8-review-nokia-s-new-flagship.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nokia-n8-review-nokia-s-new-flagship.htmlI remember one of the first mobile phones I ever used being a Nokia 5110i. It was among Nokia’s earliest of devices that packed an easy to use and straightforward interface in a supremely well-built package. Since we didn’t have as many phone launches each month back then as there are stars in the sky, the 5110i served me very well for more than 3 years without showing any signs of aging./news/nvidia-asus-unveil-360hz-1080p-g-sync-monitor-rog.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-asus-unveil-360hz-1080p-g-sync-monitor-rog.htmlEven though CES proper doesn’t kick off for one more day, NVIDIA and ASUS are getting in an announcement a bit ahead of the curve relating to a new monitor. The two companies have been working on a new high-performance 1080p display aimed at competitive gaming that offers a blistering 360Hz maximum refresh rate,  50% faster than the current crop of 240Hz market leaders. The new monitor will be sold by ASUS as the ROG Swift 360, and is set to be available later this year./news/playstation-3-s-gpu-the-nvidia-rsx-reality-synthesizer.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playstation-3-s-gpu-the-nvidia-rsx-reality-synthesizer.htmlNVIDIA's contribution to the PS3 is their RSX GPU. The RSX GPU offers dual screen output, with each output offering a resolution of up to 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080). The GPU runs at 550MHz and is connected to 256MB of local GDDR3 memory running at 700MHz. The GPU itself can process 136 shader operations per cycle, compared to 53 shader ops per cycle of the current GeForce 6 GPU. In terms of shader performance, the RSX is clearly more powerful than even two GeForce 6 GPUs./news/power-consumption-apple-27-inch-led-cinema-display-review.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-apple-27-inch-led-cinema-display-review.htmlPower Consumption With the U2711 Dell opted for a CCFL backlight to deliver a wider color gamut. Apple moved to LED to reduce the size of the display's chassis and cut power consumption. Even while charging a MacBook Pro and running at full brightness the 27-inch LED Cinema Display never got more than warm. Part of this is due to the vent in the back of the display: The display is also just generally power efficient:/news/power-consumption-and-i7-6950x-overclocking.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-and-i7-6950x-overclocking.htmlLoad Delta Power Consumption Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single MSI GTX 770 Lightning configuration with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare both the power management of the BIOS and the board's ability to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency./news/razer-reveals-mamba-hyperflux-mouse-no-battery-wireless-charging.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-reveals-mamba-hyperflux-mouse-no-battery-wireless-charging.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — The Razer Mamba HyperFlux is a wireless mouse but it doesn’t need a battery.The gaming mouse, which includes a charging mat, the Firefly Hyperflux, will release in the first quarter of 2018.  Razer’s HyperFlux technology which uses the mousepad to create a magnetic field that constantly powers the mouse. The Firefly Hyperflux is a two-sided charging mouse pad, with both hard and cloth sides for different comfort and friction options./news/revived-hedt-brings-more-cores-of-zen-4.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/revived-hedt-brings-more-cores-of-zen-4.htmlAMD's Ryzen Threadripper 7000 processors mark the latest additions to the high-end desktop (HEDT) market, a segment AMD wants to bring back to the mainstream. Based on AMD's proven Zen 4 architecture and built on TSMC's 5nm process, both of AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 7000 lineups – Pro and non-Pro – are designed to bring more cores and more I/O to the high-end desktop and workstation markets. Altogether, AMD is offering three new Ryzen Threadripper 7000 SKUs, the top-end 7980X with 64 cores, the mid-tier 7970X with 32 cores, and the entry-level chip in the line-up, the 24-core 7960X./news/software-android-2-3-3-and-htc-sense-3.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-android-2-3-3-and-htc-sense-3.htmlHTC Sense 3.0 Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s talk about the other side of HTC’s strategy. I mentioned at the beginning that one half of that is unique industrial design and hardware, the second angle is software differentiation. The Sensation is running Android 2.3.3, but for the most part the angular, contrasty, dark visage of Gingerbread is hidden under a UI skin. That brings us to the oft-maligned HTC Sense, which the Sensation includes the very latest version of, Sense 3./news/specifications-and-feature-set-comparison.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/specifications-and-feature-set-comparison.htmlPrior to getting into the performance evaluation, we will take a look at the specifications of the 4 HGST Deskstar NAS and see how it compares against the other NAS-specific hard drives that we have looked at before. Unlike other consumer NAS HDDs, the HGST Deskstar NAS doesn't skimp on performance by lowering the rotational speeds. We have a standard 7200 rpm drive with a SATA 6 Gbps interface. There is a 64 MB cache, but the reliability ratings in terms of MTBF and UREs are the same as the other consumer NAS drives./news/the-a5x-soc-the-apple-ipad-review-2012.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-a5x-soc-the-apple-ipad-review-2012.htmlThe A5X SoC The ridiculousness of the new iPad begins at its heart: the A5X SoC. The A5X breaks Apple's longstanding tradition of debuting its next smartphone SoC in the iPad first. I say this with such certainty because the A5X is an absolute beast of an SoC. As it's implemented in the new iPad, the A5X under load consumes more power than an entire iPhone 4S. In many ways in the A5X is a very conservative design, while in others it's absolutely pushing the limits of what had been previously done in a tablet./news/the-nvidia-gpu-tech-conference-2017-keynote-live-blog.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nvidia-gpu-tech-conference-2017-keynote-live-blog.html11:51AM EDT - I'm here at NVIDIA's keynote at their annual GPU Technology Conference 11:52AM EDT - So far the WiFi is holding up, but if I get quiet for a bit, you can take a good guess as to why 11:54AM EDT - The press posse is here in full, and the analysts are mixed in here as well 11:54AM EDT - It's going to be a full house./news/thunderbolt-2-the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thunderbolt-2-the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlThunderbolt 2 The new Mac Pro integrates three Intel Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt 2 controllers. These are the fully configured controllers, each supporting and driving two Thunderbolt 2 connectors on the back of the Pro for a total of 6 ports. Pairing Thunderbolt 2 with Ivy Bridge EP is a bit tricky as Apple uses Thunderbolt 2 for display output as well as data. Typically you’d route all display through processor graphics, but in the case of IVB-EP there is no integrated graphics core./news/trim-performance-power-consumption-final-words.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/trim-performance-power-consumption-final-words.htmlTRIM Performance In practice, SandForce based drives running a desktop workload do very well and typically boast an average write amplification below 1 (more writes to the device than actual writes to NAND). My personal SF-1200 drive had a write amplification of around 0.6 after several months of use. However if subjected to a workload composed entirely of incompressible writes (e.g. tons of compressed images, videos and music) you can back the controller into a corner./news/wi-fi-alliance-announces-wi-fi-6e-moniker-for.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wi-fi-alliance-announces-wi-fi-6e-moniker-for.html   Wi-Fi platform vendors have long been citing the lack of enough spectrum in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands as true gigabit wireless becomes commonplace. In fact, despite support for 160 MHz channels in the Wi-Fi 6 standard, very few consumers are able to actually utilize it because the dynamic frequence selection (DFS) feature is often disabled by default. DFS is necessary to prevent Wi-Fi devices operating in the 5 GHz band from interfering with radars that are licensed users of the channels in that band./news/windows-8-madvr-and-more.htmlMon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/windows-8-madvr-and-more.htmlIntroduction The build process and thermal performance of a fanless Ivy Bridge HTPC was covered in detail last month. I had indicated that the piece would be the first of a three-part HTPC series. Today, we are looking at the second part of the series. My original intention was to present the HTPC oriented benchmarks and aspects of the PC as it was built in the first part./news/35-inch-200-hz-2560-1080-curved-display-with.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/35-inch-200-hz-2560-1080-curved-display-with.htmlThis week AOC has introduced its new AGON-branded curved display for gamers that boasts a 200 Hz refresh rate. The ultra-wide AG352QCX monitor has an MVA panel and a pretty high contrast ratio and a WFHD resolution. In addition, the AG352QCX supports AMD’s FreeSync and VESA’s Adaptive-Sync technologies. The AOC AGON AG352QCX is based on a 35” MVA panel with 2560×1080 resolution and 21:9 aspect ratio. General specifications of the display are fairly typical: 300 nits brightness, 2000:1 contrast ratio, 178°/178° viewing angles, 16./news/a-testament-to-honesty-about-battery-life.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-testament-to-honesty-about-battery-life.htmlI follow AMD's Patrick Moorhead on Twitter and recently he's been on a tirade against MobileMark 2007 and those who use it to characterize notebook battery life. Moorehead's complaint is motivated by the fact that Intel performs better on MobileMark than AMD (possibly due to better power characteristics at idle conditions), but it highlights another truth: most notebook makers can't be trusted when it comes to battery life claims. In my recent MacBook Pro coverage I pointed out that this wasn't true for Apple./news/acer-aspire-v3-571g-9435-the-value-proposition.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-aspire-v3-571g-9435-the-value-proposition.htmlAcer’s V3-571G Value Proposition While there have been a few reasonably impressive Acer laptops over the years, most target a familiar refrain: deliver better performance at a lower price than the competition. Acer manages this quite thanks to their size (e.g. large buying power) and their willingness to compromise on certain aspects of the laptop experience. Their latest Aspire V3 series does come with several noteworthy updates compared to previous value offerings, however, and the price might just scare a few of their competitors into making some much-needed improvements./news/amd-set-to-fix-ryzen-8000g-apu-stapm-throttling.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-set-to-fix-ryzen-8000g-apu-stapm-throttling.htmlEarlier this week, we published our review of AMD's latest Zen 4 based APUs, the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G. While we saw much better gaming performance using the integrated graphics compared to the previous Ryzen 5000G series of APUs, including the Ryzen 7 5700G, the team over at Gamers Nexus has since highlighted an issue with Skin Temperature-Aware Power Management, or STAPM, for short. This particular issue is something we have investigated ourselves, and we can confirm that there is a throttling issue within the current firmware (at the time of writing) with AMD's Ryzen 8000G APUs./news/at-news-update-dram-price-fixing.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/at-news-update-dram-price-fixing.htmlLate last week various reports began to hint that the US DOJ price fixing investigations against the Big 4 memory producers; Samsung, Micron, Hynix, and Infineon. The EU has launched a separate probe against the same companies with regard to the extremely unusual increase in DRAM prices that lasted between November 2001 and May 2002. As part of court documents in the now dismissed FTC case against Rambus, an email sent from a Micron employee claiming with regard to memory suppliers Samsung and Infineon states; "/news/baby-steps-the-new-trackpad.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/baby-steps-the-new-trackpad.htmlWith the MacBook Air, Apple introduced its first oversized trackpad: The MacBook Air's trackpad The size was necessary to enable more complex gestures; you could now rotate pictures just using two fingers and the trackpad. Neat. The MacBook Pro got the same functionality with its update earlier this year, and now with this last redesign both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have support for even more gestures. The old MBP trackpad (left) vs./news/benchmarked-civilization-beyond-earth.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/benchmarked-civilization-beyond-earth.htmlOne of the longest running gaming franchises around, the Civilization series goes all the way back to my high school years. There have been many changes along the way, but the core gameplay has remained. Civilization is a turn-based strategy game where you guide your fledgling empire from the early stages of a single settlement up through global endgame battles for domination. The games have all been digital crack as far as I'm concerned, and I know at least a few people that failed – or very nearly failed – out of college thanks to time spent playing various incarnations of Civilization./news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-z590-oc-formula-review.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-z590-oc-formula-review.htmlBIOS The UEFI firmware used on all of the three ASRock Z590 boards we have reviewed so far has been consistent in design other than subtle changes to the GUI, such as color. In fact, the firmware on the Z590 OC Formula is visually identical to that used on the ASRock Z590 Taichi. The Z590 OC Formula GUI consists of a black background, yellow accents, white text, and grey, denoting which option is currently selected./news/cooper-lake-sp-ice-lake-sp-due-in-2020.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cooper-lake-sp-ice-lake-sp-due-in-2020.htmlRecently a Chinese university has published a collection of slide-decks from various companies covering a server/HPC event. Among the slides, Intel had a seemingly longer comprehensive presentation describing Intel’s conceptual approaches to HPC to analysis of various workloads, and most interestingly, future plans and what looks to be an up-to-date server roadmap. According to slides published by the Central South University from Changsha City, Hunan, Intel had to delay its Ice Lake-SP server platform from 2019 to 2020 because of the general delay of its 10 nm process technology./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-simulation-intel-core-i9-13900k-and.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-simulation-intel-core-i9-13900k-and.htmlCPU Benchmark Performance: Simulation Simulation and Science have a lot of overlap in the benchmarking world. The benchmarks that fall under Science have a distinct use for the data they output – in our Simulation section, these act more like synthetics but at some level are still trying to simulate a given environment. In the encrypt/decrypt scenario, how data is transferred and by what mechanism is pertinent to on-the-fly encryption of sensitive data - a process by which more modern devices are leaning to for software security./news/cpu-performance-simulation-and-science.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-simulation-and-science.htmlSimulation and Science have a lot of overlap in the benchmarking world, however for this distinction we’re separating into two segments mostly based on the utility of the resulting data. The benchmarks that fall under Science have a distinct use for the data they output – in our Simulation section, these act more like synthetics but at some level are still trying to simulate a given environment. DigiCortex v1.35: link DigiCortex is a pet project for the visualization of neuron and synapse activity in the brain./news/display-analysis-the-dell-xps-13-7390-2-in.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-analysis-the-dell-xps-13-7390-2-in.htmlDisplay Analysis Dell offers two display options. The review unit arrived with the first option: a 1920x1200 sRGB display, offering pen and touch support. Dell also offers a 3840x2400 P3-D65 panel, which delivers a higher resolution image with a wider color gamut, but as we've seen time and time again, will come with a stiff hit to battery life. Both feature bonded Corning Gorilla Glass 5 as well, for added durability./news/final-words-conclusion-the-arctic-liquid-freezer-iii-280.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-conclusion-the-arctic-liquid-freezer-iii-280.htmlConclusion In a densely populated market of cooling options, ARCTIC's Liquid Freezer III 280 A-RGB White AIO cooler manages to stand out, highlighting the company's persistence on releasing ever more competitive products. ARCTIC's A-RGB White AIO model focuses on a blend of high performance and visual elegance with its A-RGB features and all-white appearance, suitable for users who prioritize both efficiency and aesthetics in their setup. A key feature of the Liquid Freezer III is its seamless aesthetic appeal, particularly in the A-RGB White version, which offers a visually stunning setup without the clutter of excessive cables./news/game-review-the-binding-of-isaac.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/game-review-the-binding-of-isaac.htmlThere is some special alchemy at the heart of The Binding of Isaac. Developer Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) has combined biblical monsters, scatological humor, and tense twin-stick shooting into a thrilling and, at times, disturbing game about a boy and his troubled relationship with his mother. A pregame Flash animation shows Isaac’s mother, who likes to watch Christian television programming, being told by God that Isaac is a creature of immense sin./news/gaming-performance-the-corsair-ddr4-5000-vengeance-lpx-review.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-the-corsair-ddr4-5000-vengeance-lpx-review.htmlGaming Performance Civilization 6 (DX12) Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master./news/globalfoundries-gives-7-nm-capacity-update-mulls-skipping-5.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/globalfoundries-gives-7-nm-capacity-update-mulls-skipping-5.htmlHigh-ranking executives of GlobalFoundries this month gave several updates concerning future plans of the contract maker of semiconductors. As it appears, in a bid to provide more tangible advantages to its customers and not to invest in short-lasting nodes, the company is mulling skipping 5 nm manufacturing technology like it did with the 10 nm fabrication process. In addition, the company admits that its only leading-edge fab may not have enough capacity for all of its customers at 7 nm, and some of its clients may need to work with other foundries to meet their demand./news/google-announces-pixel-4a-5g-and-pixel-5-focusing.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/google-announces-pixel-4a-5g-and-pixel-5-focusing.htmlToday through the company’s rather short virtual launch event, among other novelties, Google has officially announced the new Pixel 4a (5G) and the new Pixel 5. Both phones had been teased for some time now as Google had pre-announced them back in in early August with the announcement of the Pixel 4a. The new Pixel 4a (5G) is very much what its name implies, a variant of the Pixel 4a with added 5G connectivity through the addition of a Snapdragon 765 SoC./news/gv100-gpu-and-tesla-v100-accelerator-announced.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gv100-gpu-and-tesla-v100-accelerator-announced.htmlToday at their annual GPU Technology Conference keynote, NVIDIA's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the company's first Volta GPU and Volta products. Taking aim at the very high end of the compute market with their first products, NVIDIA has laid out a very aggressive technology delivery schedule in order to bring about another major leap in GPU deep learning performance. As a quick history lesson, NVIDIA first unveiled the Volta architecture name all the way back in 2013./news/hot-test-results-45-c-ambient.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hot-test-results-45-c-ambient.htmlFor the testing of PSUs, we are using high precision electronic loads with a maximum power draw of 2700 Watts, a Rigol DS5042M  40 MHz oscilloscope, an Extech 380803 power analyzer, two high precision UNI-T UT-325 digital thermometers, an Extech HD600 SPL meter, a self-designed hotbox and various other bits and parts. For a thorough explanation of our testing methodology and more details on our equipment, please refer to our How We Test PSUs - 2014 Pipeline post./news/hp-launches-z6-g4-workstation-with-intel-xeon-scalable.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-launches-z6-g4-workstation-with-intel-xeon-scalable.htmlHP has started sales of its fourth-generation Z6 workstation, which pack one or two of Intel’s Xeon Scalable processor, NVIDIA’s Quadro RTX graphics cards, as well as up to 384 GB of memory. The new HP Z6 G4 machine is designed for graphics and compute intensive workloads and is aimed at VFX specialists, engineers and other creative professionals. HP’s Z6 G4 workstation is based on one Intel Xeon W CPU or two Intel Xeon Scalable processors, with up to 48 cores in total./news/htc-adds-sense-6-progress-to-software-update-page.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-adds-sense-6-progress-to-software-update-page.htmlHTC has updated their software update status page with a section that displays the current status of the HTC Sense 6.0 upgrade. The page indicates that they intend to update the HTC One M7, HTC One mini, and HTC One Max across all US and Canadian carriers as well as the unlocked and developer edition versions of the HTC One M7. According to the website, all the devices — with the exception of the HTC One M7 on T-Mobile USA — are on the integration state of development which involves HTC working with cellular providers to incorporate software modifications, applications, and other services that are specific to that carrier and creating the maintenance release./news/lg-34um67-ultrawide-freesync-review.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-34um67-ultrawide-freesync-review.htmlLG 34UM67 Introduction and Overview LG as a company has many products and certainly offers some strong competition. Their product line includes HDTVs and computer displays, smartphones and smart watches, fitness bands, home appliances, audio accessories, commercial AC and lighting, and numerous other offerings; in short, LG is a brand we’ve all encountered. Given their strong presence in the HDTV market over the years, computer displays should be a strong category for LG, and with one of the first shipping FreeSync displays, LG is at the front of the pack as far as new technologies are concerned./news/low-power-finfet-for-everyday-chips.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/low-power-finfet-for-everyday-chips.htmlIntel Foundry Services (IFS) this week soft-launched their new Intel 16 process technology, a 16nm-class node that will be used for the production of low-power chips for everyday workloads. The updated legacy node, derived from Intel's existing 22FFL process tech, is aimed at cost-conscientious customers who are producing simpler chips that don't require the performance offered by cutting-edge process nodes. Set to compete against nodes such as TSMC's N12e, budget nodes like Intel 16 typically see wide use in a variety of fields, ranging from aerospace and defense to IoT and radios./news/memory-subsystem-latency-amazon-s-arm-based-graviton2-against.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/memory-subsystem-latency-amazon-s-arm-based-graviton2-against.htmlMemory Subsystem & Latency Memory performance in server chips is absolutely crucial due to the sheer core count in the system. Amazon’s Graviton2 chip has the most modern memory capabilities of our test set thanks to 8 DDR4-3200 memory controllers, providing up to a theoretical 204GB/s peak bandwidth. What’s also important, is the SoC’s cache hierarchy and the latencies it’s able to access data at. Looking at the linear latency graph results, let’s first focus on the DRAM region and see how the Graviton2 ends up relative to the competition./news/miscellaneous-aspects-and-final-words.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/miscellaneous-aspects-and-final-words.htmlIn the process of reviewing the Western Digital Red 6 TB drives, we did face one hiccup. Our QNAP testbed NAS finished resyncing a RAID-5 volume with three of those drives, but suddenly indicated an I/O error for one of them. We were a bit surprised (in all our experience with hard drive review units, we had never had one fail that quickly). To check into the issue, we ran the SMART diagnostics and also a short test from within the NAS UI./news/netgear-introduces-orbi-pro-sxk50-ax5400-mesh-system-for.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/netgear-introduces-orbi-pro-sxk50-ax5400-mesh-system-for.htmlNetgear Business - the SMB-/SME-focused arm of Netgear - has been delivering mesh Wi-Fi systems to small businesses under the Orbi Pro lineup since 2017. The 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) version was followed up by the flagship AX6000 (Wi-Fi 6) Orbi Pro SXK80 models in late 2020. Last year, a cut-down dual-band AX1800 version - the Orbi Pro SXK30 - was introduced at $300. As part of the 2022 CES announcements, the company is introducing the mid-range Orbi Pro model - the SXK50 series./news/new-probook-635-aero-g8-with-ryzen-5000-mobile.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-probook-635-aero-g8-with-ryzen-5000-mobile.htmlHP has updated its ProBook series with new models based on AMD's latest mobile processors, with a sleek and professional design. The HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 now features AMD Ryzen 5000 processors, with a slimline design and weight of just under 1 kg. Based on the previous ProBook 635 Aero G7 (2020) model, the new ProBook 635 G8 follows a similar design, with a 13.3-inch 1080p display, with support for up to 32 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD storage./news/not-arrandale-but-better-graphics.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/not-arrandale-but-better-graphics.htmlApple is up to something. For the past 1.5 years every single Mac has shipped with some form of NVIDIA graphics, standard, regardless of price. These are all G9x based GPUs with full support for OpenCL. From the looks of it, Apple is trying to broaden its install base of OpenCL compliant machines. In preparation for what I'm not really sure, but something is coming. The unwillingness to ship a Mac without real GPGPU support leads us to the current problem with the 13-inch MacBook Pro./news/optimus-prime-nvidia-optimus.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/optimus-prime-nvidia-optimus.htmlOptimus, Prime? "The Autobots called… they want their leader back!" Transformers jokes aside, it's amazing how much the computing landscape can change in such a short amount of time. A few months ago, switchable graphics seemed like a great technology that not enough companies were interested in using. Now, switchable graphics tastes like leftovers from last week. All things being equal, who would want to spend the same amount of money for something that doesn't work nearly as well?/news/overclocking-heat-nvidia-geforce-ddr-roundup-march-00.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-heat-nvidia-geforce-ddr-roundup-march-00.htmlOverclocking Heat It is a well known fact that chip producers are overly cautious when it comes to setting a running speed. By setting the stock speed of chips at speeds which they are certain that all chips can reach, companies such as NVIDIA take the responsibility out of ensuring that a chip runs as expected. By doing so, however, the true potential of a chip is never fully reached. It is for this reason that almost every GeForce card out there can be overclocked to some extant./news/putting-it-all-together-part-3.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/putting-it-all-together-part-3.htmlFor my build, I ran into a series of small but notable issues that made me question whether I'd made the right decision in opting to use the Corsair Carbide Air 540, specifically in terms of clearance. I opted to use the two in-line quick-release connects on the radiators; I'd connect an arbitrary amount of tubing to one of the ports on the radiator and then put half of one of the connects on the other end of the tube before routing that tube back behind the motherboard tray./news/quantum-dots-tb3-usb-c.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quantum-dots-tb3-usb-c.htmlSamsung this week introduced its new CJ79 and CJ89-series curved displays, which are aimed at home and office audiences. The ultrawide CJ79 34-inch monitor features Samsung’s QLED backlighting to offer a wider color gamut, AMD’s FreeSync variable refresh technology, as well as Thunderbolt 3 inputs for compatibility with the latest notebooks. Meanwhile, the CJ89-series monitors are available in 43 and 49-inch sizes, and unlike the 34-inch model, uses USB Type-C connectivity instead./news/samsung-series-7-np700z7c-review.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-series-7-np700z7c-review.htmlSamsung is a well-known and generally respected brand within the computer and consumer electronics world, but we actually haven’t had a chance to look at very many of their laptops. We’ve reviewed many of their smartphones, some of their displays, and quite of few of their storage offerings (including HDDs and SSDs) over the years, but this is the first time in a long time that we’ve had a chance to review one of their upscale consumer notebooks./news/setting-new-standards-in-gaming.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/setting-new-standards-in-gaming.htmlAround the time of the Athlon64 and Athlon64 FX launch on September 23rd, we were talking with Elite PC about evaluating a full-blown gaming system that they were planning to build around the Athlon64 FX. There were several delays due to Elite PC's desire to use a Dual Socket 940 board and the new ATI Radeon XT. There were some difficulties with their early Dual boards and they wanted everything to be right before sending us a review system./news/soc-tile-part-2-neural-processing-unit-npu-adds.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/soc-tile-part-2-neural-processing-unit-npu-adds.htmlSoC Tile, Part 2: NPU Adds a Physical AI Engine The last major block on the SoC tile is a full-featured Neural Processing Unit (NPU), a first for Intel's client-focused processors. The NPU brings AI capabilities directly to the chip and is compatible with standardized program interfaces like OpenVINO. The architecture of the NPU itself is multi-engine in nature, which is comprised of two neural compute engines that can either collaborate on a single task or operate independently./news/spec2006-2017-industry-standard-st-performance.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/spec2006-2017-industry-standard-st-performance.htmlSingle-threaded performance of the new M1 is certainly one of its key aspects, where the new Firestorm cores definitely punch far above their power class. We had hinted in our preview A14 analysis article that the M1 may well be ending up as not only the top-performing low-power mobile CPU out there, but actually end up as the top-performing absolute performance amongst all CPUs in the market. The A14 fell short of that designation, but the M1 is an even faster implementation of the new Firestorm cores./news/storage-benchmarks-sandisk-extreme-pro-usb-3-0-flash.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/storage-benchmarks-sandisk-extreme-pro-usb-3-0-flash.htmlStorage Benchmarks Synthetic Benchmarks - ATTO and Crystal DiskMark SanDisk claims read/write speeds of 245 MBps/190 MBps and 260 MBps/240 MBps respectively for the Extreme and Extreme PRO. These are backed up by the ATTO benchmarks provided below. Unfortunately, these access traces are not very common in real-life scenarios. CrystalDiskMark, despite being a canned benchmark, provides a better estimate of the performance range with a selected set of numbers. As evident from the screenshot below, the performance can dip to as low as 8./news/system-performance-the-nzxt-n7-z490-motherboard-review-from.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-nzxt-n7-z490-motherboard-review-from.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, POST time and latency. This can come down to the manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested. For Z490 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update./news/ul-benchmarks-pcmark-and-3dmark.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ul-benchmarks-pcmark-and-3dmark.htmlThis section deals with a couple of UL Futuremark benchmarks - PCMark 10 and 3DMark. While PCMark evaluates the system as a whole, 3DMark focuses on the graphics capabilities with emphasis on gaming workloads. PCMark 10 UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation)./news/visual-inspection-the-asrock-z390-taichi-review-jack-of.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-asrock-z390-taichi-review-jack-of.htmlVisual Inspection The ASRock Z390 Taichi is a full-sized ATX motherboard with similar aesthetics compared to revious iterations of the Taichi range across multiple chipsets new and old. The main design traits of the Z390 Taichi consist of a black PCB with a grey cog inspired patterning throughout. The power delivery heatsink has a matte grey finish while the rear panel cover and audio PCB cover feature a black design which contrasts quite elegantly with the PCB./news/who-cares-about-clock-speeds.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/who-cares-about-clock-speeds.htmlSo far we've figured out that UT3 likes large caches, sees a huge benefit from two cores (and a minor improvement from 4) but what about raw clock speed? We took an unlocked Intel Core 2 Duo processor and ran it at 333MHz increments from 2.0GHz up to 3.33GHz, plotting performance vs. frequency on the chart below in all three flybys: At 1024 x 768, a reasonably CPU bound resolution, the curve isn't as steep as you'd expect./news/wireless-speakers-and-thermals-the-microsoft-surface-pro-2017.htmlSun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wireless-speakers-and-thermals-the-microsoft-surface-pro-2017.htmlWireless Microsoft has stuck with the Marvell AVASTAR wireless network card for the Surface Pro, and it’s the same card they use on every other Surface device (and have for a couple of generations now). They’ve told us that they find it to be a reliable, stable platform. It hasn’t always been very reliable, but it is more reliable now than it used to be, and driver updates have helped improve the speed as well./news/2006-2007-mobile-platform-roadmap.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2006-2007-mobile-platform-roadmap.htmlNote that Merom will operate in the very same power envelope as Yonah does, meaning that power consumption will stay constant while performance goes up. This also makes it easier for OEMs to simply start shipping their existing Core Duo designs with Merom instead of Yonah, avoiding a lengthy and costly ramp up of Merom just months after Yonah really started shipping in volume. In 2007 Intel will replace Napa with the Santa Rosa platform, also featuring Merom but with a new chipset (Crestline and ICH8M) as well as a new wireless solution called Kedron./news/80plus-platinum-2000-w-psu.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/80plus-platinum-2000-w-psu.htmlSilverStone demonstrated the industry’s first 2000 W ATX power supply that carries the 80Plus Platinum badge at Computex this year. The Strider Platinum 2000 W PSU is aimed at overclockers as well as cryptocurrency miners who care about efficient and quality power supply. The SilverStone SST-ST2000-PT PSU is compliant with the ATX12V v2.4 as well as EPS12V v2.92 standards and is rated for a 166.5 A maximum load and 1998 W power./news/aerocool-computex-2004-cases-and-cooling.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/aerocool-computex-2004-cases-and-cooling.htmlAeroCool AeroCool is doing something unique with its accessories. The front intake fan on its AeroEngine model of mid-tower cases is molded to look like the engine of an airplane. The two models, AeroEngine and JetMaster, come in two different sizes: junior, which is a mid-tower; and senior, which is a full tower.AeroCool also has an aluminum fan-less VGA cooler, which makes use of heat pipes to dissipate heat through its lightweight fins./news/amazon-updates-the-kindle-paperwhite.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amazon-updates-the-kindle-paperwhite.htmlThe venerable Kindle is one of my favorite tech devices. I owned the Kindle 3, but the obvious shortcoming was the lack of lighting, forcing me to use a case with a clumsy light attached. The minute the original Kindle Paperwhite was announced, I quickly ordered a couple of them and they are to this day one of my favorite pieces of technology. The Paperwhite added a “light guide” layer to the display to evenly distribute the light from the LEDs found in the bezel, which gives the e-ink display the bright white image and makes it much easier to use in dim or dark scenarios./news/apple-lays-out-plans-to-transition-macs-from-x86.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-lays-out-plans-to-transition-macs-from-x86.htmlAfter many months of rumors and speculation, Apple confirmed this morning during their annual WWDC keynote that the company intends to transition away from using x86 processors at the heart of their Mac family of computers. Replacing the venerable ISA – and the exclusively-Intel chips that Apple has been using – will be Apple’s own Arm-based custom silicon, with the company taking their extensive experience in producing SoCs for iOS devices, and applying that to making SoCs for Macs./news/asus-announces-rog-swift-500-hz-g-sync-gaming.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-announces-rog-swift-500-hz-g-sync-gaming.htmlIn direct collaboration with NVIDIA, ASUS has announced the world's first 500 Hz G-Sync enabled gaming display during Computex 2022. The latest ROG Swift 24.1-inch display will feature a 500 Hz panel with a 1080p resolution and comes loaded with features such as NVIDA's Reflex Analyzer and a new vibrance mode. Designed more the fast-paced eSports titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, Overwatch, and titles like these, the latest monitor from ASUS's premium ROG Swift range now features an impressive 500 Hz E-TN display./news/asus-reveals-the-ultra-slim-rog-zephyrus-laptop-with.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-reveals-the-ultra-slim-rog-zephyrus-laptop-with.htmlHot off the heels of NVIDIA announcing the GTX Max-Q design, ASUS is announcing the latest laptop in their Republic of Gamers lineup, with the ROG Zephyrus GX501VI and GX501VS featuring an Intel Core i7-7700HQ and NVIDIA GTX 1080 Max-Q in a design which is less than 1.7 cm thick, and weighs in at only 2.2 Kg. Although not everyone needs to go thin and light, those that do will appreciate even more performance in a new slim laptop./news/asus-rog-maximus-xii-formula.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-maximus-xii-formula.htmlASUS has also announced it will be releasing its ROG Maximus XII Formula, but not announced a full breakdown of what it will include. Typically famous for its inclusion of EKWB VRM MOSFET heatsinks, the Maximus XII Formula will come with a 16-phase teamed power delivery for the CPU, which is using 60 A power stages. It will also feature EK Crosschill III Hybrid heatsinks, with a large PCIe slot cover and rear panel cover with integrated RGB LEDs./news/bios-and-software-the-biostar-a10n-8800e-motherboard-review.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-biostar-a10n-8800e-motherboard-review.htmlBIOS The Biostar A10N-8800E uses a simplistic UEFI firmware with grey and white text on a black background. The grey text signifies that the element is non-customizable, whereas the options in white text provide some function. The firmware is divided into four primary sections with the left-hand side displaying an informative list of information from CPU core speed to the current CPU temperature, date, and time. Across the top is the word ‘Motherboard’, while the central panel houses all of the settings that users can customize such as enabling, or disabling controllers, power settings and even enable the IOMMU function./news/camera-performance-acer-iconia-a500.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-performance-acer-iconia-a500.htmlCamera Performance Using the rear facing camera on a tablet has always been an iffy proposition to me, and the Iconia is no different. From an ergonomic standpoint, it’s all wrong. Literally, all wrong. Doesn’t matter which device you’re holding - iPad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Transformer, anything. You just look and feel really weird holding up a 10” piece of glass and metal. I got so many weird looks from passersby as I was taking the photo and video samples./news/cherry-launches-mc-4900-mouse-with-fingerprint-reader-1375.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cherry-launches-mc-4900-mouse-with-fingerprint-reader-1375.htmlNowadays Cherry is known primarily for its mechanical switches for keyboards, but the company also manufactures its own range of peripherals and accessories as well, some of which are unique. This week Cherry introduced its MC 4900 mouse that features an integrated fingerprint reader compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Hello aiming individuals and organizations concerned about security that want to take advantage of easy biometric authentication. The Cherry MC 4900 (JM-A4900) is an ambidextrous mouse for office and other business environments./news/conclusion-fastest-ever-but-at-a-high-price.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-fastest-ever-but-at-a-high-price.htmlConclusion: Fastest Ever, But at a High Price The performance conclusion is really a simple one: the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme FTW is among the fastest consumer desktops you can buy. If that's all you're really concerned about, then godspeed. I'll be trying to get a system with dual Radeon HD 6990s in for review as a comparison point, but until then the GX FTW holds the crown. But there are some real concerns here./news/diamond-multimedia-tests-networking-waters-at-ces.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/diamond-multimedia-tests-networking-waters-at-ces.htmlDiamond Multimedia is well known for its AMD graphics cards and USB capture devices. To date, the AMD graphics cards continue to be their cash cow, flying off the store shelves at retailers such as Fry's. DisplayLink products (eg.) also form a good chunk of their product catalog. We dropped by their CES suite to see the products on display. The most interesting DisplayLink product (pictured above) was the Ultra Dock dual video USB 3./news/display-samsung-galaxy-s-4-review.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-samsung-galaxy-s-4-review.htmlDisplay We wrote about how we suspected that SGS4 would go to a 5-inch 1080p SAMOLED display just after CES. Turns out that was spot on, as the SGS4 includes a 5-inch 1080p Full HD SAMOLED panel, the latest in Samsung's AMOLED roadmap. Samsung's naming stays true, and there's no Plus tacked on at the end, so we get another non-RGB stripe subpixel geometry with SGS4. The last few Samsung AMOLED variants we've seen have had different subpixel grids, and the one on the SGS4 is possibly the most interesting to date./news/display-analysis-the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-analysis-the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and.htmlDisplay Analysis One of the weak spots on Acer’s Nitro lineup has been the display in the past, so we will see how the new model fares. The base offering is a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 IPS display, offering a 60 Hz refresh rate, and on higher-tire models there is a 144 Hz offering available, although with the limited GPU offerings, that is likely overkill for this machine. There is no G-SYNC available either, so although 144 Hz displays are fantastic, the Acer Nitro 5 likely won’t be able to achieve that kind of framerate at its native resolution anyway./news/game-load-performance-intel-x25-m-ssd-intel-delivers.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/game-load-performance-intel-x25-m-ssd-intel-delivers.htmlGame Load PerformanceI looked at three games for load time performance and I picked these titles because they run the whole spectrum of how well an SSD will work in a gaming machine. First up is Spore. Here I'm timing how long it took to load the next stage of evolution in the game, my character just grew legs and is about to walk on land for the first time:/news/gaming-performance-medium-and-high-presets.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-medium-and-high-presets.htmlGaming Performance: Medium and High Presets Now that we know the 96-shader NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M has room to breathe at 1366x768, let's see what happens when we start bumping up game settings. Our medium preset makes all of these games a lot more attractive, but may also bring the gap in memory speed out into the open. Left 4 Dead 2 is the odd man out here; everything else shows a minor to moderate increase in performance over the 420M and general parity with the 335M./news/gigabyte-aorus-ax370-gaming-5-conclusion.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-aorus-ax370-gaming-5-conclusion.htmlThe GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 is primarily designed for gamers that want premium features, but don’t want to break the bank. Priced around $175 at Amazon, it sits at a very competitive pricing point as far as X370 boards go. With a 10-phase power design, SLI and CrossFireX multi-GPU support, this white and black themed RGB laden ATX motherboard offers a nice board for users who want to make the most of the dedicated front panel headphone codec, thanks to the inclusion of a second Realtek ALC1220 codec./news/gigabyte-x299g-designare-10g-motherboard-dual-10g-ethernet.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-x299g-designare-10g-motherboard-dual-10g-ethernet.htmlGIGABYTE has released only a handful of its professional focused and creator-driven Designare branded motherboards, one for X299 and X399 for HEDT, as well as a Z390 version for desktop users. At Computex GIGABYTE unveiled its plans to launch a new variant, the X299G Designare-10G which drops flashy RGB LEDs, and opts for more professional features including dual 10 Gigabit ports. The X499 moniker on the heatsink is a name placeholder, not a confirmed chipset/news/high-end-with-wi-fi-6-2-5g-lan.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-end-with-wi-fi-6-2-5g-lan.htmlDuring Computex 2019, GIGABYTE unveiled a wide variety of X570 motherboards stretching from the entry-level X570 Gaming X to the very high-end flagship, the X570 Aorus Xtreme. The GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Master slots in below the X570 Aorus Xtreme and has a range of high-end features such as 2.5 Gigabit LAN, three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, and Intel's Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax wireless interface. The GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Master could be considered its flagship for general consumers with a price tag of $349 which situates it towards the top of the X570 range at launch./news/htc-announces-desire-510-first-64-bit-android-phone.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-announces-desire-510-first-64-bit-android-phone.htmlWhile normally one might expect high end phones to get the latest and greatest features first, this time we see a bit of a surprising reversal. The Desire 510 is HTC's first 64-bit phone, and the first announced device with Snapdragon 410. For those that aren't familiar with Snapdragon 410, it has four Cortex A53 CPU cores running at 1.2 GHz, along with an Adreno 306 GPU which suggests that it is a mild modification of the current Adreno 305 GPU that we see in the Snapdragon 400./news/i-o-tile-extended-and-scalable-depending-on-segment.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/i-o-tile-extended-and-scalable-depending-on-segment.htmlThe smallest of Meteor Lake's tiles is the I/O tile, which is primarily designed to offer additional connectivity features. This, of course, is down to two things; specific vendor's needs and the grade of processor itself. As Meteor Lake is scalable, the I/O tile is perhaps the crux of enabling specific features such as Thunderbolt 4 on devices. A lower-end Intel Core 3 Meteor Lake chip is likely to drop flashy I/O-specific features such as TB4 to save on cost, as entry-level notebooks aren't going to use it./news/ice-lake-xeon-processor-list-and-competition.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ice-lake-xeon-processor-list-and-competition.htmlSection by Ian Cutress Ice Lake Xeon Processor List  Intel is introducing around 40 new processors across the Xeon Platinum (8300 series), Xeon Gold (6300 and 5300 series) and Xeon Silver (4300 series). Xeon Bronze no longer exists with Ice Lake. Much like the previous generation, the 8/6/5/4 segmentation signifies the series, and the 3 indicates the generation. Beyond that the two digits are somewhat meaningless as before. That being said, there is a significant change./news/khronos-announces-opengl-es-3-1.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/khronos-announces-opengl-es-3-1.htmlCoinciding with a mobile-heavy CES 2014, back in January Khronos put out a short announcement stating that they were nearing the release of a new version of OpenGL ES. Dubbed OpenGL ES Next, we were given a high level overview of the features and a target date of 2014. As it turns out that target date was early 2014, and with GDC 2014 kicking off this week, Khronos is formally announcing the next version of OpenGL ES: OpenGL ES 3./news/legacy-cpu-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/legacy-cpu-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiZnqaTnXyxvs6drJysX2aFd34%3D/news/mge-s-quiet-powersupply-consumer-electronics-show-2005-at.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mge-s-quiet-powersupply-consumer-electronics-show-2005-at.htmlMGE's Quiet Powersupply MGE, the case manufacturer, was showing off one of their new HTPC cases. Unfortunately the case on display had none of the more interesting features that would make it into the final product such as sound insulating foam: MGE also demonstrated a more sleek lineup of cases, a welcome change from the overly busy gaming cases that we've seen far too much of lately: Quite possibly the most interesting product at MGE's booth was their Magnum power supply./news/microsoft-office-for-windows-phone-7.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-office-for-windows-phone-7.htmlFor the most part, Microsoft has always had excellent Office support on its mobile products. It’s been that way since Windows Mobile, and WP7 does a similarly good job keeping basic functionality intact. It isn’t exactly the entire office suite, but enough that you can open, edit and send things along that show up as email attachments. Word gets you almost the same support as it did on Windows Mobile last I remember it./news/minisforum-unveils-mini-itx-motherboard-with-mxm-slot-for.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/minisforum-unveils-mini-itx-motherboard-with-mxm-slot-for.htmlMinisforum continues to diversify its business beyond compact PCs and this week it introduced a rather unusual Mini-ITX motherboard with an MXM slot. Typically used for graphics cards, Minisforum's Eyertec AD650i motherboard instead comes with an MXM adapter to house up to three M.2 SSDs. All together, the Mini-ITX board is able to drive 4 M.2 SSDs, as well as a couple of SATA SSDs for good measure. [making the platform suitable for an HTPC, NAS, or a small desktop that needs three M./news/msi-kt6-delta-fis2r-tech-support-and-rma.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-kt6-delta-fis2r-tech-support-and-rma.htmlMSI KT6 Delta-FIS2R: Tech Support and RMA For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here: The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address (es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we are not getting the staff on an "/news/noise-and-thermal-testing-stock.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/noise-and-thermal-testing-stock.htmlNoise and Thermal Testing, Stock Up until this point I've been casually suggesting that the SilverStone Sugo SG09's performance is, frankly, pretty stellar. As you'll see that's mostly true, as it's pretty hard to go too wrong when you have a 180mm fan blowing almost directly on to your processor. This is something SilverStone has traditionally understood pretty well: the best cooling is direct cooling. It's also why their designs oftentimes deviate a bit from the norm./news/nvidia-updates-geforce-rtx-3060-ethereum-throttle-updated-drivers.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-rtx-3060-ethereum-throttle-updated-drivers.htmlNVIDIA this morning has released a new driver set for their GeForce cards, version 466.27. And though it’s primarily for next week’s release of Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition and a couple of other games, this latest driver drop from NVIDIA also includes an update to their anti-Ethereum throttle, which they first implemented in their GeForce RTX 3060 cards. In short, NVIDIA has tweaked future RTX 3060 cards to require this driver (or newer), which will prevent them from using older drivers that can bypass NVIDIA’s hash limiter./news/playstation-3-demos-sony-introduces-playstation-3-to-launch.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playstation-3-demos-sony-introduces-playstation-3-to-launch.htmlPlaystation 3 Demos There were far too many demos to even begin to list here, the most impressive of all were those that were of new games made specifically for PS3. You'll surely be able to find videos of them online shortly, so we'll only show a few screenshots here. Tekken on PS3 Gran Tourismo on PS3 GT on PS3 once more One of the demos involved the Cell processor simulating an explosion:/news/power-consumption-the-vishera-review-amd-fx-8350-fx.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-the-vishera-review-amd-fx-8350-fx.htmlPower Consumption With Vishera, AMD was in a difficult position: it had to drive performance up without blowing through its 125W TDP. As the Piledriver cores were designed to do just that, Vishera benefitted. Remember that Piledriver was predominantly built to take this new architecture into mobile. I went through the details of what makes Piledriver different from its predecessor (Bulldozer) but at as far as power consumption is concerned, AMD moved to a different type of flip-flop in Piledriver that increased complexity on the design/timing end but decreased active power considerably./news/rise-of-legends-silence-is-golden-silent-gpu-roundup.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rise-of-legends-silence-is-golden-silent-gpu-roundup.htmlRise of Nations: Rise of LegendsRise of Nations: Rise of Legends is a game that we recently added to our list of benchmarks as a good third-person strategy game benchmark. First-person shooter games are always popular but aren't the only games people play on computers, and we need some tests to be able to reflect card performance for all types of games. This is the first of our "fraps" benchmarks, and it basically consists of a twenty minute recording of a battle between several humans players using different races./news/silicon-motion-sm2320-and-ymtc-nand-in-a-potent.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silicon-motion-sm2320-and-ymtc-nand-in-a-potent.htmlLexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired in 2017 by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar SL500 Portable SSD is one of the moderately priced 20 Gbps PSSDs in that set./news/simple-and-affordable-the-supermicro-microcloud.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/simple-and-affordable-the-supermicro-microcloud.htmlSupermicro's MicroCloud SYS-5038ML-H8TRF Supermicro's 3U MicroCloud chassis is not a competitor for "advanced" micro servers such as AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 or HP's Moonshot. Advanced micro servers save power and keep management costs low due to an integrated fabric that routes networking and storage traffic very fast inside the box and only needs to be attached to the core switch via a few cables outside. You could say that the rack switch has been upgraded and integrated./news/speakers-and-sound-cards-buyer-s-guide.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/speakers-and-sound-cards-buyer-s-guide.htmlAudio Recommendations We'll start with the sound cards first. For many people, the integrated sound in any of these systems will be sufficient. There are two exceptions to that, and they are gamers and audiophiles. We'll leave the gamers out of this for now, but those of you who are interested in sound quality or who do audio work for a living will probably want something more than integrated audio./news/system-performance-gigabyte-z590-aorus-master-review-soaring-high.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-gigabyte-z590-aorus-master-review-soaring-high.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, POST time and latency. This can come down to the manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested. For Z590 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 20H2 update./news/the-bad-aopen-ax6bc-pro-ii-millenium-edition-slot.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-bad-aopen-ax6bc-pro-ii-millenium-edition-slot.htmlThe Bad We've said it before and we'll reemphasize it here - AOpen's hardware monitoring capabilities have always been weak and nothing has changed with the AX6BC Pro II. Hardware monitoring is performed by the Genesis Logic GL518SM - a chip that AOpen uses on most of their boards, but is rarely seen from other manufacturers. Four voltage are reported by the utility - +3.3V, +5V, +12V, and Vcore. No temperature or voltage information is provided in the BIOS, that information is only available via software./news/the-pcie-ssd-transition-begins-with-nvme.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-pcie-ssd-transition-begins-with-nvme.htmlIn 2008 Intel introduced its first SSD, the X25-M, and with it Intel ushered in a new era of primary storage based on non-volatile memory. Intel may have been there at the beginning, but it missed out on most of the evolution that followed. It wasn't until late 2012, four years later, that Intel showed up with another major controller innovation. The Intel SSD DC S3700 added a focus on IO consistency, which had a remarkable impact on both enterprise and consumer workloads./news/w-2195-w-2155-w-2123-w-2104-and.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/w-2195-w-2155-w-2123-w-2104-and.htmlAnyone looking at a high-end Intel system has three choices: Core i9, Xeon W, or the larger socket Xeon Scalable. Those first two both use the LGA2066 socket, and have identical core/frequency configurations, but are in effect different platforms with locked motherboards for each. The benefits of the Xeon W and Xeon Scalable lie in the ability for ECC memory, vPro management features, and with some processors there are different cache variants./news/win7-driver-issues-microsoft-amd-recommend-uninstalling-kb3004394.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/win7-driver-issues-microsoft-amd-recommend-uninstalling-kb3004394.htmlThough we don’t normally report on Windows updates, we’ll make an exception on this one. AMD sends word this evening that they are advising users to remove update KB3004394, which was released as part of this week’s Patch Tuesday, due to driver installation issues this update is inflicting. The update, designed to update Windows’ root certificate store, has apparently been causing havoc on some Windows 7 configurations. In AMD’s case what they are finding is that the update prevents the installation of new graphics drivers on affected systems, with both AMD and NVIDIA drivers refusing to install./news/16-cores-of-zen-4-plus-pcie-5-and.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/16-cores-of-zen-4-plus-pcie-5-and.htmlDuring the AMD Keynote at Computex 2022, its CEO, Dr. Lisa Su officially unveiled their next generation of Ryzen processors and the successor to the highly successful Ryzen 5000 series. The new family, the Ryzen 7000 series, will feature up to 16 Zen 4 cores using TSMC's optimized 5 nm manufacturing process.  AMD Ryzen 7000 also officially marks the end of its long-serving AM4 socket, with the new AM5 LGA1718 socket replacing it with a freshly announced trio of new performance-driven chipsets, including X670E, X670, and B650./news/2x-density-scaling-20-improved-performance.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2x-density-scaling-20-improved-performance.htmlTaking place this week is the IEEE’s annual VLSI Symposium, one of the industry’s major events for disclosing and discussing new chip manufacturing techniques. One of the most anticipated presentations scheduled this year is from Intel, who is at the show to outline the physical and performance characteristics of their upcoming Intel 4 process, which will be used for products set to be released in 2023. The development of the Intel 4 process represents a critical milestone for Intel, as it’s the first Intel process to incorporate EUV, and it’s the first process to move past their troubled 10nm node – making it Intel’s first chance to get back on track to re-attaining fab supremacy./news/akitio-thunder3-duo-pro-das-review.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/akitio-thunder3-duo-pro-das-review.htmlA lot of attention has been paid to high-speed I/O interfaces for computing systems over the last five years. Flash-based storage media capable of multi-Gbps throughput have become very affordable. Display resolutions have also seen a rapid rate of increase. The necessity to support multiple such devices in both consumer and professional computing solutions have exposed the limitations of the traditional external I/O interfaces. While USB 3.x has become successful as an interface for high-speed peripherals, it does not handle display output./news/alyx-with-vive-cosmos-valve-index.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/alyx-with-vive-cosmos-valve-index.htmlBeing, perhaps, the most anticipated virtual reality game to date, Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx is expected to greatly increase interests towards VR gaming and VR hardware. In a bid to attract attention to their latest hardware, HTC and Valve are both bundling the game with some versions of their headsets. For a limited time (while supplies last, to be more specific), HTC’s Vive Cosmos Elite bundle for $899/€999 will come with a free digital copy of Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx./news/asrock-z590-extreme-extreme-wifi-6e.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z590-extreme-extreme-wifi-6e.htmlThe ASRock Z590 Extreme WiFi 6E benefits from an Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E CNVi and looks a more clean-cut offering design-wise than the Phantom Gaming series. It uses an ATX PCB with an X-shaped cutout to provide better access to some of the SATA ports for improved cable management. It follows a black design throughout, with blue accents on the rear panel cover and chipset heatsinks, with some lighting in the rear panel./news/available-week-of-march-5th-for-699.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/available-week-of-march-5th-for-699.htmlIn what has now become a bona fide tradition for NVIDIA, at their GDC event this evening the company announced their next flagship video card, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Something of a poorly kept secret – NVIDIA’s website accidentally spilled the beans last week – the GTX 1080 Ti is NVIDIA’s big Pascal refresh for the year, finally rolling out their most powerful consumer GPU, GP102, into a GeForce video card./news/bfg-physx-and-the-ageia-driver.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bfg-physx-and-the-ageia-driver.htmlLet us begin with the BFG PhysX card itself. The specs are the exact same as the ASUS card we previewed. Specifically, we have:130nm PhysX PPU with 125 million transistors 128MB GDDR3 @ 733MHz Data Rate 32-bit PCI interface 4-pin Molex power connector The BFG card has a bonus: a blue LED behind the fan. Our BFG card came in a retail box, pictured here:Inside the box, we find CDs, power cables, and the card itself:As we can see here, BFG opted to go with Samsung's K4J55323QF-GC20 GDDR3 chips./news/blackberry-6-home-screen-options-setup.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/blackberry-6-home-screen-options-setup.htmlRest of Platform The other big change on BlackBerry 6 is the home screen, which is definitely an evolution of BlackBerry OS 5. If you’re coming from there, this is going to feel like largely familiar territory. By default there’s one row of applications in the navigation bar.  Left: Home - Portrait, Right: Home - Landscape What’s different is that you can now drag the panel left and right, from all to favorites, media, downloads, and frequent./news/ces-2007-evolutionary-not-revolutionary-products.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ces-2007-evolutionary-not-revolutionary-products.htmlWe have recently returned from the Consumer Electronics Show 2007 with our heads still spinning and legs extremely sore after viewing literally thousands of products from hundreds of suppliers. The International Consumer Electronics Show is the world's largest annual consumer technology tradeshow but PCs and their related components actually comprise a very small portion of the products on display. Several of the larger PC centric companies such as Intel, AMD, HP, Dell, and Microsoft had very large displays in the main exhibition areas but the majority of the floor space belonged to consumer technology companies like Samsung, Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, LG, Sharp, and the multitude of companies that offer these types of products./news/chinese-tech-giant-leeco-enters-us-market-with-le.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/chinese-tech-giant-leeco-enters-us-market-with-le.htmlLeEco announced its official entry into the U.S. market at its “Ignite the Eco World” event in San Francisco, an important step in the company's globalization plan. Its initial products include two large-screen smartphones, a range of 4K TVs, and new content partnerships. LeEco may be the biggest tech company you’ve never heard of. The Chinese company began life as LeTV in 2004 as a streaming content provider and is often referred to as the “Netflix of China./news/colorful-announces-three-micro-atx-b660-motherboards.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/colorful-announces-three-micro-atx-b660-motherboards.htmlDuring CES 2022, Colorful has unveiled three new micro-ATX motherboards based on Intel's latest B660 chipset. Featuring support for Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake processors, the Colorful CVN B660M Gaming Pro V20 and B660M Gaming Frozen offer PCIe 5.0 support, 2.5 GbE, Wi-Fi 6, and dual M.2 slots. The other model is the Colorful Battle-Ax B660M HD Deluxe V20 which offers a more budget-focused feature set, with PCIe 4.0 and Gigabit Ethernet./news/comparisons-and-what-s-in-the-box.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/comparisons-and-what-s-in-the-box.htmlAs I mentioned before, the X's obvious close comparison is the HTC EVO 4G. As noted, the X is a few millimeters taller than even the EVO. Not by much, but still notable. The next interesting comparison is the original Motorola Droid, at least until the Droid 2 comes later this summer. My friend gracioiusly left me his original Droid for the purposes of this review and physical comparison - ironically he's since replaced it with an HTC Incredible, and after playing with my X, will replace it as soon as he can get an X./news/compatibility-final-words-google-chrome-performance-and-first-impressions.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compatibility-final-words-google-chrome-performance-and-first-impressions.htmlCompatibilityGoogle is in a unique position to test the compatibility of something like a browser, given that the company has servers that spend their days indexing the entirety of the internet. You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to pull from that index and produce a reasonable set of test cases for Chrome. Plugins like Flash just work, which is nice, but not all websites play nicely with Chrome. Take a look at NVIDIA’s Force Within download page:/news/conclusion-the-only-game-in-town.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-the-only-game-in-town.htmlConclusion: The Only Game in Town I keep feeling like Fractal Design is what would happen if Corsair were a European company. They share a lot of the same strengths, but they also share a lot of the same weaknesses, and that's fairly evident with the Define Mini. One thing Corsair consistently does better, though, is convenience. Their cases are typically much easier to build in and make a lot of allowances for the end user./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-science-the-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-science-the-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d.htmlCPU Benchmark Performance: Science Our Science section covers all the tests that typically resemble more scientific-based workloads and instruction sets. For our 2023 CPU suite, we've also added SciMark 2.0 which measures numerical kernels and various computational routines found in numeric coding. We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 7 78000X3D and the other Ryzen 7000 series we've tested. This also includes Intel's 13th and 12th Gen processors. We tested the aforementioned platforms with the following settings:/news/e3-2000-report.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/e3-2000-report.htmlAnother year, another E3. For those of you who are unfamiliar with E3, it stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo. Every year, the computer entertainment industry gathers for a ho-down to show their wares. For AnandTech, the interest lies in the hardware side of the industry. But with sounds of "Zug Zug" emitting from the Blizzard booth, who can resist. Warcraft 3 and Diablo II are going to be worth the wait, that's for sure./news/ekwb-releases-new-varder-evo-fan-with-start-stop.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ekwb-releases-new-varder-evo-fan-with-start-stop.htmlEKWB recently released a new lineup based on its EK-Vardar fans. The Vardar line was established in 2014 and created to be an industrial grade high-static pressure computer cooling fan. EK says the line was designed and built primarily for highest-performance computer liquid cooling systems, a fitting choice as the fan name "Vardar" is a term used for a cold northwesterly wind blowing into the valleys of Macedonia in the Balkans. The Vardar line has now grown into the new EK-Vardar EVO series of fans offering users the ER EVO which an extended range of PWM operation featuring a special start-stop function./news/getting-nerdy-usb-power-delivery-type-c-cables-third.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/getting-nerdy-usb-power-delivery-type-c-cables-third.htmlGetting Nerdy: USB Power Delivery 2.0 Now to understand why this is, we need to talk a bit about the USB Power Delivery Specification 2.0, which is closely tied to USB-C. PD 2.0 establishes a series of voltages, depending on how many Watts a sink device needs. Furthermore it also defines the Amperage limits at each of these voltages (and in special cases when you can exceed them). In short, PD 2./news/globalfoundries-plans-to-expand-dresden-and-ny-fabs-in.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/globalfoundries-plans-to-expand-dresden-and-ny-fabs-in.htmlOnly a year has passed since AMD officially spun off its manufacturing division with the help of ATIC. The resulting GlobalFoundries have been busy getting its ducks in a row in preparation for inevitable battle with TSMC. It started with construction of Fab 8 (formerly GF Fab 2) in Saratoga County, NY due for revenue production in 2012. Today GF is announcing plans to expand Fab 8 before its completion and an expansion to Fab 1 (formerly AMD Fab 30/36) in Dresden./news/google-i-o-2018-opening-keynote-live-blog-10am.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/google-i-o-2018-opening-keynote-live-blog-10am.html11:43AM EDT - Hello everybody and welcome to the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View where we'll be live covering Google's IO 2018 opening keynote. 11:46AM EDT - The event will be starting at 10am PT - a little bit over an hour from now so stay tuned. 12:51PM EDT - The keynote should be kicking off in 10 minutes. 01:00PM EDT - The event is starting. 01:01PM EDT - Intro video with cubes - I wonder what they represent./news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-4x4-box-7840u.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-4x4-box-7840u.htmlGPU Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks AMD's Phoenix SoCs include an integrated GPU with a microarchitectural update over the one in the Rembrandt-R SoCs. The new RDNA3 microarchitecture is present in the Ryzen 7 7840U in the form of the Radeon 780M. With 12 CUs and 768 shader units clocked at 2.7 GHz, AMD claims that the GPU should be capable of playing virtually any modern game at Full HD resolutions. The slide below references the HS series, but the iGPU clock rates are the same for the U-series as well as the HS-series as per AMD's specifications./news/hdplex-unveils-2nd-generation-h5-passive-pc-chassis.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hdplex-unveils-2nd-generation-h5-passive-pc-chassis.htmlThe advent of CPUs with low TDPs (but having enough power to handle HTPC duties) has resulted in passive HTPCs becoming more and more popular. There are a number of vendors making a play in this niche such as Streacom, Wesena, Perfect Home Theater and HDPLEX. We even looked into the Streacom FC10 in detail with a passively cooled Ivy Bridge HTPC build. I have also been using the HDPLEX H5./news/intel-axes-10nm-cpu-based-nuc.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-axes-10nm-cpu-based-nuc.htmlIntel has notified its partners about plans to discontinue its only 10nm small form factor NUC in the market. The NUC, which went under the code name of Crimson Canyon, is/was Intel's only 10nm device in this market - it used Cannon Lake processors made on its 10 nm technology, and paired with AMD’s Radeon 540 graphics.  The fate of Intel’s Cannon Lake processors has been, to put it mildly, 'dead on arrival'./news/kingston-launches-datatraveler-ultimate-gt-usb-flash-drive-with.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kingston-launches-datatraveler-ultimate-gt-usb-flash-drive-with.htmlKingston this week introduced its new DataTraveler Ultimate GT USB flash drive with a re-freshed design and up to 2 TB capacity. The new devices are designed for those who need to store large collections of multimedia files. The new Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT family of flash drives consists of 1 TB and 2 TB models with a USB 3.0 Type-A connector. The drives come in zinc-alloy metal enclosures to protect from physical damage and are relatively compact for their capacities (at least, more compact than external HDDs or SSDs)./news/maximum-flexibility-reliability-no-rgb.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/maximum-flexibility-reliability-no-rgb.htmlFounded in 1999, EKWB was among the pioneers of the PC liquid cooling market. But despite the market's roots going even farther back – as a spin-off of supercomputer cooling – until now the company has been content to focus on liquid cooling solutions for consumers and enthusiasts, never specifically addressing servers and workstations. All of that has changed, however, and last week the company finally unveiled its Professional lineup of liquid cooling components, which are aimed at a market looking for the highest reliability and utility, but not exactly for fancy looks./news/modern-warfare-3-breaks-one-day-sales-record-hauls.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/modern-warfare-3-breaks-one-day-sales-record-hauls.htmlPublisher giant Activision Blizzard has released first day sales figures for the latest in the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. They sold 6.5 million units for a gross of over $400m in 24 hours since release. The record was preivously held by another game in the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which grossed $310 million in the 24 hours since release./news/more-streaming-relive-in-adrenalin-2019.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-streaming-relive-in-adrenalin-2019.htmlLike the previous Adrenalin and Crimson ReLive overhauls, Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 maintains the focus on streaming and capturing on ReLive, adding several useful improvements. For one, ReLive now features an in-game instant replay functionality, where a 5-to-30 second clip is  shown picture-in-picture upon pressing the requisite hotkey. While Instant Replay already exists, the in-game replay provides an easy method for streamers to showcase it for live viewers, or alternatively act as an impromptu deathcam without disrupting the flow of gameplay./news/msi-announces-ge76-raider-17-inch-gaming-laptops-dragon.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-announces-ge76-raider-17-inch-gaming-laptops-dragon.htmlNot to be left out of the crowd, MSI was among several laptop vendors to unveil its next generation of laptops at the show. Leading the charge for MSI is the company's 17-inch gaming laptop, the GE76 Raider. Replacing 2020's GE75 Raider, the GE76 has been refreshed with NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 30 series graphics adapters, which are paired with Intel's Comet Lake (10th Gen) Core processors. MSI also announced the GE76 Raider Dragon Edition Tiamat, a version of the laptop with a unique Babylonian-inspired chassis./news/nvidia-moves-fermi-gpus-to-legacy-status-ends-mainstream.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-moves-fermi-gpus-to-legacy-status-ends-mainstream.htmlThis week, NVIDIA has announced that they are ending mainstream graphics driver support for Fermi-based GeForce GPUs. Effective as of this month (i.e. immediately), all Fermi products are being moved to legacy support status, meaning they will no longer receive Game Ready driver enhancements, performance optimizations, and bugfixes. Instead, they will only receive critical bugfixes through the end of the legacy support phase in January 2019. While the announcement mentions ‘Fermi series GeForce GPUs,’ the actual support plan specifies that mainstream driver support is limited to Kepler, Maxwell, and Pascal GPUs./news/patriot-pxd-1tb-m-2-pcie-type-c-external.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/patriot-pxd-1tb-m-2-pcie-type-c-external.htmlHigh-performance bus-powered direct-attached storage units have become very popular, thanks to the advent of high-speed interfaces and technologies such as USB 3.2 Gen 2, NVMe, and 3D NAND flash. Flash manufacturers such as Western Digital / SanDisk, Crucial (Micron), and Samsung produce and market external solid-state drives (SSDs) under their own brand. In addition, manufacturers such as Patriot Memory also buy flash in the open market and bring their own value additions to the external SSD market./news/performance-metrics-i-the-intel-nuc8i7hvk-hades-canyon-review.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-metrics-i-the-intel-nuc8i7hvk-hades-canyon-review.htmlPerformance Metrics - I The Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) was evaluated using our standard test suite for small form-factor gaming PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2014 SE, as well as some of the Futuremark benchmarks./news/pro-vega-for-under-a-grand.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pro-vega-for-under-a-grand.htmlKicking off this week is the annual SIGGRAPH graphics conference. Getting in ahead of the crowd – and their own CPU launch – AMD is announcing their latest workstation graphics card this Sunday morning. Joining the Radeon Pro WX family is the Radeon Pro WX 8200, AMD’s second professional card based on the Vega GPU, and now the second-tier product in their professional graphics stack. The junior member of the team follows the WX 9100’s introduction at this show a year ago, and is designed to offer the same Vega-powered feature set with a bit less performance and a much lower price tag./news/qualcomm-to-start-xr2-reference-design-programme-for-ar.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-to-start-xr2-reference-design-programme-for-ar.htmlToday Qualcomm is announcing that it will be reintroducing its Reference Design Programme for its upcoming XR2 chip for AR/VR/XR headsets. The company stated that after the success of its XR1 equivalent programme, they would be initiating with potential customers earlier in the cycle this time around in a similar way to how they approach smartphone vendors with its new handset SoCs. The plan is to offer a unit that provides dual 2K LCD panels, 5G and 60 GHz support, no cables, 7 cameras, and the full software stack./news/qualcomm-s-dynamic-spectrum-sharing-demo-with-5g-and.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-s-dynamic-spectrum-sharing-demo-with-5g-and.htmlOne of the key elements of any new wireless coverage standard is how to carve up the frequency spectrum. We’ve covered in previous articles that 5G will operate in different frequency ranges in different countries, due to different regulations, but one of the other key areas to discuss is where the intended frequency ranges for 5G overlap with spectrum already allocated for the 4G market. When this sort of thing has occurred with new wireless technologies, each part of the spectrum was ringfenced for obvious reasons./news/quality-testing-the-software.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quality-testing-the-software.htmlQuality Testing In order to test the quality and consistency of a keyboard, we are using a texture analyser that is programmed to measure and display the actuation force of the standard keyboard keys. By measuring the actuation force of every key, the quality and consistency of the keyboard can be quantified. It can also reveal design issues, such as the larger keys being far softer to press than the main keys of the keyboard./news/sony-releases-quad-layer-128-gb-bd-r-xl.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-releases-quad-layer-128-gb-bd-r-xl.htmlSony is about to start selling the industry’s first 128 GB write-once BD-R XL optical media. The discs will also be the first quad-layer BDXL media formally aimed at consumers, but bringing benefits to professionals that use BDXL today. Although the general BDXL specifications were announced back in 2010 for multi-layered write-once discs with 25 GB and 33.4 GB layers, only triple-layer BDXL discs with a 100 GB capacity (generally aimed at broadcasting, medical, and document imaging industries) have been made available so far./news/sugon-workstation-with-8-core-hugon-dhyana-processor.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sugon-workstation-with-8-core-hugon-dhyana-processor.htmlSugon, an OEM of servers and workstations in China, has started selling of machines equipped with the Hugon Dhyana processors. These are processors based on AMD’s 1st Generation Zen microarchitecture. The CPUs feature up to eight cores and are compatible with the x86 instruction set architecture, thus can run all popular applications available today. The workstations can be equipped with the latest Quadro RTX or Quadro GV100 graphics cards from NVIDIA. Back in 2016, AMD and Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co./news/the-2022-flagship-with-a-snapdragon-888-option.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-2022-flagship-with-a-snapdragon-888-option.htmlFor those of us outside the US, Huawei has maintained its presence in a number of markets in which it has grown its sales over the last decade. Even without access to Google Services or TSMC, the company has been producing hardware and smartphones as it pivots to a new strategy. To lead off in 2022, that strategy starts with the Huawei P50 Pro, the next generation of flagship photography camera./news/the-test-amd-sempron-a-fresh-take-on-budget.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-amd-sempron-a-fresh-take-on-budget.htmlThe Test In looking at our performance comparison, we want to pay attention to 3 different things: how the new Sempron parts do in comparison to Intel's budget line, how the K7 Sempron does against Athlon XP processors, and how the K8 Sempron does against other Athlon 64 processors in 32-bit mode.We only had time to benchmark a few new numbers, so the Athlon 64 that we chose was the 2800+ with the same clock speed and twice the L2 cache./news/the-test-windows-vista-ultimate-64-bit.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-windows-vista-ultimate-64-bit.htmlWhile the major benchmark suites still lack support for the OS, we are trying our hands at testing CPUs under Windows Vista with this review. By now we know not to expect a significant performance difference between Windows Vista and XP, but given Vista's compelling feature set we see it becoming the dominant PC OS for new system builds in the enthusiast community. With a substantial number of our CPU benchmarks available in 64-bit versions, using the 64-bit version of Vista wasn't a difficult choice./news/total-war-shogun-2-amd-radeon-hd-7970-review.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/total-war-shogun-2-amd-radeon-hd-7970-review.htmlTotal War: Shogun 2 One of our goals with this iteration of our benchmark suite was to throw in some additional non-FPS games, so we’re broadening our horizons a bit by adding in Total War: Shogun 2. Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once./news/visual-inspection-the-asus-rog-zenith-ii-extreme-trx40.htmlFri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-asus-rog-zenith-ii-extreme-trx40.htmlVisual Inspection The ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme is an E-ATX motherboard that retails for $850 and sits at the top of its current TRX40 product stack. It has a stacked PCB which is mostly hidden by an aluminium PCB cover which doubles up as a heatsink for two of the five available PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. The rear panel cover is also crafted from aluminium and includes a LiveDash 1./news/4k-htpc-credentials-intel-nuc6cayh-arches-canyon-apollo-lake.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/4k-htpc-credentials-intel-nuc6cayh-arches-canyon-apollo-lake.html4K HTPC Credentials The Intel NUC6CAYH is actively cooled, but the fan curves are quite good. We were barely able to hear the fans at a distance of 6 ft. While not being as good as fanless unit with respect to acoustics, the NUC6CAYH fits the bill for a secondary / bedroom HTPC. Refresh Rate Accuracy Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy./news/a-capable-contender-for-the-atx-3-0-club.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-capable-contender-for-the-atx-3-0-club.htmlMontech is a rather new player in the PC Power & Cooling market. The Taiwanese company first appeared in 2016 and quickly made its presence international. Montech is currently focused on designing and producing PC cases, power supply units (PSUs), and CPU coolers. As the core philosophy of the company was to be competitive in terms of pricing, the vast majority of its products were targeting the high-volume mainstream market./news/amd-introduces-seamicro-sm15000-with-piledriver-and-ivy-bridge.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-introduces-seamicro-sm15000-with-piledriver-and-ivy-bridge.htmlIn its first major announcement since the acquisition by AMD, SeaMicro unveiled its SM15000 server. This is an updated version of the standard 10U SeaMicro chassis with 64 compute card slots. The new SM15K can accept both Intel Ivy Bridge and AMD Piledriver based processor cards. Despite being AMD owned, SeaMicro is committed for generations to come to supplying both Intel and AMD based servers. Seamicro still supports Intel based clusters to make sure that they do not alienate some of their customers./news/amd-s-turbo-something-different-reaching-for-turbo-aligning.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-s-turbo-something-different-reaching-for-turbo-aligning.htmlAMD’s Turbo With AMD introducing Turbo after Intel, as has often been the case in their history, they've had to live in Intel's world. And this has repercussions for the company. By the time AMD introduced their first Turbo-enabled processors, everyone in the desktop space ‘knew’ what Turbo meant, because we had gotten used to how Intel did things. For everyone, saying ‘Turbo’ meant only one thing: Intel’s definition of Turbo, which we subconsciously took as the default, and that’s all that mattered./news/asus-thunderbolt-ex-upgrade-card-for-7-series-motherboards.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-thunderbolt-ex-upgrade-card-for-7-series-motherboards.htmlOnly two members of ASUS' Z77 stack feature integrated Thunderbolt support: the P8Z77-V Premium and the P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt. As the interface is still fairly new and the controllers still relatively expensive, ASUS didn't want to burden the price of all of its 7-series motherboards by adding Thunderbolt across the lineup. Recognizing the value in supporting the interface however, ASUS offers a Thunderbolt upgrade path for many of its other 7-series boards./news/closing-thoughts-nvidia-s-geforce-gts-450-pushing-fermi.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closing-thoughts-nvidia-s-geforce-gts-450-pushing-fermi.htmlClosing Thoughts After the launch of the GTX 460 series, we had been hoping to see NVIDIA continue to drive forward with the same level of hyper-competitiveness that we saw with the 460. In some ways that has happened today, and in some ways that hasn’t. The GTX 460 was a card that made the comparable AMD card obsolete and brought significantly improved performance to the $200 market. NVIDIA had a card built to hit one of AMD’s weak spots, and it struck beautifully./news/compaq-tablet-pcs-stealing-comdex-2002.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compaq-tablet-pcs-stealing-comdex-2002.htmlCompaq Compaq's tablet-PC is the TC1000 and the system takes a different approach to the tablet-PC design. Whereas the Toshiba unit maintains a notebook style design, the TC1000 is a handheld tablet-PC with a keyboard docking bay. Basically, the unit has a removable keyboard that snaps on top of the tablet's screen to protect it. Unsnap the screen, put it on a table, dock the tablet into the keyboard, and you have tablet-PC that resembles a notebook./news/conclusion-and-final-thoughts-motorola-droid-bionic-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-and-final-thoughts-motorola-droid-bionic-review.htmlConclusion & Final Thoughts The Bionic is the first smartphone we’ve seen to date that combines 4G LTE connectivity with a dual core SoC, ending a surprisingly long period where those two were mutually exclusive. The result is what’s currently the best cross section of features on paper, and a shockingly speedy experience. The Bionic’s stock battery life isn’t far behind the other LTE smartphones, but it’s also not any better than them./news/e3-2005-day-1-the-xbox-360-update.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/e3-2005-day-1-the-xbox-360-update.htmlOne of the big items of this year's E3 is, of course, Microsoft's Xbox 360 - and thus it was the focus of our first few hours on the show floor. Given that the Xbox 360 is supposed to launch and be available by the end of this year, we expected to see a pretty large showing of it at this year's E3. Don't be mistaken, the vast majority of this year's show focused on currently available consoles - the original Xbox, Playstation 2, Gamecube and a plethora of mobile gaming platforms, but there were hints of the new console spread out throughout the show./news/final-words-apple-s-mighty-mouse-the-move-to.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-apple-s-mighty-mouse-the-move-to.htmlFinal Words Apple created a truly interesting product with the Mighty Mouse; essentially, they've created a one button mouse that is a bit more flexible than their prior one-button offerings, but definitely not a mouse that is catered to the needs of those who depend on multi-button mice. The scroll ball is nice, although I'd like to see some control over the number of lines per scroll click. The side buttons are horrible and it would be nice to make them a little easier/more convenient to use, but then again, that may conflict with Apple's desire to make the Mighty Mouse still look and work like a single-button mouse./news/final-words-dell-xps-13-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-dell-xps-13-review.htmlFinal Words The XPS 13 is a bold move from Dell. High quality build materials, a good keyboard, a good trackpad, and the latest generation Intel Ultrabook processor all inside a chassis with a display that is two sizes too big stuffed into it. Combine that with a 1920x1080 IPS display on the base model, as well as solid state storage as the only option, and you would expect the starting price to be north of $1000./news/final-words-ocz-agility-3-240gb-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-ocz-agility-3-240gb-review.htmlFinal Words OCZ's Agility 3 is a mixed bag of performance. For typical desktop workloads and light usage, the Agility 3 looks a lot like a Vertex 3. It's only when you start mixing in data that's not easily compressed/deduped that the Agility misbehaves. As a general boot/application drive I'm pretty confident in the Agility 3's abilities, however those of you who work with (more than just play back) a lot of photos, video, music and file archives will want to spend the extra on the Vertex 3./news/final-words-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-review.htmlFinal Words I have to say I was very skeptical when I first heard that the 840 will use TLC NAND. Samsung kept the TLC/MLC divide between the 840 and 840 Pro quiet until it took the stage at the SSD Summit for good reason. Prior to the 840's launch TLC NAND was mostly used in low cost devices (USB sticks, cheap tablets, etc...)—no one would dare throw a TLC drive into a high performance PC./news/final-words-the-acer-nitro-5-gaming-laptop-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-acer-nitro-5-gaming-laptop-review.htmlFinal Words AMD’s Ryzen launch has transformed the company, and really brought proper competition to the CPU space that we’ve not seen in the x86 world for a long time. But Ryzen was first and foremost a desktop competitor, and even though AMD did eventually release a laptop version, it’s not had the same success as its desktop counterpart. The biggest issue is the idle power draw, which is quite high, rendering it less than ideal in an Ultrabook./news/gainward-geforce4-ultra-750xp-nvidia-geforce4-ti-4400-4600.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gainward-geforce4-ultra-750xp-nvidia-geforce4-ti-4400-4600.htmlGainward GeForce4 Ultra/750XP Click the Images to Enlarge GPU NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 (300/650 core/memory clock) Memory 128MB Samsung 2.8ns DDR SDRAM Cooling (Core) Modified Reference HSF unit Cooling (Memory) 4 - Heatsink Strips External Video Encoder Chip External TMDS Transmitter(s) Software/Gaming Bundle Serious Sam, WinCoder, WinProducer, WinDVD/news/gpu-performance-more-optimisations.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-more-optimisations.htmlOn the GPU side of things, it’s again a very interesting to match up the Snapdragon 888 versus the Dimensity 1200. The Snapdragon should dominate in peak performance, however sustained is another question. Unfortunately, the 11T Pro here is again a Snapdragon Xiaomi device like many that we’ve seen in the past – the issue here being is that the phone just outright doesn’t throttle at all. In anonymous applications, the phone will go full power no matter the temperature until at some point it’ll give out an overheating warning./news/infiray-p2-pro-and-topdon-tc001-thermal-cameras-capsule.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/infiray-p2-pro-and-topdon-tc001-thermal-cameras-capsule.htmlThe consumer thermal camera market was opened up in the late 2010s by the launch of Seek Thermal's first offering and FLIR's FLIR ONE / FLIR ONE Pro. These had comparatively high resolutions of 206x156 and 160x120, which allowed the companies to further cut down the cost of follow-up products with lower-resolution sensors. US regulations prevent these cameras from offering videos with frame rates higher than 9 Hz, but that is often plenty enough for a wide variety of consumer use-cases such as home inspection (both electrical and plumbing), rodent control etc./news/installing-tortoise-cvs-how-to-set-up-a-source.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/installing-tortoise-cvs-how-to-set-up-a-source.htmlTortoise CVS CVSNT is the server side component of our new source control installation. Now, we need a client interface to allow us to manage our files. Tortoise CVS is an open source version control client that allows you to work with your files in CVS/CVSNT. Tortoise CVS integrates into Windows Explorer and makes managing your files incredibly easy. Tortoise CVS works in Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003 and XP./news/market-positioning-test-bed-kit-order.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/market-positioning-test-bed-kit-order.htmlMarket Positioning As mentioned in the previous page, this memory kit has some immediate challengers in and around the price range for the capacity: $145: Corsair Vengence 4x4GB DDR3-1600 7-8-8 (8.75ns / 13.125ns) $150: Kingston HyperX 4x4GB DDR3-2400 11-13-13 (9.17ns / 12.08ns) $150: Corsair Vengeance 4x4GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 (8.33ns / 11.25 ns) $150: Mushkin Redline 4x4GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 (8.33ns / 11.25 ns) $150: G.Skill Trident 4x4GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 (8.33ns / 11./news/meet-radeon-overlay-amd-releases-radeon-software-adrenalin-edition.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-radeon-overlay-amd-releases-radeon-software-adrenalin-edition.htmlMeet Radeon Overlay As one of the main features of Adrenalin, Radeon Overlay is a little difficult to sum up neatly. It’s essentially an in-game/desktop overlay of certain Radeon Settings options and tools, combined with OSD and performance logging/monitoring functionality. While an overlay, AMD noted that the overhead was very small and that Radeon Overlay would not interfere with Steam in-game overlay and others. Radeon Overlay hooks into particular hardware in GPUs, and while AMD mentioned that it supports a wide range of products, a full compatibility list was not disclosed./news/miscellaneous-factors-and-final-words.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/miscellaneous-factors-and-final-words.htmlMiscellaneous Factors and Final Words The QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP is a 12-bay NAS, and there are many applicable disk configurations (JBOD / RAID-0 / RAID-1 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-10). Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in RAID-5 mode. The disks used for benchmarking (OCZ Vector 120 GB) were also used in this section./news/msi-b350m-gaming-pro-conclusion.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-b350m-gaming-pro-conclusion.htmlConclusions The intended audience for the  MSI B350M Gaming Pro is a world of gamers on a budget, who are looking for a no frills mATX offering as a smaller alternative to a full-sized system. While there are enough core features and elements to put this board into the gamer friendly category, it has to be remembered that this is an entry level B350 chipset offering. While comparisons will be made in the performance figures against much more expensive boards, premium controllers simply cost more./news/msi-z270-sli-plus-board-features-visual-inspection.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-z270-sli-plus-board-features-visual-inspection.htmlMSI Z270 SLI Plus Board Features As we mention in our introductory section, MSI’s designers have been trying to implement on the Z270 SLI Plus as many practical features as possible with a motherboard that needs to retail for under $140. Compromises had to be made and thus there is no Thunderbolt support and no native U.2 ports - adding these would have pushed the cost higher and into a more premium category./news/nvidia-hopper-gpu-architecture-and-h100-accelerator-announced-working.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-hopper-gpu-architecture-and-h100-accelerator-announced-working.htmlDepending on your point of view, the last two years have either gone by very slowly, or very quickly. While the COVID pandemic never seemed to end – and technically still hasn’t – the last two years have whizzed by for the tech industry, and especially for NVIIDA. The company launched its Ampere GPU architecture just two years ago at GTC 2020, and after selling more of their chips than ever before, now in 2022 it’s already time to introduce the next architecture./news/pc-companion-and-update-service.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pc-companion-and-update-service.htmlAlready familiar with Sony Ericsson's upgrade software from my previously mentioned X10 mini experiences, my next strategy was to hit up the company's support website. There, I found four different software packages available for download, three of them Windows-based. The PC Companion utility was the one that I'd already used before: it includes (among other things) firmware upgrade capabilities, as does the seeming functionally redundant Update Service program. Also offered were a multimedia sync program called Media Go, which again seemed redundant with that same feature in PC Companion, and a Mac OS X-tailored functional twin of Media Go called Media Sync./news/playing-on-streams-streaming-pc-games-to-mobile-and.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playing-on-streams-streaming-pc-games-to-mobile-and.htmlFor all the emphasis on streaming, the marquee feature of Adrenalin 2019 is not about streaming gameplay for an audience but streaming games rendered on the PC to play remotely on another device. The GCN-accelerated ReLive technology underpins this, but by-and-large this is really a different use case from streamers. The ReLive-powered wireless game streaming service comes in two flavors, one for streaming games/desktop to a mobile device, and another for streaming SteamVR titles to standalone VR headsets./news/power-consumption-and-thermal-performance.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-and-thermal-performance.htmlThe power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel Core m3-6Y30 Compute Stick with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.15.0 and Prime95 v28.7 together. Compared to the Bay Trail and Cherry Trail Compute Sticks, the Core M one has higher idle and load power consumption numbers./news/quad-cameras-48mp-ois.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quad-cameras-48mp-ois.htmlThe main features of the Honor 20 Pro are its cameras, and in the short time we had the phone it’s what we’ll be focusing on. What will be particularly interesting to see is how the phone holds up against the View20. Since the review of the View20 we also got our hands on a OPPO Reno with the same IMX586 sensor. The differences between the phones here will be their optics as well as their software processing calibrations./news/samsung-galaxy-tab-size-really-does-matter-samsung-galaxy.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-tab-size-really-does-matter-samsung-galaxy.htmlSamsung Galaxy Tab - Size Really Does Matter The Galaxy Tab is almost exactly half the size of the iPad. So the Galaxy Tab, as one of the first 7” tablets to release, brings up a new concern in the tablet space - how much does screen size change things? This is the first real 7” tablet I’ve played with for any length of time, but my first reaction when I pulled the Galaxy Tab out of the box was “dang, this thing is a lot smaller than I expected”./news/skylake-sp-ecc-for-lga2066.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/skylake-sp-ecc-for-lga2066.htmlOn the professional side of the CPU space, Intel’s new Xeon Scalable Processor family, based on the Skylake-SP architecture, is suiting up against the new EPYC processors from AMD. Part of Intel’s Xeon-SP launch was a rebranding of their product stack: gone are E5 and E7 families, and now Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze make for a confusing conversion. With this announcement, Intel also gave the image that now consumer and professional platforms were separate: no longer were Xeons welcome in consumer sockets./news/sprint-holiday-smartphone-buyer-s-guide.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sprint-holiday-smartphone-buyer-s-guide.htmlSprint When Sprint launched the EVO 4G in June, they had a runaway success on their hands, so naturally, it makes sense to start there in our Sprint holiday picks. I bought an EVO on launch day, after standing in the cold and rainy weather that Seattle passes off as early summer (when in fact, it bears no resemblance to the word summer at all). It was totally worth it. When I wrote up my first impressions bit, the word “beast” came up more than once, and for good reason - it was a monster device, not just in a physically imposing sense, but also just for the number of technologies it housed./news/steve-jobs-resigns-as-apple-ceo-tim-cook-now.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/steve-jobs-resigns-as-apple-ceo-tim-cook-now.htmlAs of this evening, Steve Jobs has resigned his post as CEO of Apple, naming Tim Cook as his successor. This news follows an extended health-related leave of absence that began this past January. Jobs will stay on at Apple as Chairman of the Board. In a press release, Jobs cited his inability to "meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's CEO" as the reason for his resignation, but didn't go into any further detail./news/system-performance-the-asus-z370-i-gaming-review-mini.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-asus-z370-i-gaming-review-mini.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested./news/t-mobile-g2-keyboard-display-camera-and-video.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/t-mobile-g2-keyboard-display-camera-and-video.htmlOne thing that’s pretty clear from HTC’s history is that they know how to make some pretty great smartphone keyboards. The Touch Pro 2, the original Tilt/TyTN II, the old school T-Mobile MDA, etc. - they all have excellent keyboards, and the G2 is no exception. In fact, the G2’s slide-out keyboard is pretty similar in both look and feel to the Touch Pro 2 keyboard, and that’s not a bad thing./news/the-first-64-bit-armv8-cpu-cores.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-first-64-bit-armv8-cpu-cores.htmlYesterday AMD revealed that in 2014 it would begin production of its first ARMv8 based 64-bit Opteron CPUs. At the time we didn't know what core AMD would use, however today ARM helped fill in that blank for us with two new 64-bit core announcements: the ARM Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53. You may have heard of ARM's Cortex-A57 under the codename Atlas, while A53 was referred to internally as Apollo. The two are 64-bit successors to the Cortex A15 and A7, respectively./news/the-iphone-5-review.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-iphone-5-review.htmlThe last significant redesign of the iPhone platform came in 2010 with the iPhone 4. It was an update that literally touched all aspects of the device, from SoC to display to baseband and of course, chassis. Last month’s launch of the iPhone 5 is no different in magnitude. The sixth generation iPhone makes some of the biggest changes to the platform since its introduction in 2007. Visually the device begins by evolving the design language of the iPhone 4/4S chassis./news/the-lg-g7-review-a-rushed-attempt.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-lg-g7-review-a-rushed-attempt.htmlThis year was a change in pace for LG. The company's "mainline" flagship device, the LG G7, was released a couple of months later later than in years prior, hitting the market in the early summer rather than the more traditional spring. And while this may sound like a trivial distinction, it's actually more meaningful than it may first appear. The tight schedules in the smartphone industry mean that time is often the most valuable asset a manufacturer can have./news/the-raijintek-tisis-top-tier-cpu-air-coolers-q3.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-raijintek-tisis-top-tier-cpu-air-coolers-q3.htmlThe Raijintek Tisis Raijintek is yet another new European company, founded in 2013. For a company this new, Raijintek is retailing a fair number of products, which are thirteen coolers, four cases and several fans, with the company now expanding to peripherals and PSUs. The Tisis is Raijintek's most recent and advanced CPU cooler, which was originally baptized "Nemesis" but it was renamed due to a naming collision with another company's similar product./news/where-style-paints-a-picasso.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/where-style-paints-a-picasso.htmlThere are three major selling factors when it comes to laptops: Specifications, Price, and Style. It is exceedingly rare to have a laptop hit all three, and if often takes a flagship device to score high marks on all three. The first two, specifications and price, often go hand in hand, but one aspect that often gets overlooked in the mid-range is the element of Style. The Honor Magicbook 14 notebook, which is the subject of this review, scores remarkably high marks for style./news/wilocity-and-60ghz-wigig.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wilocity-and-60ghz-wigig.htmlMeeting with Wilocity today has been very interesting.  Wilocity will be the first company to market with WiGig technology - a 60 GHz band wireless system.  Designed as a direct southbridge connection, the system uses PCIe lanes to provide necessary wireless bandwith, and I am told costs around the same ballpark as a normal WiFi 802.11n mini-PCIe wireless solution.  With it being compatible with mini-PCIe, Wilocity's Wil6100 chipset is capable of 4./news/windows-rt-will-not-get-windows-10-update.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/windows-rt-will-not-get-windows-10-update.htmlMicrosoft has confirmed today that Windows RT will not be upgraded to Windows 10. The official statement from the company is that Surface Pro will be updated to Windows 10, and “we are working on an update for Surface (RT and Surface 2), which will have some of the functionality of Windows 10.” For anyone who purchased either the Surface RT, or the Surface 2, this is a fairly poor message, especially considering the Surface 2 was still for sale not very long ago./news/wqhd-w-dci-p3-and-165-hz-g-sync.htmlThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wqhd-w-dci-p3-and-165-hz-g-sync.htmlViewSonic has introduced a new high-end gaming-focused display, the Elite XG270QG. The 27-inch WQHD monitor uses a Nano IPS panel that offers all the flair you'd expect from a gaming monitor, including a maximum refresh rate of 165 Hz with G-Sync support, but ViewSonic is also focusing on color quality as well, supporting a surprising 98% of the DCI-P3 color space. As a result, while the monitor is primarily positioned for gaming, its characteristics should be good enough even for prosumers with color-critical workloads./news/16-gbps-gddr5x-16-nm-gddr6-and-gddr5.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/16-gbps-gddr5x-16-nm-gddr6-and-gddr5.htmlMicron has made a number of announcements in recent weeks regarding its GDDR memory for graphics cards, game consoles and networking applications. The company is reporting that they've been able to hit 16 Gbps data rates in the lab on their latest generation of GDDR5X devices, while also reiterating their long-term plans for GDDR6 and GDDR5, with GDDR6 memory due in a couple of quarters from now, while GDDR5 will be here to stay for a long time to come./news/2d-and-3d-nand-bit-crossover-gen-2-hits.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2d-and-3d-nand-bit-crossover-gen-2-hits.htmlMicron last week made two announcements regarding its transition to 3D NAND memory. According to the company, the output of 3D NAND at its fabs has surpassed the output of 2D NAND in terms of bits. Meanwhile, the costs of the first-generation 3D NAND are in line with expectations and the company is gearing up to start high-volume production of its second-gen 3D NAND in the coming weeks. Crossover Reached Ernie Maddock, CFO of Micron, said at the Barclays Technology Conference that the company had achieved a bit crossover between 2D and 3D NAND flash memory output./news/6-39-inch-snapdragon-855-with-game-turbo.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/6-39-inch-snapdragon-855-with-game-turbo.htmlXiaomi this week formally announced its upcoming flagship smartphone, the Mi9, at an event in China. (The worldwide launch is later this week at Mobile World Congress). The new handset looks like a range-topping 2019 Android-based device from top to bottom: it is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 SoC enhanced with Xiaomi’s Game Turbo technology, it also features an AMOLED display from Samsung (and almost without a notch), and has a triple-sensor main camera./news/a-quick-look-at-the-moto-x.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-quick-look-at-the-moto-x.htmlSince being acquired by Google, there’s been a lot of speculation about what’s coming next from Motorola. Last week they announced their Droid lineup for Verizon, this week they’re ready to talk shop about the much-rumored, very-hyped Moto X. It’s official and we just were handed one at a Motorola event in New York City. Introduction and Design The Moto X is a hugely aspirational product for Motorola, nee Google./news/a-simpler-slice-of-v-cache-for-gaming.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-simpler-slice-of-v-cache-for-gaming.htmlIn February, AMD released the first parts in its highly anticipated Ryzen 7000X3D series. This new line combines AMD's 3D V-Cache packaging with high-performance and highly efficient Zen 4 cores. Two out of the three X3D series processors were available for the initial launch, including the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the slightly lower-spec Ryzen 9 7900X3D. However, AMD may have saved the best for last. Today, we will be looking at the third sibling from the Ryzen 7000X3D line-up, the long-awaited Ryzen 7 7800X3D./news/amd-launches-the-a10-7890k-and-athlon-x4-880k.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-launches-the-a10-7890k-and-athlon-x4-880k.htmlIn what seems to be a common theme every month, AMD’s recent APU release schedule has been to introduce one or two models each news cycle. For the most part, the new elements so far this year have been increases in frequency and efficiency, either replacing previous units or expanding the product stack. This is usually due to adjustments in binning the silicon as it gets produced, or minor improvements in the back-end of production that gives efficiency benefits./news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5570-low-profile-higher-performance.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-s-radeon-hd-5570-low-profile-higher-performance.htmlConclusion With AMD's  positioning of the Radeon HD 5570 in the marketplace, you can get a few very different outcomes depending on what you’re looking for. As a video-only HTPC card, it’s no better than the 5450 in features, while it’s worse in terms of power consumption and noise. Based on our research the 5570 isn’t the HTPC über card we were expecting it to be, so if you can bear the limitations of the 5450, that’s going to be the better card./news/benchmarks-whatever-is-available-the-2020-mac-mini-unleashed.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/benchmarks-whatever-is-available-the-2020-mac-mini-unleashed.htmlBenchmarks: Whatever Is Available As we’ve had very little time with the Mac mini, and the fact that this not only is a macOS system, but a new Arm64-based macOS system, our usual benchmark choices that we tend to use aren’t really available to us. We’ve made due with a assortment of available tests at the time of the launch to give us a rough idea of the performance:/news/cellular-wifi-speakerphone-gps-nokia-lumia-710-review.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cellular-wifi-speakerphone-gps-nokia-lumia-710-review.htmlCellular Like all MSM8255 devices, the Lumia 710 uses Qualcomm’s onboard combination GSM/EDGE/WCDMA HSPA+ baseband for cellular connectivity. That means HSDPA category 10 on the downlink and HSUPA category 6 on the uplink. Of course, the fact that these HSDPA/HSUPA categories are nothing special at all right now for WCDMA means nothing to T-Mobile, who gladly replaces the “3G” indicator with “4G”. Nokia Lumia 710 - Network Support GSM/EDGE Support 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz RM-803 (Europe) WCDMA Support 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz (I, II, VIII) RM-809 (T-Mobile USA) WCDMA Support 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 MHz (I, II, IV, V) Baseband Hardware QCT MDM8255 w/QTR8615 HSPA+ Categories HSDPA 14./news/confirmed-galaxy-nexus-includes-pentile.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/confirmed-galaxy-nexus-includes-pentile.htmlThough we've learned a lot about the Galaxy Nexus specifications already, one of the things that has remained a question thus far is whether its 4.65" 720p HD Super AMOLED display uses an RGB subpixel rendering layout or PenTile. We've now confirmed that the Galaxy Nexus display does in fact use RGBG PenTile, like all the Nexus devices to date. This isn't super surprising considering that Samsung has been pretty good about adhering to all the monikers it has gradually been tacking onto AMOLED./news/core-i7-6950x-i7-6900k-i7-6850k-and-i7.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/core-i7-6950x-i7-6900k-i7-6850k-and-i7.htmlWhat would you do with more CPU cores? This is a question I see posted from an Intel employee on a yearly basis, and it actually is a difficult question to answer depending on your computing background. A gamer might not need more than four or six, and a number of workstation use cases are now GPU accelerated. Anyone never in a pure compute situation might not need more than four or six cores./news/corsair-weds-rgb-lighting-and-white-heat-spreaders-in.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-weds-rgb-lighting-and-white-heat-spreaders-in.htmlCorsair has once again expanded its lineup of Vengeance RGB memory modules, this time with a new series of white DIMMs that incorporate RGB lighting. Dubeed the Vengeance RGB White, these sticks are aimed at modders building white systems with RGB enhancements. The new DIMMs cover a broad range of speeds and capacities, with 16, 32 and 128 GB DDR4 dual- and quad-channel kits running at 3000, 3200 and 3600 MT/s data transfer rates./news/dell-xps-m1710-geforce-go-7900-gtx-512-mobile.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-xps-m1710-geforce-go-7900-gtx-512-mobile.htmlIntroductionThere's been a mantra associated with laptops pretty much since they came into being: if you're looking to build the fastest computer possible, get a desktop; the only reason to get a laptop is if you want mobility more than anything else, because laptops are always slower than equivalent desktops. While that statement is still true for the most part, the difference between top-performing desktop systems and top-performing laptops has been diminishing for many years./news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-4-15-inch.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-4-15-inch.htmlDisplay Analysis One area where Microsoft has really focused on is displays, basically since the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book launched back in 2016. Since that time, they are one of the very few manufacturers to hardware calibrate every display at the factory. Microsoft has also embraced the 3:2 aspect ratio across the entire Surface lineup, from the diminutive Surface Go, all the way up to the 28.5-inch Surface Studio./news/epox-gxb-m-gx-dual-slot-2.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/epox-gxb-m-gx-dual-slot-2.htmlAsk any Pentium Pro user if they would've shelled out the cash for their system a few years back knowing that the Socket-8 Pentium Pro interface would pretty much be a dead end at 200MHz by the end of 1997.   Chances are they would've stuck to a plain old Pentium system and saved the extra cash for a rainy day.  The same can't and won't be said about those users that bought Pentium Pro systems because they truly needed them, meaning, those that ran the quad processor demons as servers and high end workstations./news/for-the-creator-in-all-of-us.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/for-the-creator-in-all-of-us.htmlAs the market for notebook computers has expanded, new product categories have been developed to fill the needs of a wider range of audiences, and one area that has been rapidly expanded in recent years is the Content Creator notebook. Demanding more performance than a typical thin and light notebook can provide, the creator notebooks fill a gap between gaming and light use, featuring extra graphics performance and CPU performance, while generally offering a subdued yet stylish form factor that still allows for portability./news/gdc-2014-nvidia-amd-announce-new-game-dev-partnerships.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gdc-2014-nvidia-amd-announce-new-game-dev-partnerships.htmlWith GDC 2014 taking place this week in San Francisco, there are a number of gaming related announcements occurring over the next couple of days. These announcements in turn frequently intersect hardware announcements and relationships, as both NVIDIA and AMD have made it a priority to form partnerships with various game development houses to promote their various technologies and to have them implemented into high visibility games. To that end both NVIDIA and AMD are announcing new game development partnerships, which we’ll be briefly covering./news/globalfoundries-applies-for-chips-money-to-expand-u-s.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/globalfoundries-applies-for-chips-money-to-expand-u-s.htmlUpdate 9/30: Correcting the number of companies interested in receiving support from the CHIPS fund. GlobalFoundries has applied for financial support from the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act to expand its American manufacturing sites, the company said this week. The company intends to get federal grants and investment tax credits to upgrade facilities used to build chips for various applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, and many other industries. GlobalFoundries's initiative is in line with the provisions of the U./news/htc-droid-incredible-4g-lte-joining-verizon-wireless-july.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-droid-incredible-4g-lte-joining-verizon-wireless-july.htmlWe saw it first at CTIA, one of the few devices launched there, and after a long wait it's here; the Droid Incredible 4G LTE by HTC will be arriving at Verizon Wireless stores July 5th and available for $149 on-contract, after a $50 mail-in rebate. Our review sample hit the door this morning, and we're fast at work getting our review done. In the meanwhile we have some glamour shots and a little family portrait./news/huawei-building-its-ecosystem-the-huawei-matebook-16-review.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-building-its-ecosystem-the-huawei-matebook-16-review.htmlHuawei: Building its Ecosystem From the 30000ft view, I’m a fan of notebooks that promise good power and battery life at the expense of graphics. As a journalist, when I’m on the move I need something that’s going to be easy to carry, easy to work on, and has enough juice to last me through the day. Naturally, some might think that I should pivot to one of the Snapdragon or Chromebook devices, but alas I have some software in my daily toolset that doesn’t work on either, so until then, I’m still focused on devices built with AMD or Intel./news/in-and-around-the-corsair-obsidian-900d.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-corsair-obsidian-900d.htmlIn and Around the Corsair Obsidian 900D I'll cut right to the chase, this thing is enormous. It was shipped to me freight, on its own pallet of one, and the FedEx guy bellyached constantly about getting it up to and into my apartment. And it's absolutely huge. Just to give you some idea of the scale, this is the 900D's box hanging out next to the unboxed BitFenix Shinobi XL I use for cooler testing./news/initial-thoughts-msi-x48-platinum-four-pci-express-x16.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/initial-thoughts-msi-x48-platinum-four-pci-express-x16.htmlInitial Thoughts Out testing was certainly not without problems, and the X48 Platinum is still far from perfect, but even in the face of this we really enjoyed our time working with this board. MSI has done a very good job of engineering a relatively low-cost X48 motherboard that shows it has the potential to hang with some of the big dogs. A few refinements here and a couple of BIOS tweaks there should allow the X48 Platinum to be a really good alternative for those who need a gaming or multi-GPU solution without the higher prices that will prevail at the top end of the X48 market./news/intel-s-lcc-on-hedt-should-be-dead.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-lcc-on-hedt-should-be-dead.htmlIn the past couple of weeks, we have been re-testing and re-analysing our second generation Ryzen 2000-series review. The extra time and writing, looking at the results and the state of the market, led me down some interesting thoughts, ideas, and concepts, about how the competitive landscape is set to look over the next 12-18 months. Based on our Ryzen 2000-series review, it was clear that Intel’s 8-core Skylake-X product is not up to task./news/minecraft-civilization-v-performance.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/minecraft-civilization-v-performance.htmlMinecraft Switching gears for the moment we have Minecraft, our OpenGL title. It's no secret that OpenGL usage on the PC has fallen by the wayside in recent years, and as far major games go Minecraft is one of but a few recently released major titles using OpenGL. Minecraft is incredibly simple—not even utilizing pixel shaders let alone more advanced hardware—but this doesn't mean it's easy to render. Its use of massive amounts of blocks (and the overdraw that creates) means you need solid hardware and an efficient OpenGL implementation if you want to hit playable framerates with a far render distance./news/p55-chipset-quick-primer.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/p55-chipset-quick-primer.htmlIt Slices, It Dices. But Wait, There’s More! Actually, there is not more. A couple of years ago rumors were floating around that Intel’s first Platform Controller Hub (PCH) would contain the latest in features like 6Gb/s SATA ports, USB 3.0, and full PCI Express 2.0 capabilities all at a price that even McDonald’s would be envious of when launched. Of course, you know rumors are usually just that, silly rumors./news/performance-benchmarks-mydigitalssd-m2x-m-2-nvme-ssd-enclosure.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-benchmarks-mydigitalssd-m2x-m-2-nvme-ssd-enclosure.htmlPerformance Benchmarks Our evaluation routine for storage bridges borrows heavily from the testing methodology for direct-attached storage devices. The testbed hardware is reused. CrystalDiskMark is used for a quick overview, as it helps determine availability of UASP support and provides some performance numbers under ideal scenarios. Real-world performance testing is done with our custom test suite involving robocopy bencharks and PCMark 8's storage bench. CrystalDiskMark uses four different access traces for reads and writes over a configurable region size./news/qnap-s-virtualization-station-nas-units-as-vm-hosts.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qnap-s-virtualization-station-nas-units-as-vm-hosts.htmlQNAP's Virtualization Station The Virtualization Station package in QTS 4.x supports the installation of multiple operating systems in the VMs. QNAP contends that applications installed on VMs can improve the NAS compatibility (say, reading and working with CAD files can be achieved by installation of the appropriate software in the VM when such software is not available as a QTS package). The more obvious benefit is the aggregation of IT infrastructure./news/qualcomm-centriq-arm-server-systems-spotted.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-centriq-arm-server-systems-spotted.htmlThe story of Qualcomm’s Arm server product line has been full of ups and downs. On the up, last year, we saw a large disclosure on how the new Falkor core design was put together, and Qualcomm even officially launched CPU pricing. It was going to be another push for Arm cores into the datacenter. Everything looked to be on an upwards path, until early 2018, when Qualcomm was looking to consolidate some of its divisions, and it was noted that a number of key members of the Centriq team had left./news/random-sequential-performance-sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb-240gb.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/random-sequential-performance-sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb-240gb.htmlRandom Read/Write Speed The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews. Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see)./news/retesting-the-radeon-hd-4830-too-few-simds-enabled.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/retesting-the-radeon-hd-4830-too-few-simds-enabled.htmlUPDATE: As certain as it seemed AMD was that no 560 SP 4830 boards had made it into the retail channel, it appears that they were, in fact, wrong. Fewer than 400 HIS Radeon HD 4830 boards made it into the channel. Here is the statement we recieved from AMD's Jay Marsden today: AMD has identified that, in addition to reference samples of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 boards sent to media with a pre-production BIOS potentially impacting the card’s performance, a very limited number of ATI Radeon™ HD 4830 boards were released to market with the same pre-production BIOS./news/scratching-the-itch-for-the-office-niche.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/scratching-the-itch-for-the-office-niche.htmlAlthough they are still as rare as hen’s teeth, wireless mechanical keyboards are shyly showing up in the market. A few weeks ago we had a look at Corsair’s K63 Wireless, a premium (and expensive) offering designed specifically with gaming in mind. Although its battery life was very short when compared to a typical office wireless keyboard, the K63 proved a fine product for gaming as Corsair managed to minimize the input lag, while the wireless keyboard retained all of the programmability features of the wired version./news/seagate-s-multi-actuator-technology-to-address-hdd-iops.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-s-multi-actuator-technology-to-address-hdd-iops.htmlSeagate introduced its new Multi-Actuator Technology (MAT) for hard drives earlier this month. It promises to increase hard drive performance by using two or more sets of actuator arms that operate independently from a single pivot point. Seagate claims that next-gen HDDs will require higher performance to effectively take advantage of their increased capacities. It plans to use MAT in their datacenter hard drives going into pilot production in 2018./news/sequential-random-read-write-speed.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sequential-random-read-write-speed.htmlSequential Read/Write Speed Using the 6-22-2008 build of Iometer I ran a 3 minute long 2MB sequential test over the entire span of the drive. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length: Both sequential read and write speed are improved over the 5400.6 but we're still not in VelociRaptor territory. The X25-V is cripped in its write performance by comparison but most other SSDs do very well./news/sunny-cove-microarchitecture-going-deeper-and-wider.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sunny-cove-microarchitecture-going-deeper-and-wider.htmlIce Lake falls under Intel’s ‘10th Gen Core’ family, and is based around the latest iteration of the ‘Core’ microarchitecture, which initially debuted over a decade ago and has received plenty of key critical enhancements and extra features along the way. Over the years we’ve seen improved prefetchers, smarter branch predictors, adjusted cache sizes and capabilities, deeper and wider execution, micro-op caches, accelerated calculation logic, and lower power operation, all designed to increase the instruction throughput, decrease cache misses, and improve power efficiency./news/surface-3-design-the-surface-3-review.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/surface-3-design-the-surface-3-review.htmlSurface 3 Design For those familiar with the Surface line, and especially the Surface Pro 3, looking at the new Surface 3 is not going to shock you. It is certainly an evolution of the line and not a revolution. It still features the same magnesium body which really feels great in the hand. It really is unlike aluminium in feel, and I find that the Surface 3 texture gives plenty of grip, unlike some polished devices./news/teamgroup-announces-t-force-delta-rgb-ddr5-6600-cl34.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/teamgroup-announces-t-force-delta-rgb-ddr5-6600-cl34.htmlMemory vendor TeamGroup has announced two new T-Force Delta RGB DDR5 memory kits during Computex 2022, being held in Taipei, Taiwan. This includes a high-frequency kit clocked to DDR5-6600 with a latency of CL34, as well as a low-latency kit operating at DDR5-6000 CL30. Both will be available in black or white and come with RGB LEDs. Intel was the first company to introduce DDR5 memory to the desktop market in November 2021 with its 12th Gen Core series of processors./news/testing-trim-the-ssd-improv-intel-indilinx-get-trim.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-trim-the-ssd-improv-intel-indilinx-get-trim.htmlTesting TRIM A firmware update gives you TRIM support, but we should probably test to make sure it's actually working. First up, the Intel X25-M G2 with the TRIM firmware. I ran a 4KB random write test across the entire 80GB LBA space for five minutes. I ran the test again afterwards and recorded the average transfer rate for each run: 4KB Random Write, IOQ=16 Run 1 Run 2 Intel X25-M 80GB TRIM Firmware 37./news/the-apple-2022-fall-iphone-event-live-blog-10am.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-2022-fall-iphone-event-live-blog-10am.html12:56PM EDT - It's that time of the year again - Apple's fall iPhone event, where we expect the Cupertino company to unveil its newest generation family of iPhones - what should be the iPhone 14 series 12:57PM EDT - With Apple seemingly satisfied with its current industrial design as embodied by the iPhone 13 lineup, it will be interesting to see what the company does to iterate on its flagship phones this year – especially the high-end Pro designs./news/the-halo-35-w-and-45-w-mobile-apus.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-halo-35-w-and-45-w-mobile-apus.htmlAs part of the disclosures on AMD’s Ryzen Mobile 4000 portfolio, the company is also lifting the lid on perhaps one of the worst kept secrets in mobile computing: the new top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 4900H family. This family consists of two processors, the standard H model built for 45 W operation, and the HS model at 35 W. These parts will offer more frequency and more graphics performance than the rest of AMD’s offerings, and are the only APUs from AMD to carry the weight of the Ryzen 9 branding./news/the-seasonic-s12g-650w-psu.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-seasonic-s12g-650w-psu.htmlExternal Appearance The Seasonic S12G sports a small, typical ATX-sized (140mm) chassis that has been sprayed with a matte black paint. Some effort has been made to improve the appearance of the power supply, albeit not all of the measures can be considered successful. Seasonic uses all-black ribbon cables, with the exception of the 24-pin ATX cable that uses typical color-coded wires and sleeving. A blue sticker has been placed on the rear of the unit, where it will be visible from the back of a case once the PSU has been installed./news/the-technology-behind-iosafe-iosafe-solopro-disaster-proofing-your.htmlWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-technology-behind-iosafe-iosafe-solopro-disaster-proofing-your.htmlioSafe holds a number of patents related to disaster proofing of digital storage media. ioSafe's CEO Robb Moore is the primary inventor of most of those patents. In this section, we will take a brief look at the various patents related to the ioSafe SoloPRO. Note that the SoloPRO might not be using all of the inventions mentioned in the patents below. Fire Resistant, Forced Air Cooled Enclosure for Computer Digital Data Storage Device (US Patent No./news/3d-nand-how-it-works.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3d-nand-how-it-works.htmlTo understand how 3D NAND helps to keep Moore's Law in action, we first need to go in-depth with the structure. Before we begin, there are a couple of disclaimers I want to get out. First of all, every manufacturer has a different 3D NAND structure, so to avoid information overflow and confusion, I will only talk about Samsung's structure for now. When other manufacturers are ready with their 3D NAND products, I will provide a similar analysis of their structure./news/802-11ac-gbe-zigbee-and-ir.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/802-11ac-gbe-zigbee-and-ir.htmlASRock has started sales of their new smart connected home router, the X10. The new device supports not only 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet like any modern networking router, but also supports ZigBee and IR to control various smart and home electronics as a connected home central hub. The X10 and devices like it comes at an interesting inflection point for the consumer networking gear industry; nowadays, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and basic routers are cheap, if not outright free from an ISP, pushing the overall market towards being highly commoditized./news/95w-65w-and-35w-with-edram.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/95w-65w-and-35w-with-edram.htmlOur Broadwell coverage on the desktop has included reviews of the two consumer processors and a breakdown of IPC gains from generation to generation. One issue surrounding Broadwell on consumer platforms was that the top quad-core model was rated at one third less power in comparison to previous Intel quad core processors. Specifically, Broadwell is 65W against 84-95W in past generations. This puts Broadwell’s out-of-the-box peak performance at a TDP (and frequency) disadvantage./news/a-rival-for-microsoft-surface-hub.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-rival-for-microsoft-surface-hub.htmlDell has started sales of its 75-inch 4K monitor supporting multi-touch capabilities, and combined the device with a set of interactive features. The new Dell 75 4K Interactive Touch Monitor is designed to enable interactive work by groups of people and could therefore compete against Microsoft’s Surface Hub product series. Dell’s 75-inch 4K Interactive Touch Monitor (C7520QT) uses an IPS panel featuring a 3840x2560 resolution and an ‘InGlass’ touch surface supporting up to 20 touch points simultaneously./news/amd-raven-ridge-apu-in-a-zbox-ma551-mini.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-raven-ridge-apu-in-a-zbox-ma551-mini.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — ZOTAC is preparing a small form-factor PC based on an AMD’s Ryzen processor with integrated Vega graphics. The ZOTAC ZBOX MA551 will be among the first compact computers powered by AMD’s code-named ‘Raven Ridge’ chips, and the system design should allow it support all AM4 APUs as well as a comprehensive set of connectivity features. ZOTAC’s ZBOX MA551 will exist in at least two variants equipped with AMD’s quad-core Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs with the Radeon Vega integrated graphics./news/amd-releases-radeon-software-crimson-relive-edition-17-8.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-releases-radeon-software-crimson-relive-edition-17-8.htmlThis week, AMD has released Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.8.2, quickly following up on this Monday’s 17.8.1 release and the last Monday’s launch of Radeon RX Vega64. This quick update addresses some fairly important issues: several unresolved RX Vega bugs and new game driver support. Although it is focused on polishing RX Vega related matters, 17.8.2 is a unified driver like 17.8.1, and applies for both RX Vega-based cards and other products./news/announcing-a-new-apple-watch-series-3-with-intel.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/announcing-a-new-apple-watch-series-3-with-intel.htmlToday at Apple’s new Steve Jobs Theatre, Apple announced its new Apple Watch, called the Series 3. This is a new model above the Series 2 announced last year, with the new headline feature being LTE support through an integrated modem, which we believe to be an Intel modem according to trusted analysts. iFixit has done a teardown and confirmed a Qualcomm modem in their unit. We are in the process of confirming if this modem is in all Watch 3 or if it is dual sourced./news/arm-announces-new-cortex-a35-cpu.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-announces-new-cortex-a35-cpu.htmlToday as part of the volley of announcements at ARM's TechCon conference we discover ARM's new low-power application-tier CPU architecture, the Cortex-A35. ARM follows an interesting product model: The company chooses to segment its IP offerings into different use-cases depending on market needs, designing different highly optimized architectures depending on the target performance and power requirements. As such, we see the Cortex-A lineup of application processors categorized in three groups: High performance, high efficiency, and ultra-high efficiency designs./news/athlon-ii-x2-hardware-c1e-and-return-of-the.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/athlon-ii-x2-hardware-c1e-and-return-of-the.htmlI noticed something strange in my initial testing of the Athlon II X2, take a look at these SYSMark results: Processor SYSMark 2007 Overall AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE (3.10GHz) 167 AMD Athlon II X2 250 (3.00GHz) 134 AMD Athlon X2 7850 (2.80GHz) 145   The Athlon II X2 250 is slower than the Athlon X2 7850 and significantly slower than the Phenom II X2 550./news/ati-all-in-wonder-128.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ati-all-in-wonder-128.htmlHow would you like to watch TV in a window while you work? How about using your computer as a digital VCR? Wouldn't it be nice if you could get all that plus great 2D and 3D acceleration on one card? ATI hopes to make that dream a reality with their latest offering - the All-in-Wonder 128. As noted in AnandTech's Matrox Marvel G200 Review, it has been quite difficult for companies to successfully produce a multifunction device that excels in all areas./news/best-video-cards-october-2014.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/best-video-cards-october-2014.htmlAfter a couple of months off due to a very busy fall product season, we’re finally back again with our monthly guide to video cards and video card industry recap. Since our last guide it has been a busy couple of months, so there’s quite a bit to cover. The big news this fall has of course been the new video card launches from AMD and NVIDIA. While October has been a relatively quiet month, both companies kept September busy by pushing new products out the door and took others off the shelves./news/cyberpowerpc-gamer-xtreme-5200-desktop-review.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cyberpowerpc-gamer-xtreme-5200-desktop-review.htmlCyberPowerPC has carved out a niche for itself as a large scale system integrator that offers a build for pretty much any user, and today they're giving us an opportunity to once again put the screws to Haswell's new Intel Core i7-4770K as well as get some field practice in with the AMD Radeon HD 7990. These two are undoubtedly among the fastest products in their respective markets, and CyberPowerPC has seen fit to combine them in a reasonably small but attractive enclosure from Fractal Design./news/dell-revamps-xps-15-and-brings-back-xps-17.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-revamps-xps-15-and-brings-back-xps-17.htmlThe XPS lineup from Dell has been a resounding success and was the first laptop to feature the ultra-thin bezels that have defined the modern laptop. For 2020, Dell is refreshing the XPS 15 with an all-new design and bringing back the XPS 17 after almost ten years. Both look to set the bar that other manufacturers will try to attain. And thanks to the thin display bezels, both laptops are much smaller than their names would imply./news/elsa-gladiac-ultra-64mb-geforce2-ultra.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/elsa-gladiac-ultra-64mb-geforce2-ultra.htmlJust two months ago, NVIDIA gave us two special presents, the introduction of the Detonator3 drivers as well as the debut of what was and continues to be the fastest desktop 3D graphics accelerator, the GeForce2 Ultra.  While we embraced the release of the Detonator3 drivers that increased performance of all GeForce based cards by a noticeable amount, the release of the GeForce2 Ultra caught us off guard.  When combined with the Detonator3 drivers, the GeForce2 GTS that had been released just four months earlier regained its dominance over the competition./news/final-words-the-acer-swift-3-sf315-41-review.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-acer-swift-3-sf315-41-review.htmlFinal Words This review is really looking at two things. First, the Acer Swift 3, and second, the AMD Raven Ridge platform based on Ryzen mobile. Let’s start with the laptop. Acer’s Swift lineup features models from the Swift 1 at the value end, to the Swift 7 at the top end. So, the Swift 3 is closer to the value end than Acer’s flagship models. But that’s somewhat deceptive because Acer’s Swift 3 is a nicely built device, with a great aluminum exterior, an IPS display, SSD storage, and even a fingerprint reader alongside the excellent trackpad./news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-supermicro-x11sra-motherboard-review.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-supermicro-x11sra-motherboard-review.htmlConclusion If a workstation class board is necessary, chances are the user scenario is pushing the board for extended periods of time with large memory, GPU, or storage requirements. Along with a generally more robust nature, some workstation class boards offer users such as IPMI BMC support for remote monitoring (this one doesn't, to be clear) as well as additional options such as U.2 ports and other storage support. How many people really need a workstation class board is another thing altogether, however utilizing these boards in an IT environment can help with monitoring and tracking problem areas for an Operations team./news/gaming-benchmarks-direct3d-windows-vista-performance-guide.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-benchmarks-direct3d-windows-vista-performance-guide.htmlGaming Benchmarks - Direct3DThere are an incredible number of tests we wanted to run in order to explore all the different aspects of gaming on Vista versus gaming on XP both in 32- and 64-bit modes. For this first look, however, we will be sticking with single card setups on Vista x86, Vista x64, and Windows XP x86. In the future, we plan on looking at multi-GPU performance as well as the performance of games on Windows XP x64./news/gtx-570-on-a-budget.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gtx-570-on-a-budget.htmlA little more than a year ago NVIDIA introduced the GF110 GPU, the power-optimized version of their Fermi patriarch, GF100. The first product was their flagship GTX 580, followed by the eventual GTX 570. Traditionally NVIDIA would follow this up with a 3rd product. The GTX 200 series had 285/275/260, and the GTX 400 series had GTX 480/470/465. However in the past year we have never seen the 3rd tier GF110 card… until now./news/halo-fall-2003-video-card-roundup-part-i.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/halo-fall-2003-video-card-roundup-part-i.htmlHalo With Halo in stores today, we have welcomed it with open arms into our testing suite. The packaged benchmark that comes with the game is made up of all the cut scenes between levels (which are fairly graphics intensive). We ran the benchmark at 1024x768 @ 75Hz , which provided plenty of work for all our cards. We opted to simply include average framerate for this article, but there are some really interesting features of this benchmark (like percentage of time above a certain frame rate) that we may revisit later./news/hands-on-with-the-acer-predator-helios-300-special.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-the-acer-predator-helios-300-special.htmlOne of the more interesting laptop designs to come out of the Computex week was from Acer: its new Predator Helios 300 Special Edition was an eclectic mix of white and gold that made it stand out from the swathe of standard black and red looking gaming machines being announced and on the market. We had a recent chance to spend some time with the unit at an Acer UK event./news/hands-on-with-the-retail-oculus-rift-countdown-to.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-the-retail-oculus-rift-countdown-to.htmlBy far the dominant theme at GDC 2016 has been virtual reality. If you’re not a hardware vendor directly creating VR products, then you’re explaining how your products are a good match for VR or make for a better VR experience. And if you’re a software developer, then you’re at a minimum toying with VR, if not outright designing games for it. If nothing else, it’s the session attendance figures that demonstrate just how important VR is at GDC: after Monday’s overflowing attendance of VR sessions as part of the show-within-a-show VRDC, GDC had to move all of the VRDC Tuesday sessions to double sized rooms to accommodate the crowds./news/industry-update-q4-2004-amd-adds-sse3-support-intel.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/industry-update-q4-2004-amd-adds-sse3-support-intel.htmlEvery year I make at least one trip to Taipei, Taiwan, usually for the annual Computex show. The flight itself is usually grueling, traveling from the East Coast you're generally in the air for around 20 hours. Then there's getting used to the time difference, which is a full 12 hours from EST. But it's all worth it, because a trip to Taipei is like a hardware-guy's dreamland. Tons of manufacturers spread out all over the northern tip of the island all working on bringing the latest technology and performance to your PCs./news/lenovo-completes-motorola-mobility-purchase.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lenovo-completes-motorola-mobility-purchase.htmlBack towards the start of this year, Lenovo announced that it would be acquiring Motorola Mobility from Google. Motorola Mobility, the phone and gadget arm of Motorola, would be sold to Lenovo for just under $3 billion. Motorola Mobility would come as the latest in a string of acquisitions for Lenovo, who in recent years has picked up IBM’s desktop and x86 server businesses, among other major purchases. This morning Lenovo sends word that the deal has closed, and the acquisition of Motorola is complete./news/makes-its-curved-display-more-curved.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/makes-its-curved-display-more-curved.htmlDell has unveiled its new top-of-the-range 34” curved monitor for consumers. The new UltraSharp U3417W display has the same WHQD resolution as the U3415W introduced a year ago, but increased curvature and a new chassis design. The monitor is aimed particularly at users who do heavy multitasking but do not want to install two monitors on their desks. Nowadays, the majority of display makers position their curved monitors primarily for gamers and multimedia enthusiasts, thus, trying to incorporate very high refresh rates along with dynamic refresh rate technologies like AMD’s FreeSync or NVIDIA’s G-Sync./news/mixed-read-write-performance-qlc-goes-to-8tb-samsung.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-qlc-goes-to-8tb-samsung.htmlMixed Random Performance Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%./news/mushkin-reactor-1tb-ssd-review.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mushkin-reactor-1tb-ssd-review.htmlSilicon Motion has practically become the new SandForce. Almost every tier three manufacturer (i.e. one with no controller/firmware IP or NAND fab) has released an SM2246EN based drive in the past ten months and recently Silicon Motion scored two major tier one partners (namely Micron/Crucial and SanDisk) as well. To be honest, this hasn't come as a surprise because the SM2246EN is a really solid controller with good performance and more importantly it's been mostly issue free (which is something that cannot be said about SandForce)./news/nvidia-completes-proviz-ada-lovelace-lineup-with-three-new.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-completes-proviz-ada-lovelace-lineup-with-three-new.htmlWhen NVIDIA began to roll out their Ada Lovelace architecture to the workstation market, the company introduced its new flagship RTX 6000 Ada graphics card meant to offer the highest performance possible as well as its quite spectacular RTX 4000 SFF board that delivers formidable performance in a tiny package. The gap between the two solutions is vast, and on Tuesday, the company finally unveiled new products that fill it./news/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-950-gm206-the-lesser-for.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-950-gm206-the-lesser-for.htmlIt still doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago, but at this point it was 18 months ago when NVIDIA launched the first member of their Maxwell 1 GPU family, the GM107-based GeForce GTX 750 series. A prelude of things to come, the GTX 750 series introduced us to NVIDIA’s highly optimized Maxwell architecture, reaching new levels of energy efficiency and also work efficiency per CUDA core. What the Maxwell 1 architecture lacked that Maxwell 2 brought with us later in 2014 was support for newer features such as HDMI 2./news/playback-software-xbmc-and-jriver-mc-17.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/playback-software-xbmc-and-jriver-mc-17.htmlIn the CoreHT 252B review, we devoted a section to XBMC and how to configure it to play nice with that particular system. XBMC's DXVA2 decoder works better on the ASRock Vision 3D 252B compared to the CoreHT 252B, thanks to NVIDIA's well supported DXVA infrastructure. However, HD audio bitstreaming is not yet officially available on XBMC (though I have tried a few alternative builds, none of them have worked in a reliable manner)./news/rivet-networks-launches-e2600-gigabit-network-controller.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rivet-networks-launches-e2600-gigabit-network-controller.htmlThis year Computex is full of launches, and the land of network controllers is no exception. Rivet Networks, who makes the Killer line of enhanced NICs, is updating its popular E2500 design with the E2600, which is initially going to be found on a series of MSI notebooks as well as moving out into motherboard designs and system designs from popular OEMs. The new design enhances the Killer Intelligence Engine inside the controller, providing a more detailed understanding of the traffic passing through./news/ryzen-overclocking-the-msi-b450-tomahawk-motherboard-review-more.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ryzen-overclocking-the-msi-b450-tomahawk-motherboard-review-more.htmlRyzen Overclocking Experience With the MSI B450 Tomahawk Aside from the very basic and barebones A320 chipset, all of AMD's other AM4 chipsets which includes B350, X370, B450 and X470 all allow for overclocking. This is great for users with the right components to push their processors and memory above and beyond the default settings. From glancing over a lot of different boards specifications from the main vendors, a lot of focus has been on power deliveries and packing them full of unnessesary doubled inductors without a true increase in quality./news/samsung-samples-32-gb-ddr4-memory-chips.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-samples-32-gb-ddr4-memory-chips.htmlSamsung recently began sampling of its 32 Gb capacity DDR4 memory chips. The new products will simplify production of high-capacity memory modules that use multiple DRAM packages. Samsung’s 32 Gb A-die DDR4-2666 chips are comprised of two stacked 16 Gb DDR4 dies produced using the company’s 10 nm-class process technology. Samsung offers two versions of 32 Gb DDR4 packages: one featuring a 2G x8 organization, another featuring a 1G x16 organization./news/setting-the-stage-for-ddr5-6400-and-beyond.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/setting-the-stage-for-ddr5-6400-and-beyond.htmlMarking an important milestone in computer memory development, today the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association is releasing the final specification for its next mainstream memory standard, DDR5 SDRAM. The latest iteration of the DDR standard that has been driving PCs, servers, and everything in-between since the late 90s, DDR5 once again extends the capabilities of DDR memory, doubling the peak memory speeds while greatly increasing memory sizes as well. Hardware based on the new standard is expected in 2021, with adoption starting at the server level before trickling down to client PCs and other devices later on./news/software-windows-on-a-tablet.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-windows-on-a-tablet.htmlWindows On Tablets It's sort of interesting how the Windows tablet experience is unknown to many people. I stated earlier that there's more of a focus on Android and iOS tablets than Windows ones. In fact, the Windows 8 experience in general is unknown to many people. Although Windows 8 was released over two years ago, it still hasn't gained significant adoption among Windows users, myself included. This means that the Stream 7 was actually my first real experience with Windows 8, used primarily with a touch interface and in the Modern UI./news/software-working-within-chrome-os.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-working-within-chrome-os.htmlSoftware To tell the truth, I hadn't had much experience with Chrome OS before using the Chromebook Pixel. Years ago I installed Chromium OS to see what it was like, but I quickly wrote it off as far too limited to perform the tasks that I do on a daily basis. Since then, web applications have improved immensely, and Chrome OS itself has had new applications added and changes made to the interface to make it feel more like a typical operating system./news/subjective-evaluation-of-the-ergodox.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/subjective-evaluation-of-the-ergodox.htmlSubjective Evaluation of the ErgoDox I’ve covered the layout and some of the configuration options, and at least from a high level it looks like all the necessary ingredients are present for the ErgoDox to work well. Naturally, the proof is in the eating of the pudding, so let’s discuss how things work in practice. This is a far more subjective matter, as what one person likes/dislikes may or may not matter to someone else./news/synthetic-tests-basic-io-patterns.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synthetic-tests-basic-io-patterns.htmlBurst IO Performance Our burst IO tests operate at queue depth 1 and perform several short data transfers interspersed with idle time. The random read and write tests consist of 32 bursts of up to 64MB each. The sequential read and write tests use eight bursts of up to 128MB each. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite. Given that the Samsung SSD 980 is a DRAMless drive with aggressive SLC caching, it's no surprise to see that most of the burst IO scores show a big difference between testing a small slice of a mostly-empty drive and testing across an 80% full drive./news/the-20-lcd-shootout-dell-versus-apple.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-20-lcd-shootout-dell-versus-apple.htmlIntroduction When reviewing hardware, we often run into the scenario of limited diversity; dozens of manufacturers send us hardware that differs from everyone else's design by a different color PCB or bezel. Every once in a while, however, we have the pleasure of looking at something that is completely different than anything else currently available on every level. When Apple wanted us to look at their newest 20" Cinema display, we knew that our opportunity to look at something so unique in the displays market would be a rare occasion./news/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-xr-and-apple-watch.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-xr-and-apple-watch.htmlToday at Apples iPhone launch event, we saw the unveiling of three new iPhones as well as the Apple Watch Series 4. We go into more detail about the specifications of the new phones in our separate announcement article. Least to say, the new phones are a major upgrade in terms of their hardware capabilities, and also mark the across-the-board adoption of the iPhone X design for the entire iPhone product line./news/thermaltake-s-launches-liquid-cooled-waterram-rgb-ddr4-3600.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thermaltake-s-launches-liquid-cooled-waterram-rgb-ddr4-3600.htmlSeemingly intent on proving that everything in a PC should in fact be liquid cooled, Thermaltake this week has expanded its WaterRAM lineup of water-cooled RAM with DDR4-3600 kits. Available as a 32 GB dual-channel/quad-channel kit, Thermaltake’s WaterRAM DDR4-3600 (CL-W262-CA00SW) feature CL18 19-19-36 timings and 1.35 V operating voltage. The modules are based on tightly-screened SK Hynix’s C-die memory chips, a 10-layer PCB, and feature XMP 2.0 profiles for easier overclocking./news/vesa-rolls-out-updated-displayhdr-standard-for-oled-displays.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/vesa-rolls-out-updated-displayhdr-standard-for-oled-displays.htmlThis morning the VESA is rolling out an update to the standard body’s DisplayHDR monitor performance standard that’s focused on expanding the specification to cover OLED displays. Dubbed DisplayHDR True Black, the new performance tiers to the DisplayHDR standard are intended for OLED and other emissive displays, laying out the levels of display performance that the association believes are appropriate for consumer HDR displays. This update comes just over a year after the original DisplayHDR standard was launched./news/western-digital-expands-purple-surveillance-storage-options-with-18tb.htmlTue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-expands-purple-surveillance-storage-options-with-18tb.htmlWestern Digital has been marketing their surveillance-focused storage solutions under the Purple branding since 2014. After the SanDisk acquisition, the company started selling WD Purple microSDXC cards as a complement to the SanDisk High Endurance cards, bringing in ruggedness and durability in terms of weather and humidity-resistance as well as extended operating temperature range (-25C to 85C). The Purple drives and cards come with firmware tweaks that make them a better fit for SMB / SME network video recorders (NVRs) and IP cameras./news/1tb-tlc-with-3-2-gt-s-io-speed.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/1tb-tlc-with-3-2-gt-s-io-speed.htmlKioxia and Western Digital formally introduced their 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory with 218 active layers. The new storage device offers a 1Tb capacity in 3D TLC mode and features 3200 MT/s data transfer speed, a combination that will enable SSD makers to build high-performance, high-capacity drives. To enable such an extreme interface speed, the companies adopted an architecture akin to YMTC's Xtacking. The 218-layer BiCS 3D NAND device jointly developed by Kioxia and Western Digital supports triple-level cell (TLC) and quad-level cell (QLC) configurations to maximize storage density and expand addressable applications./news/after-a-vacation-with-the-sd14.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/after-a-vacation-with-the-sd14.htmlAfter a Vacation with the SD14 Whatever the motivations, the Sigma SD14 is a paragon of simplicity. In a very short time you feel comfortable with the limited controls. The possible exception is the combo on and drive mode dial on the top left. It is easy enough to use, but it is so different from competing cameras that it takes a while to get used to. There are no scene modes to choose and no programs to analyze scenes; you end up doing many things the old-fashioned way - tweaking them yourself./news/an-nvme-upgrade-for-older-macs.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-nvme-upgrade-for-older-macs.htmlApple was an early adopter of PCIe SSDs, introducing them in 2013 when the NVMe specification was still in its infancy and before any NVMe hardware was available. Apple's earliest PCIe SSDs used the AHCI protocol for compatibility with existing operating systems, but hardware compatibility was a very different story. Apple's PCIe SSDs used a proprietary form factor rather than the M.2 standard that went on to become the standard for client PCIe SSDs./news/asrock-releases-raptor-lake-bios-updates-for-its-600.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-releases-raptor-lake-bios-updates-for-its-600.htmlWhile Intel has yet to officially announce its next (13th) generation of Core processors, this isn't stopping motherboard manufacturers from releasing products for them. Always eager to slide ahead of the competition and spur on new sales towards the later half of a platform's lifecycle, mobo makers are already releasing BIOSes that support Intel's future chips – parts which, officially speaking, don't even exist (yet). Leading this charge is ASRock, who today has released a wave of new BIOSes for its 600 series motherboards designed to support Intel's next generation of processors./news/asus-p8z77-v-pro-bios-and-software-intel-z77.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-p8z77-v-pro-bios-and-software-intel-z77.htmlASUS P8Z77-V Pro – BIOS ASUS BIOSes, ever since we went graphical back in P67, have been at the top of presentation and usability of the graphical interface.  Therefore, it would have been odd if ASUS had done something vastly different for Z77.  Luckily, the same interface greets us – initial entry into the BIOS greets us in EZ mode (I still call it ee-zed, being a Brit), which displays the time, the motherboard, the BIOS version, the CPU, the CPU speed, the memory, temperatures, voltages, fan speeds and the boot order./news/asus-takes-on-lenovo-with-pro-line-of-business.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-takes-on-lenovo-with-pro-line-of-business.htmlASUS has Lenovo square in its sights with its ASUS Pro brand of business notebooks. Based on Ivy Bridge silicon (longer upgrade cycles in business, Haswell will come later), the ASUS Pro lineup is clearly designed to mimic the no-frills design of Lenovo's ThinkPad line. Although not new to Computex, this is the first time we've talked about ASUS Pro on the site. Although you can't really tell from the photos here, the ASUS Pro systems actually look and feel great in person./news/camera-analysis-stills-and-video.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-analysis-stills-and-video.htmlOne of the things Google has been criticized for in years past was the quality of its imaging system on Nexus devices. We all remember the Galaxy Nexus which shipped with fast instant capture but a 5 MP camera in a world of 8 MP shooters, and last year the Nexus 4 which opted for the smaller of the two sensors LG gave as options for its brother, Optimus G, both with 1./news/concluding-remarks-meltdown-spectre-analyzing-performance-impacts-on-intel.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/concluding-remarks-meltdown-spectre-analyzing-performance-impacts-on-intel.htmlConcluding Remarks While the primary purpose of this exercise was just to update our datasets for future system reviews, it none the less proved to be an enlightening one, and something worth sharing. We already had an idea of what to expect going into refreshing our benchmark data for Meltdown and Spectre, and in some ways we still managed to find a surprise or two while looking at Intel's NUC7i7BNH NUC./news/conclusion-windows-7-performance-guide.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-windows-7-performance-guide.htmlConclusion With the launch of Windows 7, there are really 3 different tales to tell. There’s Windows 7, the OS that replaces Vista. There’s Windows 7, the OS that needs to do what Vista failed to do and kill XP. And there’s Windows 7, the OS that needs to put a stop to Apple’s continuing growth. We’re going to look at all 3. 7 vs. Vista I’ve never been entirely convinced that Microsoft was looking to significantly move away from Vista with Windows 7, and the final release version has not changed that./news/conclusion-worth-considering-msi-ge60-review-mainstream-mobile-maxwell.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-worth-considering-msi-ge60-review-mainstream-mobile-maxwell.htmlConclusion: Worth Considering After testing and using the MSI GE60 for several weeks, I've come away reasonably impressed with what's being offered. It's not the fastest or flashiest laptop around, and it's not the cheapest either, but it gets most of the important areas right when it comes to building a good gaming notebook. Perhaps most importantly, the performance is good, the keyboard and touchpad work well, and the display also looks nice./news/corsair-unveils-dominator-titanium-ddr5-kits-reaching-for-ddr5.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-unveils-dominator-titanium-ddr5-kits-reaching-for-ddr5.htmlCorsair has introduced its new Dominator Titanium series of DDR5 memory modules that will combine performance, capacity, and style. The new lineup of memory modules and kits will offer DRAM kits up to 192 GB in capacity at data transfer rates as high as DDR5-8000. The Dominator Titanium DIMMs are based on cherry-picked memory chips and Corsair's own printed circuit boards to ensure signal quality and integrity. Also, these PCBs are supplemented with internal cooling planes and external thermal pads that transfer heat to aluminum heat spreaders, with an aim on keeping the heavily overclocked DRAM sufficiently cooled./news/crysis-warhead-nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/crysis-warhead-nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga.htmlCrysis: Warhead Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even four years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card./news/dell-build-quality-and-aesthetics-600-notebook-roundup.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-build-quality-and-aesthetics-600-notebook-roundup.htmlThe Inspiron 2200 is fairly well built and felt quite solid, especially compared to the Compaq offerings.  The unit has the most subtle and arguably sleek design out of the bunch, being completely constructed out of black plastic.  While the Gateway and Compaq designs make use of silver of varying shades and sometimes mixing in black, Dell's design is a lot more plain, and honestly, it works a lot better.  The design of the Inspiron 2200 is far more likely to age better and just has a lot less going on./news/design-and-accessories-the-amazon-kindle-oasis-2017-review.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/design-and-accessories-the-amazon-kindle-oasis-2017-review.htmlDesign Amazon has taken an unorthodox approach to the design of the Kindle Oasis for 2017. It’s asymmetrical, with thin bezels on three sides, and a much larger bezel on one side. That same side has a bulge on the back, which houses most of the circuitry and battery storage. The asymmetrical design shifts the center of gravity of the device to one side, which makes it easier to hold in one hand, since the device will have less leverage on your muscles./news/evga-s-geforce-gtx-260-core-216-superclocked-the.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/evga-s-geforce-gtx-260-core-216-superclocked-the.htmlEVGA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SuperclockedIn North America there are only two vendors launching a Core 216 today: EVGA and BFG. We're not sure what this will mean for street pricing and availability but it is what it is. EVGA sent us one of their Core 216 cards, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked. As the name implies, the Superclocked version will ship overclocked:   GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (stock) EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Core Clock 576MHz 626MHz Shader Clock 1242MHz 1350MHz Memory Clock 999MHz 1053MHz Price Point $279 $299  /news/fully-buffered-dimm-an-unnecessary-requirement.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fully-buffered-dimm-an-unnecessary-requirement.htmlThe Intel D5400XS is quite possibly the most impressive part of the entire Skulltrail platform. Naturally it features two LGA-771 sockets, connected to Intel's 5000 chipset via two 64-bit FSB interfaces. The chipset supports the 1600MHz FSB required by the QX9775 but it will work with all other LGA-771 Xeon processors, in case you happen to have some laying around your desk too. Thanks to the Intel 5400 chipset, the D5400XS can only use Fully Buffered DIMMs./news/gaming-performance-cyberpowerpc-s-gamer-xtreme-4000-now-with.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-cyberpowerpc-s-gamer-xtreme-4000-now-with.htmlGaming Performance The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 in the CyberPower 4000 is no slouch, but it's facing tough competition from some of the other desktops we've tested. Keep in mind that the 4000 is also the least expensive desktop (or at least quoted least expensive) in our lineup, though. Starting with the "High" preset we'll see if the i7 can pick up some of the slack here, but we expect the 4000 to generally fall in about the middle of the pack./news/gaming-performance-intel-s-core-i7-870-i5-750.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-intel-s-core-i7-870-i5-750.htmlFallout 3 Game PerformanceBethesda’s latest game uses an updated version of the Gamebryo engine (Oblivion). This benchmark takes place immediately outside Vault 101. The character walks away from the vault through the Springvale ruins. The benchmark is measured manually using FRAPS. The numbers are all very close, but the Core i7 870 edges out the 975 for the lead here. The i5 750 manages to outperform the i7 920 thanks to its more aggressive turbo modes./news/gigabyte-server-launches-the-mw70-3s0-targeting-3x-pcie.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-server-launches-the-mw70-3s0-targeting-3x-pcie.htmlIf you’ve been following motherboard coverage over the past few years, you can’t help but notice that all the major consumer players also have their own server based business units that primarily sell to businesses. They each have a varying amount of input into the consumer space, but ultimately it depends on the product line. ASRock has their ASRock Rack brand (which should be called ASRack in my opinion!) that has had success on the consumer side with the likes of the C2750D4I which we reviewed, but they also produce a full line of products./news/gtx-680m-vs-hd-7970m-the-big-picture.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gtx-680m-vs-hd-7970m-the-big-picture.htmlGTX 680M vs. HD 7970M – the Big Picture Our 2012 gaming suite currently ranges in age from over two years old (Civ5) to as recent as 11 months old (Batman), with an average age of around 16 months. Hardware and games have both changed during that time, so we dug through our games folder and added a few other titles to the mix. Okay, truth be told, we actually have quite a few gaming codes from AMD and NVIDIA (as well as Guild Wars 2 from ArenaNet), and we figured a selection of games from both sides should be more or less “fair”./news/gv100-for-3000-on-sale-now.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gv100-for-3000-on-sale-now.htmlOut of nowhere, NVIDIA has revealed the NVIDIA Titan V today at the 2017 Neural Information Processing Systems conference, with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang flashing out the card on stage. A mere 7 months after Volta was announced with the Tesla V100 accelerator and the GV100 GPU inside it, NVIDIA continues its breakneck pace by releasing the GV100-powered Titan V, available for sale today. Aimed at a decidedly more compute-oriented market than ever before, the 815 mm2 behemoth die that is GV100 is now available to the broader public./news/integrated-graphics-and-sli-in-one.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/integrated-graphics-and-sli-in-one.htmlAfter being blitzed by the NVIDIA marketing machine at CES 2008 about upcoming chipsets, we were excited about the technological possibilities NVIDA was planning to deliver a few weeks later. As it turns out, it was a few months later but as of today NVIDIA is officially introducing the nForce 780a SLI chipset and its family companions, the 750a SLI and 730a chipsets. At first look, it appears NVIDIA has mastered the marketing checklist with features ranging from HyperTransport 3./news/intel-and-raptr-announce-partnership-to-bring-raptr-to.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-and-raptr-announce-partnership-to-bring-raptr-to.htmlDennis Fong’s Raptr is a utility that has made a name for itself in the PC GPU space in a relatively short period of time. After pivoting off of their original designs to be a chat client, the company struck a deal with AMD in 2013 to become a quasi-second party GPU utility developer. As part of their AMD partnership, Raptr provided AMD with a branded version of their client (AMD Gaming Evolved App) and its game settings recommendation service, and more recently Raptr has added other GPU-centric features like GameDVR hardware accelerated game recording./news/kincredible-packaging-microsoft-s-kin-a-eulogy.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kincredible-packaging-microsoft-s-kin-a-eulogy.htmlIn another review, Anand wrote some words that I can't get out in my head because they're so true: "Apple has started a trend of companies spending entirely too much on packaging." Truer words haven't been spoken, but the KIN did have some of the most unique packaging I've ever seen. There's been some other memorable packaging out there, including the 'Hacker Edition' N900 packaging which requires using terminal commands over serial to open the box./news/lenovo-thinkstation-p720-p920-now-with-cascade-lake-quadro.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lenovo-thinkstation-p720-p920-now-with-cascade-lake-quadro.htmlLenovo on Tuesday introduced upgraded versions of its ThinkStation P720 and ThinkStation P920 workstations. The new machines are based on Intel’s second-generation Xeon Scalable processors codenamed Cascade Lake and add support for NVIDIA’s latest Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card. Lenovo’s new ThinkStation P720 and ThinkStation P920 workstations are based on up to two Intel Xeon Scalable processors featuring up to 28 cores per socket and running at up to 4.4 GHz./news/matrox-adopts-intel-alchemist-gpus-for-new-luma-graphics.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/matrox-adopts-intel-alchemist-gpus-for-new-luma-graphics.htmlWhile they've long since given up developing GPUs, Matrox has remained a notable player in the video card industry for over four decades. These days, the company has settled into a modest role of providing graphics cards based on other vendors' GPUs for use in niche or boutique use cases, where Matrox can differentiate based on their software and support. And while their sales volume as a whole is limited, there's a certain degree of validation that comes from Matrox tapping a vendor's GPUs for their latest video cards./news/metro-exodus-the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/metro-exodus-the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx.htmlby Ryan Smith on July 7, 2019 12:00 PM EST 135 Comments | 135 Comments Metro Exodus Assassin's Creed Odyssey Strange Brigade ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiKoaenZJavsMSxZmpsZmaFgK%2Bvmp6edWRbrq24nH%2BYpauVW8CwvtN2Z1%2BokZyyfoOFrKOun22ptaZ5wKabZqqRmbKwuoyrr2ZtZ2V9bsTTZqmxZWVsfXF50Z6top2n/news/microsoft-catapult-intel-s-hybrid-and-xilinx-opencl.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-catapult-intel-s-hybrid-and-xilinx-opencl.htmlThere has been some activity in the FPGA realm lately.  First, Microsoft has published a paper at ISCA (a very well-known peer-reviewed computer architecture conference) about using FPGAs in datacenters for page ranking processing for Bing. In a test deployment, MS reported up to 95% more throughput for only 10% more power. The added total cost of ownership (TCO) was less than 30%. Microsoft used Altera Stratix V FPGAs in a PCIe form-factor with 8GB of DDR3 RAM on each board./news/more-greenlow-motherboards-announced-asrock-rack-s-c230-series.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-greenlow-motherboards-announced-asrock-rack-s-c230-series.htmlOn the back of Intel’s muted launch for the Xeon E3-1200 v5 platform, the server based business units from normal motherboards consumer facing companies are announcing their C230 series. We covered GIGABYTE Server’s offering in a previous pipeline post, and next up comes ASRock Rack with ATX, microATX and mini-ITX offerings for workstations set up for server-based airflow. C236 WS First up is the full ATX model, giving support for dual PCIe co-processors at PCIe 3./news/nvidia-brings-back-destiny-2-bundle-again-for-gtx.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-brings-back-destiny-2-bundle-again-for-gtx.htmlFor what is the 3rd time this year, NVIDIA is offering the “New Legends Will Rise” Destiny 2 bundle for GeForce GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti graphics cards, systems, and laptops. From today until November 29th (or while supplies last), qualified purchases will come with a digital copy of Destiny 2 via Blizzard Desktop App, officially launching on October 24th for PC. As a reminder, eligible systems may include NVIDIA’s own GeForce GTX Battlebox PCs./news/oculus-announces-six-week-sale-of-399-rift-touch.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/oculus-announces-six-week-sale-of-399-rift-touch.htmlUpdate: On 7/14/17, Oculus permanently reduced the cost of the Rift + Touch bundle to $499. Meanwhile, the bundle is still available for $399 for the next six weeks. In the spirit of summer sales and their own “Summer of Rift,” Facebook subsidiary Oculus VR has announced that the Rift + Touch bundle is now on sale for $399. The bundle includes the headset, a pair of Touch controllers, two sensors, an Xbox One wireless controller, a remote, and cables, including connectors for Rock Band VR guitar controllers./news/oculus-quest-can-now-tether-to-pcs.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/oculus-quest-can-now-tether-to-pcs.htmlOculus VR this week started to distribute its Oculus Link software, enabling owners of the standalone Oculus Quest VR headsets to connect them to gaming PCs and play games originally developed with the Rift and Rift S in mind. For now, VR gamers will have to use a quality third-party USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C cable, but later on the company promises to release its own long cable. From now, a beta version of the Oculus Link application for Oculus Quest is available from Oculus VR as a part of the Gear VR Build 11./news/p182-special-edition-one-of-the-best-cases-gets.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/p182-special-edition-one-of-the-best-cases-gets.htmlIntroductionAntec has been around a long time in the case industry, and as such they've learned how to do many things exceptionally well. If any sweeping statements could be made about their approach to product design, we would have to say that they always seem to aim right in the middle of marrying current demands for popular aesthetics with pushing the envelope implementing new ideas and features. This approach keeps their cases one step ahead of most of the competition - even at their competitive price points./news/performance-hdd-and-ssd-buffalo-ministation-thunderbolt-review.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-hdd-and-ssd-buffalo-ministation-thunderbolt-review.htmlTo test the MiniStation Thunderbolt I turned to a combination of Intech’s QuickBench and the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test application from the Mac App store. I tested on my 2011 MacBook Pro, which has a first generation Light Ridge Thunderbolt controller inside. For testing on OS X, I used native HFS+ formatting for the MiniStation. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test - 2011 MBP   500 GB HDD 240 GB OCZ Vertex 3   Read (MB/s) Write (MB/s) Read (MB/s) Write (MB/s) USB 2./news/saving-power-at-low-load.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/saving-power-at-low-load.htmlSaving Power at Low Load Measuring idle power is important in some applications as operating system schedulers may choose to "race to idle", i.e. perform the task as quickly as possible so the CPU can return to an idle state. This strategy is only worthwhile if the idle state consumes very little power, but lots of server applications are running at relatively low but almost never "zero" load. One example is a web server that is visited all around the globe./news/ssd-and-usb-3-0-performance-of-the-retina.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ssd-and-usb-3-0-performance-of-the-retina.htmlTwo major upgrades offered to all of Apple's new MacBook lineup are updated SSDs and native USB 3.0 support. The same updated SSD is present across all of Apple's lineup: from the MacBook Air to the next-gen MacBook Pro. Based on the model number in Apple's System Report I'd guess my review sample features a Samsung based drive. Toshiba was a secondary source in the past, and with its announcement of a 6Gbps controller I wouldn't be surprised to find that in systems as well./news/the-card-guillemot-hercules-3d-prophet-ii-gts-64mb.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-card-guillemot-hercules-3d-prophet-ii-gts-64mb.htmlThe Card As seems to be the recent trend in GeForce 2 cards, the 3D Prophet II GTS 64MB comes with plenty of eye candy, features which immediately strike the potential buyers. Of the GeForce 2 GTS cards we have seen come in the lab, the 3D Prophet II GTS 64 seems to be the most visually pleasing Not only is the card manufactured on a blue PCB (color which is simply a product of the dye used in the PCB's manufacture), but ever component on the card shares this color scheme, making the card go nicely with the blue Windows desktop theme./news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review-featuring-evga.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review-featuring-evga.htmlLast week we took a look at NVIDIA’s newest consumer flagship video card, the GeForce GTX 980. Based on the company’s new GM204 GPU, GTX 980 further cemented NVIDIA’s ownership of the performance crown with a combination of performance improvements, new features, and power consumption reductions. Combined with a lower price than the now-dethroned GTX 780 Ti, GTX 980 is an impressive flagship with a mix of attributes that NVIDIA hopes to entice existing 600 and 500 series owners to upgrade to./news/the-samsung-950-pro-pcie-ssd-review-256gb-and.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-samsung-950-pro-pcie-ssd-review-256gb-and.htmlAfter shipping two generations of M.2 drives with PCIe interfaces for OEM customers, Samsung is releasing a PCIe drive to the retail market which has the added benefit of including the latest features Samsung offers. The Samsung 950 Pro is the new flagship consumer drive and it eschews the backwards compatibility and the 2.5" SATA form factor of the three previous iterations of the 8xx Pro family in favor of a PCI Express 3./news/the-sony-xperia-x-preview.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-sony-xperia-x-preview.htmlFor some time now, Sony has been mostly absent from the US market. While we’ve seen devices here and there, there have been issues with keeping launches aligned, and for the most part by the time an Xperia phone launches in the US it’s already on the verge of being irrelevant as the 6 month launch cycle of Xperia phones in the past meant that slipping by even a few months resulted in noticeable deltas when comparing US and international models./news/the-two-most-hilarious-miyamoto-pictures-nintendo-s-development.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-two-most-hilarious-miyamoto-pictures-nintendo-s-development.htmlThe Two Most Hilarious Miyamoto PicturesBefore I get off the Miyamoto topic entirely I want to share two things that transpired during the keynote. First, Nintendo’s president talked about how Miyamoto engages in random employee kidnapping. He grabs an employee at random from the halls of Nintendo and makes him/her play one of these games in production. The employee doesn’t give any feedback; there are no forms or anything else formal, he/she just has to play the game and have fun - if that’s possible./news/video-recording-speaker-evaluation.htmlMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/video-recording-speaker-evaluation.htmlVideo Recording Video recording on the OnePlus 7 Pro is a bit more disappointing that what you’d expect the phone to be capable of. The core issue first and foremost is the fact that currently video recording is only possible on the main camera sensor. There are some ways to switch over to the wide-angle, however this is not supported by default in camera applications. EIS is engaged for the 1080p30 and 4K30 recording modes only, and there’s some issues with the implementation./news/3-way-p4-ddr-motherboard-roundup.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3-way-p4-ddr-motherboard-roundup.htmlOut of all the semiconductor industries in existence, there aren’t many with as much competition as the CPU chipset market can claim. There are a grand total of 7 companies producing chipsets for Pentium 4, Athlon XP, or future generation platforms (Intel, AMD, VIA, SiS, NVIDIA, ATI, and ALI). Intel is the largest chipset maker of them all, but two other companies are battling it out for the runner-up position, namely VIA and SiS./news/5th-generation-wifi-802-11ac-gigabit-wifi-primer.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/5th-generation-wifi-802-11ac-gigabit-wifi-primer.htmlFive years have passed since the first 802.11n devices implementing a draft of the now-finalized specification hit the market. Over the years 802.11n support has become ubiquitous in the industry. Everything from smartphones to high-end notebooks support the standard. Even low cost products like the $99 Apple TV or $49 Roku LT ship with 802.11n support. With real world transfer speeds ranging from 30Mbps at the low end to 150Mbps at the high end, 802./news/a-32-inch-pro-monitor-with-wide-color-gamuts.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-32-inch-pro-monitor-with-wide-color-gamuts.htmlBenQ has introduced a new 32-inch professional-grade display designed for photographers and post-production specialists. Dubbed the SW321C, the monitor is for professionals who need wide color spaces like the Adobe RGB and the DCI-P3, as well as HDR transport support. And, like many other contemporary displays, BenQ’s new LCD is equipped with a USB Type-C input. Under the hood, the BenQ AQColor SW321C uses a 10-bit 32-inch IPS panel featuring a 3840×2160 resolution, a 250 nits typical brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, a 5 ms GtG response time, a 60 Hz refresh rate, and 178° viewing angles./news/acer-aspire-s3-vs-asus-ux31e.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-aspire-s3-vs-asus-ux31e.htmlIntroducing the Ultrabook Contenders When Intel initially put out the idea of the ultrabook as a new type of laptop, I admit harboring plenty of skepticism—isn’t the ultrabook just a gussied up rebranding of an ultraportable? Unfortunately, being a skeptic/cynic  has served me well over the years, and so now here I sit in front of two ultrabooks trying to determine a couple of things: which ultrabook is the “best” right now, and are any of them actually worth buying./news/amd-to-license-out-radeon-gpu-ip-to-samsung.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-to-license-out-radeon-gpu-ip-to-samsung.htmlToday Samsung and AMD announced a new multi-year strategic partnership between the two companies, where Samsung SLSI will license graphics IP from AMD for use in mobile GPUs. The announcement is a major disruptive move for the mobile graphics landscape as it signifies that Samsung is going forward with the productization of their own in-house GPU architecture in future Exynos chipsets. Samsung is said to have started work on their own “S-GPU” at its research division back around in 2012, with the company handing over the new IP to a new division called “ACL”, or Advanced Computing Lab in San Jose, which has a joint charter with SARC (Samsung Austin R&D Center, where Samsung currently designs its custom mobile CPU & memory controller IP)./news/apple-announces-ios-14-and-ipados-14-an-overview.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-announces-ios-14-and-ipados-14-an-overview.htmlAmongst today’s Apple’s WWDC historic announcements, such as the company’s switch from x86 to Arm processor architectures, we also saw the launch of the new iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 which bring new features to the company’s mobile devices. Home screen: App Library and Widgets Starting off with the home screen, for the first time in many generations we’re seeing some substantial changes to this part of iOS and iPhones./news/apple-announces-new-airport-extreme-and-time-capsule-with.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-announces-new-airport-extreme-and-time-capsule-with.htmlDuring the opening WWDC 2013 keynote, Apple announced a refresh of its AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule with support for 802.11ac. The two include 3x3:3 802.11ac with support for a PHY rate of up to 1300 Mbps and of course simultaneous 3x3:3 802.11n on 2.4 GHz (ac applies to 5 GHz only of course). From the outside, the new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule look like a taller version of the AirPort Express which was released in 2012./news/asus-announces-rog-phone-7-rog-phone-7-ultimate.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-announces-rog-phone-7-rog-phone-7-ultimate.htmlMany gaming-eccentric smartphones may already be on the market, but Asus wants that throne all for itself. The company recently announced its latest ROG Phone 7 series of high-end gaming smartphones during their "For Those Who Dare" virtual event. The ROG Phone 7 series targets enthusiast mobile gamers. Asus has revealed two models for this generation: the ROG Phone 7 and ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. Both devices share identical specifications, while the Ultimate variant has a few extra bells and whistles that may interest some gamers./news/asus-rampage-iv-black-edition-review.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rampage-iv-black-edition-review.htmlWhen Ivy Bridge-E arrived, there was discontent at the lack of a new chipset.  Users who wanted to migrate to the high performance end of the spectrum received a relatively small bump in performance over Sandy Bridge-E and Haswell on the mainstream was offering better IPC.  To compound all this, the X79 chipset looks dated, with no native USB 3.0 and only two SATA 6 Gbps.  ASUS have tried to address this balance somewhat by releasing an upgrade to the bestselling X79 motherboard: the Rampage IV Black Edition is an evolution of the Rampage IV Extreme, incorporating as many aspects of the Maximus Z87 series as possible into an antiquated chipset./news/asus-rog-xg-station-2-egfx-enclosure-with-thunderbolt.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-xg-station-2-egfx-enclosure-with-thunderbolt.htmlASUS last week finally launched theROG XG Station 2 external GPU chassis, to enable Thunderbolt 3 systems to implement discrete graphics. The eGFX enclosure from ASUS integrates a 600 W PSU to ensure compatibility with power-hungry graphics adapters, and can house not only a video card but also an additional 2.5” storage device and bundles in extra USB 3.0 ports. The design of the external GPU box features signature ‘Republic of Gamers’ elements with red LEDs and Mayan-style patterning./news/biostar-reveals-two-amd-am4-crypto-mining-motherboards.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/biostar-reveals-two-amd-am4-crypto-mining-motherboards.htmlAlthough largely overshadowed by more efficient ASIC rigs, there are still people using GPUs to accumulate digital currencies and/or create cheap OpenCL based systems. It is with those users in mind that BIOSTAR has now expanded their lineup of specialized cryptocurrency mining motherboards to include two new AMD AM4 models. Referred to as the TA320-BTC and TB350-BTC, these are the first AM4-based crypto mining motherboards announced, and as such make BIOSTAR the only manufacturer to offer mining motherboards for both mainstream platforms./news/calibration-200-nits-2-2-gamma-target.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/calibration-200-nits-2-2-gamma-target.htmlI calibrate every monitor using CalMAN V5 with an i1Pro spectrometer and a SpectraCal C6 colorimeter. Our first calibration target is for 200 nits of light output, the sRGB color gamut, and a power gamma of 2.2. For the calibration I used the Standard mode on the monitor, as that allowed access to the User Color Temperature control, which let me set 100% white correctly without using the video card LUT./news/compact-and-consistent-capacity-champ-gets-smr-right.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compact-and-consistent-capacity-champ-gets-smr-right.htmlCost-conscious consumers with bulk storage requirements need to rely on hard drives. On the portable front, HDD vendors have been using 2.5" drives in external bus-powered enclosures to serve the market. Seagate was the first vendor to put out a 5TB portable bus-powered drive, and Western Digital recently introduced a slew of 5TB models of their own. Similar to Seagate, Western Digital has also adopted SMR platters for their portable hard drives over the last couple of generations./news/controllers-and-tiger-lake-in-2020.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/controllers-and-tiger-lake-in-2020.htmlWired connectivity is converging onto two standards: USB4 and Thunderbolt 4. Both of these are set to debut by the end of the year in Intel’s upcoming Tiger Lake platform, and to set the scene Intel is updating us on the scope of its Thunderbolt 4 efforts. Thunderbolt 4 is going to be a superset of TB3 and USB4, meaning that any Thunderbolt 4 Type-C host will be able to accept TB4, TB3, USB4, and USB 3/2/1 connections./news/cooler-master-launches-masterliquid-ml360r-rgb-360-mm-aio.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cooler-master-launches-masterliquid-ml360r-rgb-360-mm-aio.htmlCooler Master this week introduced its new closed-loop liquid cooling solution featuring customizable RGB LED lighting and a 360-mm radiator. The MasterLiquid ML360R RGB is the company’s first cooler with such a large radiator and is therefore among the most capable liquid cooling systems (LCS) that Cooler Master has released to date. Following the latest trends, the new cooling system has 36 independently controlled RGB LEDs: 12 in the pump and eight in every fan./news/dfi-nf4-infinity-investigations-into-socket-939-athlon-64.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dfi-nf4-infinity-investigations-into-socket-939-athlon-64.htmlDFI nF4 InfinityWe wanted to spend a few minutes looking at the motherboard options before continuing - a mini review if you will, as we haven't officially reviewed this board and we want to compare it to the LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D. We're using the DFI NF4 INFINITY, but it is actually just the new name for the DFI NF4-DAGF. There are multiple models of the INFINITY/DAGF, using everything from the base nForce4 4X chipset to the top nForce4 Ultra and SLI./news/hitman-absolution-nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review-the-400.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hitman-absolution-nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review-the-400.htmlHitman: Absolution The third game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess. Under Hitman the GTX 770 once more goes back to trailing AMD’s 7970 cards./news/hp-stream-11-review-a-new-take-on-low.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-stream-11-review-a-new-take-on-low.htmlDesign Looking at the HP Stream, the first thing that catches your attention is the brilliant Horizon Blue color scheme. There is also a model with Orchid Magenta as the base, and both of these colors really set the Stream apart from the myriad of black and grey laptops we have become accustomed to. The shell is all plastic (again, $199 price point) but the outside is not glossy and seems fairly resistant to fingerprints./news/in-and-around-the-ibuypower-battalion-m1771-msi-gs70.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-ibuypower-battalion-m1771-msi-gs70.htmlIt's true the iBuyPower Battalion M1771 (MSI GS70) cribs from Razer's playbook (in turn cribbing very liberally from Apple's), but it's also a smart choice on MSI's part. Even if you're not among the Apple devoted (and happily I'm not), it's difficult to find too much fault with Apple's industrial design on their notebooks. Lifting that, painting it black, and sticking it on a gaming notebook is a pretty solid plan, all things considered./news/intel-announces-new-wave-of-optane-and-3d-nand.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-announces-new-wave-of-optane-and-3d-nand.htmlToday Intel is announcing updates to most of their SSD product lines. Their products based on 3D NAND are being updated to use Intel's 144-layer QLC and TLC NAND. On the Optane side of the business, we have detailed specifications for the first product to use second-generation 3D XPoint memory, and an updated Optane Memory caching solution for client PCs. Intel has also revealed the code name for their third-generation Optane persistent memory modules, which will be launching along Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors./news/intel-confirms-comet-lake-based-nuc-10-frost-canyon.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-confirms-comet-lake-based-nuc-10-frost-canyon.htmlIntel has officially confirmed plans to release its NUC10 ‘Frost Canyon’ ultra-compact form-factor PCs with mobile Comet Lake processors. The main selling point of the systems will be CPUs with up to six x86 cores as well as support for up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory, offering the laptop platform in a pint-sized desktop form factor. Intel’s NUC 10 ‘Frost Canyon’ lineup is based on Intel’s 10th Generation Core i3-10110U/i5-10210U/i7-10710U processors with two, four, or six cores, as well as UHD Graphics./news/much-prettier-than-the-original.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/much-prettier-than-the-original.htmlMicrosoft took a page from Sony’s playbook and outfitted the new Xbox 360 with all touch sensitive buttons. The eject button is much smaller but extremely sensitive, not to mention you get a loud beep whenever you hit it. There are no issues with knowing whether or not you hit the eject button. The power button is pretty much the same way, a light tap will toggle it and send you on your way./news/new-industry-high-speed-interconnect-from-intel.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-industry-high-speed-interconnect-from-intel.htmlWith the battleground moving from single core performance to multi-core acceleration, a new war is being fought with how data is moved around between different compute resources. The Interconnect Wars are truly here, and the battleground just got a lot more complicated. We’ve seen NVLink, CCIX, and GenZ come out in recent years as offering the next generation of host-to-device and device-to-device high-speed interconnect, with a variety of different features. Now CXL, or Compute Express Link, is taking to the field./news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-rx-480-preview.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-rx-480-preview.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise Given AMD’s focus on power efficiency with Polaris – not to mention the overall benefits of the move to 14nm FinFET – there is a lot of interest in just how the RX 480 stacks up when it comes to power, temperature, and noise. So without further ado… When it comes to idle power consumption I'm posting the results I've measured as-is, but I want to note that I have low confidence in these results for the AMD cards./news/raid-0-1-and-conclusion-raid-primer-what-s.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/raid-0-1-and-conclusion-raid-primer-what-s.htmlRAID 1+0 / 0+1RAID 1+0 (10) or 0+1 attempts to get the best of all worlds: It generally provides the best read and write performance, as well as offering a level of redundancy for its data when compared to RAID 0. Both RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0 are considered "nested" solutions, which is to say they use RAID 0's data striping and RAID 1's mirroring capabilities. The difference between the two is that RAID 1+0 (10) creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives while RAID 0+1 creates a second striped set to mirror the primary striped set./news/samsung-infuse-4g-announced.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-infuse-4g-announced.htmlRounding out the devices AT&T has announced this morning is the Samsung Infuse 4G, which packs a huge 4.5" Super AMOLED plus display. We're not certain what plus adds to super beyond even better sharpness and outdoor visibility. It's possible that super AMOLED plus includes a different subpixel pattern with greater density than Pentile, however we're not entirely certain yet.  The device is 9mm thin, which AT&T claims is its thinnest smartphone - sure enough, the iPhone 4 is just 0./news/signal-attenuation-and-wifi-performance.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/signal-attenuation-and-wifi-performance.htmlSignal Signal attenuation due to holding devices is now a very present concern. As usual, we’ve measured the BlackBerry Torch in three different positions and found that the Torch drops around the same amount of signal as other devices, and of course less than the iPhone 4.  The cellular antenna on the Torch is at the bottom, as is the case for most devices. You can see the flex PCB which houses the antenna at the bottom quite easily right here./news/spec2017-and-spec2006-results-15w.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/spec2017-and-spec2006-results-15w.htmlSection by Andrei Frumusanu SPEC2017 and SPEC2006 Results (15W) SPEC2017 and SPEC2006 is a series of standardized tests used to probe the overall performance between different systems, different architectures, different microarchitectures, and setups. The code has to be compiled, and then the results can be submitted to an online database for comparsion. It covers a range of integer and floating point workloads, and can be very optimized for each CPU, so it is important to check how the benchmarks are being compiled and run./news/the-300-b550-motherboard-with-chutzpah.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-300-b550-motherboard-with-chutzpah.htmlOutside of its Aqua series of motherboards, which come with exquisitely crafted monoblocks, ASRock's Taichi brand has been a critical part of the company's offerings in the land of premium motherboards. The ASRock B550 Taichi sits at the top of its product stack and features an impressive quality feature set. Some of the most notable features include a large 16-phase power delivery, eight SATA ports, dual M.2 slots, an Intel 2./news/the-design-nikon-4100-coolpix-4100-4-megapixel-entry.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-design-nikon-4100-coolpix-4100-4-megapixel-entry.htmlThe Design: Nikon 4100     Click images to enlarge. The front of the Nikon Coolpix 4100 features a 3x optical zoom lens with a 35mm equivalent range of 35mm - 105mm. Above and to the left of the lens are the AF-assist lamp and the built-in flash. To the upper right of the lens is the viewfinder window. The left side of the front is a contoured handgrip./news/the-features-speed-and-additional-comments.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-features-speed-and-additional-comments.htmlSpeed After a bit of use, there is no question that the S70 is a slow camera. First, as mentioned before, the extension of the lens at power on 3.5 seconds. A full boot from power on to still image mode take 6 seconds, quite a long time to wait when you have just the right picture. The camera takes about 1.3 seconds to auto focus and take a picture in the best situation./news/the-htc-one-review.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-htc-one-review.htmlIt is nearly impossible to begin to review the HTC One without some context, and I’ll begin our review of the HTC One (formerly the device known as codename M7) much the same way I did my impressions piece simply by stating that HTC is in an interesting position as a result of last year’s product cycle. If there’s one thing Anand has really driven home for me in my time writing for AnandTech, it’s that in the fast-paced mobile industry, a silicon vendor or OEM really only has to miss one product cycle in a very bad way to get into a very difficult position./news/the-intel-ssd-760p-512gb-review-mainstream-nvme-done.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-intel-ssd-760p-512gb-review-mainstream-nvme-done.htmlToday Intel is launching a new NVMe SSD for consumers. The Intel SSD 760p is a M.2 SSD featuring Intel's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash and a new Silicon Motion controller, and it will compete as an entry-level NVMe SSD. Based on the model number, the Intel SSD 760p would appear to be successor to the Intel SSD 750. However, the 750 was a top of the line premium SSD for its time, and Intel's Optane products are now covering that market segment./news/triple-buffering-why-we-love-it.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/triple-buffering-why-we-love-it.htmlWe often neglect to get too involved in the discussion of what options people should always enable when they play games. Rather, we tend to focus on what we test with. Honestly, our recommended settings for playing the games we test would be very similar to the settings we use to benchmark with one very important exception: we would enable triple buffering (which implies vsync) whenever possible. While it's not an available option in all games, it really needs to be, and we are here to make the case for why gamers should use triple buffering and why developers need to support it./news/up-to-2-4-tb-10k-rpm-sas.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-2-4-tb-10k-rpm-sas.htmlToshiba has announced that it has begun sampling of its new generation of SAS hard drives with a 10,500 RPM spindle speed. The new AL15SE HDDs are aimed at mission critical applications that still rely on traditional magnetic recording technology and have not yet migrated to SSDs. The key advantage of the new HDDs versus their predecessors are their increased capacity and performance. The Toshiba AL15SE family of hard drives comes in traditional enterprise HDD form-factor of 2./news/website-mcs-efms-windows-2003-32-bit-ee.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/website-mcs-efms-windows-2003-32-bit-ee.htmlOperating System:Windows 2003 R2 – 32 bit Software:MCS eFMS 9.2 Benchmark software:vApus + realworld “MCS” PHP site Typical error margin:1-2% The modular MCS Enterprise Facility Management Software (MCS eFMS), developed by MCS, is one of the heavier web applications. We have described this application in more detail here. The objective of eFMS is to integrate the management of space usage (buildings), assets and equipment (such as furniture, beamers etc.), cabling infrastructure and others while keeping track of costs./news/what-time-is-it-ram.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-time-is-it-ram.htmlMemory Timings and Bandwidth Explained With that brief overview of the memory subsystem, we are ready to talk about memory timings. There are usually four and sometimes five timings listed with memory. They are expressed as a set of numbers, e.g. 2-3-2-7, corresponding to CAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS. On modules that list a fifth number, it is usually the CMD value, e.g. 1T. Some might also include a range for the tRAS value./news/workstation-performance-asus-p5wdg2-ws-intel-975x-goes-to.htmlSun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/workstation-performance-asus-p5wdg2-ws-intel-975x-goes-to.htmlWorkstation Performance The Asus P5WDG2-WS is competitive with the other boards and manages to top the P5N32-SLI in three areas.Memory Performance The memory latency test continues to show an advantage for the nForce4's memory controller. This is an outstanding result and shows NVIDIA's ability to engineer and produce a competitive component. However, the 975X chipset improves significantly over the 955X in the latency tests. Enabling Hyper Path 3 on the Asus board improves latency scores by 2%./news/1920-cuda-cores-boosting-to-1-68ghz.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/1920-cuda-cores-boosting-to-1-68ghz.htmlBack when NVIDIA first announced the GeForce GTX 1080 earlier this month, they also briefly announced that the GTX 1070 would be following it. The GTX 1070 would follow the GTX 1080 by two weeks, and presumably to keep attention focused on the GTX 1080 at first, NVIDIA did not initially reveal the full specifications for the card. Now with the GTX 1080 performance embargo behind them – though cards don’t go on sale for another week and a half – NVIDIA has posted the full GTX 1070 specifications over on GeForce./news/a-5-94-inch-smartphone-at-139.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-5-94-inch-smartphone-at-139.htmlAlcatel introduced its new entry-level smartphone that is equipped with a 5.9-inch display, a quad-core Qualcomm SoC, 16 GB of NAND storage, facial recognition, and a dual camera, a combination of features typically not found on low-end handsets. Alcatel 3L is the latest addition to the company’s 3-series range and will be priced at around €139. One of the key selling points of modern smartphones is their display. Entry-level models tend to come with relatively small low-quality screens and cheap SoCs, which negatively affects user experience./news/a-look-at-what-s-to-come.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-look-at-what-s-to-come.htmlEarlier this month NVIDIA announced their latest generation flagship GeForce card, the GeForce GTX 1080. Based on their new Pascal architecture and built on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process, the GTX 1080 is being launched as the first 16nm/14nm-based video card, and in time-honored fashion NVIDIA is starting at the high-end. The end result is that the GTX 1080 will be setting the new high mark for single-GPU performance. Unlike past launches, NVIDIA is stretching out the launch of the GTX 1080 a bit more./news/agm-s-x3-with-ip68-coming-summer-2018.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/agm-s-x3-with-ip68-coming-summer-2018.htmlUnlike previous years, where Mobile World Congress would showcase the premier devices on the latest chipsets, this year was more muted. The product cadence for most companies is slightly offset, due to chipset availability. Some companies were not announcing their latest devices, while others were previewing what is to come. So any device manufacturer willing to state they have a device with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 SoC in the pipeline was interesting news./news/asus-unveils-zenbook-14-oled-intel-evo-laptop-with.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-unveils-zenbook-14-oled-intel-evo-laptop-with.htmlAs part of its desire to upgrade its existing laptop and notebook ranges with the latest and greatest hardware available, ASUS has announced during CES 2022 that it has refreshed and updated its Zenbook range for the upcoming year. This includes both Intel and AMD variants of its Zenbook 14 OLED series. The Intel version (UX3402) comes equipped with the latest 12th generation Alder Lake mobile processor, as well as a 1 TB PCIe 4./news/battery-life-the-xiaomi-mi-mix-2s-review-fantastic.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-the-xiaomi-mi-mix-2s-review-fantastic.htmlBattery Life The Mi MIX 2S comes with a 3400mAh battery – a relatively average size given that now we’re starting to see competitor devices with similar form-factors employ 4000mAh units, such as the Huawei P20 Pro. The larger concern for me was how the increased performance characteristics of the Snapdragon 845 as well as the JDI panel will fare in terms of overall device efficiency. In the web browsing battery life test, the Mi MIX 2S lands with an average 9./news/bios-and-software-gigabyte-z590-aorus-tachyon-review-built.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-gigabyte-z590-aorus-tachyon-review-built.htmlBIOS The GIGABYTE UEFI firmware has remained consistent throughout the previous generations on both Intel and AMD models. Looking at the design, GIGABYTE is using a primarily black background with orange accents, white text and fits in with its Aorus gaming theme. The Z590 Aorus Tachyon BIOS has two primary modes, Easy Mode and Advanced Mode. Entering the firmware upon system POST and pressing the F2 key will bring users into the Easy Mode area of the firmware./news/bios-and-software-gigabyte-z790-aorus-xtreme-motherboard-review.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-gigabyte-z790-aorus-xtreme-motherboard-review.htmlBIOS Having seen GIGABYTE's UEFI BIOS many times, the firmware on GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme hasn't changed much from previous generations, especially not in terms of the overall theme. The GUI on GIGABYTE's UEFI firmware has Aorus-styled grey and orange highlighting along the top and white text, easily visible on the predominantly black background. Like other vendors, GIGABYTE has two primary BIOS modes for users to select. The first time a user initially boots into the firmware, it brings up the 'easy Mode,' while more advanced users looking to overclock and make other adjustments can press F2 to switch to the 'advanced mode./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-rendering-intel-core-i9-14900ks-review.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-rendering-intel-core-i9-14900ks-review.htmlCPU Benchmark Performance: Rendering Rendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-simulation-and-rendering.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-simulation-and-rendering.htmlSimulation and Science have a lot of overlap in the benchmarking world, however for this distinction we’re separating into two segments mostly based on the utility of the resulting data. The benchmarks that fall under Science have a distinct use for the data they output – in our Simulation section, these act more like synthetics but at some level are still trying to simulate a given environment. We are using DDR5 memory at the following settings:/news/deepbench-inference-rnn-sparse-gemm.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/deepbench-inference-rnn-sparse-gemm.htmlDeepBench Inference: RNN and Sparse GEMM Rounding out the last of our DeepBench inference tests are RNN and Sparse GEMM, both available in single precision only. That being said, the FP16 parameter could be selected anyway. Given the low results all around, this is more of an artifact than anything else. While RNNs might also be accelerated, DeepBench and NVIDIA only support single precision RNN inference at this time. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZH5zgpZsZq2hpJa7bsKMnZyeqF2hsqK%2BzaKloGWUmrKxecOirZ5nYWc%3D/news/deepcool-s-genome-is-a-water-cooling-equipped-case.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/deepcool-s-genome-is-a-water-cooling-equipped-case.htmlWe’ve dealt with closed loop liquid coolers for computer processors for the best part of five years now, and there are users different sides of the fence regarding their utility, ease-of-use or performance. There are chassis being designed with these CLLCs in mind, such that users have enough space to cool multiple CPUs or GPUs with plenty of mounting points. Deepcool, via their brand Gamer Storm, had a case on display designed to fit their specific cooler which aims more towards the aesthetic of the boring black CLLCs we have had up to this point./news/entry-level-pascal-for-laptops-just-in-time-for.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/entry-level-pascal-for-laptops-just-in-time-for.htmlThis morning NVIDIA has taken the wraps off of a new video card for laptops, the GeForce MX150. Aimed at the entry-level market for discrete GPUs – that is, laptops that need performance only a bit above an integrated GPU – the MX150 is NVIDIA’s Pascal-based successor to the previous 930M/940M series of laptop adapters that have been in computers over the last couple of years. Today’s reveal is undoubtedly tied to next week’s Computex trade show, so we should expect to see a number of laptops using the new adapter announced in the coming days./news/final-words-transcend-ssd370-128gb-256gb-512gb-review.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-transcend-ssd370-128gb-256gb-512gb-review.htmlFinal Words From the performance perspective, the SSD370 is a very competitive value drive. It doesn't top the charts, but it provides a very good balance of consistency and peak performance. In most workloads, particularly our real-world testing, the SSD370 performs better than the MX100 and Ultra II, which have been my go-to value drives. Under very intensive workloads, the ARC 100 is slightly faster thanks to its great consistency, but most people who are looking for value drives won't have such harsh usage anyway./news/gaming-benchmarks-intel-nuc5i7ryh-broadwell-u-iris-nuc-review.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-benchmarks-intel-nuc5i7ryh-broadwell-u-iris-nuc-review.htmlGaming Benchmarks Intel's integrated GPUs don't have a big name in the gaming community. Once in a while, Intel throws in a surprise. In the Haswell family, CPUs with Iris Pro graphics gave a pleasant surprise to casual gamers. In this section, we will identify whether the Intel Iris Graphics 6100 in the Core i7-5557U can provide an acceptable gaming experience. It will also be interesting to find out how it compares against the HD 6000 in the Core i5-5250U and the HD 5500 inthe Core i7-5500U (BRIX s)./news/going-for-power-is-105w-tdp-accurate.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/going-for-power-is-105w-tdp-accurate.htmlFor regular readers, we have covered the discrepancy in how different companies ascribe the Thermal Design Power to their product lines: While Intel’s TDP represents the internal power measured for long and sustained high performance (also motherboard dependent), AMD’s metric is more akin to actual thermal cooling requirements for a given cooler rating. That being said, the power consumption of AMD’s first and second generation Ryzen processors has often been parallel to the TDP rating on the box, with the CPU levelling out to the TDP value as we load up the cores with a high energy workload./news/gpu-tests-grand-theft-auto-dx11-1080p-4k.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-tests-grand-theft-auto-dx11-1080p-4k.htmlGPU Tests: Rocket League DX9 (1080p, 4K) GPU Tests: GTX 1080 at 8K and 16K Comments Locked 254 Comments View All Comments Dr. Swag - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link Is it just me that sees "[table]" in the test bed and setup part? :P Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link As always, still writing as the embargo passes :D Always down to the wire, then over the wire, and a hop skip and a jump into a fast typing frenzy of fastidious fire./news/huawei-launches-the-p30-and-p30-pro-p-is.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-launches-the-p30-and-p30-pro-p-is.htmlThe latest update in Huawei’s P series smartphones are the new P30 and P30 Pro handsets, launched today in Paris. These new devices hope to push the reason why the P series exists – to go above and beyond when it comes to photography. The P30 and P30 Pro include Huawei’s new rear SuperSpectrum camera that allows more light into the sensor, and a front facing 32MP camera for better selfies./news/making-sense-of-the-intel-haswell-transactional-synchronization-extensions.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/making-sense-of-the-intel-haswell-transactional-synchronization-extensions.htmlMulti-core and Locking Intel has released additional information on their Transactional Synchronization technology (TSX), which is basically a instruction set architecture (ISA) extension to make hardware accelerated transactional memory possible. What does that mean in the real world? The more cores you get in a system, the more threads you need to keep them busy. Unfortunately, doing so is not that easy: threads have to work on shared data and need locks to make sure that the end result is correct./news/mercenaries-2-world-in-flames-pc-xbox-360-ps3.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mercenaries-2-world-in-flames-pc-xbox-360-ps3.htmlMultiplayer While Mercenaries 2 does not feature standard multiplayer modes for deathmatch and team play, it does offer cooperative gameplay. In this mode, players may simply drop into another player's game and assist during their campaign. In the options menu, the ability open your game up to a single joiner exists for those who desire an experience with friendly banter and twice the destruction. Those who want to jump into another player's game can use the same menu to search for an open game in progress and then dive right in./news/msi-mpg-z590-gaming-carbon-wifi.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-mpg-z590-gaming-carbon-wifi.htmlA mainstay from the MPG performance gaming series, the MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon WiFi is using a carbon fiber inspired design throughout. Opting for a more aggressive and futuristic look compared to its Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi model. From the black PCB to the black and slightly dark grey heatsinks throughout its design, MSI looks to stamp a new style to its motherboard range. Notably, the heatsink fan array on the power delivery heatsink is very striking, with an RGB-enabled rear panel cover, and more RGB LEDs integrated into the chipset heatsink./news/nvidia-announces-q3-fy-2020-earnings.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-announces-q3-fy-2020-earnings.htmlToday NVIDIA announced their results for the third quarter of their 2020 fiscal year, and the company’s results took a hit compared to their Q3 2019 results with earnings of $3.014 billion this quarter, down 5% year-over-year. Gross margin was up though to a very healthy 63.6%, up 3.2% from a year ago. Operating income was down 12% to $927 million, with net income down 27% to $899 million. Earnings-per-share fell to $1./news/nvidia-introduces-dual-cortex-a9-based-tegra-2.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-introduces-dual-cortex-a9-based-tegra-2.htmlA month ago NVIDIA shared this slide with me: It's a graph of the total available market, according to NVIDIA, for its Tegra SoC (System-on-Chip). This year alone NVIDIA estimates that there's around a $4B market for Tegra. Next year it grows to $6B. By 2013 the total available market for NVIDIA's Tegra SoC reaches over $10B. That's more money than NVIDIA ever made from the PC market. In order to compete in that space you need a competent chip./news/nvidia-releases-388-00-whql-game-ready-driver.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-388-00-whql-game-ready-driver.htmlUpdate (10/26/17): NVIDIA has released the 388.10 Hotfix Driver (non-WHQL), resolving stability issues on certain Kepler-based cards for Wolfenstein II. Ahead of tomorrow’s Destiny 2 launch, today NVIDIA has released driver version 388.00, featuring Game Ready support for the aforementioned Destiny 2, as well as the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Origins (10/27). As part of the 387 branch already introduced with 387.92, 388.00 is a more minor update and is not bringing any new features./news/nvidia-to-hold-special-geforce-livestream-on-may-6th.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-to-hold-special-geforce-livestream-on-may-6th.htmlNVIDIA has announced via their website and Twitter feed that the company will be holding a special GeForce livestream this week. The event be broadcast on NVIDIA’s Twitch channel. NVIDIA has not announced what the event will be for, or any content details, for that matter. However given that it’s a GeForce event and that NVIDIA has already announced their first Pascal architecture GPU for the HPC market, a similar consumer announcement does seem to be the most likely candidate./news/ocz-octane-128gb-ssd-review.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ocz-octane-128gb-ssd-review.htmlAn SSD State of the Union Update I'm very pleased with the level of acceptance of SSDs today. When the X25-M first hit the market and even for the year that followed, any positive SSD recommendation was followed by a discussion of how many VelociRaptors you could RAID together for the same price as one SSD. Now we have an entire category of notebooks that come standard with some degree of solid state storage./news/pcie-2-vs-pcie-3.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pcie-2-vs-pcie-3.htmlBack when I had Origin’s tri-Titan equipped Genesis in house, I received a few requests for benchmarks with PCIe 3 enabled. Because we tested the system with its default out of the box settings, the system was configured by default to only use PCIe 2 since NVIDIA does not officially support PCIe 3 on SNB-E based systems. As a result there was some interest in whether PCIe 3 would improve performance at all compared to PCIe 2, due to the high amount of PCIe bus traffic generated by three GTX Titan cards working together./news/premium-rocket-lake-with-tb4-and-4x-m-2.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/premium-rocket-lake-with-tb4-and-4x-m-2.htmlPrior to the release of Intel's 11th Generation Rocket Lake processors, motherboard vendors unveiled their ranges of Z590 motherboards ready for the realm of PCIe 4.0. We saw a lot of refreshed models, with the MSI MEG Z590 Ace being one of them. Typically positioned as a bridge between the mid-range and the flagship models, the Ace has offered exceptional features in the past, with slightly fewer bells and whistles of models such as MSI's Godlike, but still plenty to get excited about./news/ryzen-7000-i-o-die-tsmc-integrated-graphics-at.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ryzen-7000-i-o-die-tsmc-integrated-graphics-at.htmlWe’ll start our look at the Ryzen 7000 silicon with the glue that holds the chip together: the I/O Die (IOD). Whether it’s a 7600X or 7950X – one CPU chiplet or two – every Ryzen 7000 processor gets one of AMD’s new IODs. As with the Ryzen 3000/5000 series, the IOD is a die separate from the CPU core chiplets that hosts everything that isn’t the CPU cores or their associated L1/L2/L3 caches./news/samsung-announces-itunes-movie-tv-show-support-in-its.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-announces-itunes-movie-tv-show-support-in-its.htmlSamsung has announced that 2018 and 2019 Smart TVs will offer Apple iTunes Movies and TV Show support, along with support for Apple’s AirPlay 2. The surprise announcement made today has wider implications to Apple’s content service as well as future plans for the Apple TV hardware. The new “iTunes Movies and TV Shows” Smart TV application will be available on all new 2019 TV models from Samsung beginning this spring, as well as seeing support for 2018 models via firmware updates./news/samsung-ssd-840-preliminary-benchmarks.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-ssd-840-preliminary-benchmarks.htmlI just got back from Seoul last night where Samsung held their SSD Global Summit for the first time. As a souvenir, Samsung gave us all an 840 SSD because they were only able to ship 840 Pros for the initial reviews. While I haven't had time to run the 840 through all of our tests yet, I just finished running our Storage Bench suite and thought I would give you a quick teaser on its performance:/news/sandisk-professional-pro-blade-modular-ssd-ecosystem-unveiled.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-professional-pro-blade-modular-ssd-ecosystem-unveiled.htmlWestern Digital is announcing a host of products under the SanDisk and SanDisk Professional brands today at its What's Next Western Digital Event. The company also provided a second look at products introduced during the recently concluded NAB show - the G-DRIVE PRO STUDIO SSD with a 7.68TB enterprise-class desktop SSD inside, and the addition of 20TB Ultrastar drives to the G-RAID SHUTTLE 8 (driving up the top capacity to 160TB)./news/tag-heuer-unveils-the-intel-powered-connected-smartwatch.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tag-heuer-unveils-the-intel-powered-connected-smartwatch.htmlToday TAG Heuer, a traditional Swiss watchmaker, announced their entry into the world of smartwatches with the TAG Heuer Connected. This is really the first example of a luxury Android wear watch, and also the first example of a traditional mechanical watch manufacturer moving into the smartwatch space. The TAG Heuer Connected has a diameter of 46mm, a thickness of 12.8mm, and a mass of 52 grams. The chassis of the watch is made of titanium, and the LCD display is covered by a sheet of sapphire glass./news/testing-results-the-arctic-liquid-freezer-iii-280-a.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-results-the-arctic-liquid-freezer-iii-280-a.htmlTesting Results, Maximum Fan Speed Our maximum speed testing is performed with both the fans and the pump of the kit powered via a 12V DC source. This input voltage should have the pump and fans matching the speed ratings of the manufacturer. According to ARCTIC’s P14 PST fan specifications, the fans should have a maximum rotational speed of 1900 RPM. Our tachometer indicated that the fans were rotating at an average speed of exactly 1880 RPM, very close to their rated specifications./news/the-atx-3-0-era-has-begun.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-atx-3-0-era-has-begun.htmlJust under a year since the specification was first announced, the ATX 3.0 era for power supplies is now underway. The updated version of the Intel-maintained specification introduced several notable changes to PC power supply designs, most notably the introduction of the 600 Watt-capable 12VHPWR connector and associated cabling. Altogether, ATX 3.0 is designed to lay the groundwork for future video cards (and other high-powered accelerators) by providing for a single-cable power connection that can better accommodate the high total and rapid shifts in power consumption a video card can undergo./news/the-design-casio-qv-r51-5-megapixels-for-300.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-design-casio-qv-r51-5-megapixels-for-300.htmlThe Design: Casio QV-R51 88.3 x 60.4 x 33.4mm On the front of the camera, we can see the lens, the built-in flash, and a self-timer lamp. The lens is protected by a small automatic cover that opens before the lens extends and after the lens retracts. The lens has a 3x optical zoom and a 4x digital zoom. The optical zoom is equivalent to 39-117mm on a 35mm camera./news/the-interior-of-the-streacom-f12c-desktop-aluminum-case.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-interior-of-the-streacom-f12c-desktop-aluminum-case.htmlAccess to the interior of the Streacom F12C is deceptively simple. Two knobs can be seen at the back of the case that look like variable resistors / rheostats. Some might even confuse them for a fan controller. Actually, these knobs are the screws that hold the top panel attached to the body. Rotating them clockwise (they are upside down) will release the top panel. To reinstall it, simply place the top panel back on the case and rotate the knobs counterclockwise./news/the-polaris-connection-closing-thoughts.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-polaris-connection-closing-thoughts.htmlThe Polaris Connection Meanwhile perhaps the most surprising aspect of Sony’s announcement isn’t the specifications reveal, but rather that Mark Cerny directly referenced AMD’s Polaris architecture, stating that Sony/AMD "adopted many new features from the AMD Polaris architecture." This is a statement that has a lot of ramifications, but also a statement where nuance is critical because it’s so vague. To examine the Polaris connection, let’s take a step back in how AMD develops their GPU families./news/tiny-take-on-b360-sub-100.htmlSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tiny-take-on-b360-sub-100.htmlEveryone likes a good analysis of a Mini-ITX sized board, but this time we're looking at a  B360 chipset version. This chipset offers users the ability to jump into Coffee-Lake based CPUs who do not plan on overclocking. The ASRock B360M-ITX/ac we have on the test bench is a fully featured board with a single M.2 slot, Intel Networking (LAN and Wi-Fi), along with USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports.  ASRock B360M-ITX/ac Overview Over the past few weeks, we have looked at several small form factor (SFF) motherboards of all types./news/31-5-inch-144-hz-freesync-sub-400.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/31-5-inch-144-hz-freesync-sub-400.htmlLast fall AOC introduced its curved G1-series displays aimed at gamers, offering high refresh rates along with AMD’s FreeSync. This month the company has started selling its flagship G1 model, which has a QHD resolution, runs at 144 Hz, supports FreeSync, and has a 31.5 inch size. The CQ32G1 is now available both in Europe and the US at an MSRP below €400/$400. The AOC CQ32G1 relies on a 31.5-inch curved VA panel of 2560×1440 resolution, 300-nits peak brightness, a 3000:1 contrast ratio, 1 ms MPRT response times, and a 144 Hz refresh rate./news/6500-ion-tlc-and-xtr-slc.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/6500-ion-tlc-and-xtr-slc.htmlMicron is expanding its data center SSD lineup today with the introduction of two new products - the 6500 ION and the XTR NVMe SSDs. These two products do not fall into any of their existing enterprise SSD lineups. They are meant to fill holes in their product stack for high-capacity and high-endurance offerings. Micron's competitors have high-density QLC offerings in a variety of form factors for datacenters aiming to maximize the per-rack storage capacity./news/a-0-db-cooler-for-amd-s-threadripper.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-0-db-cooler-for-amd-s-threadripper.htmlAt an event for gamers in Leipzig, Germany, Arctic demonstrated a prototype of one the industry’s first partially-passive cooling systems for AMD’s Threadripper processors. The Freezer 50 TR is a sizable heatsink-fan cooler that is specifically designed to be able to cool a Threadripper processor passively under low loads, allowing its fans to be turned off to minimize noise. And while it looks extremely big and will be an interesting challenge in fit in most modern PC cases, having cooler that can run noise-free under light loads certainly comes with its advantages./news/amd-releases-new-radeon-memory-sku-rg2133-gamer-series.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-releases-new-radeon-memory-sku-rg2133-gamer-series.htmlAfter entering the PC memory market about a year and a half ago, things have for the most part been quiet for AMD’s fledgling memory operations. With DDR3 enjoying a long, prosperous reign as the memory of choice for PCs, memory is not a fast-moving field that has the kind of rapid innovation and quick product turnovers as AMD’s GPU and CPU businesses do. But with that said, even as a commodity product there’s still periodic bumps in capacity and performance, and that’s what AMD is announcing today./news/an-intel-atom-octocore-smartphone-soc-on-14nm-with.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-intel-atom-octocore-smartphone-soc-on-14nm-with.htmlLast year Intel decided to cease development of its smartphone SoCs and focus instead on microprocessors for other devices, as well as LTE, 5G modems, as well as various IoT solutions. While we weren't expecting a new x86 SoC in the space, Intel did not specify that would be the case: the agreements with third-party SoC developers such as Spreadtrum and Rockchip were still in place. Despite this, we were surprised to hear that At MWC 2017, Intel’s partner Spreadtrum introduced a brand new application processor for high-end handsets, featuring Intel’s 2015 Airmont cores (as seen in Cherry Trail) and made using Intel’s 14 nm process technology./news/apple-announces-new-iphone-11-iphone-11-pro-iphone.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-announces-new-iphone-11-iphone-11-pro-iphone.htmlApple’s new iPhone Special Event just finished up at the Steve Jobs theatre in Cupertino – and as expected we saw the launch of a new generation of iPhones – the new iPhone 11 series. The new iPhone 11 is the successor to the iPhone XR of last year and is projected to again be Apple’s most successful device for the year, upgrading the camera system with new photography experiences as well as introducing the new A13 chipset./news/asus-prime-x570-p-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-prime-x570-p-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlASUS Prime X570-P Moving onto the second of the ASUS Prime series models, the ASUS Prime X570-P represents an entry-level offering to the X570 chipset with two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots, dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, and a pair of budget-friendly Realtek controllers handling the onboard audio and networking. The most noticeable aspect of the board's design is how bare the PCB looks in contrast to other models from the ASUS X570 product stack./news/asus-reveals-padfone-specifications.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-reveals-padfone-specifications.htmlASUS has been talking about its Padfone product for quite a while now but we're finally getting some more detailed specs on it. As a recap, Padfone is a smartphone that can dock into a tablet, which can then dock onto a keyboard to build a ultraportable netbook/notebook. The Padfone itself is based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4, although it's not clear what S4 model number is being used. The MSM8960 would obviously make sense, but since ASUS isn't listing LTE connectivity as a feature it could easily be the MSM8260A./news/batman-arkham-asylum-amd-s-radeon-hd-5850-the.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/batman-arkham-asylum-amd-s-radeon-hd-5850-the.htmlBatman: Arkham Asylum Batman: Arkham Asylum is another brand-new PC game, and has been burning up the review charts. It’s an Unreal Engine 3 based game, something that’s not immediately obvious from just looking at it, which is rare for UE3 based games. NVIDIA has put a lot of marketing muscle into the game as part of their The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program, and as a result it ships with PhysX support and 3D Vision support./news/cost-price-royalties-rambus-dram-uncovering-facts-burying-rumors.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cost-price-royalties-rambus-dram-uncovering-facts-burying-rumors.htmlCost, Price & Royalties Until this point there hasn't really been a reason not to like Rambus and this "wonderful" RDRAM technology they've brought with them, but here's the real kicker.  When it comes down to money, people will often change their minds in the blink of an eye, it's the same reason the phrase "vote your pocketbook" came about regarding political elections, everyone has their breaking point and for most users, having to pay $1000 for 128MB of RDRAM wasn't worth the added security of knowing that you had 1./news/dell-xps-lineup-is-reinvigorated-with-skylake-on-the.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-xps-lineup-is-reinvigorated-with-skylake-on-the.htmlDell really put their stamp on the 2015 Ultrabook lineup this year with the Dell XPS 13 with its amazing Infinity Display. They packed a 13.3-inch display into a notebook that would normally house something closer to 11-inches, and no other manufacturer has come close to it this year. Performance was great, battery life was the new benchmark, and other than a couple of foibles such as a camera that points up at your chin, and some aggressive use of Content Adaptive Backlight Control (CABC) there was very little to complain about on the XPS 13./news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-book-2-15-inch.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-book-2-15-inch.htmlDisplay Analysis One area where Microsoft has consistently outperformed the competition is in the display department. They continue to be the only major PC maker to hardware calibrate their displays at the factory, across the entire product lineup. It wasn’t always the case, but starting with the Surface 3, all Surface devices are now calibrated, and the Surface Book 2 is of course no exception. The benefit of a hardware calibration over something you could do on your own is that you avoid issues with clipping the display to correct issues, and of course the other benefit is the display is the right color without any work involved by the end user./news/gameplay-analysis-red-dead-redemption-2.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gameplay-analysis-red-dead-redemption-2.htmlRead Dead Redemption 2 is also a title where the Xbox One X framerate is locked to 30 FPS, and as it has not been optimized yet for the Series X, the more powerful console inherits this limitation. In this St. Denis scene, the Xbox One X did suffer from some frame time glitches and stutters, whereas the Xbox Series X did not have the same issues. It was locked in much more consistently at the 30 FPS level./news/gameplay-analysis-the-wolf-among-us.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gameplay-analysis-the-wolf-among-us.htmlAlthough a cell-shaded game like The Wolf Among Us, created by Telltale games, may not seem like a particularly taxing game to test on the Xbox One X and the Xbox Series X, this PC port is actually quite demanding on the consoles, with the Xbox One and Xbox One X both exhibiting stuttering and framerate drops. So, why not see how the more powerful Series X can handle it?/news/gigabyte-x570-gaming-x-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-x570-gaming-x-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlGIGABYTE X570 Gaming X Currently at the bottom of GIGABYE's gaming-focused product stack is the X570 Gaming X. With a slightly lesser 10+2 power delivery when compared to the X570 Aorus Elite with a 12+2, the X570 Gaming X includes a cheaper Realtek ALC887 audio codec, a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit NIC, and two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. On the boards PCB itself is a very funky and unique black and grey theme with triangle shaped accents which extends over the PCB onto the heatsinks./news/google-android-3-0-honeycomb-preview.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/google-android-3-0-honeycomb-preview.htmlNote to Readers: Saumitra is one of the newest members of our smartphone team. He has contributed to articles in the past but we'd like to formally welcome him to the AnandTech team. Saumitra will be focusing on everything Android and iOS. Welcome Saumitra! The tablet market today is a far more interesting place than it was just over a year ago. Since the launch of the iPad, there hasn’t been a real competitor to iOS in the tablet space./news/in-and-around-the-nzxt-switch-810.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-nzxt-switch-810.htmlIn and Around the NZXT Switch 810 When you get it out of the box and eyeball it, the NZXT Switch 810 really does come off as a fairly sleek and attractive design. It's a little flashier than most, but it's not over-the-top Stormtrooper-style like the Phantom; the Switch is just distinctive. Our review unit is a two-toned white-on-black unit, but you can also get it in black-on-black if you want something a little less eye-catching./news/kourses-mario-kart-wii.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kourses-mario-kart-wii.htmlKourses Though the game begins with four different cups of tracks to choose from, a lot of fancy driving lies between the player and the entire selection of courses. The makers of Mario Kart Wii have put together 16 new courses, all of which have elements of originality plus the "same-old same-old." The first course of the first cup is, as expected, a basic circle/figure-eight style track with few or no surprise elements, and the last course of the final cup is, once again as expected, Rainbow Road (and it's kind of a doozy)./news/let-there-be-light-installing-the-projector.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/let-there-be-light-installing-the-projector.htmlAs I mentioned in my last post, the first projector I bought was the Panasonic AE1000U, an LCD based unit. The projector was decent but it wasn't bright enough. Projector technology advances quick enough that I was hoping to stay away from spending too much on a projector, since I could buy a new projector every year and probably be better off than spending $20K - $30K on a single projector today./news/lg-reveals-31-5-inch-ultrafine-ergo-4k-monitor.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-reveals-31-5-inch-ultrafine-ergo-4k-monitor.htmlLG has announced its new 31.5-inch UltraFine Ergo 4K display, the largest in the UltraFine family to date. Living up to its name, the Ergo monitor has an innovative ergonomic arm that provides far more flexibility than any other stand that comes with LCDs, affording some new opportunities to free up space on the desktop. The new LG UltraFine Ergo display model 32UN880 uses a 31.5-inch IPS panel with a 3840×2160 resolution, offering a maximum brightness of 350 nits, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, a 60 Hz refresh rate, a 5 ms response time, and the usual 178°/178° horizontal/vertical viewing angles./news/mario-kart-wii.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mario-kart-wii.htmlIntro Lovers of red shells, gather 'round. Masters of the mushroom, take your places. Drunken partygoers looking for something more exciting than yet another Friday night of cow tipping, put down your car keys and pick up a controller. It's go time. Mario Kart Wii has finally arrived. And for those of us whose sole purpose in shelling out a large sum of money to purchase Nintendo's latest console was in anticipation of this game, it has been a long wait, (though, to be fair, Mario Galaxy helped the time pass)./news/microsoft-announces-fall-creators-update-sdk-availability-and-is.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-announces-fall-creators-update-sdk-availability-and-is.htmlThis morning, Microsoft is live-streaming their Windows Developer Day, where they are showcasing some of the new APIs and features coming to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, due for distribution on October 17th. If you’re an interested developer, and missed out on the live-stream. Microsoft will more than likely make it available in its entirety later as well. Corporate VP, Kevin Gallo, as well as some of the engineering team, are discussing the significant update to Windows 10’s APIs and capabilities, with “thousands of new capabilities and improvements” available in the latest Software Development Kit (SDK)./news/nvidia-releases-359-00-whql-game-ready-driver.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-359-00-whql-game-ready-driver.htmlThe season's flurry of games has brought along a blizzard of updates. Bad pun tie-ins aside, there is little that tarnishes a shiny new game like musty old drivers, and once again NVIDIA strives to keep up with the holiday rush with another new driver release. NVIDIA's latest 359.00 WHQL drivers bring us game ready support for the newly released Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is part of their Bullets or Blades bundle that is still running./news/opencl-programming-model-and-suitability-for-fpgas.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/opencl-programming-model-and-suitability-for-fpgas.htmlOpenCL is an open-standard programming interface developed by the Khronos group designed particularly for parallel and heterogeneous computing.  OpenCL can be used to program various types of hardware including CPUs, GPGPUs, FPGAs and many-core coprocessors like Xeon Phi or Adapteva's Epiphany.  Each hardware vendor that wants its hardware to be exposed to OpenCL needs to provide an OpenCL driver for its hardware. For example, OpenCL drivers are available for various CPUs and GPUs for Windows, Linux and Mac and Altera is now providing OpenCL drivers and associated development tools for their FPGAs./news/putting-it-all-together-the-anandtech-linux-xbox-pc.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/putting-it-all-together-the-anandtech-linux-xbox-pc.htmlPutting it all Together Modding the XBOX is really the simple part. We received a solderless SmartXX v2 from www.bmmods.com. These generally run for $75 if you get the solderless adaptor or $60 for the solder option. Other mod chips work well for installing a Linux distribution, but the SmartXX comes with an XBOX version of Debian (Xebian) and is the most mature chip for running a Linux distribution.Opening up the XBOX and getting at the mainboard was fairly simple./news/realtek-2-5-gbe-pcie-cards-now-for-sale.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/realtek-2-5-gbe-pcie-cards-now-for-sale.htmlA Japanese company has started sales of its 2.5 GbE network card that uses a Realtek controller. The adapter is a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x1 board that is compatible with the vast majority of desktop PCs that are used today. However, it isn't as cheap as one might expect. The 'Area Mr. Jack' 2.5 GbE LAN (SD-PE25GLAN-1L) network adapter is a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x1 card based on Realtek’s RTL8125 controller launched over a year ago and currently used on some motherboards./news/refining-for-efficiency-development-simplicity.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/refining-for-efficiency-development-simplicity.htmlWhile the initial fervor over low-level graphics APIs has died down quite a bit since they first hit the scene in the middle of the last decade, API development is still alive and well. In fact in many ways it’s better than ever – now that these APIs are accepted and stable, developers on both sides of the aisle can sink their teeth into the new options provided, and plot where to go in the coming years./news/ssd-2021-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ssd-2021-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGh5nqaTnXyUn6NraA%3D%3D/news/ssd-shipments-up-41-2-yoy-pc-sales-up.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ssd-shipments-up-41-2-yoy-pc-sales-up.htmlSales of SSDs in the first quarter of 2016 were up 41.2% year-over-year, based on findings from TrendFocus*, a storage market tracking company. Shipments of all types of SSDs, including drives for client and server systems, were up sequentially and year-over-year, which again proves that NAND-based storage devices are taking the place of traditional hard drives both inside client PCs and enterprise machines. SSD Sales now above 33.7 Million Units Shipments of SSDs in the second quarter hit 33./news/startech-launches-usb-docking-station-with-uhd-display-support.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/startech-launches-usb-docking-station-with-uhd-display-support.htmlStarTech has launched three new USB based docking stations for the home-office or BYOD workforce. Being that they are based on USB 3.0, they will work with any Windows 7 and up PC, or Mac OS 10.8 and later. While a USB dock may not offer all of the same performance and connectivity of a business class docking station, the fact is that most laptops don’t offer any sort of docking solution./news/starts-at-noon-eastern-16-00-utc.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/starts-at-noon-eastern-16-00-utc.html11:49AM EDT - AMD's second and final product keynote of the month is taking place today, with an event AMD has dubbed "Where Gaming Begins". Hosted as always by AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, AMD will be focusing on the new Radeon RX 6000 series and more, unveiling for the first time their latest generation of video cards. Powered by the company's new RDNA2 architecture, the RX 6000 cards and associated RDNA2-powered game consoles mark an important launch for AMD as they establish the technological cornerstone of gaming products for years to come./news/storage-and-wi-fi-performance-hp-stream-11-review.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/storage-and-wi-fi-performance-hp-stream-11-review.htmlStorage Performance The HP Stream 11 has 32GB of eMMC based flash storage, which shows as Hynix HBG4e. It is also the first device I have seen which leverages WIMBoot, which arrived at Microsoft's Build conference as part of Windows 8.1 Update to lower the storage requirements for Windows PCs. Traditionally, PCs come with Windows installed on the C: drive, and include a recovery partition to allow people to reset or refresh their computers back to factory specifications./news/testing-results-the-iceberg-thermal-icesleet-g6-stealth-review.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-results-the-iceberg-thermal-icesleet-g6-stealth-review.htmlTesting Results, Maximum Fan Speed To begin with, we are having a look at the IceSLEET G6 Stealth with its stock 140 mm fan running at its maximum speed. Core Temperature, Constant Thermal Load (Max Fan Speed) Due to its enormous mass, we expected the IceSLEET G6 Stealth to land near other similarly-sized products, such as the Noctua NH-D15 and the Phanteks PH-TC14PE. We were not mistaken, as the average thermal resistance of 0./news/the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and-turing-on.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and-turing-on.htmlDesign Acer has tweaked the design of the Nitro 5 for this year, offering a cleaner look than the outgoing model. The 15.6-inch display offers a “narrow-bezel” design, although really that is only on the sides. For this kind of price, Acer is not going to be able to compete with the thinnest and lightest laptops out there, plus as a gaming-focused system, offering a bit more space for components and cooling is crucial./news/the-asus-hq-tour-endurance-testing.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asus-hq-tour-endurance-testing.htmlAll consumer electronics, in order to be deemed safe for use, have to go through a certification process based on electrical noise, impact testing, vibration testing and heat testing. This is becoming especially more important in the motherboard space as these certifications can act as selling points, or help ensure a lower return rate. Typically these testing areas at motherboard manufacturer headquarters are off-limits to almost everyone, but we had special permission and a tour guide to take us through./news/the-msi-z370i-gaming-pro-carbon-ac-mitx-motherboard.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-z370i-gaming-pro-carbon-ac-mitx-motherboard.htmlToday we're looking at one of MSI's Mini-ITX motherboards, the Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC. The Gaming Pro Carbon AC supports 8th Gen Intel Core Coffee Lake-based processors with DDR4 memory support up to DDR4-4600. The board includes the latest Realtek audio codec, along with Nahimic 2+ audio processing, Intel-based LAN and wireless, USB 3.1 ports out back, a well as a single M.2 drive. RGB is also in abundance, all in a Mini-ITX package./news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-founders-editions.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-founders-editions.htmlOverclocking For our final evaluation of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Founders Edition cards, let’s take a look a overclocking. Whenever I review an NVIDIA reference card, I feel it’s important to point out that while NVIDIA supports overclocking – why else would they include fine-grained controls like GPU Boost 3.0 – they have taken a hard stance against true overvolting. Overvolting is limited to NVIDIA’s built in overvoltage function, which isn’t so much a voltage control as it is the ability to unlock 1-2 more boost bins and their associated voltages./news/the-phantoms-of-nzxt.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-phantoms-of-nzxt.htmlI recently reviewed the NZXT Phantom 820 and found it to be a remarkably excellent, intelligent case, so imagine my delight in learning that NZXT is following up that success with the Phantom 630. Over the past couple of years, NZXT has increasingly been carving out a niche as a case manufacturer that produces stylized, exceptionally feature-rich cases. As a former art student it's actually interesting to see that their products have an increasingly distinctive flavor to them./news/the-turing-architecture-volta-in-spirit.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-turing-architecture-volta-in-spirit.htmlDiving straight into the microarchitecture, the new Turing SM looks very different to the Pascal SM, but those who’ve been keeping track of Volta will notice a lot of similarities to the NVIDIA’s more recent microarchitecture. In fact, on a high-level, the Turing SM is fundamentally the same, with the notable exception of a new IP block: the RT Core. Putting the RT Cores and Tensor Cores aside for now, the most drastic changes from Pascal are same ones that differentiated Volta from Pascal./news/unboxing-an-ampere-emag-workstation.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/unboxing-an-ampere-emag-workstation.htmlOne of the key elements I’ve always found frustrating with basic software development is that it can often be quite difficult to actually get the hardware in hand you want to optimize for, and get a physical interaction that isn’t delayed by networking or logging in or anything else. Having a development platform on the desk guarantees that direct access, and for the non-x86 vendors, I’ve been asking for these for some time./news/vortex-g25-for-workstations-the-w25.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/vortex-g25-for-workstations-the-w25.htmlAt the MSI suite this year at CES, one of the updated systems on display was the new MSI Vortex W25. The W25 is a workstation version of the G25, a popular mini-PC that packs some super high-end hardware into a super small PC chassis. I saw the G25 with a Core i7-8700 and GTX 1080 inside back last year, and one of my responses to MSI was to create a professional version./news/zotac-preps-second-gen-wearable-backpack-vr-go-pc.htmlFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zotac-preps-second-gen-wearable-backpack-vr-go-pc.htmlMultiple makers of gaming PCs formally introduced their wearable backpack PCs for VR gaming at Computex 2016 and have never updated these systems since then. But apparently after two years, it is time for an upgrade. ZOTAC announced on Thursday that it would demonstrate its VR GO 2.0 system at Computex 2018 next week. Having learnt from the first-generation VR GO, ZOTAC made its second-gen wearable backpack PC smaller and lighter than the original one./news/10gbe-rounds-out-a-premium-board.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/10gbe-rounds-out-a-premium-board.htmlThe latest motherboard to grace our test bench is the GIGABYTE Z690 Aorus Master, which hails from its Aorus gaming series and sits just one step below its Aorus Xtreme models. Some of its most notable features include 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-FI 6E networking, USB 3.2 G2x2 connectivity, as well as plenty of storage capacity consisting of five M.2 slots and six SATA ports. The Aorus Z690 Master also boasts support for DDR5-6400 memory and an impressive 20-phase power delivery designed for overclockers looking to squeeze out extra performance./news/a-pretty-decent-directx-7-half-life-2-gpu.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-pretty-decent-directx-7-half-life-2-gpu.htmlA Pretty Decent DirectX 7 The second most popular Half Life 2 GPU according to Valve’s own statistics is the GeForce4 MX.  As a quick refreshed, the GeForce4 MX is basically a GeForce2 MX with an updated memory controller, so its feature set will not be DirectX 8 compliant like the GeForce4, rather it is more of a DX7 part.  So what do you lose if you’ve got an older card like a GeForce2, GeForce4 MX or original Radeon?/news/asrock-b550m-hdv-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview-asus.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-b550m-hdv-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview-asus.htmlASRock B550M-HDV Nearer the bottom of the ASRock product stack we get to the B550M-HDV, which is aimed at the more commercial pre-build markets and aims to offer what these markets might need. As a result it does away with the fancy styling and aims to give the bare essentials. That means no power delivery heatsinks, only two DRAM slots, no extra M.2, and only a 4-pin CPU power connector is needed./news/assembling-the-lian-li-pc-v353.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-lian-li-pc-v353.htmlAssembling the Lian Li PC-V353 Lian Li designed the PC-V353's assembly to be tackled essentially in pieces. I have historically endorsed using modular power supplies for any build (to the point where I'm mortified whenever I have to assemble a machine without a modular power supply); in the instance of the PC-V353, I'm about 5% away from making it a requirement. The PC-V353 breaks down into roughly four parts (five if you're going to argue semantics): the motherboard tray, the drive trays, the power supply mount, and the chassis (which includes the optical drive mount)./news/core-i7-6700k-and-i5-6600k-tested.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/core-i7-6700k-and-i5-6600k-tested.htmlIt’s the Intel review you’ve been waiting for. Today is the launch of the first two CPUs from Intel’s Skylake architecture, the 6th Generation Core i7-6700K and the Core i5-6600K. With the new processors we get a new architecture, a new socket, the move to DDR4 and the potential to increase both performance and efficiency at the same time. A lot of readers have asked the question – is it time to upgrade?/news/corsair-obsidian-550d-starting-to-specialize.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-obsidian-550d-starting-to-specialize.htmlIntroducing the Corsair Obsidian 550D We've been keeping track of the evolution of Corsair's line of enclosures since the Graphite 600T was released. Even as the newer enclosures generally found themselves lower and lower in price, there was a clear evolution as Corsair's engineers gained more experience and confidence with their designs. Yet each new design up to this point has been a little bit of refinement and a little bit of experimentation without any specific specialization./news/crysis-3-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/crysis-3-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell.htmlCrysis 3 Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2014./news/detecting-turbo-microseconds-vs-milliseconds.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/detecting-turbo-microseconds-vs-milliseconds.htmlOne of the biggest issues with obtaining frequency data is the actual process of monitoring. While there are some basic OS commands to obtain the frequency, it isn’t just as simple as reading a number. How To Read A Frequency As an outlay, we have to differentiate between the frequency of a processor vs. the frequency of a core. On modern PC processors, each core can act independently of each other in terms of frequency and voltage, and so each core can report different numbers./news/epic-announces-infinity-blade-dungeons-diablo-style-gaming-for.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/epic-announces-infinity-blade-dungeons-diablo-style-gaming-for.html  Epic is really at the forefront of driving iOS gaming. Today it announced Infinity Blade: Dungeons, an Unreal Engine based title for the iPad. The gameplay is very Diablo like, check out the gallery below for the first shots.  Infinity Blade Dungeons will be available "soon". ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIJ3gZBonKmhk2Kur7rOrqWcnaNitq%2ByyKegrbFdl7misMRmm66ml5q8r7%2BMnaCampykwLXFy55koJmdnruoecWoqWahoJax/news/gigabyte-revamps-aorus-17-gaming-laptop-with-12th-gen.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-revamps-aorus-17-gaming-laptop-with-12th-gen.htmlGIGABYTE has unveiled its latest 17-inch gaming laptop, the Aorus 17 YE5. Updated for 2022 with the latest Intel 12th generation mobile processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series graphics, the Aorus 17 YE5 boasts a new 360 Hz 1080p display, with support for the latest DDR5 memory, as well as incorporating thinner bezels for a sleeker yet powerful gaming solution for gamers on the go. With Intel announcing its latest Alder Lake-H series of mobile processors, many vendors have announced its latest gaming laptop ranges during CES 2022./news/guillemot-hercules-3d-prophet-ii-gts-64-mb-card.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/guillemot-hercules-3d-prophet-ii-gts-64-mb-card.htmlGuillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 64 MB- Card Specs 3D Prophet II GTS 64 MB Specifications Memory 64 MB Hyundai DDR SDRAM 6 Ns Cooling Heatsink/Fan combo with Memory Heatsinks Temperature 131 F TV-Out Brooktree 869 Drivers NVIDIA Reference Highest Overclock (max core) 230/400 MHz Highest Overclock (max memory) 225/418 MHz/news/hands-on-with-the-huawei-honor-5x.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-the-huawei-honor-5x.htmlWe’ve reviewed Huawei Honor devices before, but by and large they were designed to target China and similar markets. There were also a number of growing pains as seen in our Huawei Honor 6 review. However, in the time since that review Huawei has done quite a bit of growing up when it comes to resolving some of their weaknesses and improving upon their strengths. Their Kirin SoCs started off with some notable issues in implementations, but with the Kirin 950 we’ve seen a major leap in performance and power efficiency./news/hp-announces-updated-elitebook-800-g5-series-and-zbook.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-announces-updated-elitebook-800-g5-series-and-zbook.htmlHP has announced today updates to its Elitebook and Zbook lines, with an aim to 'bring premium experiences and features to the mainstream'. Ultimately, it comes down to a mobile workforce, which is a key aspect to HP's latest marketing push and updates. Elitebook 800 G5 Series The 800 G5 series is a mid-level commercial laptop resting below the flagship premium design of the Elitebook 100 series. HPs goals with this generational update are to bring down features of that premium design to the mainstream and the majority of users./news/integer-fp-units-load-store-improvements.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/integer-fp-units-load-store-improvements.htmlInteger & FP Execution On the integer execution side, units and pipelines look largely unchanged from Bobcat. The big performance addition here is the use of Llano’s hardware divider. Bobcat had a microcoded integer divider capable of one bit per cycle, while Jaguar moves to a 2-bits-per-cycle divider. The hardware is all clock gated, so when it’s not in use there’s no power penalty. The schedulers and re-order buffer are incrementally bigger in Jaguar./news/intel-discloses-new-details-on-meteor-lake-vpu-block.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-discloses-new-details-on-meteor-lake-vpu-block.htmlWhile the first systems based on Intel’s forthcoming Meteor Lake (14th Gen Core) systems are still at least a few months out – and thus just a bit too far out to show off at Computex – Intel is already laying the groundwork for Meteor Lake’s forthcoming launch. For this year’s show, in what’s very quickly become an AI-centric event, Intel is using Computex to lay out their vision of client-side AI inference for the next generation of systems./news/lacie-mobile-drive-and-ssd-external-storage-solutions.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lacie-mobile-drive-and-ssd-external-storage-solutions.htmlSeagate has made it customary to launch a few external storage solutions at CES each year. This time around, the LaCie brand is getting a couple of newly designed all-aluminium enclosures. The two have an 'eye-catching diamond-cut' design, and complement the look and feel of the current Apple notebooks (LaCie's primary target market). The LaCie Mobile Drive (external hard-drive) comes in capacities ranging from 2TB (10mm thick) to 5TB (20mm thick), while the LaCie Mobile SSD (external SSD) comes in capacities up to 2TB./news/media-performance-dfi-ut-p35-t2r-tweakers-rejoice.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/media-performance-dfi-ut-p35-t2r-tweakers-rejoice.htmlMedia PerformanceWe will take a brief look at general media performance with our test suite that includes Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. We utilize the PC WorldBench 6.0 Test for measuring platform performance in Adobe's Photoshop CS2. The benchmark applies an extensive number of filters to the test image and heavily stresses the CPU and storage systems. The scores reported include the full conversion process and are represented in seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance./news/meet-the-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-founder-s-edition.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-founder-s-edition.htmlWhen it comes to the design of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founder’s Edition, if you’ve seen a high-end NVIDIA card in the last 4 years then you know roughly what to expect. NVIDIA has found their sweet spot in card design, and while the GTX 1080 Ti does have a few wrinkles of its own, it’s not a radical departure from the likes of the GTX 1080, GTX 980 Ti, or GTX 780 Ti./news/mozaic-3-hamr-hard-drives-can-last-over-seven.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mozaic-3-hamr-hard-drives-can-last-over-seven.htmlAs Seagate ramps up shipments of its new heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)-based Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform, the company is both in the enviable position of shipping the first major new hard drive technology in a decade, and the much less enviable position of proving the reliability of the first major new hard drive technology in a decade. Due to HAMR's use of temporal heating with its platters, as well as all-new read/write heads, HAMR introduces multiple new changes at once that have raise questions about how reliable the technology will be./news/office-and-web-performance-the-intel-core-i7-7700k.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/office-and-web-performance-the-intel-core-i7-7700k.htmlOffice Performance The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode./news/overclockable-pentium-anniversary-edition-review-the-intel-pentium-g3258.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclockable-pentium-anniversary-edition-review-the-intel-pentium-g3258.htmlMany industries, both inside and outside of technology, are versed in the terminology ‘cheap and cheerful’. When enthusiasts were overclocking their CPUs at the turn of the century, this was the case – taking a low cost part, such as the Celeron 300A, and adjusting one or two settings to make it run as fast as a Pentium III 450 MHz. This gave a +50% frequency boost at the lower price point, as long as one could manage the heat output./news/performance-atom-vs-arm-s-cortex-a15.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-atom-vs-arm-s-cortex-a15.htmlIn our iPhone 5 review I included this crude diagram comparing the high level micro-architecture layouts of the current crop of mobile CPU cores. While most of the cores looked fairly similar, the one to really stand out is ARM's Cortex A15. A three issue, OoO core, the Cortex A15 was designed to put ARM in a completely new performance category. For 2013, the Cortex A15 is expected to be the ARM CPU core of choice for the next wave of smartphone and tablet SoCs./news/phison-ps3110-s10-with-toshiba-s-3d-tlc.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/phison-ps3110-s10-with-toshiba-s-3d-tlc.htmlDespite growing demand for SSDs in the recent years, the four leading makers of motherboards have largely stayed out of this market, despite the significant leverage they normally have with commodity products. However after all of this time, GIGABYTE has decided to try its luck and added two SSDs to its lineup of products. The UD PRO-series drives are aimed at entry-level gaming systems, which continues to be the fastest growing segment of the SSD market./news/samsung-announces-exynos-1080-5nm-premium-range-soc-with.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-announces-exynos-1080-5nm-premium-range-soc-with.htmlToday Samsung LSI announced the new Exynos 1080 SoC, a successor to last year’s Exynos 980. This year’s 1080 is seemingly positioned a little above the 980 in terms of performance as we’re seeing some quite notable gains in features compared to the 980. It’s to be remembered that this is a “premium” SoC, meaning it’s not a flagship SoC, but it’s also not quite a mid-range SoC, fitting itself in-between those two categories, a niche which has become quite popular over the last 1-2 years./news/samsung-keynote-introduces-galaxy-note-galaxy-tab-7-7.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-keynote-introduces-galaxy-note-galaxy-tab-7-7.htmlGalaxy Note: Big Screen, Big Phone When we heard that two of the US variants of the Galaxy S II would feature 4.5" displays, we groaned. Super-sized displays make for huge form factors that can get comical before they get useful. We were further frustrated that resolution wasn't similarly upsized. With the Galaxy Note, Samsung seems set to challenge our presumption that a huge screen can't be portable, while taking the resolution higher than any phone it's previously introduced./news/seagate-western-digital-hike-hdd-prices-amid-surge-in.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-western-digital-hike-hdd-prices-amid-surge-in.htmlSeagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce. According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year./news/seagate-s-satellite-ios-android-and-browser-apps.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-s-satellite-ios-android-and-browser-apps.htmlSeagate's Satellite iOS, Android, and Browser Apps Seagate gives you more options than Kingston when it comes to connections—the Satellite has a webserver built in that you can connect to from any device that has a browser. Turn the Satellite on, wait for it to show up in the list of available networks, and connect. This is standard stuff, and it doesn’t matter what device you’re using./news/sff-pcs-with-amd-phoenix-and-usb4.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sff-pcs-with-amd-phoenix-and-usb4.htmlASRock Industrial has introduced a new lineup of NUC-like systems based on AMD's Ryzen 7040-series 'Phoenix' processors for laptops and compact desktops. The new 4x4 Box 7040 series compact PCs can be used for a wide variety of workloads given their high performance, advanced built-in graphics, rich connectivity, and USB4 support. ASRock's 4x4 Box 7040 systems are built around AMD's latest generation, Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7840U (8C/16T, 5.10 GHz, Radeon 780M with 768 stream processors, AI accelerator) or Ryzen 5 7640U (6C/12T, 4./news/similar-soc-meet-the-omap-3430.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/similar-soc-meet-the-omap-3430.htmlThe SoC - OMAP3 3430 Before we dive into the phones, let's take a look at the SoC at the core of both. We talked about the OMAP 3430 back in 2009 (well maybe not way back, but it sure feels like it) in the context of the Palm Pre, which uses the OMAP 3430. It turns out that Texas Instruments' OMAP 3430 SoC is quite popular if not a microcosm of the generation of smartphones we're talking about; it's common to the N900, Motorola Droid, and Palm Pre./news/smart-home-functionality-more-4k-hdr-streaming-services.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/smart-home-functionality-more-4k-hdr-streaming-services.htmlNVIDIA at CES launched its updated SHIELD set-top-box (STB), with an expanded feature-set as well as smaller and lighter form-factor. The upcoming NVIDIA SHIELD TV is based on the same Tegra X1 SoC as the previous-generation model launched in 2015, and like the mid-generation refreshes of gaming consoles that NVIDIA is clearly aiming to mimic, the launch of this slimmer console with updated software is meant to offer the hardware in a new form factor while calling attention to the major software updates being delivered to the platform this year./news/sony-xperia-1-the-long-21-9-smartphone-available.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-xperia-1-the-long-21-9-smartphone-available.htmlWhen Sony introduced its Xperia 1 flagship smartphone at MWC 2019, the company disclosed all technical specifications, but omitted two important details: pricing and launch date. This month some of the company’s partners began to take pre-orders on the product and had to disclose its estimated price. While retailers are taking pre-orders, we still do not know when Sony intends to start shipments. Late last week Clove.co.uk started to take pre-orders on Sony’s Xperia 1 128 GB charging £849 (including VAT) per unit./news/sound-quality-cambridge-soundworks-digital-2-1-speakers.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sound-quality-cambridge-soundworks-digital-2-1-speakers.htmlSound Quality These speakers produce very clear and crisp highs & mids, with adequate punchy bass. For a two-channel solution, the sound is very well balanced. Treble The treble is provided by a 3" long throw driver. Power is rated at 8 Watts per satellite. This is, of course, shared with the mid-range since they use the same woofer. The result is a crisp clean reproduction of the treble range all the way up to 22kHz./news/synthetic-benchmarks-atto-and-crystaldiskmark.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synthetic-benchmarks-atto-and-crystaldiskmark.htmlBenchmarks such as ATTO and CrystalDiskMark help provide a quick look at the performance of the direct-attached storage device. The results translate to the instantaneous performance numbers that consumers can expect for specific workloads, but do not account for changes in behavior when the unit is subject to long-term conditioning and/or thermal throttling. Yet another use of these synthetic benchmarks is the ability to gather information regarding support for specific storage device features that affect performance./news/the-dock-updated-internals.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-dock-updated-internals.htmlThe Dock As this is still a Transformer, you can purchase an optional Transformer dock in a matching color for the 300: The dock, as always, adds a QWERTY keyboard, trackpad, integrated 16Wh battery, full sized USB 2.0 port and SD card reader. The battery capacity is down from the Prime's dock (22Wh) and as a result extends battery life less than it does in the case of the Prime./news/the-lg-g8-review-solid-but-not-great.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-lg-g8-review-solid-but-not-great.htmlOnly a few years ago LG was largely considered one of the top smartphone brands, competing alongside Samsung and the likes of HTC for marketshare. In the last few years however, LG has had quite a bit of a rough time, unable to deliver differentiating products and sometimes failing to deliver on some important basics in a smartphone. The result is dwindling marketshare numbers and less than stellar financial reports./news/the-msi-x299-sli-plus-motherboard-review-232-with.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-x299-sli-plus-motherboard-review-232-with.htmlToday we had an opportunity to look at another motherboard in the MSI lineup. Instead of coming from the Enthusiast, Performance, or Arsenal line of products, the MSI X299 SLI Plus hails from their Professional line of motherboards. The SLI Plus is often cited as a low-cost, 'meets almost everyone's needs' type of board, and previous iterations have worked well in the past. We put it on the test bed for a thorough inspection./news/turning-on-anisotropic-filtering-half-life-2-gpu-roundup.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/turning-on-anisotropic-filtering-half-life-2-gpu-roundup.htmlTurning on Anisotropic Filtering For the most part Half Life 2 doesn’t absolutely beg for anisotropic filtering to be enabled, but there are definitely a few situations where image quality could be improved by turning it on.  Looking at the peach colored metal platform towards the right of the images before you can see some of the benefits of anisotropic filtering in Half Life 2: Aniso Disabled 8X Aniso Enabled - ATI/news/wireless-audio-thermals-and-software.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wireless-audio-thermals-and-software.htmlWireless For networking, Acer has turned to Killer Networking for both the Gigabit Ethernet, as well as the wireless adapter. The Acer Predator Triton 500 features the Killer Wireless-AC 1550, which is based on Intel’s excellent 9260 Wi-Fi solution, and the Killer E3000 Ethernet adapter. The big change over Intel’s previous 826x wireless is that the 9260 card offers support for 160 Mhz channels, meaning there is a peak theoretical speed of 1./news/xfx-radeon-r9-280x-double-dissipation-the-radeon-r9.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xfx-radeon-r9-280x-double-dissipation-the-radeon-r9.htmlXFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation The first of our R9 280X cards is our reference-like sample, XFX’s Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation. The R9 280X DD is XFX’s sole take on the 280X, utilizing a new and apparently significantly revised version of XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler, and paired with a 280X operating at the 280X’s reference clocks of 850MHz core, 1000MHz boost, and 6GHz RAM. Since there isn’t an overclock here, XFX will primarily be riding on their cooler, build quality, and other value add features./news/zotac-taps-desktop-and-laptop-geforce-rtx-4070s-for.htmlThu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zotac-taps-desktop-and-laptop-geforce-rtx-4070s-for.htmlZotac this week introduced two new compact desktops, both packing versions of NVIDIA's higher-end GeForce RTX 4070-series graphics processors. The Zbox Magnus One is an upgradable, desktop-style SFF machine with an 8.3-liter chassis and includes a desktop GeForce RTX 4070 card inside. Meanwhile the Zbox Magnus is a tiny machine that's close to a NUC in size and construction, and includes a soldered-down GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. Zbox Magnus One: Not So Small, But Powerful Zotac has been offering its Zbox Magnus One small form-factor desktops for some time (and we even reviewed one of them), but the models ERP74070C and ERP74070W pack Intel's latest Core i7-13700 processor paired with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory (AD104, 5888 CUDA cores, 29 FP32 TFLOPS)./news/assembling-the-corsair-carbide-300r.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-corsair-carbide-300r.htmlAssembling the Corsair Carbide 300R I've routinely mentioned Corsair makes the easiest cases to assemble on the planet, and the 300R has somehow made that even easier. This assembly was one of the smoothest I've done by a long shot, although there is still at least a little bit of room for improvement. First, the motherboard tray is practically a godsend. Corsair doesn't include any motherboard standoffs with the 300R because the tray itself has a single brass stud in the center for lining up the board and then extrusions with mounts built into them./news/asus-launches-vg49v-an-ultrawide-curved-32-9-49.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-launches-vg49v-an-ultrawide-curved-32-9-49.htmlLast year Samsung released the industry’s first ultrawide 49-inch gaming display which proved that rather exotic products could be quite a success. At Computex, ASUS introduced its own ultrawide 49-inch that targets a more price-sensitive audience than Samsung’s model does. The ASUS VG49V display is based on Samsung’s 49-inch curved VA panel featuring a 32:9 aspect ratio, an 1800R curvature, a 144 Hz refresh rate and 3840×1080 resolution. The monitor does not have a quantum-dot enhanced backlighting and does not comply with AMD’s FreeSync 2 requirements./news/asus-tuf-z490-plus-wi-fi-the-intel-z490.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-tuf-z490-plus-wi-fi-the-intel-z490.htmlASUS TUF Z490-Plus Wi-Fi Once standing for a unique rugged range of thermal armor clad models designed for endurance, the TUF Sabertooth was a sought after bit of kit. Since after the Intel Z270 days, the TUF or The Ultimate Force brand took a bit of a transformation. These days the TUF brand signifies its entry-level gaming range and the ASUS TUF Z490-Plus Wi-Fi and non-wireless enabled model adds some exciting features for gamers./news/auo-to-ship-8k-uhd-tv-panels-in-coming.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/auo-to-ship-8k-uhd-tv-panels-in-coming.htmlAU Optronics this week has announced plans to start shipments of 8K panels for large UHDTVs in the first half of 2018. The panels will enable TV manufacturers to produce “Super UHD” 8K TVs to compete against LG and Samsung later this year. The lineup of panels featuring a 7680×4320 resolution will be aimed at ultra-high-end TVs and sizes will range from 65 to 85 inches, said Liao Wei-Lun, president of AUO’s video products business group, at a press conference./news/battery-life-meagre-results.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-meagre-results.htmlBattery life results of the Xperia 1 is among one of the biggest questions for the device. With a 3330mAh battery capacity, the battery is a tad lower than what we’d find in other devices of the same device footprint this year. Sony managed to keep the size and weight of the phone in check, but it’s still quite on the lower end of capacities we’re finding on the market./news/best-gaming-laptops-and-notebooks.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/best-gaming-laptops-and-notebooks.htmlWe're in the midst of updating all of our "best of" guides for the holiday season, and we've already covered what is likely the most popular category: Budget Laptops. Some of what we said there also applies to gaming laptops, and our budget gaming recommendations in particular will be rehashed here, along with any other potential candidates. But here we'll also be looking at higher performance offerings that can handle all of the latest games, perhaps even at maximum details./news/conclusion-you-know-if-you-want-it.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-you-know-if-you-want-it.htmlAfter testing the Corsair Carbide Air 540, I'm increasingly convinced it's 2013's BitFenix Prodigy. The review of the Prodigy was one of our most popular case reviews, and it drew a lot of attention for its potential as the foundation of powerful, unorthodox builds. While the Carbide Air 540 doesn't share the Prodigy's smaller form factor, it also doesn't share the Prodigy's weaknesses. What's common between the two is the way they, at the risk of sounding incredibly art school pretentious, open up possibilities for the end user./news/crysis-warhead-nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review-the-new.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/crysis-warhead-nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review-the-new.htmlCrysis: Warhead Up next is our legacy title for 2013, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 4 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA./news/diy-on-intel-ice-lake-xeon-just-got-a.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/diy-on-intel-ice-lake-xeon-just-got-a.htmlSince the launch of Intel’s Third Generation Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors in April, it was widely expected that the initial volumes of hardware would be going towards Intel’s biggest customers through their OEM partners. Users who want retail hardware would have to wait a while, although exactly how long was a bit of a mystery. The answer to this seems to be that Ice Lake Xeon hardware is now available at retail: both motherboards and a CPU or two./news/enermax-leadex-and-seasonic-at-up-to-2800w.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/enermax-leadex-and-seasonic-at-up-to-2800w.htmlJust several years ago, we were impressed to witness a 2,000W power supply for mining systems at Computex. But with arrival or AMD's Ryzen Threadripper WX and Intel's Xeon W-3400-series – CPUs that can devour all the way to 900W under heavy loads – as well as NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards (or, well, H100 PCIe for AI), 2,000W PSUs are no longer entirely overkill. As new processors have raised the bar on power consumption, so has the bar been raised on PSUs themselves./news/eric-kuo-and-sam-chern-from-msi-notebooks.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/eric-kuo-and-sam-chern-from-msi-notebooks.htmlAs part of a series of getting into the minds of those who run our industry, we were able to take the time at CES to interview two key figures from MSI’s Notebook team who were visiting the show from the MSI headquarters in Taiwan. First up is Eric Kuo, Vice President of Notebook Sales and Marketing who has been with MSI for more than 17 years. Mr Kuo has been in charge of the MSI notebook sales and marketing since 2006, pre-dating the recent rise in laptop based gaming machines./news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-r9-270.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-r9-270.htmlFinal Words Bringing this review to a close, coming from the launch of the 280X and the 290 series, the 270 series is a much tamer and straightforward launch. Since AMD is taking their existing Pitcairn GPU and carving out newer, faster SKUs from them, we already have a solid frame of reference to work with, which is all the more important given how crowded the sub-$200 market can be. Neither the 270X or 270 will be game changers as neither gets the benefit of a generational leap in hardware or significantly lower prices than the competition (AMD included), but they still have a place in the bigger picture as AMD’s mainstream 1080p cards./news/final-words-conclusion-the-corsair-rm1000x-and-rm1000i-1000w.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-conclusion-the-corsair-rm1000x-and-rm1000i-1000w.htmlConclusion With Corsair placing a lot of emphasis within their business operations on their PSUs, it is no surprise that they are constantly releasing new models and upgrading their old ones. The RM series is focused on providing high performance while maintaining the lowest possible noise levels. In our review of the original RM1000, the PSU did manage to maintain outstandingly low noise levels, but there were certain shortcomings. The electrical performance was not on par with other advanced units and the small heatsinks resulted to relatively high temperatures, even under low loads./news/fusion-drive-performance-practical-limits.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fusion-drive-performance-practical-limits.htmlPutting Fusion Drive’s Performance in Perspective Benchmarking Fusion Drive is a bit of a challenge since it prioritizes the SSD for all incoming writes. If you don’t fill the Fusion Drive up, you can write tons of data to the drive and it’ll all hit the SSD. If you do fill the drive up and test with a dataset < 4GB, then you’ll once again just measure SSD performance. In trying to come up with a use case that spanned both drives I stumbled upon a relatively simple one./news/g-skill-unveils-trident-z-royal-hexa-channel-192.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/g-skill-unveils-trident-z-royal-hexa-channel-192.htmlG.Skill has released the industry’s first hexa-channel DDR4 memory kits designed specifically for Intel’s 28-core Xeon W-3175X processor for extreme workstations. The top-of-the-range kit features a 192 GB capacity and operates at 4000 MT/s data transfer rate, thus combining extreme performance and capacity. To make it even more attractive, the modules use G.Skill’s ‘blingy’ Trident Z Royal heat spreaders. As usual, G.Skill plans to offer a number of Trident Z Royal hexa-channel memory kits for extreme workstations powered by Intel’s Xeon W-3175X featuring capacities ranging from 48 GB to 192 GB and rated for DDR4-3200 CL14/CL16, DDR4-3600 CL17, and DDR4-4000 CL17 at 1./news/gpu-cheatsheet-a-history-of-modern-consumer-graphics-processors.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-cheatsheet-a-history-of-modern-consumer-graphics-processors.htmlIntroduction After the overview of modern Intel and AMD processors, there were many requests for a similar article covering the graphics arena. "Arena" is a great term to describe the market, as few other topics are as likely to raise the ire of the dreaded fanboy as discussing graphics. However, similar to the CPU Guide, this article is not meant as a set of benchmarks or to answer the commonly asked question of "/news/idf-spring-2005-day-2-the-yonah-scoop.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/idf-spring-2005-day-2-the-yonah-scoop.htmlSean Maloney alluded to a presentation by Intel's Mooly Eden, VP of Intel's Mobility Group and GM of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group. Although he wears a marketing hat these days, Mooly was the head of the design team of the original Pentium M (Banias) so he's an engineer at heart. The presentation was supposed to shed some more light on Intel's Yonah microprocessor, the dual core 65nm successor to Dothan./news/intel-announces-movidius-myriad-x-vpu-featuring-neural-compute.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-announces-movidius-myriad-x-vpu-featuring-neural-compute.htmlToday, Intel subsidiary Movidius is announcing the Movidius Myriad X vision processing unit (VPU), a low-power system-on-chip (SoC) intended for deep learning and AI acceleration in vision-based devices such as drones, smart cameras, and VR/AR headsets. This follows up on last month’s launch of the Myriad 2 powered Movidius Neural Compute Stick. As for the Myriad 2, the Myriad X will coexist alongside its predecessor, which was first announced in 2014./news/leadtek-winfast-geforce-256-sdr.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/leadtek-winfast-geforce-256-sdr.htmlAs far as video card manufactures are concerned, at the lab, Leadtek is still considered to be one of the new kids on the block. The company has always been a diverse one, as can be seen with their current product line up: it includes not only 3D gaming cards but also professional video cards. However, it was not until the release of the TNT2 based S320 that Leadtek made a big impression on the 3D gaming market, as this card was one of the first (if not the first) TNT2 cards to arrive on the scene./news/microsoft-announces-windows-phone-8-1.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-announces-windows-phone-8-1.htmlThis morning at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Microsoft kicked off its semi-annual BUILD developer conference with a keynote address detailing what’s coming now and in the near term for its major consumer platforms of Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox. Microsoft had a lot to discuss, and started the keynote off with Joe Belfiore officially announcing Windows Phone 8.1.  Unlike previous updates to Windows Phone 8, this is certainly a major release./news/microsoft-releases-fy-2015-q3-financial-results.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-releases-fy-2015-q3-financial-results.htmlYesterday (apologies for the delay I was in travel status when the results came out) Microsoft announced their Q3 results for fiscal year 2015, and revenue was up 6% year-over-year, coming in at $21.7 billion for this quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was $14.6 billion, or 67%. Operating income for the quarter was $6.6 billion, down 5% year-over-year, and earnings per share (EPS) was $0.61, down from $0.66 in Q3 2014./news/more-scaling-different-frequency-domains.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-scaling-different-frequency-domains.htmlFor people unfamiliar with the Mali-G77 and the Valhall GPU architecture, I highly recommend on catching up on last year’s deep dive into the changes of the design, as very much the majority of those key elements are still very much present on the new Mali-G78. Read: Arm's New Mali-G77 & Valhall GPU Architecture: A Major Leap From a high top-level perspective, the biggest visible change for the new G78 is the promise that it’ll be able to scale up again to 24 GPU cores./news/overclocking-to-save-the-day-intel-s-pentium-m.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-to-save-the-day-intel-s-pentium-m.htmlOverclocking to Save the Day? Of course, the big question is - "What if you overclock it?" As you can expect, the Pentium M benefits greatly from being overclocked; not necessarily from the CPU being overclocked, but from the memory bus being overclocked. Unfortunately, as we mentioned before, the 855GME chipset and the two motherboards that we have based on it don't seem to want to overclock the memory bus too much, so we're left with somewhat nice performance gains from overclocking, but not ideal./news/performance-direct-attached-storage-mode.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-direct-attached-storage-mode.htmlSeagate suggests that the BarraCuda Pro Compute drives are suitable for use in direct-attached storage systems. We evaluated the performance in such a usage scenario using one of the highest performing 2-bay DAS units currently in the market - the Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro, connected to our testbed via a Thunderbolt 3 interface. Prior to processing real-life workloads, we first checked quick artificial access traces using ATTO and CrystalDiskMark./news/ppga-is-old-news-intel-celeron-600-coppermine128.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ppga-is-old-news-intel-celeron-600-coppermine128.htmlPPGA is old news As we discussed at the beginning of this article, Intel’s Celeron 300A was the first Celeron to feature an on-die L2 cache.  Not only did the on-die L2 cache run at clock speed and offer very low latency L2 access when compared to the Pentium II’s off-die L2 cache (it’s obviously easier for the CPU to access something that is contained within its die than something that is outside of its die), but by moving the L2 cache onto the processor’s die, Intel also managed to eliminate the need for the Celeron’s SEPP (Single Edge Processor Package) card./news/roccat-integrates-keyboard-and-smartphone-the-skeltr.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/roccat-integrates-keyboard-and-smartphone-the-skeltr.htmlAlongside the Nyth, ROCCAT is also announcing another hybrid technology at Gamescom in the form of a keyboard called the Skeltr. The purpose of the Skeltr is to bring the smartphone as an add-on device for the keyboard, allowing apps to be developed that integrate with either the game being played or the on-screen action. I remember importing one of the original Logitech G15 models from the US almost a decade ago./news/samsung-to-receive-6-4-billion-under-chips-act.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-to-receive-6-4-billion-under-chips-act.htmlSamsung Electronics this week was awarded up to $6.4 billion from the U.S. government under the CHIPS and Science Act to build its new fab complex in Taylor, Texas. This is the third major award under the act in the last month, with all three leading-edge fabs – Intel, TSMC, and now Samsung – receiving multi-billion dollar funding packages under the domestic chip production program. Overall, the final price tag on Samsung's new fab complex is expected to reach $40 billion by the time it's completed later this decade./news/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb-240gb-120gb.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb-240gb-120gb.htmlA few weeks ago I mentioned on twitter that I had a new favorite SSD. This is that SSD, and surprisingly enough, it’s made by SanDisk. The SanDisk part is very unexpected, because until now SanDisk hadn’t really put out a very impressive drive. Much like Samsung in the early days of SSDs, SanDisk is best known for its OEM efforts. The U100 and U110 are quite common in Ultrabooks, and more recently even Apple adopted SanDisk as a source for its notebooks./news/slc-cache-sizes-sysmark-2018.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/slc-cache-sizes-sysmark-2018.htmlWhole-Drive Fill This test starts with a freshly-erased drive and fills it with 128kB sequential writes at queue depth 32, recording the write speed for each 1GB segment. This test is not representative of any ordinary client/consumer usage pattern, but it does allow us to observe transitions in the drive's behavior as it fills up. This can allow us to estimate the size of any SLC write cache, and get a sense for how much performance remains on the rare occasions where real-world usage keeps writing data after filling the cache./news/sony-launches-xperia-z1-compact-z1s-at-ces-2014.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-launches-xperia-z1-compact-z1s-at-ces-2014.htmlToday at CES, Sony announced the Xperia Z1 Compact. This phone finally fills a slot that has been ignored in the Android device space, which is a phone that is easily used with one hand for the vast majority of people, and is also a high end flagship. While the Moto X also fits in this space, its SoC made it decidedly mid-high range, much like the Xperia S was at its debut./news/steelseries-acquires-a-volute-company-behind-nahimic-audio-software.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/steelseries-acquires-a-volute-company-behind-nahimic-audio-software.htmlDanish peripherals and gaming headset manufacturer SteelSeries has announced its acquisition of A-Volute, the independent developer of the Nahimic audio software. The Danish manufacturer is looking to take full advantage of A-Volutes' experience to bolster its audio range, with its Arctis series already established in the gaming headset market. SteelSeries is no stranger to the peripherals market, with experience spanning over the best part of two decades. The company has seen successful product launches, and its popular products including its World of Warcraft branded gaming mice./news/system-performance-multi-tasking-geekom-as-6-asus-pn53.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-multi-tasking-geekom-as-6-asus-pn53.htmlSystem Performance: Multi-Tasking One of the key drivers of advancements in computing systems is multi-tasking. On mobile devices, this is quite lightweight - cases such as background email checks while the user is playing a mobile game are quite common. Towards optimizing user experience in those types of scenarios, mobile SoC manufacturers started integrating heterogenous CPU cores - some with high performance for demanding workloads, while others were frugal in terms of both power consumption / die area and performance./news/tcl-shows-off-132-inch-micro-led-4k-uhdtv.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tcl-shows-off-132-inch-micro-led-4k-uhdtv.htmlDirect view Micro LED displays are a relatively new display technology that so far has been publicly demonstrated only by Samsung and Sony, the two of which tend to experiment with variety of technologies in general. At IFA last week TCL, a major maker of televisions, threw its hat into the ring by demonstrating its ultra-large Micro LED-based Ultra-HD TV. Dubbed the Cinema Wall 132-Inch 4K, TCL’s Micro LED television uses 24,000,000 individually controlled LEDs as RGB subpixels, and features a 1,500 nits max brightness level as well as a 2,500,000 contrast ratio (good enough to compete against OLEDs)./news/the-alphacool-nexxxos-cool-answer-360-ddc-xt-liquid.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-alphacool-nexxxos-cool-answer-360-ddc-xt-liquid.htmlNot so long ago, PC liquid cooling was considered to be an extreme approach, one performed by hardcore enthusiasts and overclockers alone. There were no commercial products available and every individual system was designed by the user. Radiators were modified heater cores extracted from cars, CPU blocks were rare and occasionally machined at local workshops using a copper block and a mill, while high-performance tubing came from shops with medical supplies./news/the-goflex-desk-the-world-s-first-3tb-hdd.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-goflex-desk-the-world-s-first-3tb-hdd.htmlThe GoFlex Desk After putting the drive back together I decided to look at the product for what it is: an external 3.5” drive enclosure. Seagate does nothing to hide the fact that this is a standard SATA drive in an enclosure. The SATA data and power connectors are clearly visible on the base of the enclosure. While you can plug a SATA power cable directly into the drive, the enclosure prevents you from sticking a SATA data cable in there - not without trimming away part of the plastic surrounding the cable’s SATA connector at least./news/the-msi-mpg-a1000g-pcie5-psu-review-balance-of.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-mpg-a1000g-pcie5-psu-review-balance-of.htmlBack in December, we had the opportunity to take a look at MSI's MEG A1300P power supply, the company's latest flagship PSU. Besides offering plenty of power, the MEG Ai1300P was also MSI's first ATX 3.0 power supplies – and one of the first ATX 3.0 PSUs on the market overall. And while it was admittedly not a groundbreaking design overall, it was still a seminal work of sorts, sketching out a rough picture of what we should expect from other ATX 3./news/two-10-gbe-four-2-5-gbe-ports.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/two-10-gbe-four-2-5-gbe-ports.htmlOne of the big reasons for why faster-than-GbE networks have not gained traction in the consumer space is due to a lack of appropriate network switches. 10 GbE switches are generally aimed at businesses, and they are priced accordingly. Fortunately, the situation is beginning to change. Buffalo Japan has introduced its new six-port switch featuring two 10 GbE ports and four 2.5 GbE ports that is designed for home use./news/understanding-35mm-and-digital-lenses.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/understanding-35mm-and-digital-lenses.htmlUnderstanding 35mm and Digital LensesIf you have no interest in understanding what different lenses do and when to use them, then don't buy a Digital SLR. The main reason SLR exists is to offer a flexible platform for using a wide range of lenses. You could justify the quality aspect and through the lens viewing, but you can find those features on fixed lens cameras. People who buy a digital SLR with one lens they never change and never intend to change are basically wasting their money - they should buy a quality point-and-shoot or fixed lens SLR./news/visual-inspection-gigabyte-z590-aorus-master-review-soaring-high.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-gigabyte-z590-aorus-master-review-soaring-high.htmlVisual Inspection If you were to compare the previous Aorus Master with the latest version we have here, you would be hard-pressed to find any real notable differences in regards to aesthetics. The GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master keeps the same black and silver aesthetic that has worked for the vendor for the last year or so. The Master has a typical Aorus design with a large rear panel cover including integrated RGB LEDs, PCIe slot armor, three M./news/with-snapdragon-google-a-new-start.htmlWed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/with-snapdragon-google-a-new-start.htmlToday, we see HONOR announce the company’s new flagship Magic 3 series of devices. We’ve covered the company for many years now, but to date that was in the context of the company being a subsidiary brand of Huawei. Today’s event also comes from HONOR, but this time around from a spun off company that’s supposed to have cut ties with the trade embargoed and restricted Huawei of past. In a sense, it’s mostly the same people behind the scenes, but also at the same time, it’s also a clear cut-off from past devices, most notably in the form of the adoption of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets, the return of Google’s application suite and ecosystem, as well as a fresh start from a software OS perspective./news/a-compact-coffee-lake-gaming-pc.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-compact-coffee-lake-gaming-pc.htmlSmall form-factor machines have emerged as a very significant chunk of the PC market. Building on the success of the UCFF NUCs, Intel introduced the mini-STX platform in 2015. We have seen multiple mSTX PCs from vendors such as ASRock (DeskMini 110), ECS (LIVA One), and MSI (Cubi 2 Plus). ASRock took things a bit further by introducing the micro-STX form factor in early 2017. Compared to the 5.4" x 5./news/a-glimpse-into-core-m.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-glimpse-into-core-m.htmlWith Haswell Refresh fully behind us and 2014 now in to its second half, Intel is turning their attention to their next generation of products and processes. Intel’s tick-tock methodology coupled with the long development periods of new products means that the company has several projects in flight at any given time. So while we have seen the name Broadwell on Intel’s roadmaps for some time now, the reality of the situation is that we know relatively little about Intel’s next generation architecture and the 14nm process that it is the launch vehicle for./news/a-low-level-look-at-little-endian.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-low-level-look-at-little-endian.htmlIt is the widest superscalar processor on the market, one that can issue up to 10 instructions and sustain 8 per clock: IBM's POWER8. IBM's POWER CPUs have always captured the imagination of the hardware enthusiast; it is the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the M1 Abrams of the processor world. Still, despite a flood of benchmarks and reports, it is very hard to pinpoint how it compares to the best Intel CPUs in performance wise./news/amd-announces-turks-based-firepro-v4900.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-announces-turks-based-firepro-v4900.htmlFor the last couple of years AMD has been pretty consistent about cascading their GPUs through their entire product line. Nowhere is this more evident than their professional graphics lineup, where consumer desktop video cards have transitioned over to professional products at almost 6 months on the dot. In May of this year we saw the introduction of the Cayman based FirePro V7900 and V5900, and now just a bit over 6 months after the Turks based Radeon 6570 and 6670 launched, Turks is getting the professional graphics treatment with the FirePro V4900./news/apple-releases-watchos-2.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-releases-watchos-2.htmlFive days ago Apple released iOS 9, the latest major release of their operating system for smartphones and tablets. They also planned to release the first major upgrade to watchOS, their operating system for the Apple Watch. Due to an unspecified bug that couldn't be fixed in time for the planned September 16th launch the release of watchOS 2 was delayed with no specific details about when it would be released other than that it would be soon./news/asrock-unveils-deskmeet-sff-pc-platform-with-intel-b660.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-unveils-deskmeet-sff-pc-platform-with-intel-b660.htmlASRock has been at the forefront of the small form-factor (SFF) PC revolution right from the Sandy Bridge days. Starting with the Core HT series in the early 2010s, the company moved on to the Beebox (NUC clones) , and recently settled on the DeskMini lineup (based on mini-STX boards). At the 2022 CES, the company is introducing a new SFF PC - the DeskMeet. It is meant to be a step up from the DeskMini - allowing for a custom motherboard, more RAM slots, and space for discrete GPUs./news/asrock-x570-pro4-and-x570m-pro4-motherboards-more-for.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-x570-pro4-and-x570m-pro4-motherboards-more-for.htmlASRock unveiled a number of its X570 models during Computex 2019: a lot of gaming-focused models, and some extremely high-end offerings, but the ATX sized ASRock X570 Pro4 and microATX X570M Pro4 looks set to offer users less bling and more functionality at a lower price point. Starting with the design of the ASRock X570 Pro4 and X570M Pro4 models, both models use the same silver and black theme throughout, with shining silver heatsinks, and a solid looking aluminium rear panel cover which doubles up as the power delivery heatsink./news/ati-radeon-64mb-ddr.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ati-radeon-64mb-ddr.htmlIntroduction A lot has changed at ATI since its formation in 1985. Long gone are the days when a complex graphics chip had 10,000 transistors and 3D rendering was a thing of science fiction. No longer can ATI release a product when it sees fit or lavish in the quality of their 2D features. No, the world of consumer graphics cards has become a constantly changing and adopting field of electronics, making it a very fast paced and dog-eat-dog world./news/compute-performance-amd-radeon-hd-7950-review-feat-sapphire.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compute-performance-amd-radeon-hd-7950-review-feat-sapphire.htmlCompute Performance Moving on from our look at gaming performance, we have our customary look at compute performance. Since compute performance is by definition shader bound, the 7950 is at a bit of a disadvantage here compared to gaming performance. Whereas ROP performance scales with the core clock, shader performance is hit by both the reduction in the core clock and the disabled CU array. Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly./news/construction-under-the-hood.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/construction-under-the-hood.htmlThe Inspiron 8200 that Dell provided us with came loaded with some of the most powerful components available in laptops today. Our test Inspiron 8200 came with a Mobile Pentium 4-M 2.0GHz processor, 512MB DDR memory, a 40GB 5400RPM hard drive, an internal DVD/CD-RW drive, and the latest mobile graphics processors provided via a an NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go mobile graphics module and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics module (replaceable mobile graphics boards that are proprietary to Dell)./news/corsair-demos-9000d-airflow-pc-case-with-24-fans.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-demos-9000d-airflow-pc-case-with-24-fans.htmlTrade shows like Computex always bring out their fair share of oddities, and this year was no exception, with one of the highlights being a Corsair PC case with no fewer than 24 fans. As one of a handful of companies offering really big desktop PC cases, Corsair was demonstrating its new creature: the 9000D Airflow. At 90 liters in volume – which is twice the size of regular PCs and 1./news/design-and-chassis-dell-xps-13-review.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/design-and-chassis-dell-xps-13-review.htmlDesign and Chassis The design of the XPS 13 is the first thing you see, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who does not think Dell has done a great job with the overall intention. From the external aluminum shell, to the carbon fibre palm rest, to the super thin bezels, the XPS 13 is undeniably a great looking laptop. Dell has really squeezed the dimensions down for this device./news/display-quality-keyboard-trackpad.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-quality-keyboard-trackpad.htmlDisplay Quality The new Chromebook's display is still a fairly mediocre TN panel, but for anyone used to the majority of low cost PC notebooks over the past few years it's really not any different. The 16:9 display measures 11.6 inches along the diagonal with a 1366 x 768 resolution. Viewing angles are pretty bad. Max brightness tops out at 233 nits, although contrast ratio is better than a lot of low cost notebooks./news/dragon-fantasy-stay-alive-spelltower-and-time-ducks.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dragon-fantasy-stay-alive-spelltower-and-time-ducks.htmlIt's that time of the year again - this weekend, many of you without smartphones, iPod, or iPads are likely to get one, and those of you who have them already stand a decent chance of getting gift cards. Plenty of great games have come out for mobile platforms this year, and they've gotten lots of attention - Jetpack Joyride, Infinity Blade 2, Tiny Wings, Squids, and others have all had their time in the sun, and you should grab all of them if you haven't already./news/gaming-performance-the-asus-prime-x299-deluxe-motherboard-review.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-the-asus-prime-x299-deluxe-motherboard-review.htmlGaming Performance Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation Ashes of the Singularity is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second./news/gigabyte-z77x-up7-software-gigabyte-z77x-up7-review-oc.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z77x-up7-software-gigabyte-z77x-up7-review-oc.htmlGigabyte Z77X-UP7 Software As mentioned in the BIOS section, on the high end segments for motherboards often the manufacturer will partition the top range with new features or a new look. Gigabyte for the most part has not done this specifically with the UP7 – the usual gamut of EasyTune6 and 3DPower are here in their original form, as well as some of the newer Gigabyte software utilities such as USB Blocker and TweakLauncher./news/gtx-980m-and-970m-notebooks-and-conclusion.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gtx-980m-and-970m-notebooks-and-conclusion.htmlToday's launch of 980M and 970M is about as much of a "hard launch" as we see with notebook GPUs. Quite a few notebooks should be available for order with the new chips, though it could take a couple weeks or more for orders to process. We were hoping to have the MSI GT72 prior to today's launch, but as noted earlier it should arrive in the next day (or in a few hours even)./news/input-lag-color-gamut-and-energy-use.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/input-lag-color-gamut-and-energy-use.htmlInput lag is tested over HDMI using the Leo Bodnar lag tester. It is limited to 1080p but it provides consistent, repeatable results that anyone can duplicate. A scaler can also be designed to introduce very little lag if implemented correctly so native resolution might provide better results, but it would be a slight difference (unless a poor/slow scaler is used). Tested this way the Samsung S27B971D averages 26.3ms of lag./news/intel-and-micron-develop-hybrid-memory-cube-stacked-dram.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-and-micron-develop-hybrid-memory-cube-stacked-dram.htmlDuring the final keynote of IDF, Intel's Justin Rattner demonstrated a new stacked DRAM technology called the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC). The need is clear: if CPU performance is to continue to scale, there can't be any bottlenecks preventing that scaling from happening. Memory bandwidth has always been a bottleneck we've been worried about as an industry. Ten years ago the worry was that parallel DRAM interfaces wouldn't be able to cut it./news/kodak-dx4530-specifications-5-megapixels-for-300-kodak-dx4530.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kodak-dx4530-specifications-5-megapixels-for-300-kodak-dx4530.htmlby Stephen Caston on July 15, 2004 12:05 AM EST 9 Comments | 9 Comments Kodak DX4530 Specifications Kodak DX4530 Release Date August 2003 Price $220 Pixel Count 5.0 Million Camera Type Compact Highest Resolution 2580x1932 Lower Resolutions 2580x1720, 2032x1524, 1288x966 Sensor Type CCD Sensor Size 1/2.8" LCD Screen Size 1./news/lower-revenue-but-strong-cloud-growth.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lower-revenue-but-strong-cloud-growth.htmlToday Microsoft also announced their earnings for the third quarter of their 2016 fiscal year. Revenue, income and earnings were all down compared to Q3 2015, with revenue for the quarter of $20.5 billion, which is down 6%. Operating income was $5.3 billion, down 20%, and net income was $3.8 billion, which is down 25%. Earnings per share were $0.47, down 23% compared to a year ago. Microsoft Q3 2016 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q3'2016 Q2'2016 Q3'2015 Revenue (in Billions USD) $20./news/microsoft-surface-pro-teardown-msata-ssd-inside.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-surface-pro-teardown-msata-ssd-inside.htmlAfter we published our Surface Pro review I went back and updated it to confirm that the SSD inside was indeed of the mSATA variety. My particular review sample used a Micron C400 mSATA SSD, similar to what I reviewed here a while back. Today, the patient folks at iFixit tore their Surface Pro apart and offered visual confirmation: the Surface Pro SSD is mSATA and technically, if you can get inside the system, it can be upgraded./news/nvidia-shield-gets-a-launch-date-and-a-price.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-shield-gets-a-launch-date-and-a-price.htmlEarlier this morning NVIDIA sent out a press release offing an update on the launch of their forthcoming handheld console, Shield. When Shield was first made available for pre-orders back in May, NVIDIA announced that the console would ship in late June with a price tag of $349. Today’s press release serves as an update for that, giving shield a proper launch date and a new price. Shield’s official launch date will be a week from now, June 27th, meeting NVIDIA’s original goal of shipping in late June (if only just)./news/october-1998-super7-3d-video-accelerator-comparison.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/october-1998-super7-3d-video-accelerator-comparison.htmlEight different chipsets, 4 tests, 3 resolutions, 2 processors, 1 winner... ...all on a Socket-7 Motherboard "Out with the old and in with the new, it is this spring cleaning attitude that drives the markets we so dearly scrutinize during every minute of our dedicated hobby time.  When referring to the newest automobiles, the latest fashion trends, or even the most popular music, parting with the old and heading towards the world of the new is relatively easy and painless (unless, of course, you have that pair of 70's style socks you just can't bring yourself to get rid of)./news/philips-unveils-brilliance-439p9h-superwide-32-10-curved-prosumer.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/philips-unveils-brilliance-439p9h-superwide-32-10-curved-prosumer.htmlPhilips this week announced a new ultra-wide display aimed at prosumers. The curved Brilliance 439P9H brings together a large 32:10 aspect ratio panel with USB Type-C docking capabilities, an integrated KVM switch, a wide color gamut, factory calibration, and more. And while the monitor is not aimed at color-critical workloads, many users who need accurate colors may actually consider it. The Philips Brilliance 439P9H uses a curved VA panel featuring a 1./news/power-efficient-2-gbps-in-an-ip66-package.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-efficient-2-gbps-in-an-ip66-package.htmlLexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired in 2017 by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD makes its entry as the new flagship in the 20 Gbps PSSD segment./news/power-temperature-noise-nvidia-s-geforce-gt-430-the.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-nvidia-s-geforce-gt-430-the.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise We only have 1 GT 430 card on hand, so unlike past articles we cannot compile any data on the load voltages of this line of cards. Our lone Asus card has a load voltage of 1.08v, and an idle voltage of 0.88v. Idle clocks are 50.6MHz for the core, and 270MHz effective for the memory. While GT 430 may not be competitive on a performance-per-dollar basis, it’s hard to argue with these power results./news/seagate-ironwolf-110-ssd-480gb.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-ironwolf-110-ssd-480gb.htmlWe haven’t yet given away any hardware this summer, so let’s change that. Earlier this year Seagate announced that they’d be expanding their Ironwolf family of NAS-focused drives to include SATA SSDs, and to that end the company has sent over a 480GB drive for us to give away. As noted by Ganesh earlier this year when the drives launched, the Ironwolf 110 family the recent drop in NAND pricing has opened the door to SSDs becoming increasingly viable for NASes, especially as cache drives./news/setup-notes-the-in-band-ecc-option.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/setup-notes-the-in-band-ecc-option.htmlUpon completion of the hardware configuration of the NUCS BOX-1360P/D4 and freshly installing the OS, we took some time to look into its BIOS interface. The video below present the entire gamut of available options for the system. ASRock Industrial primarily plays in the B2B space, where a functional feature-rich BIOS is valued over a fancy GUI-based one with fewer knobs. In that context, it is not hugely surprising that the BIOS interface is spartan in nature./news/sony-demonstrates-concept-xperia-ear-headphones-and-xperia-touch.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-demonstrates-concept-xperia-ear-headphones-and-xperia-touch.htmlAs we move through our MWC meeting writeup backlog this week, one of the interesting developments we saw was from Sony. Apart from new smartphones, Sony showed two interesting devices at MWC 2017: the Xperia Ear Open-Style Concept as well as the Xperia Touch Android projector. Both devices use a number of Sony’s proprietary technologies, and Sony states that their usage models differ from what we expect to see from today’s devices./news/synology-launches-8-bay-rangeley-based-ds1815.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synology-launches-8-bay-rangeley-based-ds1815.htmlIn the last week of September, Synology launched their Intel Rangeley-based DS415+. In our review, we found it resolved most of the issues encountered in the previous Atom-based SMB NAS units (such as performance with encryption enabled and latencies when subject to multi-client access). While 4-bay units tend to cover the needs of the lower end of the SMB spectrum, higher bay counts are necessary for the other segments. Towards this, Synology is launching the 8-bay DS1815+ today./news/team-group-s-t-force-cardea-liquid-a-liquid.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/team-group-s-t-force-cardea-liquid-a-liquid.htmlWith liquid cooling options already available for most PC components, it was only a matter of time until someone did it for PC storage as well. And now that point has come, thanks to Team Group and its T-Force Cardea Liquid M.2 PCIe Gaming SSD. True to its name, the T-Force Cardea Liquid M.2 PCIe Gaming SSD is an M.2 SSD relying on water cooling to keep its temperature in check./news/the-geforce-gt-330m-apple-s-15-inch-core.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-geforce-gt-330m-apple-s-15-inch-core.htmlThe GeForce GT 330M The discrete GPU Apple settled on in the 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pro isn't bad for a notebook. The GT 330M is a 40nm chip with 48 SPs, cores, CUDA funhouses or whatever you want to call them. This is up from 16 in the GeForce 9400M that shipped on last year's MBPs, and 32 in the optional GeForce 9600M. Those GPUs were also built on TSMC's 65nm process, but power consumption may not be lower on the 330M given what we've seen with NVIDIA's desktop 40nm./news/the-inevitable-return-of-too-much-gloss.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-inevitable-return-of-too-much-gloss.htmlThe Inevitable Return of Too Much Gloss Sometimes I feel like we're on crazy pills here. Glossy plastic has proven to be the bane of my existence as a laptop reviewer (let alone mediocre laptop photographer), and we gripe about it every time, yet nothing seems to change. The nicest thing I can say with the Xplorer X6-9100 is that at least they used the gloss in a very uniform fashion: it's the exact same glossy black finish on the lid, the screen bezel, the palm rest, and surrounding the keyboard./news/the-motherboard-welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-motherboard-welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb.htmlThe Motherboard Two phillips screws hold the fan in place. You don’t need to remove them to remove the heatsink but I did anyway: The single large heatsink is a lot heftier than what we'd seen in previous 360s, it doesn't feel quite as cheap or as insufficient. This time around it has to do double duty cooling both the CPU and the GPU. At this point I can easily remove the motherboard and flip it over, revealing our old friend: the x-clamp./news/thunderbolt-3-now-on-the-cpu.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thunderbolt-3-now-on-the-cpu.htmlOne of the big failures of the Thunderbolt technology since its inception has been its adoption beyond that Apple ecosystem. In order to use it, both the host and the device needed TB controllers supplied by Intel. It wasn’t until Thunderbolt 3 started to use USB Type-C, and Thunderbolt 3 having enough bandwidth to support external graphics solutions, that we started to see the number of available devices start to pick up./news/tiger-lake-comes-to-nucs.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tiger-lake-comes-to-nucs.htmlAs part of its CES 2021 announcements, Intel officially unveiled a number of NUCs based on their Tiger Lake SoCs. Intel's initial NUCs were all based on 100mm x 100mm (4in x 4in) boards, kickstarting the UCFF craze that contributed to revitalizing the PC market. Over the last few years, we have seen Intel expand the NUC to encompass multiple other form-factors, while keeping compactness in mind: Performance: The original 4x4 UCFF units Pro: 4x4 UCFF units with expansion support and vPro capabilities Compute Elements: Add-in Card form factor with carrier boards for system design Extreme: Compute Elements using a 45W TDP processor with a base board hosting up to three PCIe expansion slots (inclusive of a M./news/two-s-company-sub-100-s-a-crowd.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/two-s-company-sub-100-s-a-crowd.htmlTwo weeks ago we saw the paper launch of the Radeon HD 6450, the low-end member of AMD’s Northern Islands family of GPUs. It was a solid product for HTPC use and a very notable improvement over the 5450 it replaced, but it was an uncharacteristically delayed launch for AMD. At the same time we noted that the Northern Islands family had one more GPU we had not seen: Turks./news/western-digital-announces-wd-black-sn850x-nvme-and-p40-game.htmlTue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-announces-wd-black-sn850x-nvme-and-p40-game.htmlWestern Digital is announcing a host of consumer-focused SSD solutions today at its What's Next Western Digital Event. The gaming-focused WD_BLACK is getting the SN850X NVMe SSD and the P40 Game Drive SSD, while the SN740 is now making an appearance as PCIe 4.0-capable M.2 2230/42/80 NVMe SSD under the regular Western Digital brand. The WD_BLACK drives are slated for a summer release. The SN850X is a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD with read speeds of up to 7300 MBps, and will be available in 1TB ($190 MSRP), 2TB, and 4TB capacities./news/250-watt-ampere-in-a-standard-form-factor.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/250-watt-ampere-in-a-standard-form-factor.htmlWith the launch of their Ampere architecture and new A100 accelerator barely a month behind them, NVIDIA this morning is announcing the PCIe version of their accelerator as part of the start of the now-virtual ISC Digital conference for high performance computing. The more straight-laced counterpart to NVIDIA’s flagship SXM4 version of the A100 accelerator, the PCie version of the A100 is designed to offer A100 in a more traditional form factor for customers who need something that they can plug into standardized servers./news/2wire-homeportal-100w-digging-into-phoneline-networking-and-homepna.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2wire-homeportal-100w-digging-into-phoneline-networking-and-homepna.html2wire HomePortal 100w The HomePortal 100x series of broadband routers from 2wire is truly and interesting product line. The most basic unit is simply called the 2wire HomePortal 100 and contains a 2 port broadband router (one WAN, one LAN), a HomePNA 2.0 bridge AND a USB interface option. The unit we had a chance to test is the 2wire HomePortal 100w, which integrates an 802.11b wireless LAN into the package along side the HomePNA 2./news/8-core-amd-ryzen-7-radeon-rx-580-4k.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/8-core-amd-ryzen-7-radeon-rx-580-4k.htmlDell has introduced its first all-in-one PC based on AMD Ryzen microprocessor. The new Inspiron 27 7000-series expands options for those seeking for a system featuring AMD’s latest CPU and is also among the first computers from a top PC OEM to feature Ryzen. Dell will offer multiple configurations of the new Inspiron 27 7775-series computers, some of which will feature a 4K display, an eight-core CPU and 32 GB of memory./news/a-bit-bigger-a-bit-better.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-bit-bigger-a-bit-better.htmlFor established PC peripheral vendors, the biggest challenge in participating in the highly commoditized market is setting themselves apart from their numerous competitors. As designs for coolers and other peripherals have converged over the years into a handful of basic, highly-optimized designs, developing novel hardware for what is essentially a "solved" physics problem becomes harder and harder. So often then, we see vendors focus on adding non-core features to their hardware, such as RGB lighting and other aesthetics./news/apple-now-offering-standalone-afterburner-cards-for-mac-pro.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-now-offering-standalone-afterburner-cards-for-mac-pro.htmlAimed at very specific audiences, Apple’s Mac Pro clearly does not come at a price point that seems reasonable for an average person. Nonetheless, the features it has are not present on an average workstation either. When launched back in December, one such exclusive was Apple’s Afterburner accelerator for video decoding, which was only available with a purchase of a new Mac Pro. Recently, however, the company has made the card available for purchase separately./news/apple-s-iphone-4-thoroughly-reviewed.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-s-iphone-4-thoroughly-reviewed.htmlFaceTime Meet Manveer. I’ve known him since I was in the 6th grade. Somewhere around the 8th grade we started a ritual of calling each other every day after school and talking about video games, computers and dumb things that happened at school. We talked on the phone for hours. Back in those days we would even play the same game on separate computers while talking on the phone. It was a precursor to voice chat in gaming networks like Steam or Xbox Live./news/asrock-goes-low-profile-with-new-arc-a380-graphics.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-goes-low-profile-with-new-arc-a380-graphics.htmlAs Intel's slate of video card board partners has expanded over the last year, so has the variety in the ecosystem, as the newly minted partners set out to design their own unique products around Intel's fledgling GPU family. This, thankfully, is starting to include some underserved markets such as low profile vide cards, which have been left behind in the focus on bigger-and-better video cards. Which brings us to ASRock's latest Arc A380 graphics card, a new low-profile A380 design that brings Intel's entry-level discrete GPU to smaller systems./news/asrock-z590m-itx-ac-the-intel-z590-motherboard-overview.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z590m-itx-ac-the-intel-z590-motherboard-overview.htmlASRock Z590M-ITX/ac ASRock's only mini-ITX model known at this time is the basic looking yet elegant Z590M-ITX/ac. Small form factor systems are still popular with enthusiasts, and ASRock, over the years, has had some of the best examples of how to get mini-ITX done properly. The ASRock Z590M-ITX/ac includes a black and gray printed PCB with silver heatsinks and is advertising an 8-phase power delivery. The ASRock Z590M-ITX/ac includes one full-length PCIe 4./news/asus-rog-strix-z490-i-gaming.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-z490-i-gaming.htmlASUS has announced just one mini-ITX model for Z490 so far, the ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming. While not clear when it will be released, it includes an actively cooled power delivery heatsink. This is designed to keep the 8+2 power delivery cool with a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input. This includes a large aluminium rear panel cover, heat pipe connected heatsinks, and comes with two PCIe 3.0 x4 M./news/asus-tuf-gaming-b560m-plus-wifi-b560m-plus.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-tuf-gaming-b560m-plus-wifi-b560m-plus.htmlRounding off the ASUS B560 models is a pair of micro-ATX motherboards which are targetted at gamers on a budget. Both theASUS TUF GamingB560M-PlusWIFI and B560M-Plusfollow the quintessential TUF Gaming design with black, grey, and yellow accented PCB and heatsinks. Nearly identical to its larger ATX sibling, both the B560M-Plus and Wi-Fi model is advertised as including an 8+1 phase power delivery, with a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input delivering power to the processor./news/closing-thoughts-intel-core-i9-13900k-and-i5-13600k.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closing-thoughts-intel-core-i9-13900k-and-i5-13600k.htmlClosing Thoughts When Intel officially announced Raptor Lake back at Intel Innovation 2022, it coincidentally fell on the same day that AMD's latest Ryzen 7000 processors were made available in retail stores. Although it did take a little bit of sting out of AMD's launch, that's something that's become par for the course in what's become a highly competitive consumer CPU market. Now Intel's 13th Generation Core processors are here, and following AMD's well-received Zen 4 launch, the biggest question to be answered today is "/news/corsair-vengeance-c70-case-review-going-for-the-gamers.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-vengeance-c70-case-review-going-for-the-gamers.htmlIntroducing the Corsair Vengeance C70 Corsair has had an excellent run as a case designer, showing growth with each new enclosure by adding some features, subtracting other ones, moving things around, and generally continuing to experiment. The Obsidian and Carbide lines in particular have shown healthy progress, but today Corsair launches a fourth line under their popular Vengeance gaming brand: the Vengeance C70. While the exteriors of the Obsidian and to a lesser extent Carbide cases have all been fairly austere, the Vengeance C70's target is pretty clear: they're going after gamers./news/crysis-3-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/crysis-3-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070.htmlCrysis 3 Still one of our most punishing benchmarks 3 years later, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. Crytek’s DX11 masterpiece, Crysis 3’s Very High settings still punish even the best of video cards, never mind the rest. Along with its high performance requirements, Crysis 3 is a rather balanced game in terms of power consumption and vendor optimizations. As a result it can give us a good look at how our video cards stack up on average, and later on in this article how power consumption plays out./news/display-measurement-the-apple-iphone-xr-review-a-different.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-measurement-the-apple-iphone-xr-review-a-different.htmlDisplay Measurement The display of the iPhone XR is likely its most discussed hardware feature, simply because Apple chose to diverge from the OLED screens on the XS models and instead use a more traditional LCD screen. While that in itself shouldn’t have caused too much talk, Apple also made the interesting choice to go with a relatively low-resolution 1792 x 828 panel. This represents a lower pixel density than what we would expect out of a sizable 6./news/first-64gb-ddr5-4800-modules-from-sk-hynix.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/first-64gb-ddr5-4800-modules-from-sk-hynix.htmlDiscussion of the next generation of DDR memory has been aflutter in recent months as manufacturers have been showcasing a wide variety of test vehicles ahead of a full product launch. Platforms that plan to use DDR5 are also fast approaching, with an expected debut on the enterprise side before slowly trickling down to consumer. As with all these things, development comes in stages: memory controllers, interfaces, electrical equivalent testing IP, and modules./news/geforce-gtx-1080-price-cut-to-499-nvidia-partners.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/geforce-gtx-1080-price-cut-to-499-nvidia-partners.htmlAlong with this evening’s new of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, NVIDIA has a couple other product announcements of sorts. First off, starting tomorrow, the GeForce GTX 1080 is getting an official $100 price cut, bringing the card's price to $499. Since the card launched back in May at $599, prices for the card have held fairly steady around that MSRP. So once this price cut goes into effect, it will have a significant effect on card prices./news/gigabyte-b550m-aorus-pro-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-b550m-aorus-pro-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlGIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro The GIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro is a micro-ATX motherboard and is the condensed version of the ATX B550 Aorus Pro model. Following a similar design to its larger counterpart, the B550M Aorus Pro is decked out with black heatsinks on a black PCB, with a silver Aorus falcon logo on the chipset heatsink. It is advertised as featuring a 10+3 phase power delivery, two M.2 slots, and a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec./news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-nucs-box-1360p.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-asrock-industrial-nucs-box-1360p.htmlGPU Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks Intel did not make significant changes in the integrated GPU when moving from Alder Lake to Raptor Lake. Process maturity has allowed it to clock the iGPU a bit higher, but the number of EUs remains the same as in the previous generation. GPU performance evaluation typically involved gaming workloads, and for select PCs, GPU compute. Prior to that, we wanted to take a look at the capabilities of the iGPU in the Core i7-1360P./news/hands-on-with-the-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-the-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s.htmlWhile the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are relatively the same phone on the surface compared to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, in just about half an hour of hands-on time I actually discovered there’s quite a bit different that wasn’t even mentioned in the announcement, in addition to discovering the value of various aspects of what was discussed in the announcement. The first, and probably most important change to the iPhone 6s from a user experience perspective this generation is going to be 3D Touch./news/intel-s-core-i3-8121u-uncovering-the-microarchitecture-secrets.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-core-i3-8121u-uncovering-the-microarchitecture-secrets.htmlUncovering the Microarchitecture Secrets When we approached Intel to see if they would disclose the full microarchitecture, just as usually do in the programming manuals for all the other microarchitectures they’ve released, the response was underwhelming. There is one technical document related to Cannon Lake I can’t access without a corporate NDA, which would be no use for an article like this. These documents usually fall under corporate NDA before the official launch, and eventually become public a short time after./news/market-share-seagate-wd-and-toshiba-shipments.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/market-share-seagate-wd-and-toshiba-shipments.htmlWestern Digital Remains World’s No. 1 HDD Supplier Due to severe declines in demand for hard drives, it does not look like HDD makers want to fight for market share. Western Digital controlled about 43% of the HDD market in Q1 2016, just like a quarter before. Seagate was the second largest supplier with 39.38% market share. If the HDD shipments numbers for Toshiba are correct, then the company controlled around 17% of the hard drive market, moving ever so slightly higher./news/microsoft-s-project-scorpio-more-hardware-details-revealed.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-s-project-scorpio-more-hardware-details-revealed.htmlThis news piece contains speculation, and suggests silicon implementation based on released products and roadmaps. The only elements confirmed for Project Scorpio are the eight x86 cores, 6 TFLOPs, 326 GB/s, it's built by AMD, and it is coming in 2017. If anyone wants to officially correct any speculation, please get in touch.  One of the critical points of contention with consoles, especially when viewed through the lens of the PC enthusiast, is the hardware specifications./news/msi-mag-b550m-mortar-b550m-mortar-wifi.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-mag-b550m-mortar-b550m-mortar-wifi.htmlThe MSI B550M Mortar Wifi and B550M Mortar are MSI’s only micro-ATX models currently available at launch and represents the Arsenal series which is MSI’s entry-level gaming range. Both models are identical in terms of features and aesthetics, aside from the Wifi version which comes with a Wi-Fi 6 interface. Some of the pairings other features include two M.2 slots, a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec, and a Realtek 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller./news/multitasking-performance-the-quad-core-advantage-apple-s-mac.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/multitasking-performance-the-quad-core-advantage-apple-s-mac.htmlMultitasking Performance - The Quad Core Advantage We're almost at the end of the review and so far we've hardly shown any performance benefit thanks to quad cores; just about all of the benchmarks we've presented here today could be duplicated if you only had a single Xeon in the Mac Pro instead of two. It seems that many multithreaded applications are specifically targeted at dual core systems, and scaling above and beyond two simultaneous (and CPU intensive) threads just isn't where it needs to be for four cores to make a big difference./news/nintendo-s-development-secrets-cloud-gaming-new-killer-nic.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nintendo-s-development-secrets-cloud-gaming-new-killer-nic.htmlThis is my first GDC. It’s the Game Developers Conference. I’m not a game developer, but I’m not a regular developer either and I go to the Intel Developers Forum all the time. When Derek went last year he said that there was just too much show, and that next time he’d want me to come to help out. I obliged. Trips out to California always end up being useful in one way or another./news/overclocking-intel-s-new-45nm-qx9650-the-rules-have.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-intel-s-new-45nm-qx9650-the-rules-have.htmlIntroduction Intel has once again re-energized the overclocking community with the recent release of the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 quad-core processor, the first of many new mobile, desktop, and server CPUs fabricated using their radically new 45nm process technology. Early results have highlighted Intel's extremely conservative approach in assigning processor power specifications and because of this, users looking to push their systems beyond rated speeds are finding they have a lot more headroom than normally expected./news/overclocking-with-a-10-increase-in-core-voltage.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-with-a-10-increase-in-core-voltage.htmlWhile there's something nice about not having to do anything to overclock your CPU other than adjusting a single parameter, tweaking your core voltage has the potential to significantly increase your overclocking potential. Let's start with the Phenom II X4 940. Using the stock AMD cooler and pushing a max 10% increase in core voltage we ended up with 3.6GHz and a 2.2GHz NB frequency at 1.475V: I was able to get the chip up to 3./news/power-consumption-and-thermal-characteristics.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-and-thermal-characteristics.htmlThe power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port of the system. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel NUC13ANKi7 (Arena Canyon) with other systems evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the peak as well as idling power consumption at the wall./news/probing-fibing-verifying-chips.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/probing-fibing-verifying-chips.htmlOur final stop on the engineering portion of the tour took us through one of NVIDIA's low-level testing labs; these labs take silicon after they come back from the fab and are used to test the chips to make sure they function as expected. There was a good deal of equipment in this particular facility for diagnosing defects as well as implementing minor fixes through a FIB tool. Click to Enlarge/news/radeon-hd-8670d-vs-intel-hd-4600.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/radeon-hd-8670d-vs-intel-hd-4600.htmlThe run up to Computex has been insane. Kabini, Haswell and Iris hit us back to back to back, not to mention all of the travel before receiving those products to get briefed on everything. Needless to say, we're in major catchup mode. There's a lot more that I wanted to do with Haswell desktop that got cut out due to Iris, and much more I wanted to do with Iris that I had to scrap in order to fly out to Computex./news/ryzen-5-conclusions-the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-vs.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ryzen-5-conclusions-the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-vs.htmlAMD Ryzen 5 We mentioned at the top of the review that AMD’s Ryzen 7 launch last month benefited in a market where the competition was extremely expensive – being able to offer equivalent performance in most tasks and then undercut the competition by 50% is a difficult task, but the opening was always there due to a lack of competition in this space. When it comes to the mainstream market, the Ryzen 5 processors are actually competing on price with Intel’s processors directly, and thus has to offer something more to compete./news/ryzen-5000-mobile-with-geforce-graphics.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ryzen-5000-mobile-with-geforce-graphics.htmlDuring their E3 2021 gaming event this afternoon, Razer has launched the latest variant of its popular Blade 14 gaming laptop. For the first time, Razer is using an AMD processor to power its latest Blade 14 thin gaming laptop. Marking a milestone within the company, the Razer Blade includes plenty of features, including Wi-Fi 6E, dual USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, and multiple options with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics for fine-tuning the laptop's portable gaming performance./news/samsung-unveils-isocell-bright-hmx-108-mp-sensor-for.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-unveils-isocell-bright-hmx-108-mp-sensor-for.htmlSamsung this week has introduced the industry’s first 108 megapixel image sensor for smartphones. The Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX promises to allow smartphones to take photos comparable to those from DSLR cameras. One of the first handsets to use the new sensor will be a phone from Xiaomi. Samsung’s flagship 108 MP ISOCELL Bright HMX is a fairly large 1/1.33-inch image sensor for smartphones. Thanks to the combination of its sheer size and the underlying sensor technology, the Bright HMX is designed to absorb more light than existing image sensors, allowing it to offer better photos even in low-lit conditions./news/still-not-enough-to-game.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/still-not-enough-to-game.htmlStill Not Enough to Game At this point you should be expecting these results: the HD 4200/4250 just isn't powerful enough to run modern games at 768p. That said, reviewing the L645D gives us an opportunity to at least gauge how much CPU power can affect gaming performance with the HD 4200/4250 as well as pad out our results for two recent bench inductees: Mafia II and Metro 2033./news/the-asrock-x399-phantom-gaming-6-motherboard-review-250.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asrock-x399-phantom-gaming-6-motherboard-review-250.htmlOverclocking Experience with ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 Even though the ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 is targeting gamers and users looking for an entry-level Threadripper motherboard, there is some plenty of appeal for enthusiasts looking to overclock. Now it has to be noted that the X399 Phantom Gaming 6 has its power rating capped to support Threadripper processors with a TDP up to 180 W, but this doesn’t detract from the quality and the 16-core Threadripper 2950X is still a high-end option./news/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx.htmlA little less than 2 years ago AMD launched their latest generation of video card products, the Radeon HD 7000 series. Based on the brand-new TSMC 28nm process, these have been some of the most successful AMD products in years, seeing AMD fight with NVIDIA head-to-head for a time for the performance crown. Perhaps as a testament to that success they’ve quickly been racking up one of the longest retail shelf lives of any AMD product, with the first 7000 series products quickly approaching the 2 year mark./news/weekly-memory-motherboard-price-guide-march-2001-1st-edition.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/weekly-memory-motherboard-price-guide-march-2001-1st-edition.htmlIntroduction It's time once again for AnandTech's Memory and Motherboard price guide. The basic goal is to provide you with the best deals, and follow price trends of the listed products. We have selected a leading team of on-line vendors, and will be tracking their progress on weekly basis. Please note that all vendors were selected according to their best price offered. Some vendors may ask that you place a phone-order to make sure that you receive our listed price; others simply ask that you mention where you found the price (in this case AnandTech)./news/welcome-to-my-world-the-witcher-a-study-in.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/welcome-to-my-world-the-witcher-a-study-in.htmlWelcome to My World The Witcher is powered by BioWare's Aurora 2007 engine, a heavily modified version of the engine behind Neverwinter Nights — and it really is heavily modified, to the point where if the BioWare logo wasn't present on the box, you likely wouldn't make the connection. Initially launched in late October 2007, The Witcher is set in a dark, violent world perched on the brink of destruction. Your job, naturally, is to take the role of the Geralt, the White Wolf (from The Witcher books — now apparently resurrected without much of his memory) and set things right./news/what-is-a-parhelia-matrox-s-comeback-kid.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-is-a-parhelia-matrox-s-comeback-kid.htmlWhat is a Parhelia? The first question everyone asks when they hear the word is "What is a parhelia?" A parhelia is a natural phenomenon that occurs when light is reflected and refracted by ice crystals in the air. The resulting effect, generally referred to as a halo can take the form of a parhelia when one or two false suns can appear in the sky. The parhelia effect also goes by the name sundog however the Matrox Sundog is definitely not a very marketable name for a GPU and thus Parhelia was chosen./news/why-pine-trail-isn-t-much-faster-than-the.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/why-pine-trail-isn-t-much-faster-than-the.htmlIn 2008 Intel introduced the Diamondville platform. This was the Atom platform that was used in the vast majority of netbooks and nettops. You had an Atom processor (codename: Diamondville) and Intel's 945GSE chipset. The memory controller was located on the chipset which was built on a 90nm process that ended up eating quite a bit of power. Dual-core Atom "Diamondville" (left) vs. Dual-core Atom "Pineview" (right) At the end of last year, Intel brought forth Pine Trail./news/xpg-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950.htmlMon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xpg-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950.htmlRetail drives based on the Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller have arrived. The ADATA SX8200 Pro and HP EX950 are nearly identical drives that are replacing last year's flagship models from both brands. Silicon Motion's first NVMe SSD controller felt very much like a version 1.0 product. Despite any PR and marketing to the contrary, none of the products which used that SM2260 controller were able to compete with high-end drives like those from Samsung./news/3nm-revenue-share-drops-steeply-but-hpc-share-rises.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3nm-revenue-share-drops-steeply-but-hpc-share-rises.htmlTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week released its financial results for Q1 2024. Due to a rebound in demand for semiconductors, the company garned $18.87 billion in revenue for the quarter, which is up 12.9% year-over-year, but a decline of 3.8% quarter-over-quarter. The company says that in increase in demand for HPC processors (which includes processors for AI, PCs, and servers) drove its revenue rebound in Q1, but surprisingly, revenue share of TSMC's flagship N3 (3nm-class) process technology declined steeply quarter-over-quarter./news/a-closer-look-corsair-raptor-k40-keyboard-review.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-closer-look-corsair-raptor-k40-keyboard-review.htmlA Closer Look At first sight, the Raptor K40 is remarkably similar to Corsair's mechanical Vengeance keyboards. In fact, some could easily mistake the K40 for a Vengeance K70 Black, if they are unaware that the latter has an aluminum frame. The frame and all of the parts of the Raptor K40 are all plastic. It has a full 104 key layout with additional dedicated multimedia keys and six programmable macro keys. The keys are surprisingly well made for a rubber dome keyboard, with minimal wobble and good response./news/a-new-curved-mini-itx-chassis-from-lian-li.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-new-curved-mini-itx-chassis-from-lian-li.htmlFor many users who have gone to a large LAN event, taking stock of all the crazy PC builds is part of the experience.  Some users modify the case for a particular styling, and then insert a water cooling system with just the right amount of LED lighting.  Last year at Computex, Lian Li showed us a mini-ITX chassis in the form of a train, and even put an engine inside it instead of a PC to show it could actually function as a train./news/arm-to-be-public-once-more-files-for-ipo.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-to-be-public-once-more-files-for-ipo.htmlThe ongoing saga of ownership of Arm appears to be finally nearing its end, as Arm has announced this afternoon that the company has made its long-awaited filing for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq exchange. Share prices and listing dates have not been set as of this time, but Arm has secured the ARM ticker symbol for the new offering. The SoftBank-owned chip IP designer, whose designs are at the core of virtually every smartphone and countless other embedded computers, has been hanging in a state of limbo since early 2022, when NVIDIA’s acquisition of the company was called off due to regulatory pressure./news/asrock-z590-phantom-gaming-4-and-4-ac.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z590-phantom-gaming-4-and-4-ac.htmlThe ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming 4 AC and the non-WiFi version, the Z590 Phantom Gaming 4, represent its entry-level. It follows a fundamental layout, with much smaller heatsinks than the more high-end Z590 PG Velocita. It includes a pair of silver power delivery heatsinks, which cool the advertised 8-phase VRM, and a small silver chipset heatsink.  The ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming 4/AC and Z590 Phantom Gaming share identical features, minus the Wi-Fi on the non AC version./news/asus-rog-maximus-xii-hero-wifi-conclusion.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-maximus-xii-hero-wifi-conclusion.htmlWith Intel’s processors going above 150 W and 200 W during their turbo periods by default, we are getting to a point now where motherboard optimized profiles are extending the times these high power modes are in operation. Out of the box, most motherboards are not running Intel recommended specifications, but instead the motherboard manufacturers own optimized settings. To that end, users have to understand even before turning on the system what their cooling requirements can be, which can be difficult./news/asus-unveils-the-proart-studiobook-pro-17-a-cheaper.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-unveils-the-proart-studiobook-pro-17-a-cheaper.htmlIn addition to launching its top of the line ProArt StudioBook Pro X mobile workstation that is priced at a whopping $4,999.99, ASUS also introduced a less expensive workstation this week. The ProArt StudioBook Pro 17 steps down to NVIDIA’s Quadro RTX 3000 graphics, which along with some other configuration changes allows ASUS to offer it in configurations starting at $2000. The ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro 17 W700 laptops have a lot in common with their higher-end brother: they come in a similar chassis with a Turquoise Grey finish and use a factory-calibrated Pantone Validated 17-inch NanoEdge display with a 1920×1200 resolution that can cover 97% of the DCI-P3 color gamut./news/asus-zennovation-press-event-live-blog-11-30am-pt.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-zennovation-press-event-live-blog-11-30am-pt.html02:28PM EST - We're here at ASUS' Press Event, Zennovation 02:28PM EST - Expect to see Jonney Shih on stage 02:29PM EST - Last year, ASUS didn't have a CES event because everything was being launched after Computex 02:29PM EST - But given the recent launch of Kaby Lake, I suspect we'll see some KBL enabled systems 02:30PM EST - Ian on text, Ryan on photos. TeAm AnandTech in the house/news/big-battery-decent-battery-life.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/big-battery-decent-battery-life.htmlBig Battery = Decent Battery Life So let's get this out of the way first: the T410 "cheats" by using a 9-cell 94Wh battery compared to 6-cell 48 to 64Wh batteries in competing laptops. The default battery on the T410 is also a 6-cell unit, but if you want more battery life it's nice to have the option of grabbing a higher capacity battery. For a comparison of how the laptops really stack up, look at the relative battery life chart where we factor in battery capacity./news/cables-and-connectors-the-enermax-liberty.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cables-and-connectors-the-enermax-liberty.htmlCables and ConnectorsThe cables come in a very nice bag that can be store unused parts. On the front of the PSU we find the jacks where the cables connect. There are six black and two red jacks. The black ones are reserved for the peripheral devices like optical drives and hard disks. The two red jacks are marked PCI-E and are keyed so that only the right cable can be connected (in case the color of the jacks didn't already clue you in)./news/coffee-lake-not-supported-by-intel-s-200-series.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/coffee-lake-not-supported-by-intel-s-200-series.htmlIn a stunning bit of Twitter, a tweet from one of the leading motherboard manufacturers has stated that Coffee Lake, Intel’s 8th Generation Core processors, will not be supported on the current generation of 200-series motherboards. No，Coffee Lake CPU is not compatibilble with 200 series motherboards. — July 31, 2017 Information like this is usually kept under wraps until an Intel reveal, but it seems to have been mindlessly posted to Twitter on July 31st, an account that last tweeted on April 11th before this tweet occurred./news/conclusion-almost-everything-you-need.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-almost-everything-you-need.htmlConclusion: Almost Everything You Need My title for this review stems from the feeling that I've finally tested an enthusiast-class quiet case that is capable of producing excellent acoustics and performance competitive with cases that don't share its acoustic allowances. The Fractal Design Define XL R2 is a beastly piece of engineering, but it's also a very pleasant surprise. If you eyeball large enthusiast cases but wish they had at least some padding to keep the noise down, Fractal Design may actually have you covered./news/conclusion-still-a-solid-buy.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-still-a-solid-buy.htmlConclusion: Still a Solid Buy My conclusions from the previous review of iBUYPOWER's Erebus GT are going to be echoed here: the system continues to be a solid value and worthy of enthusiast attention. What's also worth mentioning is that this review unit exhibited none of the issues I dealt with in the last one that merited the response from iBUYPOWER's Ricky Lee: it was solid from start to finish./news/core-i9-13900k-ryzen-9-7950x-scaling-performance-cpu.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/core-i9-13900k-ryzen-9-7950x-scaling-performance-cpu.htmlFor the compute side of our testing to determine how well the Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X scale at different power levels, we've opted for a range of CPU-intensive benchmarks, particularly from the rendering and encoding section of our test suite. To keep the playing field even, we are using the same SK Hynix DDR5-5600B 2 x 16 GB memory kit throughout all of our testing. We've separated the results within the same graph to outlay performance differences at different power levels so that users can see the differences and comparison in performance on offer from both the Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X processors./news/cryptomining-demand-drives-exceptionally-high-graphics-card-shipments-in.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cryptomining-demand-drives-exceptionally-high-graphics-card-shipments-in.htmlThis week, Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reported significantly higher discrete GPU shipments for Q2 2017, attributing the historically unprecedented increase to cryptocurrency mining, specifically to Ethereum mining. As opposed to the cryptocurrency mining demand of a few years ago, JPR notes that the ASIC-resistant nature of Ethereum mining has especially encouraged GPU mining. In terms of discrete desktop graphics market share, AMD gained a few percentage points from NVIDIA, bringing the current balance to AMD’s 29./news/dfi-unveils-credit-card-sized-amd-ryzen-board.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dfi-unveils-credit-card-sized-amd-ryzen-board.htmlDFI has announced what they consider the world’s smallest single-board computer (SBC) that uses on AMD’s Ryzen Embedded processor. The highly-integrated credit card-sized GHF51 motherboard can be used for a variety of applications that have to be small, yet offer capabilities as well as performance of a modern PC. The DFI GHF51 1.8-inch platform carries AMD’s dual-core Ryzen Embedded R1000-series SoC with AMD Radeon Vega GPU featuring three compute units (192 stream processors) with hardware H./news/enermax-d-f-vegas-self-cleaning-fans-with-leds.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/enermax-d-f-vegas-self-cleaning-fans-with-leds.htmlEnermax has announced that they have expanded their lineup of fans with its DFR (dust free rotation) technology, which can clean themselves up from dust, with two new models featuring LEDs. The Enermax D.F. Vegas 120-mm fans with different lighting effects are aimed at modders, who will I suspect will appreciate the self-cleaning mechanism. Perhaps one of the most annoying things when servicing PCs is removing dust from fans. Dust is definitely not a hygienic compound, but back in the day it was not visually noticeable since PC cases did not have windows and lacked any kind of lighting inside./news/final-words-the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx-8150-tested.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx-8150-tested.htmlFinal Words In many cases, AMD's FX-8150 is able to close the gap between the Phenom II X6 and Intel's Core i5 2500K. Given the right workload, Bulldozer is actually able to hang with Intel's fastest Sandy Bridge parts. We finally have a high-end AMD CPU with power gating as well as a very functional Turbo Core mode. Unfortunately the same complaints we've had about AMD's processors over the past few years still apply here today: in lightly threaded scenarios, Bulldozer simply does not perform./news/first-impressions-asus-eee-pc-laptop-umpc-or-something.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/first-impressions-asus-eee-pc-laptop-umpc-or-something.htmlFirst Impressions Upon first opening up the box and removing the Eee PC from its packaging, you will almost certainly be impressed. This is a stylish, small, sleek laptop that you certainly wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen using in public. If you're the type of person that likes to whip out their new gadget to impress friends, the Eee PC is certainly a conversation piece. "Hey, check out my new laptop!/news/from-humble-beginnings-to-huge-success-pc-power-cooling.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/from-humble-beginnings-to-huge-success-pc-power-cooling.htmlFrom Humble Beginnings to Huge Success Before success comes hard work. That holds true for every company earning money today. Doug was the driving power behind PC Power & Cooling over the years, and their success came with a lot of hard work and some good ideas. We got some old pictures that show some of the history behind the company. Here's a picture of Doug Dodson in 1992 at his Comdex booth in Las Vegas./news/globalfoundries-to-build-new-450k-wafer-per-year-fab.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/globalfoundries-to-build-new-450k-wafer-per-year-fab.htmlLooking to capitalize on the ongoing chip crunch, GlobalFoundries this morning is announcing that the company is building a new chip fab in Singapore, with the groundbreaking taking place immediately. The unnamed fab will be joining the company’s existing cluster of fabs in Singapore, and once fully ramped up in late 2023, will be capable of processing 450K 300mm wafers per year. The fab is the first of a larger, three phase plan for the foundry, which with investments from customers and the Singapore government, will be spending $4 billion to construct the new fab./news/hands-on-with-the-samsung-galaxy-s-ii-galaxy.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-the-samsung-galaxy-s-ii-galaxy.htmlIn a not completely unexpected move Samsung Mobile announced that it would be working with NVIDIA on two different projects. First and foremost is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This 10.1" Honeycomb tablet uses NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC (just like LG's Optimus Pad and Motorola's Xoom). The big news isn't the fact that it's a 10-inch Android tablet, but that it's not using a Samsung SoC. As the reference platform for Honeycomb, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 makes a lot of sense for Samsung./news/high-end-gpu-performance-w-hdr-enabled.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-end-gpu-performance-w-hdr-enabled.htmlThe white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate At the very high end, in our most strenuous benchmark, $1200 of graphics cards will buy you less than 50 fps on average. It doesn't actually matter which vendor you go with, both ATI and NVIDIA offer similar performance at the very high end with one very important exception: ATI seems to offer much higher minimum frame rates than NVIDIA at the very high end in this test./news/how-cheap-can-you-get-a-6-52-inch.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/how-cheap-can-you-get-a-6-52-inch.htmlEven in 2020, I would have never have guessed you could build a 6-inch or above large display smartphone for anything less than $100. We have seen a number of devices around the low 5-inch mark, such as the Alcatel models, that skirt around $100-$120, but to both offer a bigger screen at half that price? DOOGEE has gone a bit crazy. The new X95 is listed as only $60, but affords a 6./news/intel-appoints-pat-gelsinger-as-new-ceo-from-feb.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-appoints-pat-gelsinger-as-new-ceo-from-feb.htmlNews is breaking that Intel has announced that Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare, is to take the role of CEO at Intel from February 15th. Intel today has released a press statement saying that current CEO Bob Swan (who we interviewed only a few days ago!) is to step down in his role, and be succeeded by Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger, a veteran of the industry, has spent over 40 years at companies such as VMWare, EMC, and spent 30 years previously at Intel, reaching the potisition of Chief Technology Officer./news/logitech-gaming-keyboard-g510-logitech-releases-a-sm%C3%B6rg%C3%A5.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/logitech-gaming-keyboard-g510-logitech-releases-a-sm%C3%B6rg%C3%A5.htmlLogitech® Gaming Keyboard G510 Gaming keyboards come in all shapes, sizes, costs, and utilities.  The multi-functional Z-board, with its game-specific overlays has had some attention over the years, as well as the Saitek Eclipse range, and Logitech’s own G-series keyboards.  The original G15 in the range offered a flip-up black-and-white LCD display, programmable G-buttons, a physical switch to turn the Windows key off, and on-board media controls.  The G11 then offered everything the G15 did, without the display./news/magsafe-and-more-apple-s-macbook-pro-using-it.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/magsafe-and-more-apple-s-macbook-pro-using-it.htmlWith the MacBook Pro Apple introduced its MagSafe power connector, a magnetic power connector that's designed to easily break away if you accidentally step on the cord or pull it too far instead of taking the notebook down with it. The idea makes a lot of sense, and the connector is significantly smaller than its predecessor, but there are many cases where it can get annoying. Although the MagSafe connector remains attached most of the time, the minute you put more strain than normal on the power cable you can expect it to break away./news/new-amd-nvidia-drivers-async-timewarp-platform-restrictions-added.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-amd-nvidia-drivers-async-timewarp-platform-restrictions-added.htmlAfter just over three and a half years and a Facebook acquisition in between, Oculus’s first-generation Rift headset is launching today. We took a hands-on preview of the headset at GDC 2016 earlier this month and will have a formal review later, but in the meantime for those lucky backers or early pre-order customers who will be receiving their units this week, let’s talk drivers and software. As you’d expect for such a high-profile device launch, both AMD and NVIDIA have new drivers being released in part to update their support for the Rift, along with blog posts lauding the release of the device./news/nintendo-wii-e3-2006-hands-on-with-nintendo-s.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nintendo-wii-e3-2006-hands-on-with-nintendo-s.htmlThe Nintendo Wii Click to Enlarge Click to Enlarge One of the main things everyone is looking forward to seeing this year is the Nintendo Wii. At Nintendo's booth, all we were able to see was the Nintendo DS at first glance but upon closer inspection, Nintendo had placed a barrier surrounding about half of its booth, reaching a good twelve to fifteen feet high. After waiting in an approximately two and a half hour line, we finally had access to the rest of the Nintendo booth./news/patriot-supersonic-rage-2-usb-3-0-256gb-flash.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/patriot-supersonic-rage-2-usb-3-0-256gb-flash.htmlThe rise of USB 3.0 as a high speed interface for PCs and the increasing affordability of flash memory has led to some very interesting products. USB flash drives are a dime a dozen, but there is scope for manufacturers to differentiate themselves. High-performance flash drives have traditionally employed a SATA SSD controller behind a USB 3.0 - SATA bridge. However, this increases the drive cost in what is essentially a price-sensitive market./news/power-consumption-heat-and-noise.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-heat-and-noise.htmlPower Consumption NVIDIA's idle power optimizations do a great job of keeping their very power hungry parts sitting pretty when in 2D mode. Many people I know just leave their computers on all day and generally playing games 24 hours a day is not that great for the health. Idle power is important, especially as energy costs rise, and taking steps to ensure that less power is drawn when less power is needed is a great direction to move in./news/sandisk-releases-z400s-ssd-for-mainstream-pcs-embedded-applications.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-releases-z400s-ssd-for-mainstream-pcs-embedded-applications.htmlWith Computex only a week away, SanDisk is taking a head start today with the release of Z400s SSD. SanDisk is aiming to cater two different markets with the X400s, the first one being the traditional mainstream PC space where SanDisk is looking to bring low-capacity drives at an affordable price, and the other one is the embedded market that includes applications such as digital signage, point of sale and surveillance. Embedded devices still rely heavily on hard drives because the upgrade cycles tend to be long and the cost of SSDs hasn't been low enough to attract interest over hard drives./news/seagate-begins-to-ship-2-5-inch-7mm-thick.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-begins-to-ship-2-5-inch-7mm-thick.htmlSeagate has started to ship its highest-capacity hard drives for notebooks. The new HDDs use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology with very high areal density as well as slimmed-down mechanics. The new Seagate Mobile HDD 2 TB is the first hard drive to market in a 2.5-inch/7 mm form-factor with such extreme capacity. The hard drive is based on two 1 TB SMR platters running at 5400 RPM and features 128 MB of cache as well as SATA interface./news/the-acer-swift-3-sf315-41-review-ryzen-meets.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-acer-swift-3-sf315-41-review-ryzen-meets.htmlIt’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to review a laptop powered by an AMD CPU, but Acer has now launched the Acer Swift 3 powered by Ryzen Mobile, and we’ve got a chance to look at one. AMD has had a tough run in the laptop space over the last couple of years, but with the release of Ryzen in 2017, they are hoping to turn their fortunes around./news/the-enermax-revolution-d-f-12-750w-atx-3.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-enermax-revolution-d-f-12-750w-atx-3.htmlEnermax, established in 1990, is a renowned Taiwanese company in the PC hardware industry, particularly recognized for its innovative power supply units (PSUs), cooling solutions, and PC cases. Over the years, Enermax has built a reputation for engineering reliable, high-performance PSUs that primarily target enthusiasts and professional users. Their commitment to quality and technological advancement has kept them at the forefront of the industry, constantly evolving to meet the demands of the ever-changing tech landscape./news/the-other-consumer-qlc-ssd.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-other-consumer-qlc-ssd.htmlThe Crucial P1 SSD isn't quite the first at anything, but it is still a very novel product. It is the second consumer SSD on the market to use four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory, after the Intel SSD 660p. It's the second QLC SSD from Micron, after their 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD that started shipping to select partners in May (and is now starting to be more widely available)./news/the-thinkpad-x100e-on-the-outside-looking-in.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-thinkpad-x100e-on-the-outside-looking-in.htmlThe ThinkPad X100e, On the Outside Looking In The Congo platform in the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e seems positively ancient at this point, and popular response to our review of the MSI Wind U230 indicated as much. Nile is the new hotness and much improved in all aspects that count, so why the heck are we spending any kind of time on a notebook with outdated hardware? Because while Acer and Toshiba are happy to sell you Nile-based ultraportables in the same price brackets (and often cheaper than) Lenovo is hitting with its X100e configurations, Acer and Toshiba's notebooks aren't as solidly built./news/thinkpad-t410-fast-for-applications.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thinkpad-t410-fast-for-applications.htmlThinkPad T410: Fast for Applications For general applications, the CPU is going to be the biggest determiner of performance. An SSD would also boost performance, particularly in benchmarks like PCMark where storage performance is a major factor. With the fastest i5 dual-core CPU currently available, the T410 is obviously going to churn out some good benchmark results. General application performance is right where we'd expect given the components. Laptops equipped with i7-720QM processors will typically offer a bit better performance in lightly threaded scenarios and quite a bit more performance in heavily threaded tasks./news/ti-omap4-first-to-be-awarded-netflix-hd-drm.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ti-omap4-first-to-be-awarded-netflix-hd-drm.htmlLast week, TI Invited me out to their Dallas, Texas headquarters as part of an editors day. There they showed and talked about a number of exciting projects, including their WiLink combo WLAN, GPS, BT, and FM solutions, MSP430 microprocessors, their C66x multicore DSP, and of course more information on OMAP5. If I had to pick a highlight however, it was being first to see Netflix HD playing back on a real live Android 2./news/turbo-power-and-latency-amd-ryzen-5-3600-review.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/turbo-power-and-latency-amd-ryzen-5-3600-review.htmlTurbo, Power, and Latency Turbo As part of our usual test suite, we run a set of code designed to measure the time taken for the processor to ramp up in frequency. Recently both AMD and Intel are promoting features new to their processors about how quickly they can go from an active idle state into a turbo state – where previously we were talking about significant fractions of a second, we are now down to milliseconds or individual frames./news/45-w-core-i9-15-6-inch-1650ti.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/45-w-core-i9-15-6-inch-1650ti.htmlFor the high-performance commercial space, the line of Extreme Lenovo ThinkPads is a popular choice. For the current generation, Lenovo is unveiling a new X1 Extreme Gen3 version specifically for those commercial users that need performance from both the CPU and GPU in a typical ThinkPad style design. Highlights include the Intel Core-H series processor, the optional NVIDIA GeForce 1650Ti graphics, a 600-nit 15.6-inch display, as well as Wi-Fi 6 capabilities and an optional Cat16 LTE modem./news/amd-announces-radeon-pro-duo-polaris.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-announces-radeon-pro-duo-polaris.htmlBack in 2016 AMD launched the Radeon Pro Duo, an interesting take on a semi-pro workstation card. As a dual-GPU Fiji card wasn’t going to be viable for the consumer market, AMD instead focused their attention on developing such a card for the professional content creation market, where the lack of VRAM would be less of an issue and the second GPU more of an asset. The resulting card was best geared for a niche market, but none the less an important one for the company./news/an-iphone-with-bumpers-apple-s-iphone-4-thoroughly.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-iphone-with-bumpers-apple-s-iphone-4-thoroughly.htmlApple's Bumper Case The iPhone 4 is Apple's second product to launch with first party accessories. Like the iPad before it, the iPhone 4 is available with an Apple fabricated and sold case, dubbed the "bumper." At launch, this was the only case available. Most Apple stores (and online) only had black in inventory, though I'm told a few also had pink in stock. As of right now, the Apple store shows other colors shipping on July 16th - white, pink, orange, green, and blue eventually./news/anandtech-storage-bench-the-destroyer.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/anandtech-storage-bench-the-destroyer.htmlThe Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact./news/asrock-rack-lists-wrx80d8-2t-motherboard-for-ryzen-threadripper.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-rack-lists-wrx80d8-2t-motherboard-for-ryzen-threadripper.htmlASRock Rack has listed a new motherboard on its website supporting AMD's latest Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3000WX series of processors. The ASRock Rack WRX80D8-2T is currently under 'preliminary' status and features eight memory slots, seven full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, as well as twelve SATA ports and support for two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives. It also includes dual 10 GbE and is supported by an ASPEED BMC controller with a dedicated management LAN port and D-sub video output./news/asus-details-zenbook-pro-ux480-with-screenpad-whiskey-lake.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-details-zenbook-pro-ux480-with-screenpad-whiskey-lake.htmlASUS at IFA formally introduced its 14-inch ZenBook Pro UX480 laptop featuring the company’s ScreenPad, a touchpad with a built-in display. The notebook was demonstrated back in early June at Computex, but ASUS never disclosed its specs nor an availability timeframe. As it appears, the mobile PC is powered by Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake-U processor accompanied by NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX dGPU. ASUS intends to start selling the product sometimes in late October./news/ati-all-in-wonder-radeon-32mb-ddr.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ati-all-in-wonder-radeon-32mb-ddr.htmlEver since it's arrival in 1974, the role of the personal computer in daily life has perpetually evolved. Primarily developed for business use, the world's first personal computer was not targeted at individuals at all but rather at small businesses. Possessing the same processing power that could only be found in large mainframes years prior, the personal computer soon became a staple of both small businesses and individuals who found themselves on the cutting edge./news/ati-s-radeon-9800-9600-9200-still-fighting-strong.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ati-s-radeon-9800-9600-9200-still-fighting-strong.htmlAround the Comdex timeframe there were rumors that NVIDIA's GeForce FX would not only be severely delayed, but it would also have a tough time outperforming the Radeon 9700 Pro. Although tough to believe at the time, when push came to shove, a combination of issues surrounding anisotropic filtering quality, drivers that weren't ready for prime-time and a launch that should never have happened left the GeForce FX as an product inferior the Radeon 9700 Pro./news/bargain-basement-4-5-6.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bargain-basement-4-5-6.html#4: Shenzhen Winbest Company Limited, VR102 + VR106 The only company to offer two SKUs, even with different designs, was the Shenzhen Winbest Company Limited. The lower end model, the VR102, uses a full 720x1280 5-inch IPS display with Android 5.1 powered by an RK3126 quard (sic) core SoC. This is a Rockchip design, built on a 40nm process, featuring quad ARM Cortex-A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU./news/bluetooth-sig-announces-bluetooth-mesh-for-large-scale-device.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bluetooth-sig-announces-bluetooth-mesh-for-large-scale-device.htmlThe month the Bluetooth SIG has taken the wraps off of their latest standards project: an addition to the Bluetooth specification that enables creation of large networks of devices. Dubbed "Bluetooth Mesh", the new standard is designed for smart homes, public and manufacturing facilities. An extension of the Bluetooth LE protocol, the Bluetooth SIG hopes that the first products supporting the Bluetooth Mesh specification will be quickly available in the coming months as the new technology does not require principally new hardware./news/complete-bios-tuning-guide-memory-timing-setting.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/complete-bios-tuning-guide-memory-timing-setting.htmlComplete BIOS Tuning Guide - "Memory Timing Setting" Memory Timing Setting P1 - [Auto, Enabled] We can tell you this setting optimizes internal MCH latencies when setting an FSB of 475MHz or greater, but the exact functionality is unknown at this time. Enable this option when overclocking above 475FSB to gain back some memory read performance and improve memory access latencies. Below 475FSB, this option has no effect (Auto maps to Enabled by default)./news/conclusion-is-intel-serious-about-xeon-w.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-is-intel-serious-about-xeon-w.htmlConclusion: Is Intel Serious About Xeon W?  In this review, we have covered the performance on three of the more popular Xeon W processors, as well as two off-roadmap parts, and discussed that the Intel’s decision to bifurcate the way its workstation and consumer processors work has put more questions on the table for prospective buyers. This ultimately comes down to the question: Is Intel Serious About Xeon W? If we ask Intel about this, of course the answer to them is yes – they want to have target markets and have a product portfolio that they feel will fit with that user base./news/conclusions-motorola-moto-g-review.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusions-motorola-moto-g-review.htmlMaking an affordable smartphone for the masses that aren’t willing to spend the dime on flagship-tier devices is a pitch I’ve heard a few times. Usually the device starts out great, but software support ends up being negligible from the start, or the device has serious caveats in actual practice. The number of mid to low end phones I’ve seen which promised to be halo devices of the mass market but are stuck running the same software they launched with could fill a few desk drawers./news/conroe-performance-preview-follow-up.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conroe-performance-preview-follow-up.htmlAt Fall IDF 2005 Intel briefly mentioned to us that we might be able to benchmark Conroe at this year’s Spring IDF.  We took the comment very light heartedly and honestly didn’t expect good ol’ conservative Intel to let us benchmark and preview a platform a several months before its release.  We didn’t believe that Intel was going to let us do it, once again because of their very conservative history, even as we were walking to our Conroe performance meeting./news/cpu-gpu-performance-the-nexus-7-2013-review.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-gpu-performance-the-nexus-7-2013-review.htmlCPU Performance The while the original Nexus 7 was fast for the money, the new Nexus 7 is just fast. Moving away from NVIDIA to Qualcomm, ASUS and Google settled on the APQ8064 Pro. Although we originally assumed this would be a quad-core Krait 200 based SoC, Brian's teardown revealed the part number 8064-1AA. What's special about that part number is it implies newer Krait 300 cores, making the SoC effectively a Snapdragon 600./news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-295x2-review.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-295x2-review.htmlFinal Words Bringing this review to a close, when I first heard that AMD was going to build a full performance dual Hawaii GPU solution, I was admittedly unsure about what to expect. The power requirements for a dual Hawaii card would pose an interesting set of challenges for AMD, and AMD’s most recent high-end air coolers were not as effective as they should have been. In that context AMD’s decision to build a card around a closed loop liquid cooling solution makes a lot of sense for what they wanted to achieve./news/gigabyte-b550-vision-d-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-b550-vision-d-the-amd-b550-motherboard-overview.htmlGIGABYTE B550 Vision D Aiming more towards content creators and resembling its Designaire models, the GIGABYTE B550 Vision D includes a mid-range set of features. Spearheading what the Vision D has to offer includes an Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 interface which powers the two Type-C ports on the rear panel, with two M.2 slots, four SATA ports, a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and two Intel-based Gigabit Ethernet ports./news/high-end-laptops-1500-and-up.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-end-laptops-1500-and-up.htmlHigh-End Laptops: $1500 and Up At the top of the mobile price scale, we have laptops and notebooks that cost anywhere from $1500 to $5000 (or even more!), with components to match the prices. Most users spending this much money on a laptop are interested in one of three things: mobile gaming, mobile workstations, or "designer" laptops. We'll look at all three categories briefly. The gaming and workstation crowds will want to start with reading our last High-end Laptop Roundup./news/huawei-connecting-future-press-event-a-live-blog-1pm.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-connecting-future-press-event-a-live-blog-1pm.html07:51AM EST - Huawei has once again rented out the Italian Pavilion here in Barcelona for its annual Mobile World Congress press event. We're expecting to see CEO Richard Yu on stage talk about the next generation of Huawei technology, including 5G and the leaked Mate X. 07:52AM EST - 10 minutes to go 07:59AM EST - One minute 08:00AM EST - As with last year, looks like 3000+ people in the venue/news/intel-s-haswell-quad-core-desktop-processor-skus.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-haswell-quad-core-desktop-processor-skus.htmlIntel’s Haswell is here, or at least the first salvo of quad-core parts has arrived. Just like we saw with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, Intel will be releasing Haswell in stages, starting at the high-end and trickling down from there. Today, we can tell you about the quad-core desktop and mobile parts, and we have several other articles going into greater detail on the performance and features you’ll get. These two Pipeline posts are going to strip out all the other stuff and just focus on the processors being launched today./news/intel-s-next-generation-packaging-emib-and-foveros.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-next-generation-packaging-emib-and-foveros.htmlAlongside the process node advancements, Intel also has to march forward with next-generation packaging technology. The demand for high performance silicon coupled with increasingly difficult process node development has created an environment where processors are no longer a single piece of silicon, relying on multiple smaller (and potentially optimized) chiplets or tiles to be packaged together in a way that benefits performance, power, and the end product. Single large chips are no longer the smart business decision – they can end up too difficult to make without defects, or the technology to create them isn’t optimized for any one particular feature on the chip./news/lg-announces-velvet-phone-korea-only-for-now.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-announces-velvet-phone-korea-only-for-now.htmlLG had been teasing the “Velvet” for several weeks now, trickle-feeding information about the company’s new premium level smartphone. Today, the company officially launches the device in Korea, fully revealing the specifications of the device as well as its pricing. The LG Velvet isn’t a “true flagship” as it positions itself just one tier below that, featuring a Snapdragon 765 SoC as well as a lesser camera configuration. Where it does stand out is in the design – whilst some might criticise as “standard”, it’s probably LG’s best-looking phone in years./news/meet-the-gtx-460-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-460.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-gtx-460-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-460.htmlMeet the GTX 460 A number of differennt GTX 460 cards will be launching today. For the purpose of this article we are focusing on the reference design as it will be the most common, but there are also a number of vendor-customized designs that will be launching alongside the reference cards. For a complete writeup of the vendor cards we've received from EVGA, Asus, and Zotac, please see Part 2 of our launch day coverage./news/multi-gpu-sli-cf-scaling-lynnfield-s-blemish.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/multi-gpu-sli-cf-scaling-lynnfield-s-blemish.htmlWhen running in single-GPU mode, the on-die PCIe controller maintains a full x16 connection to your graphics card: Hooray. In multi-GPU mode, the 16 lanes have to be split in two: To support this the motherboard maker needs to put down ~$3 worth of PCIe switches: Now SLI and Crossfire can work, although the motherboard maker also needs to pay NVIDIA a few dollars to legally make SLI work. The question is do you give up any performance when going with Lynnfield's 2 x8 implementation vs./news/oneplus-launches-the-oneplus-x.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/oneplus-launches-the-oneplus-x.htmlWhen OnePlus launched the OnePlus Two earlier this year the company also mentioned that they would be launching a second smartphone in 2015, and that the new phone would be announced closer toward the end of the year. With November and the holiday season approaching the phone needed to launch fairly soon to meet that deadline, and today OnePlus has made the new device official. It's the OnePlus X, and it's a smaller addition to the OnePlus family, with a 5./news/our-first-x58-motherboard-preview-the-asus-rampage-ii.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/our-first-x58-motherboard-preview-the-asus-rampage-ii.htmlWe utilized the ASUS Rampage II Extreme motherboard for our overclocking and memory tests in today’s article. We will take a detailed look at this board and others from MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS again, and Intel in few days. Boards from these particular manufacturers will be available shortly and our review samples now feature retail production kits, not engineering or early production samples. All of the boards have performed very well so far, but we have been on the BIOS of the day merry-go-round for the last week or so./news/pentium-ae-is-a-processor-we-want-but-not.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pentium-ae-is-a-processor-we-want-but-not.htmlTesting the Pentium G3258 has been fun. There was a well of nostalgia in me that was particularly excited to get the processor in and get a chance to play with the overclocking potential. Even though this does not seem to be a fully-fledged member of the Devil’s Canyon cohort, Intel should receive kudos for providing the ‘cheap and cheerful’ unit which might instill a new wave of overclocking enthusiasts./news/premium-gaming-z97-in-mini-itx.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/premium-gaming-z97-in-mini-itx.htmlOver the years we have reviewed a number of Republic of Gamers (ROG) motherboards, usually focusing on the high end Extreme and gaming ATX focused Formula. We probed the Maximus VI Impact late last year and it offered a sense of premium to the high end that no other mini-ITX did, but we concluded it would be a tough act to follow. The sequel is now here with the Maximus VII Impact, ready for Haswell./news/quad-sli-on-skylake-and-now-with-thunderbolt-3.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quad-sli-on-skylake-and-now-with-thunderbolt-3.htmlThis is a review of a $500 motherboard for Skylake processors. For some readers, there’s going to an instant reaction of a series of question marks, confused emoji and an interrobang or two. You might ask why would anyone want to spend this much on a Skylake motherboard, when at this price point with a K-series processor, one could flip it around and go for a six-core Haswell-E and motherboard, get more cores and more PCIe lanes?/news/quadro-no-more-nvidia-announces-ampere-based-rtx-a6000.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quadro-no-more-nvidia-announces-ampere-based-rtx-a6000.htmlNVIDIA’s second GTC of 2020 is taking place this week, and as has quickly become a tradition, one of CEO Jensen Huang’s “kitchenside chats” kicks off the event. As the de facto replacement for GTC Europe, this fall virtual GTC is a bit of a lower-key event relative to the Spring edition, but it’s still one that is seeing some NVIDIA hardware introduced to the world. Starting things off, we have a pair of new video cards from NVIDIA – and a launch that seemingly indicates that NVIDIA is getting ready to overhaul its professional visualization branding./news/samsung-memverge-and-h3-build-2tb-cxl-memory-pool.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-memverge-and-h3-build-2tb-cxl-memory-pool.htmlSamsung, MemVerge, H3 Platform, and XConn have jointly unveiled their 2 TB Pooled CXL Memory System at the Flash Memory Summit. The device can be connected to up to eight hosts, allowing them to use its memory when needed. The 2 TB Pooled CXL Memory system has software enabling it to visualize, pool, tier, and dynamically allocate memory to connected hosts. The 2 TB Pooled CXL Memory system is a 2U rack-mountable machine built by H3 with eight 256 GB Samsung CXL memory modules connected using XConn's XC50256 CXL 2./news/software-aosp-ui-the-new-motorola-moto-x-2nd.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-aosp-ui-the-new-motorola-moto-x-2nd.htmlSoftware By now, most people are probably familiar with Motorola’s new strategy. Instead of focusing upon differentiating their user interface with a visual redesign and custom applications to replace almost every function, Motorola has stuck with the UI that we see in Nexus devices and any build on Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Instead, Motorola is focusing upon adding value with applications that add functionality and don’t really deviate from the established design language./news/the-gaming-gt-pc-launched-with-core-i7-k.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-gaming-gt-pc-launched-with-core-i7-k.htmlGIGABYTE has quietly announced its new small form-factor computer designed for performance-minded gamers. The new SFF PC not only packs high-performance components, such as the latest-generation CPU and GPU, but it uses desktop-class components and could be upgradeable. High-performance PCs in small form-factor are not rare nowadays: various PC makers use mobile CPUs and GPUs to build such systems. Such computers demonstrate high-performance out-of-the-box, but their upgrade strategy is tricky because it is not easy to get MXM GPUs or mobile CPUs in retail./news/the-apple-2018-iphone-event-live-blog.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-2018-iphone-event-live-blog.html12:26PM EDT - Hello everybody and welcome from Apple's Steve Jobs Theater here in Cupertino, CA. 12:27PM EDT - For me personally this is the first time around on the Apple campus, and looking forward to what Apple has to reveal in this year's iPhone release event. 12:27PM EDT - There's been rumours floating around pointing out that we might be looking at two new iPhone X successors - and a third cheaper variant./news/the-hardware-the-htc-flyer-review.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-hardware-the-htc-flyer-review.htmlThe Hardware Compared to early Android tablets the Flyer doesn't look very different. It's a 7-inch almost 16:10 tablet with a 1024 x 600 resolution. In the grand scheme of things however, this is a pretty different form factor - particularly for a tablet released in 2011. Apple set the tone for at least the first generation of tablets with the iPad: nearly 10-inches, and at least a 1024 x 768 display./news/the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-mac-pro-review-late-2013.htmlThe year was 2004. I was enrolled in ECE 466 at NCSU, a compiler optimization/scheduling class. I remember walking into the lecture hall and seeing far too many PowerBooks and white iBooks. This was the computer engineering department right? It wasn’t much later that I started my month with a Mac experiment. I spent most of my life at that point staying away from Apple hardware. I wanted to give the platform a fair shake so I bought the fastest thing Apple offered back then: a 2GHz PowerMac G5./news/unboxing-and-setup-impressions-aleutia-relia-industrial-pc-review.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/unboxing-and-setup-impressions-aleutia-relia-industrial-pc-review.htmlUnboxing and Setup Impressions: Aleutia doesn't bundle input accessories (keyboard / mouse / IR remote etc.) with the system. We also don't find any detailed operating manuals. The package is pretty barebones as it can be. This is perfectly acceptable given the target market. There is a single welcome note which lists the package contents and also provides the initial login details for systems with pre-installed operating systems. The contents of the package include:/news/up-to-1-tb-m-2-pcie-3-0.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-1-tb-m-2-pcie-3-0.htmlADATA has announced its new lineup of SSDs designed to combine high-performance with 3D TLC flash memory. The new XPG SX7000 is positioned below ADATA’s flagship XPG SX8000 series, but for those looking for something more powerful than a typical SATA drive, but not ready to invest in a super high-end SSD, this is the market ADATA is aiming for. The ADATA XPG SX7000 series lineup comes in an M.2-2280 form-factor, uses PCIe 3./news/up-to-ddr-4000-10-rgb-leds.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-ddr-4000-10-rgb-leds.htmlCorsair on Monday introduced its latest family of memory modules designed for enthusiasts and modders. The Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 DIMMs bring together rather high performance and style: they are rated for up to DDR4-4000 and they use brand-new heat spreader with a lightbar that features 10 RGB LEDs, the highest number of diodes that we have seen in a memory module so far. Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro family of products initially includes about a dozen of 16 GB and 32 GB kits for dual-channel and quad-channel memory sub-systems speced for operation at 2666 MT/s – 4000 MTs data transfer rates at 1./news/white-and-gold-gaming-laptop.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/white-and-gold-gaming-laptop.htmlAcer has announced its new 15.6-inch gaming laptop that brings together performance and style. The Predator Helios 300 Special Edition uses Intel’s latest six-core processors as well as NVIDIA’s discrete graphics, yet one of the main selling points of the notebook besides performance is its white chassis with gold trim. If you want some laptop bling, Acer has you covered. The Predator Helios 300 Special Edition (PH315-51) is based on Intel’s 8th Generation Core i7 processor as well as NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 GPU./news/xiaomi-announces-the-mi-11-first-snapdragon-888-device.htmlSat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xiaomi-announces-the-mi-11-first-snapdragon-888-device.htmlToday Xiaomi held the Chinese launch announcement of the new Mi 11 – the company’s new mainstream flagship phone for 2021. The new phone features a new super-high-end OLED screen that ticks off every checkmark feature that you’d expect from a 2021 design, including 1440p resolution and 120Hz refresh rates, features the new Snapdragon 888 SoC at its heart – as well as comes in a new thinner, lighter, and more stylish industrial design compared to its predecessors./news/2-exaflops-tens-of-thousands-of-cpus-and-gpus.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2-exaflops-tens-of-thousands-of-cpus-and-gpus.htmlArgonne National Laboratory and Intel said on Thursday that they had installed all 10,624 blades for the Aurora supercomputer, a machine announced back in 2015 with a particularly bumpy history. The system promises to deliver a peak theoretical compute performance over 2 FP64 ExaFLOPS using its array of tens of thousands of Xeon Max 'Sapphire Rapids' CPUs with on-package HBM2E memory as well as Data Center GPU Max 'Ponte Vecchio' compute GPUs./news/a-ryzen-based-0-87-liter-sff-pc.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-ryzen-based-0-87-liter-sff-pc.htmlASRock has introduced what could be the world’s smallest system based on AMD Ryzen processor. The 4X4 Box-R1000 ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) PC can fit on the palm of a hand, yet it packs everything needed to run a variety of software required for digital signage, kiosks, thin clients and other applications. Measuring 110×118.5×67.3 mm and weighing 0.7 kilograms, the ASRock 4X4 Box-R1000 is based on AMD’s dual-core Ryzen Embedded R1000-series SoC (the R1606G or the R1505G model) with integrated Radeon Vega graphics./news/alienware-17-gaming-notebook-review.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/alienware-17-gaming-notebook-review.htmlThe Alienware M17x R3 and M17x R4 were, at the time, essentially the standard bearers of gaming notebooks. You've had your Clevos and your MSIs for as far back as I can remember; Toshiba throws their hat into the ring with the Qosmio and ASUS has their G series. But if you wanted the best and you were willing to pay top dollar for it, there was really only one vendor to go to./news/amkor-to-build-2-billion-chip-packaging-fab-in.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amkor-to-build-2-billion-chip-packaging-fab-in.htmlAmkor, the world's second largest independent outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) service provider, has announced their intention to build a new advanced chip packaging facility in the U.S. Carrying a price tag of around 2 billion dollars, the plant in Arizona will primarily serve to package chips produced by TSMC at its Fab 21 nearby. Adding an interesting (and unusual) wrinkle to the announcement, the notoriously tight-lipped Apple also issued its own press release, officially confirming that it is set to become the largest customer of the facility./news/asrock-rocks-with-white-marble.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-rocks-with-white-marble.htmlBuilding on the success of their hybrid architecture Alder Lake (12th Gen) Core series chips, Intel last year released the upgraded Raptor Lake core with a similar core architecture and design with performance (P) cores and efficiency (E) cores. While we've reviewed and put Intel's 13th Gen Core series chips through their paces, it's been a while since we tested out the platforms that not only unleash that multi-threaded and single-core IPC performance but add all of the features associated with each chipset./news/asus-rog-strix-b450-i-gaming.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-b450-i-gaming.htmlASUS ROG Strix B450-I Gaming While the B450-I is the smaller sibling of the Strix B450-F, it packs a mighty punch in feature sets with a host of good quality components usually found on mITX form factor boards over the years from ASUS. The Strix B450-I includes a ROG SupremeFX S1220A audio codec with dual operational amplifiers, an Intel I211-AT Gigabit LAN controller and an Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter with MIMO capabilities built-in./news/biostar-relaunches-h61-chipset-in-2020.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/biostar-relaunches-h61-chipset-in-2020.htmlAlmost a decade ago, with the launch of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, came the H61 chipset. Compared to the high-end P67 and Z68 models, the idea behind H61 is that it was cheap, and it was long-life. At a time when low power embedded Atom CPUs still didn’t have enough power, H61 was there to be equipped with one of Intel’s new-fangled Core processors, with the systems that designed for it destined to last a couple of decades./news/boe-to-triple-production-of-smartphone-amoled-panels.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/boe-to-triple-production-of-smartphone-amoled-panels.htmlBOE has outlined a new set of aggressive plans to expand production of AMOLED display panels for mobile devices next year. The company has reasons to be optimistic as it is adding two AMOLED production lines to its fleet, yet their ramp to full capacity is something that remains to be seen.Meanwhile the company has also noted that LCD panel supply is outpacing demand, which makes AMOLED a much more lucrative market at this time./news/correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation.htmlOver the weekend we reported on a statement released by NVIDIA regarding recent concern over unusual VRAM allocation and VRAM bandwidth performance from the GeForce GTX 970. In brief, various GTX 970 owners had observed that the GTX 970 was prone to topping out its reported VRAM allocation at 3.5GB rather than 4GB, and that meanwhile the GTX 980 was reaching 4GB allocated in similar circumstances. All of this was at odds with what we thought we knew about the cards and the underlying GM204 GPU, as the two cards were believed to have identical memory subsystems./news/cpu-performance-web-and-legacy-tests.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-web-and-legacy-tests.htmlWhile more the focus of low-end and small form factor systems, web-based benchmarks are notoriously difficult to standardize. Modern web browsers are frequently updated, with no recourse to disable those updates, and as such there is difficulty in keeping a common platform. The fast paced nature of browser development means that version numbers (and performance) can change from week to week. Despite this, web tests are often a good measure of user experience: a lot of what most office work is today revolves around web applications, particularly email and office apps, but also interfaces and development environments./news/dell-and-alienware-products-dell-corporation.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-and-alienware-products-dell-corporation.htmlDell 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./news/dfi-pro875-board-layout-dfi-pro875-875p-introducing-the.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dfi-pro875-board-layout-dfi-pro875-875p-introducing-the.htmlDFI PRO875: Board Layout DFI’s engineers clearly have listened to our requests in terms of laying out components, as the DFI PRO875 is one of the best laid out motherboards we’ve ever come across.   Let’s start off by looking at the position of the ATX (20-pin) connector. DFI very nicely arranges the ATX connector on the right-hand side of the motherboard about one inch from the top of the PCB./news/does-the-world-need-premium-sata-ssds.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/does-the-world-need-premium-sata-ssds.htmlSamsung has dominated the SSD market for a very long time, and every new consumer SSD model the company introduces is noteworthy. The latest product to reach the shelves is the new range of 870 EVO SSDs, building on a decade-long legacy of SATA SSDs. We have tested the 1 TB and 4 TB models from this new product family. Pushing for SATA Samsung is one of the few companies still putting significant effort into SATA SSDs and releasing new consumer SATA models./news/f-e-a-r-performance-fall-06-nvidia-gpu.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/f-e-a-r-performance-fall-06-nvidia-gpu.htmlF.E.A.R. Performance F.E.A.R. has a built in test that we make use of in this performance analysis. This test flies through some action as people shoot each other and things blow up. F.E.A.R. is very heavy on the graphics, and we enable most of the high end settings for our test. During our testing of F.E.A.R., we noted that the "soft shadows" don't really look soft. They jumped out at us as multiple transparent shadows layered on top of each other and jittered to appear soft./news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-asus-rog-strix-b360.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-and-conclusion-the-asus-rog-strix-b360.htmlConclusion The B360 chipset was designed to give users a more cost effective option for Coffee Lake based CPUs, in particularly processors which are locked and do not overclock. With this in mind, many B-series boards are cheaper but still include features like M.2 slots, USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports, and other features frequently found on most Z370 boards.  The ASUS B360-G Gaming offers users features that will rival most Z370 boards - this includes USB 3./news/g-skill-announces-trident-z-rgb-ddr4-kits-with.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/g-skill-announces-trident-z-rgb-ddr4-kits-with.htmlG.Skill has recently launched new Trident Z RGB memory kits, this time aimed at Intel X99 platforms, and following the RGB trend they give owners of high-end desktops an opportunity to customize the look of DRAM inside their machines. This is also the launch where the company introduces its first 16 GB memory modules with programmable LED lighting. The Trident Z RGB memory modules feature programmable LED lightbars and can change their colors in accordance with user’s demands (G./news/gigabyte-z690-aorus-pro-ddr4.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z690-aorus-pro-ddr4.htmlThe GIGABYTE Z690 Aorus Pro DDR4 offers a solid entry point into the Aorus series, with a more modest feature set when compared to the Z690 Aorus Master. The design is also similar, but the Z690 Aorus Pro opts for a simpler design that consists of black and silver heatsinks throughout. GIGABYTE does include a small amount of integrated RGB LED lighting that can be found built into the rear panel cover./news/hp-2311xi-brightness-and-contrast-ratios.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-2311xi-brightness-and-contrast-ratios.htmlHP 2311xi - Brightness and Contrast Ratios HP rates the 2311xi for 250 nits maximum brightness and that’s exactly what I found it produced. If I turned the brightness all the way down it then put out only 41 nits, which gives you a lot of flexibility around adjusting the backlight level. 250 nits should be enough light output for most people, but if you have direct sunlight on your display for most of the day you might need something even more powerful to avoid it looking washed out./news/igp-gaming-corsair-vengeance-pro-review-2x8-gb-at.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/igp-gaming-corsair-vengeance-pro-review-2x8-gb-at.htmlIGP Gaming The activity cited most often for improved memory speeds is IGP gaming, and as shown in both of our tests of Crystalwell (4950HQ in CRB, 4750HQ in Clevo W740SU), Intel’s version of Haswell with the 128MB of L4 cache, having big and fast memory seems to help in almost all scenarios, especially when there is access to more and more compute units.  In order to pinpoint where exactly the memory helps, we are reporting both average and minimum frame rates from the benchmarks, using the latest Intel drivers available./news/importance-of-open-innovation-platform-is-growing-collaboration-needed.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/importance-of-open-innovation-platform-is-growing-collaboration-needed.htmlThis year TSMC is commemorating 15 years of its Open Innovation Platform, a multi-faceted program that brings together the foundry's suppliers, partners, and customers to help TSMC's customers better build innovative chips in an efficient and timely manner. The OIP program has grown over the years and now involves tens of companies and over 70,000 IP solutions for a variety of applications. It continues to grow, and its importance will get higher than ever when next generation technologies, such as 2 nm, and advanced packaging methods become mainstream in the coming years./news/intel-releases-graphics-driver-15-46-for-windows.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-releases-graphics-driver-15-46-for-windows.htmlWith last week’s release of Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two, Intel has released their Graphics Driver 15.46 to provide launch support, as well as bugfixes, feature updates, Computer Vision and AI application development support, and support for Windows 10 Creator’s Update features. The driver is only for Windows 10 64-bit, and applies to Intel HD, Iris, and Iris Pro graphics on 6th and 7th generation processors (Skylake and Kaby Lake), Apollo Lake platforms, and Xeon E3-1200v5/E3-1500v5/E3-1200v6 product families./news/lenovo-launches-thinkvision-displays-with-usb-c-docking-at.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lenovo-launches-thinkvision-displays-with-usb-c-docking-at.htmlAs soon as the USB-C connector and alternate modes were announced with DisplayPort adding support, I instantly envisioned a monitor with USB-C as the single cable to allow docking. With the added Power Delivery v2.0 available with USB-C, this single cable could offer video, peripherals, and laptop charging, since Power Delivery v2.0 can offer up to 100 Watts of power. Since most laptops come with somewhere around 30-65 Watts only, the new cable would have plenty of capability for a single cable docking solution./news/lock-screen-launcher-keyboard-and-navigation-buttons.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lock-screen-launcher-keyboard-and-navigation-buttons.htmlLock Screen The Android lock screen has gone through a number iterations over the years. With Ice Cream Sandwich Google settled on a design that was a lock symbol surrounded by a circle, which could be dragged to the right to unlock the phone, and to the left to open the camera. This solution didn't really have any issues, although I feel like the move away from the previous method of sliding right to unlock had more to do with legal pressure than anything else./news/more-on-the-pa246q-cms.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-on-the-pa246q-cms.htmlMore on the PA246Q CMS As mentioned earlier, the PA246Q offers a CMS (Color Management System) to the end user in User mode. While a CMS is becoming more and more common on TVs and projectors, they are not too common on computer displays at this point. Since they aren’t too common, I’ll describe how they work a bit, and what they should do when correctly implemented. Many of you are probably familiar with the CIE 1931 color space diagram./news/nvidia-announces-quadro-m6000-quadro-vca-2015.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-announces-quadro-m6000-quadro-vca-2015.htmlEarlier this week we took a look at the GeForce GTX Titan X, NVIDIA’s first product to use their new high-end Maxwell GPU, the GM200. Now just 2 days later the company is back again with GM200 and is set to launch it in their new professional graphics counterpart, the Quadro M6000. Like Titan, 6000 is NVIDIA’s flagship Quadro card and today’s launch sees the new GM200 based Quadro M6000 take its place at the top of the Quadro graphics stack./news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-r7-265-r7.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-the-amd-radeon-r7-265-r7.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise./news/powering-xbox-one-x-custom-amd-apu.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/powering-xbox-one-x-custom-amd-apu.htmlPowering Xbox One X: The Scorpio Engine The heart of the Xbox One X is a custom AMD APU, which Microsoft is dubbing the Scorpio Engine. This APU features eight CPU cores and forty GPU compute units, essentially making it a vastly more powerful version of the APU found in the original Xbox One. All of this is built on TSMC’s 16 nm fab process, packing seven billion transistors into 360 mm2./news/samsung-announces-12gb-lpddr4-dram-for-mobile-devices.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-announces-12gb-lpddr4-dram-for-mobile-devices.htmlToday Samsung Electronics announced that they have begun mass production of the memory industry's first 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM on their 20nm manufacturing process. These new chips offer 50% greater density than Samsung's existing 8Gb chips. The production of 12Gb chips opens up the possibility of smartphones and tablets with 6GB of RAM using a four 12Gb chip DRAM package, as well as 3GB using just two chips in a package. A 6GB package would also only take up the same amount of space as existing 3GB packages which use 6Gb chips./news/t-mobile-mytouch-4g-slide-camera-hardware-t-mobile.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/t-mobile-mytouch-4g-slide-camera-hardware-t-mobile.htmlAnd now we get to the good stuff. The MT4GS camera is one of the more highly touted smartphone shooters in recent memory, with features like zero-shutter lag, an f/2.2 aperture, built-in HDR, panorama, 5-shot bursts, 1080p video recording, and practically everything else including the kitchen and bathroom sinks included. We decided to do a bit of digging to figure out what really was going on, and naturally, took a ton of pictures in the process./news/testing-results-software-conclusion.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-results-software-conclusion.htmlTesting The basic electrical figures of the CyberPower ValuePro VP1600ELCD 1600 VA UPS are quite good – unexpectedly so, in fact. The transfer times are exceptional, with the unit requiring less than 4 ms to switch while fully loaded. The RMS voltage and frequency output look to be extremely close to the expected 230V/50Hz output. There are minor frequency variations but these are exceptionally small. UPS Load Performance   10% 25% 50% 75% 100% Voltage Output (Vrms) 230 230 230 230 229 Frequency (Hz) 50 50 50./news/the-apple-a14-soc-firestorm-icestorm.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-a14-soc-firestorm-icestorm.htmlThe new Apple A14 is the company’s newest mobile SoC and sits at the heart of the new iPhone 12 series. The new chip is the industry’s first commercial 5nm manufactured chip from TSMC, alongside the now no longer manufactured Kirin 9000. Inside the A14 we find two big performance cores dubbed “Firestorm” and four efficiency cores called “Icestorm”, making this a 2+4 heterogeneous CPU SoC. Alongside the CPUs, we also find a 4-core GPU./news/the-chip-intel-pentium-iii-e-coppermine-slot-1.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-chip-intel-pentium-iii-e-coppermine-slot-1.htmlThe Chip The Pentium III E is a much more complex processor than the original Pentium III was. While the 128mm^2 Katmai core housed around 9.5 million transistors, the 106mm^2 Coppermine core is home to around 29 million transistors. While this is more than the 22 million that make up AMD’s Athlon, keep in mind that around 19 to 20 million of these transistors are for the 256KB of L2 cache./news/the-fastest-smartphone-soc-today-samsung-exynos-4210-samsung.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-fastest-smartphone-soc-today-samsung-exynos-4210-samsung.htmlThe Fastest Smartphone SoC Today: Samsung Exynos 4210 Samsung has been Apple's sole application processor supplier since the release of the original iPhone. It's unclear how much Samsung contributes to the design process, especially with later SoCs like the A4 and A5 carrying the Apple brand. It's possible that Samsung is now no more than a manufacturing house for Apple. Needless to say, the past few years of supplying SoCs for the iPhone and iPad have given Samsung a good idea of what the market wants from an application processor./news/the-main-event-shows-the-boxee-box-review.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-main-event-shows-the-boxee-box-review.htmlThe Main Event: Shows I canceled my digital cable subscription over a year ago. I never had time to watch shows when they aired, I always ended up DVRing them. By the time I got around to watching the shows I’d recorded, they were already available on the web and in some cases it was more convenient for me to watch them on my computer (I could watch while testing, for example)./news/the-vega-architecture-amd-s-brightest-day.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-vega-architecture-amd-s-brightest-day.htmlFrom an architectural standpoint, AMD’s engineers consider the Vega architecture to be their most sweeping architectural change in five years. And looking over everything that has been added to the architecture, it’s easy to see why. In terms of core graphics/compute features, Vega introduces more than any other iteration of GCN before it. Speaking of GCN, before getting too deep here, it’s interesting to note that at least publicly, AMD is shying away from the Graphics Core Next name./news/tyan-introduces-1u-power8-based-server-for-hpc-in.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tyan-introduces-1u-power8-based-server-for-hpc-in.htmlAt this week's OpenPOWER Summit in San Jose, California, Tyan has introduced its new IBM POWER8-based 1U servers designed for high-performance computing (HPC) as well as in-memory applications. The new machines are designed to target niche markets that do not require extreme processing performance, but need a lot of RAM. The new Tyan GT75 expands the range of Tyan’s POWER8-based machines and helps IBM’s POWER8 platform to compete against Intel Xeon in niche markets./news/using-c7-for-syncing-and-streaming.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/using-c7-for-syncing-and-streaming.htmlIntel’s conference call this week featured some elements on the progression of the desktop. Lisa Graff, VP and GM of Intel’s Desktop Client Platforms Group tells us that while Notebooks outsell Desktops by 57:43, key segments within the Desktop platform are actually growing rapidly – as much as 50% year-on-year for the ‘Tiny PC’ space such as NUCs but also in the all-in-one market. Desktop is therefore a big part of the market, and this includes business more so than consumer based on shipments./news/visual-inspection-and-test-setup.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-and-test-setup.htmlVisual Inspection The first thing I noticed when I took the motherboard out of the box was the color. Plenty of gaming motherboards in the industry are red and black, and we’ve seen yellow, orange, green and combinations therein throughout the years. However in most circumstances a motherboard use two primary colors for the main components and areas, and it’s a bit of luck what everything else is like power delivery, IC color, some of the ports, buttons and so on./news/wifi-router-and-charger-on-the-go-wifi-range.htmlFri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wifi-router-and-charger-on-the-go-wifi-range.htmlIn the name of connectivity, local networks, data sharing and charging, D-Link are showcasing their DIR-510L WiFi AC750 Portable Router and Charger at CES this week.  The principle behind the DIR-510L is simple: it looks like a normal 4000 mAh rechargeable battery pack with two USB ports, but it also has an Ethernet port to connect to a wired internet connection and share it with 802.11 b/g/n and 802.11ac devices up to 750 Mbps./news/a-no-notch-fullview-smartphone-with-kirin-980.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-no-notch-fullview-smartphone-with-kirin-980.htmlAt the end of the presentation today for the Honor Play, George Zhao, CEO of Honor, showcased the upcoming Honor Magic 2. Following on from the original Honor Magic, Mr. Zhao stated that the brand name ‘Magic’ holds a special no-compromise element within the company, and after the Magic was the first smartphone with AI, the new Magic 2 will also introduce a number of firsts. No details about the smartphone were given, except that it will be using the unannounced Kirin 980, which is set to be a big part of Huawei’s Keynote presentation at IFA./news/acer-announces-nitro-xv273k-monitor-4kp144-displayhdr-400-freesync.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-announces-nitro-xv273k-monitor-4kp144-displayhdr-400-freesync.htmlAcer on Wednesday unveiled its new Nitro XV273K display that features an Ultra-HD resolution and a dynamic refresh rate of up to 144 Hz enabled by AMD’s FreeSync technology. The new monitor brings 4Kp144 gaming with variable refresh rates to owners of AMD’s Radeon graphics cards. What is noteworthy is that Acer’s Nitro-series FreeSync-supporting 4Kp144 monitor is considerably cheaper than its G-Sync-supporting counterpart. The Acer Nitro XV273K uses a 27-inch IPS panel featuring a 3840x2160 resolution, an up to 400 nits peak brightness in HDR mode, and a maximum refresh rate of up to 144 Hz./news/amd-announces-embedded-radeon-e8860-gpu.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-announces-embedded-radeon-e8860-gpu.htmlFor the integrated market, there are several levels of capability that manufacturers need to consider.  This is a market driven by sales, thus OEMs that require specific resources are usually catered for.  Thus despite the fact that AMD have an aggressive APU line up on the embedded side (and have the embedded related warranties and support), there is scope for something more powerful.  This is the purpose of the E8860./news/amd-ceo-dr-lisa-su-to-deliver-opening-keynote.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-ceo-dr-lisa-su-to-deliver-opening-keynote.htmlTaiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the organizer of Computex, announced today that Dr. Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive officer, will give the trade show's Opening Keynote. Su's speech is set for the morning of June 3, 2024, shortly before the formal start of the show. According to AMD, the keynote talk will be "highlighting the next generation of AMD products enabling new experiences and breakthrough AI capabilities from the cloud to the edge, PCs and intelligent end devices./news/amd-radeon-hd-7750-radeon-hd-7770-ghz-edition.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-radeon-hd-7750-radeon-hd-7770-ghz-edition.htmlWith thelaunch of Tahiti behind them, AMD is now firing on all cylinders to get the rest of their Southern Islands lineup out the door. Typically we’d see AMD launch their GPUs in descending order of performance, but this time AMD is taking a slight detour. Rather than following up the Tahiti based 7900 series with the Pitcairn based 7800 series, AMD is instead going straight to the bottom and launching the Cape Verde based 7700 series first./news/asrock-unveil-their-new-microatx-threadripper-motherboard-the-x399m.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-unveil-their-new-microatx-threadripper-motherboard-the-x399m.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — It is no secret that AMD's Threadripper multi-core processor is a beast goes without saying and 16c/32t of computing power is nothing short of impressive in the desktop marketplace. Going the extra mile when it comes to providing 'power' users multiple options in regards to form factors, ASRock has unveiled their new microATX TR4 socket motherboard at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, the ASRock X399M Taichi. The ASRock X399M Taichi is the worlds first AMD Threadripper supported motherboard and allows users to run a microATX system with AMD's EPYC based Threadripper processors including the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X ($799) and 1950X ($999)./news/assembling-the-rosewill-blackhawk-ultra.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-rosewill-blackhawk-ultra.htmlAssembling the Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra One of the nicest things about working with a case the size of the Blackhawk Ultra is that it's huge: you very seldom find your hands getting cramped into uncomfortably narrow gaps, and so getting everything installed an in place can be a lot easier. One of the worst things about working with a case the size of the Blackhawk Ultra is that it's huge: whenever you have to move the case itself, it's unwieldy, and it's heavy./news/asus-tech-support-and-rma.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-tech-support-and-rma.htmlASUS is currently the largest motherboard manufacturer in the world in terms of pure motherboard shipments, with ECS trailing closely behind them. And so as the largest motherboard maker, ASUS is supposed to take the lead in not just product innovation and design, but in other, arguably equally important matters like tech support and RMA policies. Being restricted to the 24-hour timeframe due to a lack of time, we sent three different emails from three different addresses to see how quickly, on average, ASUS would be able to respond./news/battery-life-the-google-pixel-3-review-the-ultimate.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-the-google-pixel-3-review-the-ultimate.htmlBattery Life In terms of battery life, we should be expecting the Pixel 3 to do better than the Pixel 2, as we have an 8% larger battery coming at 2915mAh compared to last year’s 2700mAh unit. On the other hand, we also have to consider the Pixel 3 has a larger screen that needs to be powered, and the SoC efficiency can go either way. For our battery tests, we set the device brightness to 200 nits using our colorimeter tools./news/bios-and-software-the-asus-rog-strix-x299-xe.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-asus-rog-strix-x299-xe.htmlBIOS When we first get into the BIOS we are greeted by the Main screen (2nd image) and not EZ Mode as pictured below. I am not sure if that is because this is a ROG brand product, and ASUS is thinking that users that buy this class of enthusiast motherboard would generally jump through to advanced, or why it is different than the TUF X299 Mark 1 recently reviewed which comes into EZ Mode first./news/cpu-benchmark-performance-encoding-and-compression.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmark-performance-encoding-and-compression.htmlOne of the interesting elements on modern processors is encoding performance. This covers two main areas: encryption/decryption for secure data transfer, and video transcoding from one video format to another. In the encrypt/decrypt scenario, how data is transferred and by what mechanism is pertinent to on-the-fly encryption of sensitive data - a process by which more modern devices are leaning to for software security. Video transcoding as a tool to adjust the quality, file size and resolution of a video file has boomed in recent years, such as providing the optimum video for devices before consumption, or for game streamers who are wanting to upload the output from their video camera in real-time./news/dell-fic-and-ibm-examined.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-fic-and-ibm-examined.htmlIf you could not tell from our Pentium M processor review, we are extremely excited about Intel's new mobile chip. The first Intel processor designed from the ground up to find its way into notebooks only, Intel's Pentium M processor and Centrino solution are certainly giant leaps forward when it comes to mobile processing power. Many kudos to Intel for the technology but ultimately it is up to the hardware manufacturers to take advantage of the Pentium M and utilize it to its fullest extent./news/does-the-6258r-make-sense-for-intel.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/does-the-6258r-make-sense-for-intel.htmlDoes the 6258R Make Sense for Intel? For this test, I wanted to compare the difference between Intel’s Xeon Platinum 8280 and Intel’s Xeon Gold 6258R. These processors are practically identical on paper for any regular 1P or 2P server, offering up 28 cores at 2.7-4.0 GHz, however the Gold 6258R has a list price that saves over $6000 compared to the Platinum 8280. As per our regular testing procedure, I put both CPUs in our 1P LGA3647 test system and ran through our performance benchmarks./news/final-words-amd-s-athlon-xp-2000-vs-intel.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-amd-s-athlon-xp-2000-vs-intel.htmlFinal Words There are two things you can take away from this review; the first is that the Northwood core has been long overdue and now that it is here, the Pentium 4 is a much more competitive processor. We were able to reach speeds of 2.64GHz, air cooled, with our 2.2GHz processor using a 120MHz FSB and bumping up the voltage to 1.625V. The 512KB L2 cache improves performance by 5 - 9% across the board which isn't bad./news/for-sharing-your-streams-radeon-settings-connect-tab.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/for-sharing-your-streams-radeon-settings-connect-tab.htmlFor Sharing Your Streams: The New Radeon Settings ‘Connect Tab’ For Social Media For Adrenalin, the streamer focus is very clear not only in direct enhancements for ReLive but also in how ReLive can be accessed through the new Radeon Settings ‘Connect Tab’, Radeon Overlay, and the AMD Link mobile app. The Connect Tab in particular allows users to upload and share ReLive captures on their desired social media account directly from Radeon Settings./news/gigabyte-z690-ud-ax-z690-ud-ac-z690-ud.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z690-ud-ax-z690-ud-ac-z690-ud.htmlGIGABYTE Z690 UD AX, Z690 UD AC & Z690 UD (DDR5) Moving onto GIGABYTE's entry-level Z690 models with support for DDR5 memory, we have three near-identical representatives from its Ultra Durable series (UD). All three GIGABYTE Z690 UD models feature the same black and grey aesthetic, as well as the same core feature set. The only difference between the three comes in the level of wireless CNVi it includes. GIGABYTE Z690 UD AX = Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 CNVi GIGABYTE Z690 UD AC = Intel Wi-Fi AC 9560 CNVi GIGABYTE Z690 UD = No CNVi Other than the wireless networking configuration, all three GIGABYTE Z690 UD models are exactly the same./news/hands-on-with-a-tegra-4i-phone.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-a-tegra-4i-phone.htmlWhen we stopped by NVIDIA to play with Shield, they had another surprise in store for us with a Tegra 4i-based phone currently being shopped around from an unnamed ODM. The unusual “Brand” markings of course would be replaced with either an operator’s brand or some other OEM’s who wants to carry and support it. NVIDIA has talked about and shown its Phoenix reference design with Tegra 4i inside, this unnamed “Brand” phone includes the same platform but with a different PCB inside with an optimized layout for cost, manufacture, and reduced PCB area./news/input-and-processing-latency-dell-u3011-review-dell-s.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/input-and-processing-latency-dell-u3011-review-dell-s.htmlInput Lag Testing Processing and display lag is a very important thing for gamers, and it’s most often nebulously reported if at all. We’ve discussed this in previous display reviews, but what matters most is how the display acts in real world testing. I’ve been doing previous tests by comparing LCDs with first a 17” Princeton CRT, then a Sony G520 20” CRT. So far the results have been a bit interesting, with the CRTs edging a pretty consistent - if small - lead over LCDs./news/inside-apple-s-macbook-air.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/inside-apple-s-macbook-air.htmlOur MacBook Air just arrived and before even turning it on we had a few burning questions we had to answer. These questions of course required us to break out the screw driver and open up the poor little thing. The MacBook Air is surprisingly easy to take apart, you simply have to remove 10 screws from the bottom of the notebook and just pull the base away. There's no prying, no heat gun and no special tools required./news/intel-core-i7-in-a-ucff-pc.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-core-i7-in-a-ucff-pc.htmlOver the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Intel kickstarted the category with their Sandy Bridge NUC kits in early 2013. Recognizing the popularity of this segment, other vendors also began to promote similar products. GIGABYTE targets this market segment with an extensive lineup of products under the BRIX brand. Late last year, GIGABYTE sent us their high-end vanilla BRIX, the GB-BXi7-4500./news/lg-gsa-4120b-high-speed-multi-format-champion.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-gsa-4120b-high-speed-multi-format-champion.htmlIntroduction and Construction Even with the backing of enormous manufacturers like Hitachi and LG, the DVD-RAM format never quite got off the ground in the retail market. Only up until a few months ago, you needed a separate DVD-RAM burner to write data. LG was the first to step up to the task in creating a true, universal DVD writer using chipsets designed from the ground up. Today, we take a look at their second generation "/news/logitech-acquires-astro-gaming-strengthens-portfolio-of-headsets-for.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/logitech-acquires-astro-gaming-strengthens-portfolio-of-headsets-for.htmlIn a bid to expand its portfolio of products, Logitech this week acquired ASTRO Gaming, whom is primarily known for its high-end headsets for consoles and PCs. The move will help Logitech to address the console gaming market with high-margin products and strengthen its headset lineup in general. Logitech’s family of products includes tens of mice and keyboards, many of which are designed for gamers with different requirements and budgets. But when it comes to headsets, Logitech (only) offers eight models priced from $35 to $200./news/maybe-we-can-have-it-all.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/maybe-we-can-have-it-all.htmlIntroducing the Fractal Design Define XL R2 Amusingly and appropriately enough, the wave of silence-oriented enclosures that have been popping up recently haven't really drawn attention to themselves as a trend. Yet all of a sudden, we have results from a couple of solid contenders from Nanoxia and a few less expensive (and more readily available) also-rans. For a little while, this was a wave that Fractal Design was riding high, but the Define R4 wound up being a little underwhelming./news/msi-meg-x570-ace-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-meg-x570-ace-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlMSI MEG X570 Ace Our full review of the MSI MEG X570 Ace is currently live with many more X570 models set to be fully reviewed and analyzed over the next couple of months. The MSI MEG X570 Ace motherboard represents its premium MEG range and as we've seen from its range on the Intel Z390 chipset, MSI has followed the same naming structure for users to easily identify which each range signifies./news/new-chrome-os-update-enables-google-play-on-acer.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-chrome-os-update-enables-google-play-on-acer.htmlGoogle has released an update for its Chrome OS that enables select Chromebooks to run apps designed for Google Android and access Google Play Store. Right now, only two mobile PCs, one from Acer and another from ASUS, are compatible with the new build, but the fact of the release confirms Google’s intentions to enable Android software on its OS for PCs. Google has been trying to bring programs developed for Android to its Chrome OS platform for over two years now./news/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-965m.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-965m.htmlIn a rather unusual turn of events, the first I officially knew of the GeForce GTX 965M was when I saw it in some of MSI’s new gaming notebooks on Sunday. NVIDIA usually briefs us on new product launches, but for whatever reason they didn’t feel the need to send us anything in advance. (Maybe it might have something to do with Tegra X1 and all the car stuff being shown at CES?/news/pci-express-link-speeds-and-bandwidth-capabilities.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pci-express-link-speeds-and-bandwidth-capabilities.htmlPCI Express Link Speeds and Bandwidth Capabilities PCI Express uses a highly scalable architecture that is capable of delivering high bandwidth with a relatively low pin-count, dramatically simplifying design complexity while simultaneously allowing for smaller interface footprints. This is accomplished through the use of Low Voltage Differential Signal (LVDS) signal pairs - a simple two wire connection allowing for 1 bit to be transferred per clock (therefore 1GT/s is equal to 1Gbps)./news/pentium-ii-overdrive-a-home-made-xeon.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pentium-ii-overdrive-a-home-made-xeon.htmlOn August 10, 1998, Intel introduced their latest addition to the OverDrive family of processors with their highly anticipated Pentium II OverDrive processor.  While Intel mainly provided the Pentium II OverDrive as a satisfactory solution to keep Pentium Pro owners who invested thousands of dollars in their systems interested in the Intel platform, and to keep them from falling off the face of the planet as far as support goes, Intel never expected the Pentium II OverDrive to have the potential to be the average Joe's answer to their expensive Xeon processor./news/phenom-ii-system-buyers-guide.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/phenom-ii-system-buyers-guide.htmlIntroduction In January, AMD launched their new quad-core Phenom II processors that were compatible with existing AM2+ motherboards and DDR2 memory. The new Phenom II processors were the first truly competitive AMD CPUs since Intel's introduction of the Core 2. The Phenom II 940 and 920, priced at $275 and $235, performed better than the equivalently priced Intel Q9400 and the Q8200. Now AMD has filled out the Phenom II line with five new models with integrated DDR3 and DDR2 support./news/philips-begins-shipments-of-lcd-monitors-with-quantum-dot.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/philips-begins-shipments-of-lcd-monitors-with-quantum-dot.htmlTPV Technology, the company that produces monitors under Philips brand, has started to sell displays with QD Vision’s Color IQ quantum dot technology. What makes this notable is that QD Vision's technology is one such method being developed to significantly and inexpensively increase color gamut that displays can produce. The new 27” monitor can cover 99% of Adobe RGB color space, and is launcing at just $299. The quality of LCD monitors as well as their ability to accurately display colors depends on multiple factors, including the quality of their panels as well as backlighting./news/prices-of-intel-s-coffee-lake-s-cpus-published.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/prices-of-intel-s-coffee-lake-s-cpus-published.htmlAn online retailer in the UK has started to take pre-orders on Intel’s upcoming Coffee Lake CPUs, specifically the socketed 'S' parts for desktop computers. As reported previously, the new processors will have more cores than their direct predecessors, but if the published pre-order prices are correct (and are not inflated because of their pre-order nature) then Intel’s new chips will also have higher MSRPs than the company’s existing products./news/qualcomm-announces-quick-charge-3-0-intelligent-voltage-control.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-announces-quick-charge-3-0-intelligent-voltage-control.htmlOne of the other features that was announced for multiple Snapdragon SoCs at the 3G/LTE Summit in Hong Kong was Quick Charge 3.0, which will be supported on the Snapdragon 820, 617, and 430. The latest iteration of Qualcomm's rapid charging technology, Quick Charge 3.0 is said to enable up to 27% faster charging over QC 2.0 or up to 38% more efficient. Relative to QC 1.0, charge speed doubles. This is done by using an algorithm that Qualcomm calls Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage, which allows for selection of appropriate voltage for various device states while charging./news/sony-a200-full-specifications-sony-a200-entry-dslr-roundup.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-a200-full-specifications-sony-a200-entry-dslr-roundup.htmlSony A200 Full Specifications Weights and Measurements Dimensions (Approx.): (WHD) 5 3/16" x 3 7/8" x 2 13/16" (130.8 x 98.5 x 71.3 mm) Weight (Approx.): 1 lb. 2.8 oz (532g) body, not including battery, lens and media Convenience Burst Mode: Up to 3FPS; Unlimited to capacity of media (JPEG L/M/S); Maximum 3 frames (RAW + JPEG); Maximum 6 frames (RAW) Color Mode(s): Standard, Vivid, Portrait, Landscape, Night view, Sunset, Black and White, Adobe RGB (Except for Adobe RGB, all other color modes use the sRGB color space)/news/sony-vaio-pro-13-exceptionally-portable.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-vaio-pro-13-exceptionally-portable.htmlSony VAIO Pro 13: Exceptionally Portable As our first non-Apple Haswell Ultrabook, the Sony VAIO Pro 13 has a high bar to clear. We’ve seen a few Haswell systems that have delivered on the promise of improved battery life, and in some cases we’ve even seen improved performance. The performance improvements mostly come in the form of faster iGPUs, at least for the GT3 and GT3e processors. Sadly, the GT3 and GT3e are only being used in a few products right now, which leaves us with GT2 mobile offerings./news/surface-pro-design-microsoft-surface-pro-review.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/surface-pro-design-microsoft-surface-pro-review.htmlSurface Pro Design When I first saw Surface Pro, the Microsoft rep giving me the demo did a simple test. He stood Surface Pro right next to Surface, with the same start screen, and asked me if I could tell the two apart. The planar dimensions of Surface Pro are identical to Surface RT. Both feature the same sized 10.6-inch display, the same capacitive Windows button and the same 1-inch border around the screen./news/system-performance-the-msi-z170a-gaming-m7-review-the.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-msi-z170a-gaming-m7-review-the.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested./news/the-asus-prime-x299-deluxe-motherboard-review-onboard-oled.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asus-prime-x299-deluxe-motherboard-review-onboard-oled.htmlSitting at the top of ASUS' consumer-focused motherboard line for X299 is the ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe. In the past, ASUS' 'Deluxe' line-up has attempted to emulate the status of the Mercedes S-Class but in motherboard form: showcasing new technology that may eventually filter down into where the bulk of the market sits over the next 3-5 years. The newest X299-Deluxe thus comes with a few of those technological features, such as WiGig and an informational OLED display, but also comes with onboard U./news/the-corsair-af140-led-qe-and-sp140-led-performance.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-corsair-af140-led-qe-and-sp140-led-performance.htmlCorsair's 140mm Performance AF140 White LED Quiet Edition As mentioned previously, the variation on Corsair's fans means that this one is our 140mm model in the 'High Airflow' (AF) category, focusing on low-impedance (case-fan style) scenarios. The LED versions are not built as sturdy as the non-LED models, and this one comes in with the 'Quiet Edition' moniker as well.  Here are the results for the AF140 LED QE fan at high and low voltage settings:/news/the-fix-8-channel-lpcm-over-hdmi.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-fix-8-channel-lpcm-over-hdmi.htmlBut, Wait! There is a solution. It's ok to send uncompressed audio over HDMI, so in theory you could decode TrueHD/DTS-HD audio tracks in software and send them out as decoded, uncompressed LPCM without a Protected Audio Path. Cyberlink, everyone's favorite player software manufacturer, supports decoding both TrueHD and DTS-HD MA in software (although it appears that Cyberlink does downsample the 24-bit 48kHz LPCM output to 16-bit 48kHz, but at least you get 8 discrete channels even if you lose the bit-for-bit lossless accuracy of the original signal)./news/the-htc-one-x-for-at-t-review.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-htc-one-x-for-at-t-review.htmlFor just over a week, I’ve been using two phones interchangeably. The first is the Lava Xolo X900 with Medfield inside, the second is the flagship of HTC’s new One series, the HTC One X on AT&T. It’s a device with lofty goals, as it’s the flagship of HTC’s new branding and strategic positioning behind a single line of devices, industrial design, and focus. The strategy mirrors that of Samsung’s with their Galaxy series, and if successful will rekindle the excitement behind HTC’s brand./news/the-snapdragon-888-vs-the-exynos-2100-cortex-x1.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-snapdragon-888-vs-the-exynos-2100-cortex-x1.htmlThe new Galaxy S21 series of devices have been out commercially for a week now, and we’ve managed to get our hands on two Galaxy S21 Ultras – one with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 SoC, and one with Samsung’s new Exynos 2100 SoC. Both chipsets this year are more similar than ever, both now sporting similar CPU configurations, and both being produced on a new Samsung 5nm (5LPE) process node./news/zotac-releases-displayport-to-dual-hdmi-adapter.htmlThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zotac-releases-displayport-to-dual-hdmi-adapter.htmlZotac has released two new products: Mini DisplayPort and DisplayPort to dual HDMI adapters. These adapters are first of their kind and simply have one (Mini) DisplayPort input and two HDMI outputs, which allows users to use one DisplayPort port for two HDMI equipped monitors. Unfortunately the HDMI outputs are limited to 1920x1080 which indicates that this adapter might be based on older, 1.1a or earlier, DisplayPort (DP) version. A monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate and 24-bit color requires bandwidth of ~4./news/2020-delivers-a-profitable-pandemic.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2020-delivers-a-profitable-pandemic.htmlEarnings season is once more upon us, and once again leading the charge is Intel, who this afternoon reported their Q4’2020 and full-year 2020 financial results. The 800lb gorilla of the PC world has seen some unexpectedly strong quarters in 2020 following the coronavirus outbreak, and despite all of the uncertainty that entails, it’s ultimately played out in Intel’s favor. As a result, they’re closing the book on yet another record year, making for their fifth in a row./news/3d-gaming-performance-intel-celeron-1-7ghz.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3d-gaming-performance-intel-celeron-1-7ghz.html3D Gaming Performance When it comes to most 3D games there's generally very little performance to be found by heavily optimizing for SSE2 or 3DNow! on either of these processors and thus the performance is mostly dependent on the overall platform (e.g. FPU capabilities, chipset, memory latency/bandwidth, cache latency/bandwidth, etc...). We'll start off with our favorite 3D gaming benchmark - the Unreal Performance Test 2002. For an explanation of what this test is and why it is so significant, be sure to read our 15-way GPU Shootout that we used to introduce the test./news/a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700.htmlFor over two years the collective AMD vs Intel personal computer battle has been sitting on the edge of its seat. Back in 2014 when AMD first announced it was pursuing an all-new microarchitecture, old hands recalled the days when the battle between AMD and Intel was fun to be a part of, and users were happy that the competition led to innovation: not soon after, the Core microarchitecture became the dominant force in modern personal computing today./news/a-look-at-os-x-10-7-2-and.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-look-at-os-x-10-7-2-and.htmliCloud is included with the OS X 10.7.2 update, so Lion users out there will be able to pull it down through Software Update if they haven’t already (and even if you don’t intend to use iCloud, 10.7.2 is a major update that purports to fix many problems with the OS). Once you restart, you’re invited to enter or create an AppleID to associate with iCloud, and upon signing in you’ll see the iCloud preference pane for the first time./news/asrock-m8-visual-inspection-and-putting-it-together.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-m8-visual-inspection-and-putting-it-together.htmlThe first thing that struck both Anand and I when we first saw this case back at Computex was most likely size and handles.  Handles on a PC case are a hard thing to get right – the case needs to be thick enough to support the weight of an entire PC going through what is usually a hinge (think Lian Li TU-200/TU-100).  Bitfenix went a different route with the Prodigy by building the handles into the case itself and placing them on the corners – ASRock, with design from BMW Group, have done something similar with their M8./news/asrock-shows-deskmini-gtx-rx-using-micro-stx-motherboard.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-shows-deskmini-gtx-rx-using-micro-stx-motherboard.htmlOne of the recurring themes in my discussions with motherboard manufacturers over the past several years is one of introducing differentiation to products and through that, new form factors. When mini-STX was shown by Intel last year as a different form factor focusing just on the processor rather than PCIe lanes, we saw the launch of several small-sized PCs, mainly for embedded functions, that could leverage a full desktop-class CPU and socket./news/asrock-visionx-471d-review-evolutionary-upgrades-for-a-powerful.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-visionx-471d-review-evolutionary-upgrades-for-a-powerful.htmlIntroduction and Setup Impressions ASRock has been one of the few motherboard vendors to focus on mini-PCs targeting the HTPC and portable gaming markets. Starting from the ION-based nettop days, they have consistently refreshed the mini-PC lineup in sync with Intel's product cycle. We reviewed the Haswell-based VisionX 420D last September. Instead of waiting for Broadwell / Skylake, ASRock has taken the opportunity of falling flash memory prices to bring out a mid-generation update in the form of the VisionX 471D./news/asus-k53e-testing-dual-core-sandy-bridge.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-k53e-testing-dual-core-sandy-bridge.htmlASUS K53E: Enter Sandy Bridge Man Last week, we looked at one of our final Arrandale laptops in the ASUS U41JF, a worthy follow-up to the U-series’ legacy. Today we have another ASUS laptop, this time one of the first dual-core Sandy Bridge systems to grace our test bench. The K53E comes to us via Intel, and they feel it represents what we’ll see on the various other dual-core SNB laptops coming out in the near future./news/asus-1s-workstation-motherboards-computex-2006-300w-gpus-conroe.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-1s-workstation-motherboards-computex-2006-300w-gpus-conroe.htmlASUS 1S Workstation Boards (AMD and Intel) The final ASUS products we were shown were from a new group at ASUS, targeting single socket workstation motherboards. The advent of dual core and forthcoming quad core CPUs will change the workstation market at least for the short term. You will soon be able to, in a single socket, achieve a level of processing power never before thought possible without going to a much more expensive workstation or sometimes server motherboard./news/cell-s-dynamic-logic-understanding-the-cell-microprocessor.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cell-s-dynamic-logic-understanding-the-cell-microprocessor.htmlCell’s Dynamic Logic Although it’s beyond the scope of this article, one of the major problems with static CMOS circuits are the p-type transistors, and the fact that for every n-type transistor, you also must use a p-type transistor.There is an alternative known as dynamic or pseudo-NMOS logic, which gets around the problems of static CMOS while achieving the same functionality.   Let’s take a look at that static CMOS NOR gate again:/news/closed-loop-aio-liquid-coolers-14-way-mega-roundup.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closed-loop-aio-liquid-coolers-14-way-mega-roundup.htmlCorsair When we mentioned the word's "liquid coolers" and "roundup" to Corsair, they got a bit overexcited and shipped us five of their AIO coolers. For some reason, Corsair is extremely interested in AIO liquid coolers, which is also reflected by the fact that they are the only company that offers nine such products at this point in time, while most manufacturers are currently limited to just two or three coolers./news/conclusion-the-war-of-attrition.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-the-war-of-attrition.html(These numbers have been updated with the later 0x34 microcode) Intel’s desktop product teams have had their hands in a bind for a while. The goal was always to migrate from 14nm to 10nm when the intersection of performance, cost, and power hit the sweet spot. This was originally expected to happen after 2017, with the launch after Kaby Lake, but we are here in 2021 and this still hasn’t happened./news/console-emulators-our-newest-benchmark.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/console-emulators-our-newest-benchmark.htmlOne late night (or perhaps it was an early morning), during the testing of the ATI Radeon 9800 XT and the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra last Fall, we decided that the only truly "correct" way to test a video card is to test it in every possible situation for which it could be used. Of course, since there is no magic benchmark fairy that brings us numbers while we sleep, testing everything is impossible./news/ekwb-releases-420mm-and-560mm-coolstream-slim-radiators.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ekwb-releases-420mm-and-560mm-coolstream-slim-radiators.htmlEKWB has completed its 140mm slim radiator lineup releasing two additional SKUs, the EK-Coolstream SE 420 and EK-Coolstream SE 560. These new radiators come on the heels of the recently released 140 and 280mm CoolStream SE radiators about a month ago. Both radiators utilize 140mm fans; 3x140mm on the SE 420 and 4x140mm on the SE 560. The two larger devices carry over the same slim dimensions with zero overhang of the radiator frame measuring in at exactly 140mm wide./news/environment-mapped-bump-mapping-matrox-marvel-g400tv.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/environment-mapped-bump-mapping-matrox-marvel-g400tv.htmlEnvironment Mapped Bump Mapping What is Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM)? As taken from our G400 Review: Instead of manipulating a standalone texture map to make it "look" like it has bumps on it, Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping adds a third texture to the rendering sequence (in cases where both an Environment Map and a Texture Map are present). The third texture, or the bump-map, is nothing more than the basic environment map with bumps and grooves./news/final-words-conclusion-the-corsair-icue-link-h150i-rgb.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-conclusion-the-corsair-icue-link-h150i-rgb.htmlConclusion The latest generation in the long line of AIO coolers from Corsair, the iCUE LINK H150i RGB AIO Liquid Cooler represents the culmination of over a decade of development in the realm of all-in-one CPU coolers. In a market teeming with AIO solutions, the iCUE LINK H150i RGB stands out, reflecting Corsair's dedication to innovative design and quality. This cooler showcases Corsair's commitment to using premium materials and superior construction techniques, ensuring a product that not only performs well but is also built to last./news/gaming-performance-amd-s-phenom-x3-8000-series-fighting.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-amd-s-phenom-x3-8000-series-fighting.htmlGaming Performance Supreme Commander Supreme Commander is a popular RTS (Real Time Strategy) title that can be very CPU dependent. Our benchmark involves playing back, as fast as possible, a 4-person match and recording the simulation time for the replay in seconds. We ran Supreme Commander at 1920 x 1200 with High fidelity presets, v-sync was disabled. None of the AMD CPUs manage to do well here at all and despite Supreme Commander's ability to utilize more than two cores, the added benefit is small enough that triple-core doesn't really do much at all./news/gigabyte-b550i-aorus-pro-ax.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-b550i-aorus-pro-ax.htmlThe GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX is the brands premium mini-ITX model, and has a strong feature set for an mITX B550 board. Interestingly, the B550I Aorus Pro AX supports up to DDR4-5330 which is impressive, while the larger ATX sized versions support up to DDR4-5200. Some of the boards notable features include two M.2 slots, one PCIe 4.0 x4 on the front. and one PCIe 3.0 x4 on the rear, with a Realtek 2./news/gpu-performance-power-google-s-tensor-inside-of-pixel.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-power-google-s-tensor-inside-of-pixel.htmlGPU Performance & Power The Google Tensors GPU is quite a beast. A Mali G78 with 20 cores, it’s sporting 42% more cores than the Exynos 2100 implementation, and only comes second after HiSilicon’s Kirin 9000. However, unlike the more power efficient N5 process node of the Kirin 9000, the Tensor SoC comes on the same process node as on the Exynos 2100. Having a much larger GPU, one would expect Google to drive the block at lower frequencies, in order to achieve better energy efficiency./news/holiday-2008-gpu-guide-price-cuts-galore.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/holiday-2008-gpu-guide-price-cuts-galore.htmlJust last month, pricing was much different. Today, those looking for a quality gaming experience can look forward to some great deals. While the low end and midrange has remained pretty fixed in price, cards over $200 have come down quite a bit. This has made some comparisons difficult, but the bottom line is great prices for consumers. Rather than looking at individual manufacturers, we are going to look at different AMD and NVIDIA SKUs./news/hp-l2335-low-response-time-and-high-resolution-lcd.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-l2335-low-response-time-and-high-resolution-lcd.htmlSpecifications The HP L2335 is advertised as a business 23" display. We certainly have no problem using the L2335 for business, but in our opinion, this may be the ultimate gaming monitor under $1000. Like other Super IPS displays, the HP L2335 features a 0.258mm pixel pitch, 16ms response time and a relatively conservative contrast ratio and brightness. This is a true 8-bit LCD and our benchmarks should reflect that later on in the benchmarks of this review - almost a necessity in our book./news/in-and-around-the-silverstone-fortress-ft02.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-silverstone-fortress-ft02.htmlIn and Around the SilverStone Fortress FT02 I'm not going to lie, I had high hopes for the FT02. Cursory experience with a boutique build utilizing the enclosure was, while backbreaking, ultimately pleasant. A healthy number of you hold it in high esteem, and frankly, it's just nice to look at a case that's understated. The Raven RV03 seemed gaudy in places, but it's also about as out there as SilverStone's designs seem to get in terms of aesthetics./news/miscellaneous-factors-netgear-s-marvell-based-readynas-nv-v2.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/miscellaneous-factors-netgear-s-marvell-based-readynas-nv-v2.htmlIn addition to the raw performance numbers, there are a number of other features which prospective customers might care about. These include the one-touch backup features, extensibility with the help of add-ons and mobile apps availability. Power consumption and noise are important factors too. One Touch Backup Backup jobs can be created in the web interface. Source and destination options include folders in the internal volume as well as the various USB ports in the system./news/more-of-the-chip-part-i.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-of-the-chip-part-i.htmlMore of the Chip, part I With a transistor count of 30 million, 5 million more than the GeForce 2 GTS, one has to wonder what additional features ATI has packed into the core to result in such a large transistor count. Let's take a look at some of the features that the Rage6C core provides. A large number of those extra transistors go into making what ATI likes to call the Charisma engine, which provides for T&L features./news/msi-mpg-z390-gaming-edge-ac.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-mpg-z390-gaming-edge-ac.htmlStarting with the ATX sized model of a trio of Gaming Edge MSI MPG (performance) range boards, the MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC as the name suggests means it has built-in wireless networking support; this is provided by a standard Intel 9462 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter which is compliant with the latest Bluetooth 5 connectivity. The overall design and layout looks very similar to the MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC with near identical PCBs, but with primarily visual differences such as heatsinks./news/msi-reveals-optix-mag251rx-240hz-ips-gaming-monitor.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-reveals-optix-mag251rx-240hz-ips-gaming-monitor.htmlMSI has announced its first display that uses a Fast IPS panel, which boasts a 240 Hz refresh rate. Like many gaming LCDs, the Optix MAG251RX is NVIDIA G-Sync compatible as well as VESA DisplayHDR 400 certified. Meanwhile, unlike most gaming monitors, the new product comes with a USB-C input. Based on a 24.5-inch 8-bit+FRC IPS panel, the MSI MAG251RX features a 1920×1080 resolution, 400 nits brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 178°/178° viewing angles, a 1 ms response time, and a maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz./news/panasonic-demonstrates-store-window-as-a-transparent-screen.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/panasonic-demonstrates-store-window-as-a-transparent-screen.htmlAt Mobile World Congress this year, Panasonic demonstrated a glass that can be turned into a display in an instant. The solution relies on a thin film between the sheets of glass that can quickly change its properties when electricity is supplied, allowing a rear projector to focus and provide an image. The system is currently aimed at retailers that want to attract more attention to their stores and shelves. The company says that the first deployments of the technology are expected this spring./news/razer-displays-the-razer-raptor-gaming-monitor.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/razer-displays-the-razer-raptor-gaming-monitor.htmlRazer is pretty well known for its gaming peripherals, as well as its gaming focused notebook lineup, so today’s announcement of a new gaming monitor from the company makes a lot of sense. It offers some excellent features for gamers, as well as the premium touch that Razer does so well. The 27-inch display features a 2560x1440 resolution for the IPS panel, and offers a 144 Hz refresh rate. For gaming, response rate is also critical, and the Razer Raptor offers a 7 ms typical response, which can be reduced to 4 ms with Overdrive, and 1 ms with Motion Blur reduction./news/samsung-begins-mass-production-of-512-gb-eufs-3.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-begins-mass-production-of-512-gb-eufs-3.htmlSamsung has kicked off mass production of its new, high-performance eUFS 3.1 storage modules. Designed primarily with high-end smartphones in mind, the embedded storage drives offer some of Samsung's fastest speeds yet, with read and write speeds similar to those of midrange SSDs for PCs. Initially, Samsung’s eUFS 3.1 family of devices will include a 512 GB drive rated for sequential read speeds of up to 2100 MB/s, sequential write speed up to 1200 MB/s, as well upwards of 100,000 IOPS and 70,000 IOPS for random reads and writes respectively./news/sandisk-extreme-microsd-cards-with-a2-app-performance-spec.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-extreme-microsd-cards-with-a2-app-performance-spec.htmlWestern Digital’s SanDisk division on Friday unveiled its first lineup of microSD cards that are compliant with the App Performance 2 (A2) specification. The new SanDisk Extreme cards are designed primarily for smartphones, so they do not offer very high sequential read/write speeds, yet in accordance with the A2 requirements, they offer rather high random performance for a removable memory card, making them better suited for running apps off of them./news/seagate-expands-external-flash-storage-lineup-with-firecuda-gaming.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-expands-external-flash-storage-lineup-with-firecuda-gaming.htmlLate last year, Seagate had launched the FireCuda Gaming Dock, a 4TB external hard drive / Thunderbolt 3 dock with a Titan Ridge controller. It stood out in the Thunderbolt 3 peripheral market for two different aspects - a number of USB 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps ports, and a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD slot inside the dock. At CES 2020, Seagate is further expanding their external storage solution set for gamers with the FireCuda Gaming SSD./news/synthetic-benchmarks-the-corsair-mp400-1tb-qlc-nvme-ssd.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synthetic-benchmarks-the-corsair-mp400-1tb-qlc-nvme-ssd.htmlBurst IO Performance Our burst IO tests run at a queue depth of one and the amount of data transferred is limited to ensure that SLC write buffers don't fill up and controllers don't overheat. In between each burst there's enough idle time to keep the drive averaging a 20% duty cycle, allowing for some buffered writes and deferred garbage collection to be completed. The random read and write tests use 4kB operations and the sequential tests use 128kB operations./news/tegra-x1-android-tv-box-shipping-in-may.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tegra-x1-android-tv-box-shipping-in-may.htmlToday NVIDIA has announced their latest addition to the SHIELD product family, the SHIELD Console. Launching in May at $199, the SHIELD Console is a combination microconsole and Android TV box, offering Android TV functionality along with two forms of gaming. The first form being Android gaming backed by the console’s Tegra X1 SoC, and the second form via access to NVIDIA’s GRID game streaming service. Like NVIDIA’s previous SHIELD devices, the SHIELD Console is perhaps first and foremost their showcase device for their Tegra SoC./news/the-a12-vortex-cpu-%C2%B5arch-massive-memory-improvements.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-a12-vortex-cpu-%C2%B5arch-massive-memory-improvements.htmlThe A12 Vortex CPU µarch When talking about the Vortex microarchitecture, we first need to talk about exactly what kind of frequencies we’re seeing on Apple’s new SoC. Over the last few generations Apple has been steadily raising frequencies of its big cores, all while also raising the microarchitecture’s IPC. I did a quick test of the frequency behaviour of the A12 versus the A11, and came up with the following table:/news/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-review-feat-sapphire.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-review-feat-sapphire.htmlCompute While I’m including compute performance for the sake of completeness here, the compute situation on Navi has not substantially changed since the launch of the Radeon RX 5700 series over 5 months ago. AMD’s Adrenaline 2020 software has improved the state of their OpenCL drivers slightly – there are fewer hard crashes and performance is up in some cases – but their drivers are still dysfunctional and not fit for production use./news/the-debate-about-free-mhz.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-debate-about-free-mhz.htmlIf you have been keeping up to date with any of the AnandTech motherboard reviews lately, there has been one topic that has been hot on my lips, and it is called ‘MultiCore Enhancement’.  As an exercise in explanation and opinion, we would like to know your thoughts on this, and how it would affect you as a user. To start, let me describe what we are talking about.  On the latest line of Intel CPUs, we have multiple cores all willing to provide computational throughput./news/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review-iterating.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review-iterating.htmlDisplay Analysis Section by Brandon Chester It's hard to deny the importance of having a great smartphone display. Almost every interaction done with a smartphone involves the display, and we've seen the quality of smartphone displays improve greatly with each year. When looking at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus at a high level, they appear to use the same displays as the previous two generations of iPhones. The iPhone 7 uses a 1334x750 IPS LCD panel with a pixel density of 326ppi, while the iPhone 7 Plus uses a 1920x1080 IPS LCD panel with a pixel density of 401ppi./news/the-nvidia-turing-gpu-architecture-deep-dive-prelude-to.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nvidia-turing-gpu-architecture-deep-dive-prelude-to.htmlIt’s been roughly a month since NVIDIA's Turing architecture was revealed, and if the GeForce RTX 20-series announcement a few weeks ago has clued us in on anything, is that real time raytracing was important enough for NVIDIA to drop “GeForce GTX” for “GeForce RTX” and completely change the tenor of how they talk about gaming video cards. Since then, it’s become clear that Turing and the GeForce RTX 20-series have a lot of moving parts: RT Cores, real time raytracing, Tensor Cores, AI features (i./news/tr-7000-vs-intel-ai-and-inferencing.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tr-7000-vs-intel-ai-and-inferencing.htmlAs technology progresses at a breakneck pace, so too do the demands of modern applications and workloads. With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) becoming increasingly intertwined with our daily computational tasks, it's paramount that our reviews evolve in tandem. Recognizing this, we have AI and inferencing benchmarks in our CPU test suite for 2024.  Traditionally, CPU benchmarks have focused on various tasks, from arithmetic calculations to multimedia processing. However, with AI algorithms now driving features within some applications, from voice recognition to real-time data analysis, it's crucial to understand how modern processors handle these specific workloads./news/two-radically-different-keyboards-two-omap-3430-phones-nokia.htmlWed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/two-radically-different-keyboards-two-omap-3430-phones-nokia.html  For starters, the N900 has 3 rows of keys, while the Motorola Droid has 4. The N900 also has a shallower slide out depth compared to the Motorola Droid as a result, making it feel just a bit more balanced in your hand when the keyboard is slid all the way out. The Motorola Droid includes a clickable D-pad, while the N900 just uses traditional up down left right keys./news/a-banana-phone-for-2018.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-banana-phone-for-2018.htmlAt MWC 2018, the depth of the Nokia nostalgia revival was strong. The owners of the Nokia band, a company called HMD Global, has revived an old Nokia favorite, as part ot its 'Originals' family of re-imagined Nokia-branded devices. The new Nokia 8110 4G slider resembles Neo’s slider handset from the 1990s, but with a difference in feel and design to match the modern era. As well as black, it also comes available in yellow, and is curved./news/a-helio-p90-powered-phone-with-a-large-punch.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-helio-p90-powered-phone-with-a-large-punch.htmlOne of the things that caught our eyes at Mobile World Congress in 2018 and 2019 were new, high-end smartphones coming from China-based manufacturers that are better known for their value handsets. Ulefone is one such company that is trying to break into the market for advanced smartphones by relying on MediaTek's premium, sub-flagship SoC offerings. Last year Ulefone demonstrated its T2 Pro 6.7-inch handset designed for demanding customers. This year the company showcased its T3 smartphone the promises to be even more impressive./news/a-premium-4k-set-top-box.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-premium-4k-set-top-box.htmlThe battle for the living room (i.e, controlling the television experience) is heating up with forays from multiple vendors. As the cord-cutting trend gains momentum, the time seems to be right for disruption. Roku has been around for a long time and they continue to taste success with inexpensive and small over-the-top set-top boxes (OTT STBs). At the other end of the spectrum is the Apple TV, which, despite just being a 'hobby', has managed to move millions of units./news/asrock-b550-phantom-gaming-itx-ax-the-amd-b550.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-b550-phantom-gaming-itx-ax-the-amd-b550.htmlASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax The budget chipsets are often a good place to find the smaller mini-ITX based motherboards, because in those small form factors, users are unlikely to be pushing the frequency limits of their processors, and something using less power and is more compact often benefits the design. This this case the B550 PG-ITX/ac seems to be a more mid-range platform, with a rear IO cover as well as a combination M./news/asus-reveals-thunderboltex-4-expansion-card-dual-type-c.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-reveals-thunderboltex-4-expansion-card-dual-type-c.htmlBack in December, we reported that Intel's Maple Ridge Thunderbolt 4 controller was shipping to customers. We can now report that ASUS has unveiled a Thunderbolt 4 expansion card, the ASUS ThunderboltEX 4. It includes support for 100 W quick charging, includes a 40 Gbps bi-directional switch, and can support up to 8K ultra HD resolutions. Since the launch of Intel's Z590 chipset on socket LGA1200, we've seen some of the more premium models featuring Intel's latest Maple Ridge Thunderbolt 4 controllers./news/battery-life-and-conclusion-acer-c7-chromebook-review.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-and-conclusion-acer-c7-chromebook-review.htmlBattery Life If the point of Chrome OS is for you to live in the browser, then the clear choice for testing battery life is our updated Web Browsing battery life test. Here we find that the advertised figure of 4 hours is almost spot on. While it’s nice to see some accuracy in these battery life claims, that’s no salve for the fact that this isn’t a road warrior. This is the lowest common denominator for getting into a Chromebook, but if it can only be untethered for four hours, that doesn’t make this the most mobile device./news/closing-thoughts-dell-dtr-laptop-shootout.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/closing-thoughts-dell-dtr-laptop-shootout.htmlClosing Thoughts We started with three different systems, and while they all look similar they end up targeting different markets. For the mobile gaming warriors among you, the M1710 is still clearly the best option. Yes, it's very expensive, but your only other choices for getting this level of performance in a laptop will likely cost just as much if not more. The R&D costs associated with creating laptops and laptop components - especially high performance parts - help to account for the higher prices./news/cpu-performance-the-2013-macbook-air-review-13-inch.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-the-2013-macbook-air-review-13-inch.htmlCPU Performance To measure CPU performance we begin with a fairly standard measure of system responsiveness: boot time. With the last generation of upgrades to 6Gbps SATA, we saw a good decrease in boot time over the previous generation platforms. The new 13-inch MBA's PCIe SSD takes the crown as it boots ever so slightly quicker than last year's setup. In practice the difference is subtle, but something you can appreciate as the 2013 MBA's IO is just snappier all over./news/display-measurement-the-google-pixel-4-xl-review-stuck.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-measurement-the-google-pixel-4-xl-review-stuck.htmlDisplay Measurement The display of the Pixel 4 is one of the phone’s main features thanks to the 90Hz refresh rate. As mentioned in the introduction, the displays on the Pixel 4 series this year is again dual-sourced between LG and Samsung. The regular Pixel 4 receives an LG panel, while the 4 XL that we’re testing and reviewing today, uses a Samsung display. Android Q promised to have implemented a new iteration of Google’s colour management system, and for the first time, the Photos app is actually able to properly display wide gamut pictures./news/faster-than-the-nexus-one-s-snapdragon.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/faster-than-the-nexus-one-s-snapdragon.htmlFresh out the frying pan and into the fire, I just finished my Nexus One review late last night only to have my iPad preorder show up early this afternoon. I had been preparing for it's arrival not by downloading apps but by figuring out what comparative benchmarks I wanted to run on the iPhone 3GS and Nexus One. As the first device to use Apple's A4 SoC I wanted to see how it stacked up against the Cortex A8 and Qualcomm's QSD8250./news/final-words-micron-m500dc-480gb-800gb-review.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-micron-m500dc-480gb-800gb-review.htmlFinal Words Overall the M500DC is a sensible addition to Micron's enterprise SSD lineup. It fills the gap between the consumer M500 and the P400m by providing a solution that is affordable yet has the feature set and meets the performance requirements of enterprise customers. The performance is actually far better than I expected from an entry-level drive, although I must admit that I was surprised (and perhaps a little terrified too) when I noticed that Micron sets aside up to 42% (!/news/high-capacity-ddr4-pricing-32-128gb.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-capacity-ddr4-pricing-32-128gb.htmlHigh Capacity and HEDT DDR4 Pricing Now, let’s take a look at larger kits designed for HEDT systems. Due to the intracacies of the quad-channel memory controllers inside Core i7 Extreme Haswell-E and Broadwell-E processors, HEDT kits do not boast with extremely high frequencies because it is hard to run four modules at high clock-rates. Even then, at moderate frequencies such DRAM sub-systems deliver a lot of bandwidth. What memory kits for HEDT do require are sub-timings optimized for their operation in quad-channel mode since in far not all situations a pair of dual-channel kits will work fine in quad-channel mode./news/htc-evo-3d-vs-motorola-photon-4g-choosing-the.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-evo-3d-vs-motorola-photon-4g-choosing-the.htmlSoftware Both the Photon 4G and EVO 3D run Gingerbread, although the Photon sports a slightly newer version (2.3.4 vs 2.3.3). The newer point release on Photon simply implements bug fixes, but don't take that to mean that the Photon should be a more stable phone. In my experience with the two, the Photon was more likely to crash although neither phone appeared to be particularly unstable. The EVO 3D ships with HTC's Sense 3./news/illustrating-the-need-for-ddr-linpack.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/illustrating-the-need-for-ddr-linpack.htmlIllustrating the need for DDR - Linpack A benchmark that has always come in handy but has never really been used on AnandTech is something known as Linpack. The guys over at Ace's Hardware have been using Linpack for quite some time, and it is to them that we owe the discovery of the benchmark as we will begin using it as well to help analyze performance. While it may be hard to get anything out of the above graph at first sight, keep in mind that all of the blue lines represent the Intel Pentium III 1GHz while the two green lines (one dark one light) represent the Athlon 1GHz./news/in-and-around-the-fractal-design-define-r4.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-fractal-design-define-r4.htmlIn and Around the Fractal Design Define R4 It's going to be difficult to go through this review without talking about the Fractal Design Define R3, so while I don't like assigning homework, reading our review of that enclosure can at least help put this new one in perspective. Essentially what we're looking at, though, is a mid-tower engineered primarily for silent running but capable of going the opposite direction in a pinch./news/mail-2-0-mac-os-x-10-4-tiger.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mail-2-0-mac-os-x-10-4-tiger.htmlMail 2.0 Mail was one of my original favorites of OS X, although the application itself looked extremely simple. It quickly proved to be much more robust and much less of a resource hog than my previous client, Outlook.  As one of my favorite applications under OS X, I was curious to play with Mail 2.0 in Tiger, which has had a handful of changes.  When starting up Mail for the first time, it will take a few minutes to import all of your old emails into the new version of Mail./news/memory-bandwidth-comparison-amd-760mp-athlon-mp.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/memory-bandwidth-comparison-amd-760mp-athlon-mp.htmlMemory Bandwidth Comparison Although we're not big fans of SiSoft Sandra as a benchmark, the memory bandwidth test contained within the suite has proved to be quite useful. Without a doubt the Xeon offers the greatest amount of useable memory bandwidth of the collection; the i860's dual channel RDRAM interface provides for a theoretical maximum of 3.2GB/s of bandwidth to main memory. According to these results, approximately 44% of the bandwidth is actually being used by the two Xeon processors./news/msi-mag-z490-tomahawk-the-intel-z490-overview-44.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-mag-z490-tomahawk-the-intel-z490-overview-44.htmlMSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk Adding to its gaming range, the MSI MAG series is designed to offer a lower entry point for users to aim for which look to benefit from Z490 features including overclocking, but at a lower cost to the end-user. The MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk includes two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots, two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, and six SATA ports Also featured is dual Ethernet with a 2./news/msi-pro-z690-a-wifi-z690-a-ddr4.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-pro-z690-a-wifi-z690-a-ddr4.htmlMSI Pro Z690-A WIFI & Z690-A (DDR4) The MSI Pro series of motherboards represent a more modest pathway to the Z690 chipset, with a lower entry-level price, more modest features when compared to the MPG series, but on a similar level to its MAG gaming-focused series. Both the MSI Pro Z690-A WIFI DDR4 and the Pro Z690-A DDR4 share the same aesthetic and core feature set, which includes a primarily black color theme with a professional-looking silver strip going along the rear panel cover./news/msi-z77-mpower-software-msi-z77-mpower-review-the.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-z77-mpower-software-msi-z77-mpower-review-the.htmlMSI Z77 MPower Software It is hard to pinpoint the perfect software to complement a motherboard.  In a normal environment the software should look nice and work flawlessly, but in an ideal environment it could be tricky to decide what functionality should be there, and what form it would take.  Over the past year MSI have used the MSI Control Center as their main detailed interface, and is now combined with MSI Suite as an attempt to roll all the individual programs into one interface access./news/new-hp-zbook-14u-zbook-15u-portable-workstations.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-hp-zbook-14u-zbook-15u-portable-workstations.htmlHP has introduced its new ZBook 14u G6 and ZBook 15u G6 mobile workstations. The new laptops use the same chassis as 14-inch and 15.6-inch ZBook machines introduced a year ago, but they offer a higher performance because of updated components. In addition, the new ZBooks feature improved security capabilities and a new selection of displays. HP’s new sixth-generation ZBook 14u and ZBook 15u notebooks come in a CNC-machined aluminum chassis that brings together durability, light weight, and style./news/nvidia-business-platform-features-nvidia-business-platform-a-competitive.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-business-platform-features-nvidia-business-platform-a-competitive.htmlNVIDIA Business Platform Features HP, Dell, Gateway, and the majority of tier-one OEMs have been offering various forms of stable image platforms through their business, education, or government solutions groups in recent years. As the complexity and size of enterprise level networks grew, along with the proliferation of networks in other sectors, it became apparent that a different level of integration between hardware and software was required. So, in mid-2003, Intel formally stepped into this market segment with their Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP), and following Intel's tremendous success, AMD introduced their Commercial Stable Image Platform (CSIP) in September of 2005./news/per-key-quality-testing-the-glorious-pc-gaming-race.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/per-key-quality-testing-the-glorious-pc-gaming-race.htmlQuality Testing In order to test the quality and consistency of a keyboard, we are using a texture analyser that is programmed to measure and display the actuation force of the standard keyboard keys. By measuring the actuation force of every key, the quality and consistency of the keyboard can be quantified. It can also reveal design issues, such as the larger keys being far softer to press than the main keys of the keyboard./news/putting-an-end-to-proprietary-ultrabook-ssd-form-factors.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/putting-an-end-to-proprietary-ultrabook-ssd-form-factors.htmlWe've seen a bunch of custom SSD form factors with the arrival of Ultrabooks as well as systems like the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro. The need is simple: standard 7mm or 9.5mm SSDs are too big for some of these machines, and you don't actually need all of that volume to build a fast drive. mSATA cards work as a small form factor solution but they are only available in a single size./news/sharp-announces-2nd-gen-8k-uhd-tvs-at-ifa.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sharp-announces-2nd-gen-8k-uhd-tvs-at-ifa.htmlSharp this week introduced its second-generation 8K ultra-high def TVs at IFA in Berlin. The new televisions use the company’s new panels as well as the latest processors that can upscale Full-HD and Ultra-HD 4K content to a 7680×4320 resolution. The initial lineup of Sharp’s 2nd Gen Aquos 8K UHD TVs will include models featuring sizes of 60, 70, and 80 inches. The new televisions will be based on the company’s new image processor that doubles its compute throughput over the predecessor and can upscale 2K as well as 4K content to an 8K resolution with a 100/120 Hz refresh rate./news/soc-and-nand-performance-the-samsung-galaxy-s7-s7.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/soc-and-nand-performance-the-samsung-galaxy-s7-s7.htmlSoC Performance While we’re ready to move on to newer benchmarks for 2016, our system performance benchmarks from 2015 are still going to provide a pretty good idea for what to expect from the Galaxy S7 and Snapdragon 820 by extension. For those that are unfamiliar with what the Snapdragon 820 is, I’d reference our previous articles on the Snapdragon 820. In essence, we’re looking at a 2x2 CPU configuration with 2./news/some-thoughts-on-smartphone-region-locking.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/some-thoughts-on-smartphone-region-locking.htmlRecently, reports of Samsung region locking the Note 3 came out via Clove UK, which posted on its blog that the Note 3 would be completely unable to use a SIM card from a carrier outside of the region, and would not ship any Note 3 devices with a region lock outside of Europe. Of course, while unprecedented in the smartphone industry, this sort of business has been happening for a very long time in the automobile industry, which has effectively banned grey importing to the US./news/spare-area-3gbps-only-aes-128.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/spare-area-3gbps-only-aes-128.htmlSpare Area and Redundant NAND Intel's controller is a 10-channel architecture and thus drive capacities are still a little wonky compared to the competition. Thanks to 25nm NAND we now have some larger capacities to talk about: 300GB and 600GB. Intel sent a 300GB version of the 320 for us to take a look at. Internally the drive has 20 physical NAND devices. Each NAND device is 16GB in size and features two 64Gbit 25nm 2-bit MLC NAND die./news/tesoro-returns-with-low-profile-switch-keyboards-fresh-software.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tesoro-returns-with-low-profile-switch-keyboards-fresh-software.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV -- Tesoro will readily admit that 2017 was a quiet year for the small peripherals company. The personnel reshifted and refocused during that time, carefully and fully revamping its products and approach to the market. We got a semi-exclusive look at what the company will be rolling out early in 2018: low-profile switch mechanical keyboards. However, neither of the two new keyboard models we got hands-on time with sport the low-profile Kaihua switches we’ve been dissecting./news/the-asus-rog-maximus-z690-hero-motherboard-review-a.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asus-rog-maximus-z690-hero-motherboard-review-a.htmlOverclocking When it comes to overclocking on Intel's 12th generation processors, Alder Lake has a new yet important variable to consider. This is because not all of its cores are equal. Intel's latest Alder Lake processors feature a hybrid design with P-cores (performance) and E-cores (efficient). Focusing on the Core i9-12900K, it has 8 P-Cores, 8 E-cores, and 24 threads in total. While Hyperthreading isn't a new technology, the hybrid nature of Alder Lake combining two different types of CPU core is./news/the-google-nexus-9-review.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-google-nexus-9-review.htmlFor the past few years, we’ve seen Google place significant emphasis on price as a way of competing with other tablets on the market. The original Nexus 7 managed to deliver a good tablet experience without the conventional 500 USD price for a tablet. The successor to the Nexus 7 was even more incredible, as it pushed hardware that was equal to or better than most tablets on the market at a lower price./news/the-mydigitalssd-sbx-ssd-review-nvme-on-the-cheap.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-mydigitalssd-sbx-ssd-review-nvme-on-the-cheap.htmlMyDigitalSSD's business model revolves around selling drives based on Phison reference designs. Like any other small SSD brand, MyDigitalSSD lacks the resources to develop their own SSD controller or even write their own firmware from scratch. The way MyDigitalSSD distinguishes themselves from the many competing brands is by offering drives for substantially lower prices and by being one of the first to market with new controllers from Phison. The SBX checks both boxes: it is priced below the Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD, and it hit the market in December 2017 as the first Phison E8 drive to ship and one of the earliest retail SSDs to feature Toshiba/SanDisk 64-layer 3D NAND./news/the-nzxt-cam-software-the-nzxt-kraken-z63-x73.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-nzxt-cam-software-the-nzxt-kraken-z63-x73.htmlThe NZXT CAM Software NZXT’s CAM is a free system monitoring program, with the added bonus that it can control and update the firmware of compatible NZXT devices. It identifies the system’s components and sub-components and also offers comprehensive resource usage information, both total and per-process. As one would probably expect, most of the software's control options become available only if supported NZXT hardware is detected. Meanwhile the monitoring features are compatible with the vast majority of hardware that is being sold in the market today./news/the-test-dell-inspiron-8600-mobile-multimedia-goes-wide.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-test-dell-inspiron-8600-mobile-multimedia-goes-wide.htmlThe Test Windows XP Professional Test System Dell Inspiron 8600 Dell Latitude D800 Gigabyte NB-1401 IBM T40 IBM X31 Desktop System CPU(s) Pentium M 1.7GHz Pentium M 1.6GHz Pentium M 1.4GHz Pentium M 1.5GHz Pentium M 1.4GHz Pentium 4 2.4GHz Motherboard(s) Dell 855PM Dell 855PM FIC 855GM IBM 855PM IBM 855PM Intel D845EBT 845E Memory 512MB PC2700 512MB PC2100 512MB PC2100 256MB PC2100 256MB PC2100 512MB PC2100 Hard Drive 60GB 7200RPM 40GB 5400RPM 40GB 4200RPM 40GB 5400RPM 40GB 4200RPM IBM Deskstar DPTA-372050 20./news/thin-bezel-x1-carbon-x1-yoga-and-x1-tablet.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thin-bezel-x1-carbon-x1-yoga-and-x1-tablet.htmlJust last week, Lenovo announced a substantial overhaul of most of it’s ThinkPad lineup. One of the main new features were a new silver color, along with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 on many models. Today, the X1 family gets the same treatment, with the X1 Carbon, X1 Yoga, and X1 Tablet all offering new features. The X1 Carbon is now on its fifth generation, and while all generations have brought about a slimming and reduction in weight, it is this new fifth generation X1 Carbon that will be the most exciting since the original’s introduction./news/updated-gt75vr-gaming-laptop-receives-killer-wireless-ac-1550.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/updated-gt75vr-gaming-laptop-receives-killer-wireless-ac-1550.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — MSI’s GT75VR Titan Pro, a more than capable premium gaming laptop, gets a notable update in the wireless department. Last year’s model used the Killer 1535 and was ‘limited’ to 867 Mbps. The latest GT75VR Titan Pro will soon begin shipping with the recently announced Killer 1550 that is capable of transfer rates to 1.73 Gbps for twice the throughput. The Killer 1550 is a conglomeration of Rivet and Intel to combine all the features that Rivet wanted to bring the table, but with Intel designing and manufacturing the chip./news/visual-inspection-amd-itx-tb3-it-s-the-asrock.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-amd-itx-tb3-it-s-the-asrock.htmlVisual Inspection The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is a mini-ITX motherboard which is priced for the mid-range of X570 but has some very premium features. This makes it one of the most versatile small form factor models on the AM4 socket. The design feels refined and fits in line with its other Phantom Gaming branded models with red and black accents on the aluminium rear panel cover and heatsinks. It wouldn't be a Phantom Gaming series motherboard without at least some integrated RGB which is located at the bottom of the board./news/watchos-time-and-notifications-the-apple-watch-review.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/watchos-time-and-notifications-the-apple-watch-review.htmlWatchOS: Time and Notifications Ultimately, Apple Watch is a first generation product. As a result, details like the CPU, GPU, and RAM configurations are of secondary importance to software. Choices made early in the growth of a platform can have far-reaching consequences that will remain many years after the original hardware has long been obsolete. Android still uses the sdcard convention for user storage, even though many modern Android smartphones place the sdcard partition on internal storage as early Android smartphones strongly relied on microSD cards for user storage./news/xiaomi-launches-mi-note-10-lite-redmi-note-9.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xiaomi-launches-mi-note-10-lite-redmi-note-9.htmlToday Xiaomi is launching a trio of mid- to low-end devices, and we’re seeing the global launch of the new Mi Note 10 Lite, Redmi Note 9 Pro and the Redmi Note 9. The new Note 10 Lite is a cut-down version of last year’s Note 10 which was the first phone with an 108MP camera. The Lite variant keeps the design aesthetics but comes with a smaller 64MP still very capable camera./news/yet-another-gaming-accessory-with-rgb-uninterruptible-power-supply.htmlTue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/yet-another-gaming-accessory-with-rgb-uninterruptible-power-supply.htmlJust when you thought there was a gaming version of everything, with shiny flashing LEDs – we’ve seen storage SSDs, M.2 drives, fans, speakers, chairs, keyboards, headsets, mice, even backpacks, there’s still one that you are missing. Enter the Schneider Electric APC Back-UPS Pro Gaming UPS. A UPS, or Uninterruptable Power Supply, enables whatever is plugged into it to keep functioning during a power outage, as well as help smooth out power delivery in areas that might suffer from fluctuating brown-outs./news/amd-begins-polaris-and-vega-gpu-retirement-process-reduces.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-begins-polaris-and-vega-gpu-retirement-process-reduces.htmlAs AMD is now well into their third generation of RDNA architecture GPUs, the sun has been slowly setting on AMD’s remaining Graphics Core Next (GCN) designs, better known by the architecture names of Polaris and Vega. In recent weeks the company dropped support for those GPU architectures in their open source Vulkan Linux driver, AMDVLK, and now we have confirmation that the company is slowly winding down support for these architectures in their Windows drivers as well./news/amd-to-launch-new-desktop-gpu-this-quarter-q2.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-to-launch-new-desktop-gpu-this-quarter-q2.htmlHaving just left the stage at AMD’s financial analyst day is CEO Dr. Lisa Su, who was on stage to present an update on AMD’s computing and graphic business. As AMD has already previously discussed their technology roadmaps over the next two years earlier in this presentation, we’ll jump right into the new material. Not mentioned in AMD’s GPU roadmap but now being mentioned by Dr. Su is confirmation that AMD will be launching new desktop GPUs this quarter./news/an-entry-level-all-flash-storage-system.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-entry-level-all-flash-storage-system.htmlWestern Digital has introduced its most affordable NVMe all-flash storage array, the new IntelliFlash N5100. The device offers up to 92 TB of raw NAND flash using SN200 NVMe SSDs, and can be further expanded when needed using additional 2U IntelliFlash SAS modules featuring 24 SAS drive bays, offering hundreds of terabytes of raw NAND flash. The IntelliFlash N5100 is aimed at customers who need to accelerate business applications, but who do not need extreme levels of performance at high prices./news/building-corsair-s-the-accelerator-build-a-rig-round.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/building-corsair-s-the-accelerator-build-a-rig-round.htmlBuilding Corsair's "The Accelerator" Build Log by Ryan Smith Whereas Ganesh worked with Zotac’s Hey Good Lookin, I took Corsair’s build, The Accelerator. Designed by former AT staffer Dustin Sklavos, Corsair’s design is distinctly focused on performance over all else; the CPU, GPU, and RAM alone comprise nearly $1000 of the $1500 budget. What this means for performance we’ll see in our next article, the performance showcase, but as far as the build goes it means that The Accelerator is rather straightforward and simple./news/camera-better-video-and-stills-motorola-droid-x2-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/camera-better-video-and-stills-motorola-droid-x2-review.htmlCamera - Upgraded Captured image quality is getting better with time, thanks to both improved image signal processing (ISP), software, optics, and of course sensors. Thankfully the X2 brings the entire package of improvements to the table. First off, the most obvious difference is that the mechanical shutter is gone (whose purpose I never quite understood), and the first vertex of the camera seems to have a larger diameter, meaning it has improved light collection over the X./news/compiler-setup-gcc-vs-llvm.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compiler-setup-gcc-vs-llvm.htmlFor further performance testing of the systems, we fell back to SPEC2006 and 2017. I wanted to make sure that there’s no heated discussions when it comes to the compilation of the test suites, so carefully investigated the compilers out there, particularly regarding the choice between GCC and LLVM. Overall, I checked three different compiler setups: A freshly compiled GCC 9.2.0 release, Arm’s Allinea Studio Compiler 20 package which comes with both Arm’s closed source LLVM and Flang variants as well as a pre-compiled version of GCC 9./news/cooler-master-ucp-900w.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cooler-master-ucp-900w.htmlIntroduction We've been eagerly awaiting our Cooler Master UCP sample; unfortunately, it was delayed an extra three weeks during shipment by the carrier. We first saw this new series at CeBIT 2008 earlier this year, and other than the name (previously called Ultimate Warranty Protection/UWP) not much has changed. This power supply has some impressive features and specifications, and we were definitely interested in putting it through our test regimen to see how it actually performs./news/dashboard-widgets-mac-os-x-10-4-tiger-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dashboard-widgets-mac-os-x-10-4-tiger-review.htmlTo me, the biggest attraction to Dashboard is the fact that you move very useful items off of your desktop and onto basically a separate desktop that is very easy to access.  Apple provides a total of 14 widgets with Tiger (and a link to download many, many more) and they also provide excellent documentation for developers to make their own widgets.  Here are the widgets that are included in Tiger:Address Book/news/display-the-lg-g4-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-the-lg-g4-review.htmlDisplay One of the major points of emphasis for us in the smartphone space continues to be display, as even though you can replace a display on a phone, the only real reason to do so is if you shatter the glass cover of the display. As a result, on pretty much any device it becomes critical to get this aspect of the device right from the very start with little to no end user intervention./news/extreme-overclocking-performance-dfi-nf4-sli-dr-expert-can.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/extreme-overclocking-performance-dfi-nf4-sli-dr-expert-can.htmlExtreme Overclocking performanceAs mentioned at the beginning of the review, we will now step away from the standard AnandTech review and present you with what many have asked to see with a board of this capability - Extreme overclocking results. In this phase, we’re not looking for the ultimate CPU top overclock, but rather how high we could push the FSB up on each CPU and remain 100% stable. We’ll begin with the 4000+ San Diego aboard the Expert and 2x512MB OCZ PC4800EL dual channel Platinum Elite Limited Edition RAM modules at 2-3-3-8 1T with voltage bumped to 2./news/farcry-2-left-4-dead-race-driver-grid-performance.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/farcry-2-left-4-dead-race-driver-grid-performance.htmlFarCry 2 Performance While the 4850 does lead the GTS 250 by a significant margine, the GTS 250 1GB edges out the 4850. As on board RAM seems to make a difference here, we'd like to see what happens with the 4850 1GB. This one again would be better suited to 1280x1024 or slightly reduced settings. 1680x1050    1920x1200    2560x1600Left 4 Dead Performance The Radeon 4850 leads the GTS 250 in this benchmark, and it even edges out the 1GB variant at and below 1920x1200./news/final-words-intel-ssd-dc-p3700-review-the-pcie.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-intel-ssd-dc-p3700-review-the-pcie.htmlFinal Words The vast majority of PCIe SSDs have been disappointing up to this point. We either saw poorly implemented designs that offered SATA RAID on a PCIe card or high priced, proprietary PCIe designs. The arrival of NVMe gives SSDs the breathing room they need to continue to grow. We finally get a low latency, low overhead interface and we get to shed SATA once and for all. Intel's SSD DC P3700 gives us our first look at an NVMe drive, and the results are impressive./news/final-words-where-is-google-tv-headed.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-where-is-google-tv-headed.htmlComing back to the software platform, it is worthwhile to pause and try to see where Google TV is headed. To most reviewers, Google appeared to have bitten off more than it could chew in the first iteration of Google TV. In trying to be a jack of all trades (DVR support, HDMI passthrough, keyboard in front of the TV etc.), it ended up being a master of none of the purposes it aimed to serve./news/full-screen-application-samsung-syncmaster-213t-the-glass-ceiling.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/full-screen-application-samsung-syncmaster-213t-the-glass-ceiling.htmlFull Screen Application Here are a few quick looks at some demanding full screen applications (except solitaire, which is windowed). All of these screenshots are taken with DVI inputs on the LCDs. We used a Radeon 9800 XT for testing. The Matrix Reload, The Matrix - We include these movies into our benchmark to test full motion video. As expected, the darks were much better on the 213T, but there was still a washed out blue tone./news/gigabyte-x99-soc-champion-motherboard-review-low-cost-x99.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-x99-soc-champion-motherboard-review-low-cost-x99.htmlWhen we ask the motherboard manufacturers about overclocking, most of them say that it is an integral part of their hardware line-up as well as a point to distinguish themselves from the competition. I have been a big fan of the cheaper overclocking oriented models in the mainstream markets, and in order to emulate the success that GIGABYTE has made in that area today they are releasing the X99-SOC Champion aimed at the Haswell-E overclocking crowd./news/huawei-s-media-tour-kirin-950-and-why-we.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-s-media-tour-kirin-950-and-why-we.htmlSometimes the only way to develop a relationship with a technology manufacturer beyond a simple press release exchange with a media relations team, and the odd limited-time product review sample, is to meet the people responsible for designing, managing and marketing the products. Over the past two decades (almost), AnandTech has done this with numerous companies in the East and the West to great effect, to the point where our CES and Computex schedules are effectively packed to meet up with manufacturers we work closely with to update each other on perspectives in the industry as well as progress being made internally and externally./news/investigating-smr-for-consumer-workloads.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/investigating-smr-for-consumer-workloads.htmlThe nature of the platters in a hard drive (CMR or SMR), unless explicitly mentioned, is not immediately evident from the specifications or even artificial benchmark tests that use a small work set. Even replaying real-world work traces often only provides slight hints about the presence of SMR. Our first tryst with SMR in the lab was the 8TB Seagate Archive HDD, followed by the retail-focused Seagate Innov8. While the Archive HDD (one of the first SMR drives from Seagate that went into mass production) had dismal performance consistency, the Innov8 carried substantially improved firmware that enabled much better overall performance numbers./news/lian-li-computex-2015-booth-tour.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lian-li-computex-2015-booth-tour.htmlLian Li had close to a dozen new or prototype-level cases on display at Computex. I've added most in the gallery at the end of this post, but I'll go through a few of the highlights here as well. The first one is the PC-V33A, which is a box-like case in which the motherboard is mounted horizontally. The top cover is made out of single piece of aluminum, but it opens up for easy installation./news/lz-compression-and-more-all-about-compression-part-i.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lz-compression-and-more-all-about-compression-part-i.htmlLempel-Ziv (LZ) Compression Lempel-Ziv compression takes advantage of the large amounts of repetitive data in a file. Take, for example, this article. Chances are that there are many occurrences of words such as "the", "compression", "LZ", etc. Wouldn't it be great if, each time we hit one of these common words, we could just put in a shorter code for this word? This is, in essence, what LZ compression does. Let's "/news/micron-s-gddr7-chip-smiles-for-the-camera-as.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/micron-s-gddr7-chip-smiles-for-the-camera-as.htmlUPDATE 6/12: Micron notified us that it expects its HBM market share to rise to mid-20% in the middle of calendar 2025, not in the middle of fiscal 2025. For Computex week, Micron was at the show in force in order to talk about its latest products across the memory spectrum. The biggest news for the memory company was that it has kicked-off sampling of it's next-gen GDDR7 memory, which is expected to start showing up in finished products later this year and was being demoed on the show floor./news/new-pricing-intel-s-core-2-extreme-core-2.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-pricing-intel-s-core-2-extreme-core-2.htmlNew Pricing As you will soon see, Intel's new Core 2 lineup has basically made all previous Intel processors worthless. The performance of the new Core 2 CPUs is so much greater, with much lower power consumption, that owners of NetBurst based processors may want to dust off the old drill bits and make some neat looking keychains. Intel also realizes that its new Core 2 line will make its older Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition processors seem a bit homely, and thus it will significantly reduce the pricing on some of the CPUs by the end of this month to help spruce them up a bit./news/ocus-r20-pro-e-test-nvidia-quadro-ddr.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ocus-r20-pro-e-test-nvidia-quadro-ddr.htmlOCUS R20 Pro/E Test The OCUS R20 benchmark, developed by Olaf Corten and available at his site, is a good small-medium size Pro/E benchmark and typically runs in about 8 -12 minutes for these cards. The test consists of 17 sub tests that run via a Pro/E trail file; OCUS roughly categorizes the tests into CPU, Graphics, GUI and I/O components as shown below. Note that this suite tests not only the graphics component but also the CPU and I/O systems./news/performance-the-chromebook-pixel-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-the-chromebook-pixel-review.htmlPerformance A friend saw me using the Pixel and asked if he could give it a try. After admiring the design and hardware he opened it up and said, “But this is basically just an iPad with a keyboard, right?” I didn’t know how to answer the question. I’d never considered the comparison, indeed I didn’t even think to include the iPad 4 as a point of reference in this review./news/performance-metrics-ecs-liva-review-the-nettop-rises-again.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-metrics-ecs-liva-review-the-nettop-rises-again.htmlPerformance Metrics The ECS LIVA was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops. First off, we have some Futuremark benchmarks. PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked the ECS LIVA for OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. PCMark Suite from PCMark 7, as well as 3D Mark benchmarks were also run./news/photoshop-3d-rendering-performance.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/photoshop-3d-rendering-performance.htmlPhotoshop Performance Adobe Photoshop CS4 To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image. The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks./news/power-draw-measured-qualcomm-snapdragon-s4-krait-performance-preview.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-draw-measured-qualcomm-snapdragon-s4-krait-performance-preview.htmlPower Measurements using Trepn Measuring power draw is an interesting unique capability of Qualcomm's MDPs. Using their Trepn Profiler software and measurement hardware integrated into the MDP, we can measure a number of different power rails on the device, including power draw from each CPU core, the digital core (including video decoder and modem) and a bunch of other measures. Measuring and keeping track of how different SoCs consumer power is something we've wanted to do for a while, and at least under the Qualcomm MDP umbrella at this point it's possible to measure right on the device./news/powercolor-extends-product-warranty-by-three-months-due-to.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/powercolor-extends-product-warranty-by-three-months-due-to.htmlPowerColor this week has announced that it is extending its warranties to existing customers by three months. The second manufacturer this month to extend its existing prodcut warranties, PowerColor is making the extension due to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus global pandemic and all of the resulting lockdown-related restrictions on non-essential shipping. With the novel Coronavirus affecting many daily aspects of life and industry, provisions of basic necessities are being prioritized over items classified as non-essential./news/qualcomm-s-modem-workshop-lots-of-comparisons.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-s-modem-workshop-lots-of-comparisons.htmlLast year Qualcomm flew me out to their San Diego headquarters to talk about modems and transceivers, and what ended up being of the biggest public disclosures made from them on the modem side. Since then the multimode LTE space has warmed up considerably, we have Intel shipping their first multimode LTE product (XMM7160) in retail devices, NVIDIA’s Tegra 4i with the first fruits of its Icera acquisition nearing launch, Broadcom showing off their multimode LTE products, and a few others (Hisilicon and Samsung) making noise with multimode LTE products of their own./news/radeon-hd-7950-w-boost-returns.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/radeon-hd-7950-w-boost-returns.htmlWith the launch of the Radeon R9 series back in October of 2013, AMD began the process of releasing a number of their existing GCN 1.0 7000 cards as faster 200 series variants. Among the first were the 7970 and 7790, which became the R9 280X and R7 260X respectively; and since then we’ve seen the 7800 series released as the 270 series and 265, and the 7770 as the 250X./news/samsung-s-note20-ultra-variable-refresh-rate-display-explained.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-s-note20-ultra-variable-refresh-rate-display-explained.htmlIn August 2020, Samsung launched the new Note20 Ultra – an interesting device that we have on our review test bed. It's safe to say that over the last few generations, there hasn’t been all that much exciting about the Note line of devices - the phones typically use the new silicon and camera technologies that were introduced in the Galaxy S-series of the same year, and the Note lends on its form factor, only improving upon the design and software experience around the S-Pen./news/software-the-iphone-6-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-the-iphone-6-review.htmlDesign The iPhone 6 comes with Apple’s newly released iOS 8. For a full rundown of everything Apple is bringing to the table with iOS 8 you can read our review of the operating system itself. iOS 8 also includes changes that are specific to the iPhones 6 and 6 Plus. Much like when Apple moved from the 3.5” 3:2 display in previous iPhones to the 4” 16:9 display on the iPhone 5, these changes are to add support for the new display on the iPhone 6./news/team-xtreem-txdr-1024m400hc2-fast-2gb-ddr-kits.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/team-xtreem-txdr-1024m400hc2-fast-2gb-ddr-kits.htmlTeam XTreem TXDR 1024M400HC2Team will be another new name to our readers, but the company already has a world-wide presence with manufacturing in Asia and US Sales Offices. The Team Marketing group lavished quite a bit of attention on the heatspreader design for the Xtreem product line. The heatspreaders are 3 dimensional gold colored with a huge raised "X" and Team logo. The top of the heatspreader is completely open for better heat dissipation./news/testing-results-maximum-fan-speed-12v.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-results-maximum-fan-speed-12v.htmlThe above charts depict exactly why a user needs to be more than just a little careful when selecting a cooler. Even though they appear similar and some of them even nearly identical, the performance of each and every AIO cooler that we have tested varies greatly. For instance, Cooler Master obviously sought to provide the best heavy-load performance possible and they did manage to reach the top of our charts; however, the noise of the fans that Cooler Master supplied at maximum speed is intolerable for daily use by any standards./news/the-corsair-k70-rgb-rapidfire-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-corsair-k70-rgb-rapidfire-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.htmlThe new Corsair K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE is physically very similar to any previous variation of the K70 that we have reviewed in the previous years. As a matter of fact, the only actual difference that it has over the Corsair K70 RGB (now that the old Corsair Gaming logo has been changed) is the presence of a USB pass-through port at the rear of the keyboard. It features an anodized brushed aluminum chassis, with the keys secured directly on its surface rather than being embedded into it./news/the-kirin-990-soc-the-huawei-mate-30-pro.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-kirin-990-soc-the-huawei-mate-30-pro.htmlThe Kirin 990 SoC The Kirin 990 is an unusual SoC this year for the fact that there’s two variants of the chip. Huawei and HiSilicon have opted to hedge their bets in terms of silicon manufacturing with TSMC and create two versions of the chipset: The regular 4G variant is created using the existing TSMC N7 manufacturing process which was also used for the previous generation Kirin 980 processor, whilst the 5G variant of the Kirin 990 is a completely altogether different chip using TSMC’s new N7+ manufacturing node which uses EUV lithography./news/the-silver-lining-of-the-late-amd-opteron-a1100.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-silver-lining-of-the-late-amd-opteron-a1100.htmlAMD announced their ARM server SoC plans at the end of 2012. At the beginning of 2014, AMD was ready "to accelerate the ARM Server Ecosystem with the first ARM-based server SoC" with a development kit. Around March 2014, the A1100 SoCs started sampling. But the quad core dev kits were not only expensive ($3000!), they also had quite a bit of teething problems as performance did not meet expectations, some of the peripheral hardware did not work properly, and the software ecosystem was far from ready./news/the-western-digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-western-digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review.htmlWestern Digital is bringing 3D NAND to their high-end consumer SSD family with the launch today of two new NVMe SSDs featuring SanDisk's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory. As with the SATA SSDs that first brought 3D NAND to their consumer portfolio, Western Digital is releasing the same drive under both their WD and SanDisk brands. Under the stickers, the hardware is identical. The names are recycled and familiar: the WD Black and SanDisk Extreme PRO./news/umc-acquires-fujitsu-s-stake-in-semiconductor-joint-venture.htmlMon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/umc-acquires-fujitsu-s-stake-in-semiconductor-joint-venture.htmlFujitsu Semiconductor and UMC on Friday said that the latter will acquire 100% ownership of Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor (MIFS), a joint venture between two companies. The move essentially ends history of Fujitsu’s in-house manufacturing of microelectronics that began in 1956. Meanwhile, UMC will gain additional manufacturing resources in Japan, which somewhat boosts its competitive positions against key rivals. Under the terms of the deal, UMC will acquire 84.1% of MIFS from Fujitsu Semiconductor for around ¥57./news/a-49-inch-ultrawide-curved-monitor-w-120-hz.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-49-inch-ultrawide-curved-monitor-w-120-hz.htmlIn recent years, displays with an ultrawide aspect ratio have gained traction both among gamers and among prosumers. At first, monitors with a 21:9 aspect ratio were released by a handful of manufacturers, but more recently, most of leading brands launched even wider LCDs featuring a 32:9 or 32:10 ratios. TPV Technology – which makes displays under AOC and Philips brands – was among the first manufacturers with professional-grade 32:9 monitors, so now it's following-up with the gamer-focused AOC Agon AG493UCX./news/adata-displays-xpg-sx930-ssd-two-new-tlc-ssds.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/adata-displays-xpg-sx930-ssd-two-new-tlc-ssds.htmlAfter a long week of meetings and over a day worth of traveling, I'm finally back from Taipei. Given our hectic schedule (it was just me and Ian at Computex this year), we didn't have time to report most of the things we saw last week, so it's now time to start going through all the new products we saw. First up is ADATA who had numerous new, interesting SSD products to show, including TLC, PCIe and USB 3./news/amd-radeon-hd-7870-launch-recap.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-radeon-hd-7870-launch-recap.htmlIt has been a couple of weeks since we reviewed the Radeon HD 7800 series, but as we mentioned earlier this week and in our 7850 recap, that was just a paper launch - the cards hit the street only recently, and as usual we're going to go through all of the stuff from AMD's partners and give you the Facts.   ASUS Gigabyte MSI PowerColor Part Number HD7870-DC2-2GD5 GV-R787OC-2GD R7870 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC/news/an-air-cooler-for-320-w.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-air-cooler-for-320-w.htmlAnnouncements of new high-performance air CPU coolers tend to get rare these days. On the one hand, many enthusiasts switched to closed loop liquid coolers in the recent years, which is why the market of high-end air coolers shrank. On the other hand, existing models of ‘mega coolers’ are powerful enough for the vast majority of CPUs. Nonetheless, makers known primarily for oversized air coolers continue to perfect their offerings. This week Thermalright introduced its Silver Arrow IB-E Extreme Rev./news/asus-unveils-zenbo-smart-companion-robot.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-unveils-zenbo-smart-companion-robot.htmlAt today's ASUS Zenvolution press event in advance of Computex, ASUS unveiled a new personal assistant robot for home use: Zenbo. The core functionality of Zenbo will be voice commands similar in principle to Amazon Echo, but Zenbo is also mobile and features a display as its face. With industrial design reminiscent of Star Wars' BB-8, WALL-E's EVE, and early iMacs, Zenbo tries to be a cute and inviting device that projects a cartoonish demeanor./news/cm-s-triple-fan-tower-cooler-for-threadripper.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cm-s-triple-fan-tower-cooler-for-threadripper.htmlCooler Master has introduced a new air cooler specifically designed for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper processors. Dubbed the MasterAir MA621P TR4 Edition, the cooler features a special base for use with AMD’s TR4 CPUs, as well as multiple heat pipes and up to three fans to cool AMD's mighty processors. And, for the aesthetically-minded out there, the new cooler also includes addressable RGB lighting. The Cooler Master MasterAir MA621P TR4 Edition is based around a dual tower heatsink featuring aluminum fins that's mounted on six heat pipes that come in direct contact with IHS of AMD’s Threadripper processor./news/coffee-lake-gtx-1070-plus-4k.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/coffee-lake-gtx-1070-plus-4k.htmlBringing together performance, style, and portability is always a challenge, but it looks like Dell’s Alienware is on the right track with its m15 laptop. The Alienware m15 notebook features a 15.6-inch display, Intel’s latest Coffee Lake CPU, a discrete GeForce GTX GPU, a hybrid storage subsystem, and a lot more. All of these components are packed into a chassis that is less than 1-inch thick. The Alienware m15 is based on Intel’s Core i5-8300H and Core i7-8750H CPUs, which offer four and six cores respectively, as well as NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB and 1070 8 GB discrete GPUs (see precise specs in the table below)./news/conclusion-battle-of-the-budget-tablets.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-battle-of-the-budget-tablets.htmlConclusion The Nook has a retail price of $249, the Galaxy Tab, $349. That $100 difference buys a decent amount - a faster processor, a more compact frame, better battery life, and real support. With the Galaxy Tab, you’re very much buying a finished product, whereas with the Nook, you’re buying a device that you can hack to oblivion. There will always be little bugs with CM7 or any other custom ROM you might decide to use for the Nook, but you have the flexibility and the freedom to do whatever you want the system./news/corsair-unveils-pearlescent-white-dominator-platinum-special-edition-contrast.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-unveils-pearlescent-white-dominator-platinum-special-edition-contrast.htmlCorsair this week introduced its new Dominator Platinum series memory modules designed for modders and enthusiasts primarily interested in style. The new Dominator Platinum Special Edition Contrast DDR4 DIMMs (ed: yes, that's really the full name) don't boast extreme data transfer rates out of the box, but the manufacturer says that they will offer a decent overclocking headroom. The Corsair Dominator Platinum SE Contrast memory kits will be available in 32 GB density, in dual-channel (2×16 GB) and quad-channel (4×8 GB) versions./news/dirt-showdown-nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-review-the-new.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dirt-showdown-nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-review-the-new.htmlDiRT: Showdown As always, starting off our benchmark collection is our racing benchmark, DiRT: Showdown. DiRT: Showdown is based on the latest iteration of Codemasters’ EGO engine, which has continually evolved over the years to add more advanced rendering features. It was one of the first games to implement tessellation, and also one of the first games to implement a DirectCompute based forward-rendering compatible lighting system. At the same time as Codemasters is by far the most prevalent PC racing developers, it’s also a good proxy for some of the other racing games on the market like F1 and GRID./news/final-words-nokia-lumia-930-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-nokia-lumia-930-review.htmlFinal Words I feel like Nokia (now Microsoft of course) has done a lot right with the Lumia 930. The 5” 1080p display is a nice addition, and every time I use a larger phone it makes it hard to go back to one with a smaller display. I do not find it too awkward to use, and the increase in real estate on the home screen is a welcome change./news/going-cheap-netbooks-and-chromebooks.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/going-cheap-netbooks-and-chromebooks.htmlGoing Cheap: Netbooks and Chromebooks Sometimes all you want is a really inexpensive laptop that you can carry with you all day, without worrying about finding somewhere to plug in. For this market, there are really two hardware platforms to look at: Intel’s Atom and AMD’s Brazos. In terms of size, “netbook” means different things to different people, but we’ll confine the discussion to 10.1”, 11.6”, and 12.1” offerings—the latter being important for getting the faster dual-core Brazos (AMD E-series) processors./news/hands-on-with-samsung-s-2013-notebook-lineup.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-samsung-s-2013-notebook-lineup.htmlA few days before the big show, Samsung announced updates to their notebook line, including a new Series 7 ultrabook and a redesigned Series 7 Chronos. As someone who uses a current-generation Series 7 Chronos in day-to-day life, I was naturally very interested in getting some hands on time with the new notebooks. Advance apologies for the unevenly lit images - Samsung always seems to have a lighting setup designed for the specific purpose of making my life difficult./news/initial-thoughts-samsung-galaxy-s-6-and-s-6.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/initial-thoughts-samsung-galaxy-s-6-and-s-6.htmlInitial Thoughts With the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Samsung claimed that they wanted to completely rethink how they designed and made smartphones. On the surface, it seems that Samsung has delivered on this promise as the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge are unlikely any other Galaxy S phone they have made previously. There is no removable battery, no microSD slot, or even a removable back cover. I would’ve liked to see a microSD slot, but I personally wouldn’t be affected by being limited to 32GB of internal storage./news/introducing-valhall-a-new-compute-core-new-isa.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/introducing-valhall-a-new-compute-core-new-isa.htmlIntroducing Valhall: A new ISA for Modern Workloads At the heart of the new Valhall architecture is Arm’s new execution core that differs significantly from its predecessor. It’s still a scalar design, however unlike Bifrost’s unusually narrow 4 and 8-wide design, the new execution core is more akin to what we see from desktop GPU vendors such as AMD and Nvidia. Bifrost’s in its initial iterations on the Mali-G71 and G72 the execution block in the core consisted of a 4-wide scalar SIMD units and with a warp/wavefront size of also 4./news/lanl-has-750-node-raspberry-pi-development-clusters.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lanl-has-750-node-raspberry-pi-development-clusters.htmlOne of the more esoteric announcements to come out of SuperComputing 17, an annual conference on high-performance computing, is that one of the largest US scientific institutions is investing in Raspberry Pi-based clusters to aid in development work. The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s High Performance Computing Division now has access to 750-node Raspberry Pi clusters as part of the first step towards a development program to assist in programming much larger machines./news/logitech-s-g100s-g500s-and-g700s-gaming-mice.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/logitech-s-g100s-g500s-and-g700s-gaming-mice.htmlIntroducing the Logitech G100s, G500s, and G700s Gaming Mice The dirty secret of gaming peripherals is that if they're good quality products in general, they're often going to be head and shoulders above hardware marketed toward the regular consumer. For whatever reason, high rent keyboards and mice just aren't marketed to consumers who'll often settle on an inexpensive wireless mouse and keyboard combination. This was strangely evident in Logitech's pre-G-branding era, and while the G branding is ultimately a good thing, some users are liable to miss out on some fantastic quality kit./news/meet-the-cards-xfx-rx-590-fatboy-powercolor-rx.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-cards-xfx-rx-590-fatboy-powercolor-rx.htmlMeet The Cards: XFX & PowerColor As there are no reference cards, for today's launch AMD sampled us the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy. PowerColor also sampled us their RX 590 Red Devil. Both sport modest factory overclocks over the reference 1545MHz boost, and both feature dual BIOS with performance and quiet options. Broadly-speaking, if you're already familiar with PowerColor's Red Devil and XFX's GTS designs for Polaris, then you'll already know what these boards are like./news/mushkin-redline-vortex-pcie-4-0-nvme-ssd-launched.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mushkin-redline-vortex-pcie-4-0-nvme-ssd-launched.htmlMushkin's lineup of PCIe 4.0 SSDs has largely remained a Phison affair. The Delta series was based on the Phison E16 and the Gamma on the Phison E18. Recently, the company launched a new series of PCIe 4.0 SSDs - the Redline VORTEX. The key here seems to be the usage of a new SSD controller - the Innogrit Rainier IG5236. It appears to be taking over the flagship mantle from the Gamma - besting it in both read and write random access IOPS and also sequential read speeds./news/new-haswell-k-with-overclocking-enhancements.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-haswell-k-with-overclocking-enhancements.htmlRewind back to the launch of Intel’s 3rd generation processor, Ivy Bridge. Enthusiasts and gamers who overclock the top end model were a little disappointed with the maximum CPU frequency that could be achieved. What used to be a 5.0-5.2 GHz ceiling on Sandy Bridge became 4.8-5.0 GHz on Ivy Bridge, and there was more of a silicon lottery as to whether the user got a good overclocking chip or not./news/nvidia-delays-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-general-availability-by.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-delays-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-general-availability-by.htmlSince yesterday’s reveal of the full Turing architecture, NVIDIA has set the stage for next week’s launch of GeForce RTX. Later that day, however, NVIDIA quietly announced that general availability of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti will be delayed by a week, from September 20 to September 27. Preorders have also been affected, and those units will arrive between the 20th and 27th. So for the launch of GeForce RTX, the GeForce RTX 2080 is left as the only card set for full availability, with the RTX 2070 slated to arrive in October./news/old-new-apps-on-honeycomb-plus-it-s-crashy.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/old-new-apps-on-honeycomb-plus-it-s-crashy.htmlOld & New Apps on Honeycomb As we mentioned in our overview of Android 3.0, there are a number of features that Honeycomb specific apps are going to be able to take advantage of. For example the dual-pane view that we see in the Honeycomb email apps - we’ll see more of that in future Honeycomb apps similar to what we saw happen with iPad specific apps. We’ll also see developers use contextual action menus./news/rainbow-six-vegas-2-xbox-360-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rainbow-six-vegas-2-xbox-360-review.htmlMultiplayer If you're into multiplayer action, expect some of the best around in R6 Vegas 2. All the familiar game modes are there, including three new ones: Team Leader, Total Conquest, and Demolition. Although welcome additions to the game, none of the three offer a style of online play that we haven't seen before. For instance, those who played Counter Strike will feel right at home with Demolition, whose objective is for one team to blow up a target as the other defends it./news/seagate-barracuda-7200-8-400gbs-with-ncq.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-barracuda-7200-8-400gbs-with-ncq.htmlIntroduction Though the technology seems fairly new to many of us end users, command queuing has been around for years. The idea of reordering the list of requests given to the hard disk drive was first introduced in the SCSI-2 standard and implemented in SCSI drives in the mid-90's. So, why has the technology only just now been given any sort of exposure to the mainstream computer market? Well, most importantly because it has been only recently implemented in consumer class desktop drives./news/setting-up-a-high-performance-openvz-container.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/setting-up-a-high-performance-openvz-container.htmlAs promised for a long time, we've been working on pitting Xen and OpenVZ against eachother in a little "battle of the free virtualization solutions". (If you can't quite recall what this OpenVZ business is all about, we suggest you go read our article on container-based virtualization) Though development of our vApus FOS benchmark suite is moving on quite diligently, it takes time to create both a realistic testing setup that will prove useful and relevant for a while in a world where cores are multiplying like a pair of rabbits./news/snapdragon-765g-vs-dimensity-1000l.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/snapdragon-765g-vs-dimensity-1000l.htmlThe positioning of the Snapdragon 765 Reno3 Pro 5G versus the Dimensity 1000L Reno3 5G is an extremely interesting one. By all means, the regular Reno3 is supposed to be the lower-end device and in fact does cost less than the Pro variant of the phone. Logically, we would expect OPPO here to choose the lower-end SoC for the Reno3 whilst the Reno3 Pro gets the better performing chipset. Although that’s what everybody would assume at first glance, things aren’t quite as straightforward./news/steam-machines-steam-link-steam-controller-launching-november-10th.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/steam-machines-steam-link-steam-controller-launching-november-10th.htmlFor a couple of years now Valve has been developing and promoting the concept of what has become their Steam Universe. The Linux-based SteamOS running on top of console-sized Steam Machines for the living room, controlled with the Steam Controller. Now after becoming subject to Valve Time and delayed from 2014, today Valve and their partners are announcing that Steam Universe is finally launching later this year. Steam Controller/news/streacom-da2-fanless-the-all-aluminum-silent-chassis.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/streacom-da2-fanless-the-all-aluminum-silent-chassis.htmlBefore Computex we reported on Streacom’s latest creation, the DA2. This is an all-aluminium chassis aimed at small form factor systems but with a key twist – the rails on the inside allowed the system builder to orient all of the parts in the chassis in any direction and any location. Streacom’s rail design has been shown at Computex for a few years, and they say that the latest iteration is the easiest yet./news/tenstorrent-licenses-risc-v-cpu-ip-to-build-2nm.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tenstorrent-licenses-risc-v-cpu-ip-to-build-2nm.htmlTenstorrent this week announced that it had signed a deal to license out its RISC-V CPU and AI processor IP to Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC), which will use the technology to build its edge-focused AI accelerator. The most curious part of the announcement is that this accelerator will rely on a multi-chiplet design and the chiplets will be made by Japan's Rapidus on its 2nm fabrication process, and then will be packaged by the same company./news/the-asrock-fatal1ty-z270-gaming-itx-ac-motherboard-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asrock-fatal1ty-z270-gaming-itx-ac-motherboard-review.htmlA few days back we had a look at a cost-effective Z270-based Mini ITX motherboard from ECS, the Z270H4-I Durathon 2, which we found to be a viable option for typical home users but hardly so for advanced gamers and enthusiasts. In this review we are having a look at a Mini ITX motherboard from ASRock, the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac. The concept and the design of the Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac are antithetical to those of the Z270H4-I Durathon 2, with ASRock trying to load the most and best possible features on the tiny Mini ITX motherboard, the result of which is an impressive list of features./news/the-fractal-design-celsius-s24-s36-aio-coolers-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-fractal-design-celsius-s24-s36-aio-coolers-review.htmlAll-in-one (AIO) liquid coolers are very popular amongst advanced PC users for a variety of reasons, with a current market potential that easily rivals that of top tier air coolers. As such, nearly all of the companies involved in the production of advanced cooling products for consumer PCs are currently marketing AIO coolers. However, AIO coolers are so successful that even companies who do not currently produce any air-based cooling solutions have decided to market their own liquid-based AIO coolers./news/the-gpu-the-27-inch-apple-imac-review-2011.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-gpu-the-27-inch-apple-imac-review-2011.htmlThe GPU There are four discrete GPUs Apple offers in the new iMac and they're all from AMD, NVIDIA is completely out of the 2011 Apple lineup at this point. The entry level 21.5-inch iMac has the same Radeon HD 6750M as the upgraded 15-inch MacBook Pro. You can get a higher clocked 6770M in the upgraded 21.5 and base 27-inch models, and finally only the upgraded 27-inch iMac comes with a Radeon HD 6970M./news/the-intel-ssd-600p-512gb-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-intel-ssd-600p-512gb-review.htmlIntel's SSD 600p was the first PCIe SSD using TLC NAND to hit the consumer market. It is Intel's first consumer SSD with 3D NAND and it is by far the most affordable NVMe SSD: current pricing is on par with mid-range SATA SSDs. While most other consumer PCIe SSDs have been enthusiast-oriented products aiming to deliver the highest performance possible, the Intel 600p merely attempts to break the speed limits of SATA without breaking the bank./news/the-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-performance-preview.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-performance-preview.htmlThe Snapdragon 820 SoC was a significant milestone on Qualcomm’s roadmap. It was a solid improvement over the 808/810, delivering higher performance and efficiency, and became a commercial success, finding its way into the majority of flagship phones last year. More importantly, it heralded Qualcomm’s vision for mobile devices: heterogeneous computing. This meant new hardware—a much improved Hexagon 680 DSP that added single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) Hexagon Vector Extensions (HVX); Qualcomm’s first fully-custom 64-bit CPU core, Kryo, which focused on improving floating-point IPC; and an updated Adreno GPU with strong ALU performance—for enabling new software technologies and user experiences—artificial intelligence for smarter personal assistants, machine learning for object recognition, computational photography for better image and video quality, and new AR/VR experiences./news/the-xiaomi-mi-note-pro-and-mi-note-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-xiaomi-mi-note-pro-and-mi-note-review.htmlXiaomi has been a significant part of the Android ecosystem for a number of years - even before they had ever launched a phone, they were already getting some level of attention from XDA-Developers and other custom ROM communities in the form of ports for MIUI. The launch of the Mi1 smartphone went almost unnoticed in places like the US, and compared to something like the Galaxy S2 at the time there wasn’t all that much to be amazed by other than price./news/this-is-the-windows-8-tablet-pc-interface.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/this-is-the-windows-8-tablet-pc-interface.htmlHere's a quick look at the new start screen for Windows 8 running on a Dell XPS Development Tablet. The tablet supports both touch and external keyboard interfaces. The UI is ridiculously smooth, it seems even quicker than Windows Phone 7. On tablets Windows 8 will support PlayBook like bezel gestures (the gestures actually take place on the first pixel next to the bezel, apparently not in the bezel itself)./news/turning-up-the-heat-ati-s-catalyst-3-8.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/turning-up-the-heat-ati-s-catalyst-3-8.htmlTurning up the Heat With any system that involves overclocking (factory regulated or otherwise), we are going to want to know it’s stable. To try to push the system, we ran the Final Fantasy XI benchmark on a loop for about 2 hours, followed by a run of X2 at the highest settings possible, then we hit it with GunMetal and finished off with TRAOD. Tomb Raider is our most intensive test here, as when all the options are set all the way up, with no compression on anything, 6x AA, at 1800x1440 we squeeze out just about 9 frames per second./news/up-to-ddr4-3000-up-to-32-gb.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-ddr4-3000-up-to-32-gb.htmlADATA has introduced its new family of SO-DIMMs for laptops and small form-factor desktops. The XPG Hunter DDR4 SO-DIMMs offer data transfer rates of up to 3000 MT/s and capacities from 8 GB to 32 GB, allowing typical dual-channel (dual slot) systems to go up to 64 GB of RAM in total. ADATA’s XPG Hunter DDR4 SO-DIMMs are based on cherry-picked memory chips as well as high-quality PCBs. Like other enthusiast-class memory modules, the XPG Hunter SO-DIMMs feature XMP 2./news/western-digital-ships-24tb-red-pro-hard-drive-for.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-ships-24tb-red-pro-hard-drive-for.htmlNowadays highest-capacity hard drives are typically aimed at cloud service providers (CSPs) and enterprises, but this does not mean that creative professionals or regular users do not need them. To cater to demands of more regular consumers, Western Digital has started shipments of its Red Pro 24 TB HDDs, which are aimed at high-end NAS use for creative professionals with significant storage requirements. Western Digital's Red Pro 24 TB hard drives come approximately 20 months after their 22 TB model hit retail in 2022, offering an incremental improvement to WD's highest-capacity NAS and consumer hard drive offering./news/wifi-performance-hp-chromebook-11-review.htmlSun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wifi-performance-hp-chromebook-11-review.htmlWiFi & Performance WiFi on the Chromebook 11 is similarly well executed. There’s a 2-stream dual-band 802.11n controller inside, capable of negotiating at up to 300Mbps link rates. Given how uncommon finding 5GHz WiFi support was in cheap PCs from not too long ago, it’s good to see HP/Google choose properly here. About my only complaint hardware wise on the Chromebook 11 is its SoC. HP settled on the same Exynos 5250 SoC that Samsung used in last year’s 11./news/120gb-agility-3-intel-510-and-more-compared.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/120gb-agility-3-intel-510-and-more-compared.htmlA year ago whenever I'd request an SSD for review I'd usually get a 128GB drive built using 3x nm 4GB 2-bit MLC NAND die. These days the standard review capacity is twice that as most drives ship with 25nm NAND, using 8GB die. Seeing a bunch of scores for 240GB+ drives however is frustrating to all involved. At these capacities you're almost always looking at two die per NAND device, which has significant performance benefits due to interleaving./news/a-quick-primer-on-ilp-and-ilp-vs-tlp.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-quick-primer-on-ilp-and-ilp-vs-tlp.htmlA Quick Primer on ILP NVIDIA throws ILP (instruction level parallelism) out the window while AMD tackles it head on. ILP is parallelism that can be extracted from a single instruction stream. For instance, if i have a lot of math that isn't dependent on previous instructions, it is perfectly reasonable to execute all this math in parallel. For this example on my imaginary architecture, instruction format is: LineNumber INSTRUCTION dest-reg, source-reg-1, source-reg-2/news/asus-pentium-m-to-pentium-4-socket-adapter.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-pentium-m-to-pentium-4-socket-adapter.htmlBefore reading this article, be sure to read our first Desktop Pentium M investigation, as we will not be revisiting any of the discoveries/conclusions in that article. At this year's Spring IDF, Derek Wilson, Johan De Gelas and I all sat across the table from Intel's Justin Rattner and asked him a question that had been on our minds ever since Prescott's introduction.  The question went something like this: Recently, Intel has shifted their focus away from ramping clock speed to increasing performance through other means such as exploiting TLP (Thread Level Parallelism)./news/battery-life-the-best.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-the-best.htmlThe previous generation ROG Phones have impressed us a lot when it comes to their battery life, and that’s easily attributed to the massive 6000mAh battery that’s included in the 240g heavy phone. The ROG Phone III this year doesn’t increase battery capacity, but does feature a more efficient SoC that should showcase even better results. The minor bump to 144Hz shouldn’t come with a notable power consumption increase. As expected, the ROG Phone III is topping our battery life charts./news/bios-and-software-the-asus-rog-strix-b550-f.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-asus-rog-strix-b550-f.htmlBIOS The ASUS Republic of Gamers firmware has two different modes for users to select between in the BIOS: EZ and Advanced. The basic 'EZ' mode is for novice users looking to make basic alterations. This includes basic XMP support (which ASUS calls DOCP on its AMD based models). On the basic screen is a list of core information including fan profile speeds, DRAM status, model and firmware version, current CPU Core voltage and motherboard temperature./news/cables-and-connectors-gigabyte-s-new-odin-gt-800w.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cables-and-connectors-gigabyte-s-new-odin-gt-800w.htmlCables and ConnectorsOn the front of the power supply are the jacks for the detachable cables. This is the first modular power supply we've looked at, so we are certainly interested in seeing whether there are any drawbacks to such a design, as has been suggested by other manufacturers in the past. There are four sockets located in the middle that can be used for the Molex/SATA component cables. The jacks on the right are for the two PEG graphics card connectors which come with 6/8 pins./news/cooler-installation-corsair-hydro-series-h60-h80-and-h100.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cooler-installation-corsair-hydro-series-h60-h80-and-h100.htmlCooler Installation Mounting the H60 and H80 radiators is similar except the H80 provides a minor challenge due to its thicker size and having a second fan to install. After all is said and done, it doesn’t pose any real problems. Just make sure to take your time and don't over tighten the screws or you may end up bending the fins on the radiator. Most cases should support either the H60 or the H80 without too much trouble, assuming the case has a mounting point for a 120mm fan./news/correcting-apple-s-a9-soc-l3-cache-size-a.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/correcting-apple-s-a9-soc-l3-cache-size-a.htmlAlong with today’s analysis of Chipworks’ A9X die shot, I’m also going to use this time to revisit Apple’s A9 SoC. Based on some new information from Chipworks and some additional internal test data, I am issuing a correction to our original analysis of Apple’s latest-generation phone SoC. In our original analysis of the A9, I wrote that the L3 cache was 8MB. This was based upon our initial tests along with Chipworks’ own analysis of the physical layout of the A9, which pointed to an 8MB L3 cache./news/cpu-benchmarks-revisiting-linux-part-1-a-look-at.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-benchmarks-revisiting-linux-part-1-a-look-at.htmlCPU Benchmarks We’ll start our short look at Ubuntu’s performance with our CPU intensive benchmarks. Up first is SuperPi, a single-threaded pi-calculating benchmark. Here we time how long it takes to calculate Pi to 1 million digits. We ran this test several times more than usual just to make sure we weren’t seeing any kind of error. The Linux version of SuperPi really is about 30% faster than the Vista version./news/ctl-launches-new-chromebook-for-education.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ctl-launches-new-chromebook-for-education.htmlThe education sector is one area where Google’s Chromebook has proved very popular. Relatively inexpensive devices, which are easier to manage, and include just a lightweight operating system, have certainly gained a foothold there. School Divisions which have bought into the Google Apps ecosystem would seem to have an easy decision to move to Chrome OS. There are several companies which specialise in the education sector. CTL is one of those companies, and today they are launching a new even lower cost entry into the Chrome OS education market./news/dell-announces-up2718q-hdr-display-and-two-infinityedge-displays.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-announces-up2718q-hdr-display-and-two-infinityedge-displays.htmlRight now, the National Association of Broadcasters conference is on, and Dell is using it to launch their latest UltraSharp display. The Dell UltraSharp UP2718Q is the company’s first display to support HDR10, in addition to its UHD 3840x2160 resolution, and it’s backed by the UHD Alliance Premium Certification. Dell has been in the UHD display game for some time, and the UltraSharp P2715Q and P2415Q have been solid displays for the company for some time, but the latest model takes Dell to a new level./news/embracing-the-graphics-and-compute-overlap.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/embracing-the-graphics-and-compute-overlap.htmlNow that NVIDIA’s second GTC event of the year has wrapped up, we’ve finally gotten a chance to follow up with NVIDIA on last week’s announcement of their RTX A6000 video card, and what that means for the Quadro brand. In short, NVIDIA has confirmed that the Quadro brand is going away for sure, and as we suspected, it’s largely due to the overlap between graphics and compute. As a quick refresher, last week NVIDIA launched their new professional visualization-focused video card, the RTX A6000./news/firmware-update-adds-biometric-login-to-surface-pro-4.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/firmware-update-adds-biometric-login-to-surface-pro-4.htmlJust the other day, I posted my review of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. One of the most exciting additions to the convertible tablet from Microsoft was the implementation of Windows Hello biometric login with the use of a facial recognition camera system. When the devices were handed out, we were told that Windows Hello would not be enabled on the review units but that it would be coming before the devices go on sale./news/gaming-performance-and-pricing-dell-precision-t1600-workstation-class.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-and-pricing-dell-precision-t1600-workstation-class.htmlGaming Performance Truthfully this page is largely irrelevant for a system like the Dell Precision T1600. This isn't a gaming tower; it's meant to be used for heavy duty work. But I can't be the only person who games on their work machine from time to time, and I'm at least personally curious to see what a single-slot, underclocked GF106 can actually do. Right now, the fastest video card available that doesn't require an extra power lead is PowerColor's Green Radeon HD 5750, and the fastest stock card available is the Radeon HD 6670./news/intel-ssd-313-series-launched.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-ssd-313-series-launched.htmlA bit over a month ago, we reported that Intel's SSD 313 would be launching soon. We don't know  when exactly the launch took place but the 313 has been added to Intel's product database (ARK) and Q1'12 is listed as the launch date. The 313 is the successor of Intel's first generation caching SSD, the Intel SSD 311. We first met the 311 when Intel introduced its Smart Response Technology (see our review)./news/it-s-an-out-of-order-atom.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/it-s-an-out-of-order-atom.htmlEver since the Pentium Pro (P6), we have been blessed with out of order microprocessor architectures - these being designs that can execute instructions out of program order to improve performance. Out of order architectures let you schedule independent instructions ahead of others that are either waiting for data from main memory or waiting for specific execution resources to free up. The resulting performance boost comes at the expense of power and die size./news/memory-hierarchy-process-technology.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/memory-hierarchy-process-technology.htmlCache & Memory Hierarchy Qualcomm has a three level exclusive cache hierarchy in Krait. The lower two levels are private per core, while the third level is shared among all cores. Qualcomm calls these caches L0, L1 and L2. Each Krait core has an 8KB L0 cache (4KB instruction + 4KB data cache). The L0 cache is direct mapped and accessible in a single cycle. Qualcomm claims an 85% hit rate in this level 0 cache, which helps save power by not firing up the larger L1 cache./news/mid-range-750w-psu-with-12vhpwr.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mid-range-750w-psu-with-12vhpwr.htmlThermaltake is a company based in Taiwan that specializes in designing and manufacturing computer hardware components and accessories. Established in 1999, the company's product range includes thermal solutions such as CPU coolers and cases and power supply units, keyboards, and mice. Thermaltake operates globally and has a presence in multiple markets, serving a customer base that ranges from casual computer users to hardware enthusiasts. The company's products are subject to various industry certifications and standards./news/package-contents-and-power-rating.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/package-contents-and-power-rating.htmlPackage Contents and Power Rating There are a few extras in the package, which is typical of high-end PSUs. Included are several cable ties, mounting screws, the power cable, and a users manual, plus a couple of cloth bags that can be reused. On the package we can see that the AX750 is EuP-ready (low power loss in standby mode) and is a compact design measuring 160mm including the modular connection panel./news/performance-and-other-notes-blackberry-bold-9780-not-so.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-and-other-notes-blackberry-bold-9780-not-so.htmlPerformance and Other Notes I won’t be covering the details of the features and enhancements that version 6 of the BlackBerry OS brings along here because, as you may have guessed, there is nothing new here compared to what was covered in the Torch review. However, one very important point I would like to bring up is the fact that even though the 9780 is not a touch-screen device, BlackBerry OS 6 works absolutely fine with just the optical keypad and soft-keys, all with no drastic change to the UI./news/premium-phoenix-in-a-compact-4x4-package.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/premium-phoenix-in-a-compact-4x4-package.htmlThe introduction of the Intel NUC in the early 2010s kickstarted the ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) trend for desktop systems. Processors with TDPs ranging from 6 - 15W formed the backbone of this segment in the initial years. The emergence of configurable TDPs for notebook processors has prompted some vendors to introduce UCFF systems with regular 45W TDP processors (albeit, in cTDP-down mode). GEEKOM, the private label brand of Shenzhen Jiteng Network Technology Co./news/qualcomm-launches-new-gigadsl-802-11ac-wave-2-chipsets.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-launches-new-gigadsl-802-11ac-wave-2-chipsets.htmlAt Computex today, Qualcomm Atheros announced a few new chipsets, and it seems that as a part of their Ikanos acquisition they’ve entered the wireline business in the hopes of solving capacity issues in the last mile. While fiber should be deployed where possible, in many cases it can be expensive and impractical to run fiber optic cable, such as older apartment complexes. As a result, a 10 Gbps connection can turn into a 100 Mbps connection when using POTS lines for the last few hundred meters depending upon channel conditions and run length./news/samsung-sm951-512gb-pcie-ssd-review.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-sm951-512gb-pcie-ssd-review.htmlThe PCIe SSD revolution is upon us. So far nearly every controller vendor has shown off its PCIe SSD controller design and the latest news I've heard is that we'll be seeing a large number of PCIe SSDs from numerous manufacturers in the second half of 2015 (watch out for Computex and Flash Memory Summit). Samsung got a head start in 2013 with the introduction of the XP941 and to-date the company is still the only manufacturer that is shipping a PCIe 2./news/sapphire-mitx-and-a-budget-tahiti-gpu.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sapphire-mitx-and-a-budget-tahiti-gpu.htmlLike most graphics companies, Sapphire didn’t have anything major to announce at CES. Their suite was mostly dedicated to showing off their Mini-ITX Edge VS boxes, which were launched previously. The new addition to the Edge VS series is the option for a DIY box—you get the case, motherboard, power and have to supply the CPU, RAM, and storage. This is a nice alternative for those that like to roll their own, as pre-configured systems often make component selections that disappoint enthusiasts./news/seagate-2nd-generation-momentus-xt-750gb-hybrid-hdd-review.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-2nd-generation-momentus-xt-750gb-hybrid-hdd-review.htmlTo say I liked the original Momentus XT would be an understatement. While Seagate had the lofty goal of negating the need for an SSD with its first mass-market hybrid HDD, the reality was the Momentus XT ended up being the best 2.5" hard drive on the market. In many cases, it was fast enough to be better than 3.5" desktop hard drives as well. Seagate earned this praise by combining a small amount of of SLC NAND (4GB at the time) with a traditional 7200RPM 2./news/sewing-up-the-high-end-market.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sewing-up-the-high-end-market.htmlAnnounced late last month and shipping 3 weeks ago, AMD kicked off the 28nm generation with a bang with their Radeon HD 7970. Combining TSMC’s new 28nm HKMG process with AMD’s equally new Graphics Core Next Architecture, AMD finally took back the single-GPU performance crown for the first time since 2010 with an all-around impressive flagship video card. Of course AMD has always produced multiple video cards from their high-end GPUs, and with Tahiti this was no different./news/silverstone-at-ces-2018-three-affordable-essential-model-psus.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-at-ces-2018-three-affordable-essential-model-psus.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — Silverstone has quite a few PSU lines in its portfolio covering every possible need in the market. The entry-level line, named “Essential” currently consists of 23 selections with efficiency ratings ranging from the base 80 PLUS certification up to 80 PLUS Gold. These units have not be certified, at this time, by Cybenetics so we are missing more detailed efficiency and performance information as well as noise output./news/sony-unveils-xperia-xa2-xperia-xa2-ultra-and-xperia.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sony-unveils-xperia-xa2-xperia-xa2-ultra-and-xperia.htmlLAS VEGAS, NV — Today at CES 2018, Sony announced the addition of three new phones to their Xperia line: the Xperia XA2, Xperia XA2 Ultra, and Xperia L2. Slotting in under the XZ flagship series, the mid-range XA2 and XA2 Ultra succeeds the original XA and XA Ultra, while the lower-end L2 succeeds the L1. The new series brings a number of hardware changes and specification upgrades across the board./news/testing-every-x86-desktop-processor-since-2010.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-every-x86-desktop-processor-since-2010.htmlOne of the most visited parts of the AnandTech website, aside from the reviews, is our benchmark database Bench. Over the last decade we've placed in there as much benchmark data as we can for every sample we can get our hands on: CPU, GPU, SSD, Laptop and Smartphone being our key categories. As the Senior CPU editor here at AnandTech, one of my duties is to maintain the CPU part of Bench, making sure the benchmarks are relevant and the newest components are tested with benchmark data up to date as much as possible./news/the-asus-maximus-viii-impact-z170-rog-mini-itx.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asus-maximus-viii-impact-z170-rog-mini-itx.htmlFor the Z170 platform, ASUS is slowly increasing the number of Republic of Gamers motherboards available. Alongside the seniors Gene/Formula/Extreme, we have the Impact as a junior, sophomore models in Ranger and Hero but freshman in the Pro Gamer pair, the Extreme/Assembly, the Aura, and potentially more models down the line. Like a stick of seaside rock, ROG runs through the middle, with bits and pieces of the feature set ending up on different models./news/the-consoles-and-their-cpus-microsoft-s-xbox-360.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-consoles-and-their-cpus-microsoft-s-xbox-360.htmlThe Consoles and their CPUs The CPUs at the heart of these two consoles are very different in architecture approach, despite sharing some common parts.  The Xbox 360’s CPU, codenamed Xenon, takes a general purpose approach to microprocessor design and implements three general purpose PowerPC cores, meaning they can execute any type of code and will do it relatively well. The PlayStation 3’s CPU, the Cell processor, pairs a general purpose PowerPC Processing Element (PPE, very similar to one core from Xenon) with 7 working Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) that are more specialized hardware designed to execute certain types of code./news/the-ecs-z270h4-i-durathon-2-mini-itx-motherboard.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-ecs-z270h4-i-durathon-2-mini-itx-motherboard.htmlIn this review, we are having a look at the first ITX motherboard based on Intel’s Z270 chipset to find its way into our labs, the ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) Z270H4-I Durathon 2 Mini ITX. The company’s approach is to create a compact and reliable, yet cost effective motherboard for typical home entertainment and gaming systems. A quick look at its specifications reveals very interesting features for a motherboard that retails for less than $110, with the marketing team even praising its overclocking capabilities./news/the-geforce-9600-gt-raises-nvidia-s-sub-200.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-geforce-9600-gt-raises-nvidia-s-sub-200.htmlAs the G9x series of GPUs slowly trickles into the mainstream, we are very happy to report that NVIDIA has executed a solid post 8800 GT launch: the G94 is very competitive at its price point in the form of the GeForce 9600 GT. That the current generation couldn't outpace the previous generation is a major complaint we had of previous midrange launches. Hopefully NVIDIA and AMD will be able to keep up the competition for all the new introductions we see this year./news/the-moto-e-2015-review.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-moto-e-2015-review.htmlDuring the past couple of years we've seen a dramatic shift in Motorola's strategy for competing in the smartphone market. As one of the earliest producers of Android devices, the company needed to let go of ideas and strategies from years that had since past. Producing exclusive devices for carriers like Verizon was no longer going to work with the iPhone finally freed from exclusivity on AT&T, and Motorola's hardware and software design had begun to show a great deal of age./news/the-noctua-nh-c14s-3-way-low-profile-cpu.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-noctua-nh-c14s-3-way-low-profile-cpu.htmlThe Noctua NH-C14S The sheer size of the box hints that the Noctua NH-C14S is not a very compact construct. Much like nearly all of Noctua’s products, the artwork on the box is austere, limited to providing useful information about the cooler itself. Inside the box everything is individually packed into separate cardboard boxes. Alongside with the mounting hardware, Noctua is also offering a basic screwdriver for the installation of the cooler, a fan speed reducer, a metallic case badge and a syringe with NT-H1 thermal compound./news/the-process-in-a-nutshell-trial-and-purchase.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-process-in-a-nutshell-trial-and-purchase.htmlFor every game that is installed, links for trial and purchase are dropped onto the desktop. Running the trial brings up a screen similar to this one for each game: From here, we can see how much time our trial has left, play the game a little more, or make a purchase. It does take a little bit of time to bring the game up once we've decided to play it, but other than that, there is nothing different than the normal experience./news/the-samsung-860-qvo-1tb-4tb-ssd-review-first.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-samsung-860-qvo-1tb-4tb-ssd-review-first.htmlConclusion The Samsung 860 QVO is not the first consumer QLC SSD we've tested, but in many ways it better conforms to our expectations for QLC than the Intel 660p and Crucial P1 did. Those NVMe SSDs don't do much to satisfy demand for a cheap entry-level drive or for a high-capacity drive, the two applications where QLC NAND seems most useful. QLC has been pitched to us several times as a HDD replacement, rather than a performance product./news/the-t-mobile-g2-preview.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-t-mobile-g2-preview.htmlSo, the son of G1 is now out and open for retail consumption, and it’s certainly an interesting device. This is one of the first high end GSM HTC Android devices in a while, so it’s been understandably hyped. The keyboard is another unique factor - this is HTC’s first Android device with a physical keyboard since the original G1, and the G2, along with the Samsung Epic 4G and Droid 2, is currently the one of the few high end Android devices with a physical keyboard./news/visual-inspection-the-msi-z370-a-pro-motherboard-review.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/visual-inspection-the-msi-z370-a-pro-motherboard-review.htmlVisual Inspection MSI's Z370-A Pro hails from their Pro lineup of motherboards intended for business (as opposed to a gaming focused product). The Pro series is a way to offer users an enthusiast class motherboard but without all the bells and whistles found in the other segments. Right off the bat, users should easily see how MSI makes up the basics on a $110 motherboard: a single M.2 slot, and a power delivery system that should be suitable for all CPUs./news/welcome-to-2010-apple-upgrades-its-camera.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/welcome-to-2010-apple-upgrades-its-camera.htmlThe iPhone 4 is equipped with two cameras: a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash on the back of the phone and a VGA camera with no flash on the front. The LED flash works in both still and video modes. Like the EVO 4G, the iPhone 4‘s flash allows you to shoot in perfect darkness. If you’re filming a video in low light the LED will stay illuminated while you’re recording./news/western-digital-previews-4-tb-sd-card-world-s.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-previews-4-tb-sd-card-world-s.htmlWestern Digital this week is previewing the industry's first 4 TB SD card. The device is being showcased at the NAB trade show for broadcasters and content creators and will be released commercially in 2025. Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC 4 TB SD card complies with the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity standard (SDUC, which enables up to 128TB). The card uses the Ultra High Speed-I (UHS-I) interface and is rated for speed Class 10, therefore supporting a minimum speed of 10 MB/s and a maximum data transfer rate of 104 MB/s when working in UHS104 (SDR104) mode (there is a catch about performance, but more on that later)./news/zotac-z68itx-a-e-wifi-review-mini-itx-meets.htmlSat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zotac-z68itx-a-e-wifi-review-mini-itx-meets.htmlWith every chipset, there's a call to arms in providing the package that everyone needs. Unfortunately there's never one motherboard which can cater for every possibility, but there are some that come quite close. Our review today is on the Zotac Z68ITX-A-E Wifi - a mini-ITX take on the Z68 chipset, which promises to be a winner right from the start, with dual gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, onboard wifi, onboard power/reset buttons, a debug LED, a lot of extras with your motherboard, and all the extras that Z68 offers./news/acer-s-14-inch-swift-3-gets-whiskey-lake.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-s-14-inch-swift-3-gets-whiskey-lake.htmlIn addition to launching its ultra-portable 13.3-inch Swift 3 laptops, Acer also introduced revamped versions of its more traditional 14-inch Swift 3 notebooks on Wednesday. The new mobile PCs sport Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake-U processors along with a slimmer design and a longer battery life. The Acer Swift 3 SF314-55-series notebooks outfitted with a 14-inch Full-HD display are based around Intel’s latest quad-core Core i7-8565U/Core i5-8265U CPUs, or dual-core Core i3-8145U processors that belong to the Whiskey Lake-U family./news/altec-lansing-ada305.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/altec-lansing-ada305.htmlby Ga'ash Soffer on October 4, 1998 2:39 PM EST 5 Comments | 5 Comments by Ga'ash Soffer Before I begin the actual review of the ADA305, I am going to talk about a pretty relevant topic; how to review a speaker system. Choosing the right speakers is undoubtedly an important decision to someone purchasing a multimedia / gaming PC. I have done my best to make this review as informative as possible; however, be aware that this review is largely subjective./news/amd-780g-vs-intel-g45-vs-nvidia-geforce-8200.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-780g-vs-intel-g45-vs-nvidia-geforce-8200.htmlAfter nearly a month of struggling with problems, we finally published our review of Intel's G45 in the first part of this series we hastily called the IGP Chronicles. Part I looked at Intel's G45 and compared it to its predecessor, G35. Initially touted as the holy grail of HTPC chipsets, G45's advantages on paper were plagued by too many real issues for us to get excited about it. Not that we were totally disappointed with the chipset as an HTPC platform, we just knew Intel could have done better and in the end they did not./news/amd-k6-2.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-k6-2.htmlAMD K6-2 Processor Review Just about a year ago, around this time, Intel stepped up to the challenge their long time competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) proposed in the microprocessor industry.  For a month prior to Intel's release of their Pentium II processor AMD had taken all of the glory with their high performing and low cost alternative, the K6.  Looking to crush the competition with one swift blow Intel struck back just over 4 weeks later with the even higher performing Pentium II processor, making the statement, as clearly and as well spoken as possible, "/news/an-impressive-cascade-lake-workstation-motherboard.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-impressive-cascade-lake-workstation-motherboard.htmlNot all motherboards are created equal. Compared to consumer hardware, prosumer level options with workstations opt for different peripheral features, but ultimately it comes down to support. The Supermicro X11SPA-T is a single socket workstation motherboard with a range of high-end features, designed to support both Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs and Xeon-W 3200 series CPUs, but its focus is with the workstation hardware on the C621 chipset. With support for up to 2 TB of DDR4-2933 memory (Xeon W) or 3 TB (Xeon Scalable) across twelve slots, a dedicated ASPEED BMC controller offering IPMI functionality, and seven full-length PCIe 3./news/arm-techcon-2016-keynote-live-blog.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-techcon-2016-keynote-live-blog.html12:27PM EDT - I'm here at the Santa Clara Convention Center for ARM's annual TechCon conference 12:27PM EDT - This year's focus is expected to be on IoT devices 12:28PM EDT - Of particular interest, Masayoshi Son of ARM's new owner Softbank will be speaking 12:29PM EDT - Softbank's acquisiton of ARM still has an air of mystery to it. So hopefully we get a bit more insight here 12:30PM EDT - And here we go/news/battery-life-wifi-performance.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-wifi-performance.htmlLast but certainly not least in our look at the MacBook is a look at its battery life and WiFi performance. Along with the technical considerations that have gone into making the MacBook as small as it is, I would consider the subject of battery life to be the second most interesting aspect of the MacBook’s design. For on the one hand, the CPU at the heart of this laptop is Core M, a very low power CPU specifically designed for thin & light devices, which on its own doesn’t draw all that much power./news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-x399-phantom-gaming-6.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-x399-phantom-gaming-6.htmlBIOS In our last review of the an ASRock motherboard, the Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac, we highlighted the consistency in its UEFI firmware. The HEDT X399 Phantom Gaming 6 swerves slightly away from this with a simpler set of overclocking related settings. The design of the firmware consists of a simple red and black Phantom Gaming themed GUI, with white text for added pop. It is presented in a well-organized manner and resembles the simplicity with ASRock models over the last couple of generations - no EZ or advanced modes on the X399 Phantom Gaming 6, just one overall and amalgamated UEFI BIOS./news/cache-size-effects-the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cache-size-effects-the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4.htmlWhole-Drive Fill This test starts with a freshly-erased drive and fills it with 128kB sequential writes at queue depth 32, recording the write speed for each 1GB segment. This test is not representative of any ordinary client/consumer usage pattern, but it does allow us to observe transitions in the drive's behavior as it fills up. This can allow us to estimate the size of any SLC write cache, and get a sense for how much performance remains on the rare occasions where real-world usage keeps writing data after filling the cache./news/cdma2000-voice-quality-comparison-verizon-iphone-4-thoroughly-reviewed.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cdma2000-voice-quality-comparison-verizon-iphone-4-thoroughly-reviewed.htmlVoice Quality The other side of things is voice quality. Unfortunately we're still working on devising some objective call quality tests. On paper, the AT&T iPhone 4 supports wideband and narrowband adaptive multirate (NB-AMR and WB-AMR) voice codecs (vocoders) on UMTS. Remember that on UMTS (3G) voice and data are multiplexed and work at the same time. There's more bandwidth on that link, and as a result UMTS has a higher bitrate voice coder than GSM./news/corsair-carbide-330r-case-review.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-carbide-330r-case-review.htmlHaving fleshed out their case lineup from top to bottom, Corsair is starting to show some of that old experimental spirit again. The Obsidian 350D turned out to be one of the best micro-ATX cases I've ever tested, and the Carbide Air 540 will actually be showing up in a future article as the case of choice for a very specialized build. Now, with the new Carbide 330R, Corsair has created a variant on the Carbide 300R designed to offer silent performance for end users who aren't ready to spend up on the splashier Obsidian 550D./news/corsair-tx750-v2-new-and-improved.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-tx750-v2-new-and-improved.htmlIntroduction, Package Contents, and Specifications Today we continue with the second part of our series of 750W power supplies. The Corsair TX V2 is the second 80 Plus Bronze certified PSU with non-modular cables that we're looking at for this range. Corsair might be a leading manufacturer of RAM modules and SSDs, but power supply quality depends largely on the ODM and their design. The big question of the PSU source is easy to answer./news/cpu-performance-cont-the-qualcomm-snapdragon-820-performance-preview.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-cont-the-qualcomm-snapdragon-820-performance-preview.htmlCPU Performance, Cont Having taken a look at Snapdragon 820 and the Kryo CPU from an architectural perspective, let’s look at our higher level benchmarks. We’ll start as always with the web benchmarks. There are two things we can immediately take away from these results. The first is that currently Google Chrome is incredibly unoptimized for Kryo, and this is something Qualcomm was also quick to mention. We won’t wax on about this as there’s nothing to say we haven’t said before, but Chrome could certainly stand to implement optimized JS engines sooner./news/creative-s-nomad-muvo-tx-under-the-hood-creative.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/creative-s-nomad-muvo-tx-under-the-hood-creative.htmlCreative's Nomad Muvo TX - Under the Hood Andrew's mini foreward: Before we proceed, I would like to make a note that the following shouldn't be attempted, unless you want to risk damaging your Muvo TX or NX or the automatic void of warranty. It took us an uncanny amount of time to meticulously take apart the Muvo TX, and I would compare it to our experience with taking apart some of the PDAs out there./news/defining-the-next-generation-of-premium-laptops.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/defining-the-next-generation-of-premium-laptops.htmlIn previous years and generations, Intel has at times instigated a platform development strategy with its partners in order to drive form factor, experience, and ultimately, revenue. In the past we've seen Centrino drive to bring Wi-Fi to the consumer, and the Ultrabook nomenclature to define thin and light designs. Project Athena is the latest project by Intel, designed to drive better Wi-Fi 6 experiences, premium designs, driving AI-accelerated workflow, and longer battery life./news/first-amd-b550-with-thunderbolt-4-the-asus-proart.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/first-amd-b550-with-thunderbolt-4-the-asus-proart.htmlFrom a post by ASUS's Technical Product Marketing Manager (u/ASUSTechMKTJJ) on Reddit, ASUS looks to be readying up a new B550 motherboard based on its ProArt series. The ASUS ProArt series primarily aims to provide to creators, and its new ProArt B550-Creator is the first AMD AM4 motherboard to benefit from Intel's updated Thunderbolt 4 controller. Also included are an advertised 12+2 phase power delivery and dual 2.5 GbE networking. Similar to previous iterations of its ProArt motherboard, such as the ASUS ProArt Z490-Creator 10G, it follows a simplistic design with straight lines provided by a pair of rectangular M./news/first-look-samsung-galaxy-s8.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/first-look-samsung-galaxy-s8.htmlWe first saw Samsung’s new 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 and 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+ at its Unpacked event a few weeks ago. During the event, we saw demos of its new virtual assistant, Bixby, and its DeX docking station, which allows the Galaxy S8 to provide a desktop-like experience by connecting to an external monitor and peripherals, but we didn’t have much time with the phones to do much more than take some pictures and try a couple of the new features./news/intel-announces-ssd-665p-denser-faster-qlc-nand.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-announces-ssd-665p-denser-faster-qlc-nand.htmlIntel's Memory and Storage Day event today in South Korea was mostly focused on enterprise and datacenter products, but they did announce an upcoming consumer SSD: The Intel SSD 665p. This is the successor to the Intel 660p, the first and most successful consumer SSD to use four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory. The 665p isn't a major update: it keeps the same Silicon Motion SM2263 4-channel controller but updates the NAND to Intel's second-generation 96-layer 3D QLC NAND./news/intel-begins-commercial-shipments-of-10nm-ice-lake-cpus.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-begins-commercial-shipments-of-10nm-ice-lake-cpus.htmlIntel has begun shipments of its 10th generation Core "Ice Lake" processors as of the second quarter, according to the company in an earnings call this week. Made using Intel’s 10nm process technology, these laptop CPUs were qualified by OEMs earlier in 2019 and are on track to reach the market inside mobile PCs by the holiday season. As reported, Intel began to produce Ice Lake processors in the first quarter in a bid to build up inventory to support a high-volume launch in the second half of the year./news/intel-chipsets-weekly-hardware-price-guides.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-chipsets-weekly-hardware-price-guides.htmlIntel Motherboards Since we took a look at the Intel CPU's, its time for the Intel motherboards! As with the AMD motherboards, we apologize for the lack of selection this week. Next week we plan on doubling our tracking inventory. Interestingly enough, we again had trouble finding an abundance of Granite Bay boards. Since there has been a lull in Intel CPU's and motherboards lately, most boards have fallen into a clear pattern of price versus performance./news/intel-s-hyper-threading-technology-free-performance.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-hyper-threading-technology-free-performance.htmlOver the past year we've reported on Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) technology on Intel CPUs. Although it originally started out as a potential meaning behind the codename Jackson Technology, Intel officially revealed their SMT technology at last fall's IDF. The codename Jackson was replaced with a much more fitting title, Hyper-Threading. But before you can understand how Hyper-Threading works you've got to understand the basis of it, more specifically what threads are and how they work./news/live-blog-8am-pt-16h00-utc.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/live-blog-8am-pt-16h00-utc.html10:43AM EST - The second keynote of CES comes from NVIDIA, and while it isn't Jensen presenting today, we do get Jeff Fisher, SVP of GeForce, and Ali Kani, VP and GM of NVIDIA's Automotive efforts. There have been rumors about what might be announced today, but follow along to the presentation with us to get all the details! 10:56AM EST - 3 minutes until go time 11:00AM EST - straight into a one minute countdown/news/logitech-unveils-g305-mouse-with-lightspeed-wireless-hero-12.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/logitech-unveils-g305-mouse-with-lightspeed-wireless-hero-12.htmlLogitech this week introduced its new entry-level gaming mouse that uses its proprietary Lightspeed wireless interconnection technology as well as its latest HERO sensor. The Logitech G305 mouse uses a proven ambidextrous form-factor but does not offer features like adjustable weight or RGB lighting. The G305 is Logitech’s second mouse to feature the company’s latest HERO (high efficiency rated optical) sensor with 12,000 DPI sensitivity, up to 400 inches per second detection speed, and up to 40G acceleration./news/meet-the-radeon-r9-fury-x.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-radeon-r9-fury-x.htmlRight off the bat it is safe to say that we have not seen a high-end card quite like the R9 Fury X before. We have seen small cards before, we have seen liquid cooled cards before, and we have seen well-crafted cards before. But none of those attributes have come together before in a single card like they have with the R9 Fury X. AMD has spared no expense on their new single-GPU flagship and it shows./news/netburst-architecture-for-the-future.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/netburst-architecture-for-the-future.htmlNetBurst: Architecture for the future? A constant theme in the marketing surrounding Intel’s Pentium 4 is that its architecture is paving the way for the next generation of computing.  This is true in more ways than one.  From the Intel marketing side this is telling you not to pay attention to the Pentium 4’s performance today, but pay attention to its performance down the road.  From our perspective this brings up the first advantage of the Pentium 4 over its predecessor, the ability to ramp up in clock speed./news/netgear-roku-xd-streaming-for-the-masses.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/netgear-roku-xd-streaming-for-the-masses.htmlThe Netgear/Roku Partnership, Bringing the Roku to a Store Near You Logitech, Netgear, and D-link; these are names that usually conjure images of webcams, routers, network switches, and perhaps a few other peripherals, but that is about to change with product offerings meant not for your PC and the recesses of your basement but for your living room. Netflix was once a company focused on competing with the likes of video rental chains with a disc-in-the-mail movie service./news/new-graphics-memory-up-to-14-gbps.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-graphics-memory-up-to-14-gbps.htmlIn Q4 2015, JEDEC (a major semiconductor engineering trade organization that sets standards for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM) finalized the GDDR5X specification, with accompianing white papers. This is the memory specification which is expected to be used for next-generation graphics cards and other devices. The new technology is designed to improve bandwidth available to high-performance graphics processing units without fundamentally changing the memory architecture of graphics cards or memory technology itself, similar to other generations of GDDR, although these new specifications are arguably pushing the phyiscal limits of the technology and hardware in its current form./news/nvidia-780i-evolution-plus-triple-sli.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-780i-evolution-plus-triple-sli.htmlNVIDIA brought editors together at their corporate headquarters in late October to discuss the launch of nForce 780i, 8800GT, 8800M, 3-Way SLI, and ESA. It certainly appeared at that time that all those new technologies would launch in early November. Unfortunately, there were early problems with 780i and the Intel Penryn processor, and NVIDIA delayed 780i until the Penryn compatibility issues could be resolved. Since 780i is 680i with an added chip to support PCI 2./news/nvidia-cuts-price-of-geforce-rtx-2060-to-299.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-cuts-price-of-geforce-rtx-2060-to-299.htmlWith AMD set to launch their new 1080p-focused Radeon RX 5600 XT next Tuesday, NVIDIA isn’t wasting any time in shifting their own position to prepare for AMD’s latest video card. Just in time for next week’s launch, the company and its partners have begun cutting the prices of their GeForce RTX 2060 cards. This includes NVIDIA’s own Founders Edition card as well, with the company cutting the price of that benchmark card to $299./news/olympus-e-620-pma-2009-panasonic-gh1-olympus-e620.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/olympus-e-620-pma-2009-panasonic-gh1-olympus-e620.htmlOlympus E-620 In our look at the flag-ship Olympus E-3 in late 2007, the AF performance was a dramatic improvement over anything previously from Olympus. The new module featured 11 double cross-point sensors and claimed the fastest AF on the market with the new SSW lenses. The fast E-3 11-point AF was quite a step-up from the Olympus 3-point AF. As mentioned in that review, it was our opinion Olympus needed to migrate that AF module down to mid and entry models as soon as possible./news/power-consumption-western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-and-my.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-and-my.htmlPower Consumption Idle power consumption is very good for the 3TB Green drive. Under load (sequential writes) the power consumption is still lower than any of the 7200RPM alternatives but higher than the 2.5" VelociRaptors. Overall power consumption is very good for the drive. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIB6hJBorp6rpJq%2Fr3nDop6irJGheqSt1aKYq2WXp7Kmuoxsq5tlkaOxbrnYZpmop5tisrS%2FxKeropmcYoC1roydqaKulah6s7HVopywnZRkhg%3D%3D/news/rdna2-at-a-high-level-ray-tracing-infinity-cache.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rdna2-at-a-high-level-ray-tracing-infinity-cache.htmlUnderpinning virtually everything that AMD wants to accomplish with their new RX 6000 series cards will be the RDNA2 GPU architecture. Not to harp on this point more than is necessary, but it needs to be underscored that AMD doesn’t get the benefit of a new process node for the RX 6000 series cards; the company will be using the same TSMC 7nm process that they used for RX 5000 family./news/rdna2-for-1440p-coming-march-18th-for-479.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rdna2-for-1440p-coming-march-18th-for-479.htmlAs part of AMD’s latest Where Gaming Begins product presentation, the prolific processor designer announced the next member in its Radeon family of video cards, the Radeon RX 6700 XT. Following the tried and true scale-down release strategy that has come to define the GPU industry, the company is preparing its second RDNA2 GPU to further flesh out its lineup of video cards. Set to be released on March 18th, the Radeon RX 6700 XT will be AMD’s anchor card for 1440p gaming, succeeding the last-generation RX 5700 XT and giving AMD’s product lineup a more wallet-friendly option than their 4K-focused 6800/6900 series cards./news/samsung-announces-galaxy-s4-zoom.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-announces-galaxy-s4-zoom.htmlSamsung's Galaxy camera came out almost a year ago, and it roughly mimicked the specs of an international SGS3 but included a unique camera system and body. Although the device couldn't make phone calls, it included cellular connectivity and was arguably the best in the first of a limited number of connected cameras competing with it. After many whispers, Samsung has announced the Galaxy S4 Zoom, an updated version of its connected camera line with a display and front face emulating the SGS4 but topped with another 16 MP camera system./news/sandisk-announces-z410-client-ssd.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-announces-z410-client-ssd.htmlSanDisk has introduced a new low-end drive to their line of client SSDs targeted at business and OEM customers. The Z410 is positioned closely to Z400s but is not a direct replacement. Instead, the Z410 focuses on offering just the most popular capacities for mainstream PC usage while the Z400s continues to serve other markets with mSATA and M.2 versions and capacities as small as 32GB. First announced almost a year ago as the first 15nm TLC SSD, the Z400s sought to cut costs in order to break into new parts of the embedded and client PC markets./news/system-tests-dual-channel-vs-8-channel.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-tests-dual-channel-vs-8-channel.htmlFor testing the processor at full glory, head on over to our review of the AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX, which shows all the data with respect to other CPUs when it is fully enabled with eight memory modules – we go more in depth in our testing in that review, and the results of those tests and more can be found in our benchmark database, Bench. For this review, we’re doing something slightly different./news/tiny-at-200-asus-z390-i-gaming-vs-asrock.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tiny-at-200-asus-z390-i-gaming-vs-asrock.htmlOverclocking Experience with the ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming Our Z390 test bed Core i7-8700K processor might not be the highest-grade silicon around, but we do know it has limitations of 5.1 GHz on every board we’ve tested so far. It’s a somewhat dirty chip that likes to draw power and run hot, which makes running 5.1 GHz somewhat fruitless with good ambient cooling due to thermal throttling. Overclocking on the ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming can be approached multiple ways; some simple, some intuitive and everything in between./news/tsmc-preps-6x-reticle-size-super-carrier-interposer-for.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tsmc-preps-6x-reticle-size-super-carrier-interposer-for.htmlAs part of their efforts to push the boundaries on the largest manufacturable chip sizes, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is working on its new Chip-On-Wafer-On-Substrate-L (CoWoS-L) packaging technology that will allow it to build larger Super Carrier interposers. Aimed at the 2025 time span, the next generation of TSMC's CoWoS technology will allow for interposers reaching up to six times TSMC's maximum reticle size, up from 3.3x for their current interposers. Such formidable system-in-packages (SiP) are intended for use by performance-hungry data center and HPC chips, a niche market that has proven willing to pay significant premiums to be able to place multiple high performance chiplets on a single package./news/under-the-hood-directx-11-1-and-wddm-1.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/under-the-hood-directx-11-1-and-wddm-1.htmlStarting with Windows Vista, Microsoft began the first steps of what was to be a long campaign to change how Windows would interact with GPUs. XP, itself based on Windows 2000, used a driver model that predated the term “GPU” itself. While graphics rendering was near and dear to the Windows kernel for performance reasons, Windows still treated the video card as more of a peripheral than a processing device. And as time went on that peripheral model became increasingly bogged down as GPUs became more advanced in features, and more important altogether./news/updates-on-valve-s-steam-os-steam-link-and.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/updates-on-valve-s-steam-os-steam-link-and.htmlIt’s been a while since we had much to report on Valve’s Steam OS and Steam Machine initiative. In the meantime things have been rolling along, and at GDC Valve announced a large number of updates. These cover a range of topic including a finalized Steam Controller, the new Steam Link, and a slate of Steam Machines from fourteen different manufacturers. Ian also covered the SteamVR aspect, so we won’t rehash that here, as there’s plenty of other items to digest./news/wrapping-it-up-antec-soundscience-rockus-3d-2-1.htmlFri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wrapping-it-up-antec-soundscience-rockus-3d-2-1.htmlWrapping it up Unfortunately we're getting down to crunch time with Antec's Soundscience Rockus 3D 2.1 speaker system, and there's a lot to consider here. First, sound quality can feel a little thin at the highs and mids, but this is made up for by the system's ability to render a fairly comprehensive sound. The Rockus 3D is capable of revealing nuances in music better than a cheaper system is going to, and if you can get past the slightly tinny character of the speaker set you'll find it may actually produce details in the songs you enjoyed that you haven't even heard before on lesser quality kit./news/2nm-in-development-3nm-and-4nm-on-track-for.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/2nm-in-development-3nm-and-4nm-on-track-for.htmlFor TSMC, being the world's largest foundry with nearly 500 customers has its peculiarities. On the one hand, the company can serve almost any client with almost any requirements. On the other hand, it has to stay ahead of everyone else both in terms of capacity and in terms of technology. As far as capacity is concerned, TSMC is unchallenged and is not going to be for years to come. As for fabrication technologies, TSMC has recently reiterated that it's confident that its N2, N3, and N4 processes will be available on time and will be more advanced than competing nodes./news/30-inch-ips-with-guaranteed-120hz-and-a-mechanical.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/30-inch-ips-with-guaranteed-120hz-and-a-mechanical.htmlOver the past year or two one of the hot subjects with displays among enthusiasts has been overclocking them to drive the panel at higher refresh rates. We've seen this mostly from the Korean 27" QHD imports, and the amount you could overclock the panel was often quite variable. Monoprice has begun offering displays as well, which gives you better support options than importing something from overseas, and now they're taking it a step further with a 30"/news/3rd-gen-ryzen-threadripper-in-2019.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3rd-gen-ryzen-threadripper-in-2019.htmlIn a new presentation for investors AMD announced a more precise launch plan for its client APUs and CPUs for desktop, mobile, and server computers. The company is preparing to update its whole lineup of products for different types of client and server machines later this year. As it turns out, AMD intends to release its 2nd Generation Ryzen Pro mobile products for notebooks this spring. AMD also plans to introduce its 3rd Generation Ryzen processors sometimes in the middle of the year./news/a-5-5-inch-ips-smartphone-for-109-109.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-5-5-inch-ips-smartphone-for-109-109.htmlMost of the time, in fact almost all the time, we tend to discuss about the most expensive phones on the market. If it isn’t $600, then it is $800, or $1099, or even $1980, as with the latest announcements. However most of the volume sales of smartphones occurs at the lower end of the scale, either in the mid-range or in the budget line. Alcatel launched its sub-$100 1-series devices last year, and at Mobile Congress today it is blowing that price bracket wide open, with a large 5./news/antec-soundscience-rockus-3d-2-1-speakers.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/antec-soundscience-rockus-3d-2-1-speakers.htmlIntroducing the Soundscience Rockus 3D 2.1 When Antec decided they wanted to introduce sound products to their portfolio with their new Soundscience brand, they weren't kidding around. They sent representatives to demo the Rockus 3D 2.1 speaker system to the press and take questions in person. I was sat down in front of a Toshiba notebook connected via analog minijack to the Rockus 3D and allowed to play with the speakers, play different music, try some tracks off of YouTube, listen to a movie demonstration./news/applying-for-time-on-titan-supercomputing-applications.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/applying-for-time-on-titan-supercomputing-applications.htmlApplying for Time on Titan The point of building supercomputers like Titan is to give scientists and researchers access to hardware they wouldn't otherwise have. In order to actually book time on Titan, you have to apply for it through a proposal process. There's an annual call for proposals, based on which time on Titan will be allocated. The machine is available to anyone who wants to use it, although the problem you're trying to solve needs to be approved by Oak Ridge./news/autocad-2004-c2001-performance-workstation-graphics-agp-cross-section.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/autocad-2004-c2001-performance-workstation-graphics-agp-cross-section.htmlAutoCAD 2004 C2001 Performance The C2001 test is Copyright 1996 - 2001 by Art Liddle and CADALYST magazine. The benchmark loads different models into AutoCAD, manipulates them in wireframe and shaded modes, and then scores the graphics card based on internal performance metrics. We'd like to thank CADALYST for allowing us to use their benchmark.The Wildcat Realizm 200 comes in low on the charts here. The FireGL and Quadro 4000 prove themselves to be better cards under AutoCAD 2004 as tested with the C2001 benchmark./news/benchmarking-performance-cpu-encoding-tests.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/benchmarking-performance-cpu-encoding-tests.htmlOne of the interesting elements on modern processors is encoding performance. This includes encryption/decryption, as well as video transcoding from one video format to another. In the encrypt/decrypt scenario, this remains pertinent to on-the-fly encryption of sensitive data - a process by which more modern devices are leaning to for software security. Video transcoding as a tool to adjust the quality, file size and resolution of a video file has boomed in recent years, such as providing the optimum video for devices before consumption, or for game streamers who are wanting to upload the output from their video camera in real-time./news/dell-xps-15z-a-good-copy-or-a-cheap.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-xps-15z-a-good-copy-or-a-cheap.htmlDell XPS 15z: A Good Copy or a Cheap Clone? If you’ve been living under a rock and happen to see the XPS 15z as the first laptop after emerging, there’s a lot to like and it would set a high bar for other laptops to clear. It’s thin, reasonably light, has plenty of performance for all but the most demanding tasks, and it gets good battery life. For the rest of us, however, it’s going to look a lot like a MacBook Pro 15./news/dell-xps-one-27-review-the-premium-all-in.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-xps-one-27-review-the-premium-all-in.htmlIntroducing the Dell XPS One 2710 The last time we reviewed an all-in-one from Dell, our impressions were decidedly less than favorable. Dell delivered a polished software experience, but the Inspiron One 2320 we saw had serious issues virtually across the board in terms of both hardware and configuration. As a family appliance (the market typically targeted by all-in-ones), the Inspiron One 2320 was a bust. Yet with the XPS One 27 (along with the impending Inspiron One 20 and Inspiron One 23) they're looking to reverse their fortunes./news/eight-x86-cores-at-up-to-3-70-ghz.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/eight-x86-cores-at-up-to-3-70-ghz.htmlZhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies and Shanghai Municipal Government, has introduced its Kaixian KX-7000 series of x86 CPUs. Based on the company's Century Avenue microarchitecture, the processor features up to eight general-purpose x86 cores running at 3.70 GHz, while utilizing a chiplet design under the hood. Zhaoxin expects the new CPUs to be used for client and embedded PCs in 2024. According to details published by Zhaoxin, the company's latest Century Avenue microarchitecture looks to be significantly more advanced than the company's previous x86 microarchitecture./news/evaluating-samsung-s-qhd-amoled-displays.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/evaluating-samsung-s-qhd-amoled-displays.htmlRecently, a package showed up at my door. While this is normally not worth talking about, the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A happened to be in the box. For those unfamiliar with this phone, it's basically a refresh of the Galaxy S5. This means a Snadragon 805 SoC instead of Snapdragon 801. This also means a minor new revision of Krait (450 vs 400), a new GPU, and a separate MDM9x35 modem on a new process (20nm SoC vs 28nm HPm)./news/evga-x58-sli-intel-x58-motherboard-roundup.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/evga-x58-sli-intel-x58-motherboard-roundup.htmlEVGA X58 SLI Features There aren't too many bells and whistles on the EVGA X58 SLI from a hardware feature viewpoint, and considering the market for this board we think that's a good design choice. The almost universal Realtek RTL-8111C PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controllers are utilized in tandem; the Realtek ALC-889 is on board for HD audio; and JMicron’s JMB362/363 chipsets get the nod for eSATA, IDE, and additional SATA port duties./news/fanless-12-5-core-i7-with-12hr-battery-under.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fanless-12-5-core-i7-with-12hr-battery-under.htmlThis month, NEC has introduced its first 2018 LaVie notebook: The LaVie Note Mobile. The LaVie line is known due to its design philosophy of being lightweight: when we had a chance to hold the LaVie Z back in 2015, it was so light it felt like picking up an empty shell of a system. For 2018, the Lavie Note Mobile is the newest member of the family, being updated from the previous model./news/functionality-conclusion-cambridge-soundworks-fps2000-digital-speakers.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/functionality-conclusion-cambridge-soundworks-fps2000-digital-speakers.htmlby Jason Clark on July 18, 1999 12:47 PM EST 4 Comments | 4 Comments Functionality One word comes into mind with the FPS2000's: "Versatile". The speakers are in a well rounded package with all kinds of features that make them unique. First of all, the volume control for these speakers is a separate control unit that controls the volume and the fade. My only complaint is that the volume control unit does not allow for the sub's bass level to be adjusted; that would have iced the cake./news/gaming-performance-4k-amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-4k-amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x.htmlGaming Performance: 4K All of our game testing results, including other resolutions, can be found in our benchmark database: www.anandtech.com/bench. All gaming tests were with an RTX 2080 Ti. We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X, as well as Intel's 12th Gen (Alder Lake) processors at the following settings: DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000 DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with appropriate kits of DDR4./news/hd-video-decoding-on-gpus-with-vlc-1-1.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hd-video-decoding-on-gpus-with-vlc-1-1.htmlIt is time for HTPC enthusiasts to rejoice! Videolan announced the availability of VLC 1.1.0 a couple of days back. VLC's popularity soared in the mid-2000s when standard definition videos were all the craze, and CPUs were powerful enough to easily decode them. Over the last few years, many people have built up a big library of high definition videos, and one of the complaints against VLC was the fact that all the inbuilt codecs relied completely on the CPU horsepower for decoding./news/high-performance-ddr2-cont-d-conroe-buying-guide-feeding.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/high-performance-ddr2-cont-d-conroe-buying-guide-feeding.htmlKingston KHX8500D2K2/1GThe Kingston Hyper X is a dynamite performer, and frankly it would have been a top recommendation except for the fact Kingston provided a 1GB kit instead of the 2GB kit we tested for every other brand in this Buying Guide. You might ask why this matters?Smaller capacity DIMMs usually clock higher than higher capacity memory, so the fact Kingston matches our leader Mushkin at the top does not mean a Kingston 2GB kit would perform the same./news/kodak-v570-dual-lens-digital-camera-ces-2006.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kodak-v570-dual-lens-digital-camera-ces-2006.htmlKodak V570 Dual Lens Digital Camera Kodak's latest innovation in digital cameras is the V570 Dual Lens. This camera features two Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach lenses each with their own 5MP CCDs. The first lens is a standard issue 3x optical zoom lens (39-117 mm); however the second lens is a fixed 23 mm ultra wide-angle lens. Zooming out to the maximum position on the camera switches to the ultra wide lens./news/meet-the-evga-geforce-gtx-1660-super-sc-ultra.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/meet-the-evga-geforce-gtx-1660-super-sc-ultra.htmlSince this latest GTX 1660 series card launch is a virtual launch like the others, NVIDIA is once again sampling partner cards to the press. For the GTX 1660 Super launch, we received EVGA’s GeForce GTX 1660 SC Ultra, a relatively straightforward dual slot, dual fan card. GeForce GTX 1660 Super Card Comparison   GTX 1660 Super (Reference Specification) EVGA GTX 1660 Super SC Ultra Base Clock 1530MHz 1530MHz Boost Clock 1785MHz 1830MHz Memory Clock 14Gbps GDDR6 14Gbps GDDR6 VRAM 6GB 6GB TDP 125W 125W Length N/A 8"/news/multitasking-with-doom-3-athlon-64-x2-new-memory.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/multitasking-with-doom-3-athlon-64-x2-new-memory.htmlMultitasking with Doom 3 Gaming performance also had a reasonable improvement in our first article, with DDR480 realizing a 4% increase in performance over standard DDR400. We paired the Doom 3 benchmark with a WME9 encoding task and watched the performance go up even further: Doom 3 Performance (fps - higher is better) DDR400 DDR480 % Improvement Doom 3 w/ background WME9 85.1 93.3 9.6% Pairing up two memory-bandwidth intensive tasks, we see a very noticeable 9./news/new-design-fan-and-mounting.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-design-fan-and-mounting.htmlScythe this month has introduced its fifth-generation Mugen cooler for CPUs. The Mugen 5 has a slightly different design compared to previous models to improve its compatibility with tall memory modules, as well as having a new fan that is claimed to be quieter as well as a new mounting mechanism that is said to be easier to use. The price remains at a ~$50 level. In the recent years, all-in-one liquid cooling systems have gained a lot of traction because they offer a rather high thermal conductivity, predictable reliability, and a compact design that allows clean builds./news/nikon-announces-d90-digital-slr.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nikon-announces-d90-digital-slr.htmlNikon USA has announced the D90, which updates the two-year old D80 DSLR. The new D90 increases resolution to 12.3 megapixels and includes the high resolution 3” LCD screen featured on the D300/D3/D700. Also introduced is the 18-105mm AF-S VR lens which will be available as a kit lens with the D90 or a standalone.Below are Nikon Press Releases for the new camera and lens. Full D90 Specifications and a Brochure comparing current Nikon models are available at Nikon USA./news/nvidia-releases-hotfix-for-geforce-driver-to-resolve-cpu.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-releases-hotfix-for-geforce-driver-to-resolve-cpu.htmlNVIDIA released the company’s GeForce 531.18 WHQL driver on February 28th. It didn’t take long before user reports started to pile up on the NVIDIA forums about a strange bug causing processor usage to spike. The problem would occur after the user exited a game, and the issue would persist until a system restarted. Now a week later, NVIDIA has solved the problem and deployed a hotfix tailored to replace the GeForce 531./news/nvidia-scrubs-geforce-rtx-4080-12gb-launch-16gb-to.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-scrubs-geforce-rtx-4080-12gb-launch-16gb-to.htmlIn a short post published on NVIDIA’s website today, the company has announced that it is “unlaunching” their planned GeForce RTX 4080 12GB card. The lowest-end of the initially announce RTX 40 series cards, the RTX 4080 12GB had attracted significant criticism since it’s announcement for bifurcating the 4080 tier between two cards that didn’t even share a common GPU. Seemingly bowing to the pressure of those complaints, NVIDIA has removed the card from their RTX 40 series lineup, as well as cancelling its November launch./news/nvidia-to-acquire-datacenter-networking-firm-mellanox-for-6.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-to-acquire-datacenter-networking-firm-mellanox-for-6.htmlStarting off the week bright and early, NVIDIA this morning announced that they’re acquiring datacenter networking and interconnect Mellanox. With a price tag of $6.9 billion, NVIDIA’s acquisition will be vaulting the company deep into the datacenter networking market, making them one of the leading vendors virtually overnight. Mellanox is not a name we normally see much here at AnandTech, as it’s often a company in the background of bigger projects./news/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new.htmlASUS G73Jw: Out with the Old, In with the New Six months is a long time in the computer industry, or so we’ve told ourselves on more than one occasion. If you’re looking for the best time to upgrade, there’s always something new just around the corner. Our first encounter with ASUS’ G73Jh was impressive, so much so that it garnered our Gold Editors’ Choice award. It had great performance and features at an amazing price, often beating gaming notebooks that cost 30 to 50 percent more!/news/processor-utilization-precise-dictation-speech-recognition.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/processor-utilization-precise-dictation-speech-recognition.htmlProcessor Utilization - Precise DictationNow that we have some idea of the accuracy these solutions offer in terms of accuracy, what sort of CPU requirements are we looking at? As with our accuracy charts, we've got a separate section looking at the processor utilization of Dragon NaturallySpeaking when transcribing a WAV file. Below are screenshots of Windows Task Manager showing CPU usage during dictation. In retrospect, finding a utility to track average CPU utilization over time would have been more useful, but these screenshots should suffice for our purposes./news/removing-the-heatsinks-from-the-motherboard.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/removing-the-heatsinks-from-the-motherboard.htmlRemoving the heatsinks from the GPU and the CPU will require a great deal of patience as to avoid damaging the motherboard. Flip over the Xbox 360's motherboard. You will see two X clamps grasping the ends of the screws that hold the heatsinks into place. Without removing the X clamps, you cannot remove the heatsinks. Microsoft has done a clever job in terms of securing the unit from prying eyes and removing the heatsinks from the Xbox 360 can be a trick for a lot of people./news/second-gen-european-cpu-for-hpc.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/second-gen-european-cpu-for-hpc.htmlSiPearl, a processor designer supported by the European Processor Initiative, is about to start shipments of its very first Rhea processor for high-performance computing workloads. But the company is already working on its successor currently known as Rhea-2, which is set to arrive sometimes in 2026 in Exascale supercomputers. SiPearl's Rhea-1 datacenter-grade system-on-chip packs 72 off-the-shelf Arm Neoverse V1 cores designed for HPC and connected using a mesh network. The CPU has an hybrid memory subsystem that supports both HBM2E and DDR5 memory to get both high memory bandwidth and decent memory capacity as well as supports PCIe interconnects with the CXL protocol on top./news/sequential-i-o-performance-qlc-goes-to-8tb-samsung.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sequential-i-o-performance-qlc-goes-to-8tb-samsung.htmlSequential Read Performance Our first test of sequential read performance uses short bursts of 128MB, issued as 128kB operations with no queuing. The test averages performance across eight bursts for a total of 1GB of data transferred from a drive containing 16GB of data. Between each burst the drive is given enough idle time to keep the overall duty cycle at 20%. Both of the 8TB QLC SSDs provide burst sequential read performance that is on par for their respective market segments./news/shuttle-ak31-revision-3-1-via-kt266a-initial-roundup.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/shuttle-ak31-revision-3-1-via-kt266a-initial-roundup.htmlShuttle AK31 Revision 3.1 Click to Enlarge Shuttle AK31 Revision 3.1 CPU Interface Socket-462 Chipset VIA KT266A Form Factor ATX Bus Speeds 100 - 166MHz (in 1MHz increments) Core Voltages Supported Auto Detect -0.100V to +0.275V (over default core) DIMM Voltages Supported 2.5V, 2.55V, 2.6V, 2.7V/news/single-multi-gpu-at-1440p-april-2013.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/single-multi-gpu-at-1440p-april-2013.htmlOne question when building or upgrading a gaming system is of which CPU to choose - does it matter if I have a quad core from Intel, or a quad module from AMD? Perhaps something simpler will do the trick, and I can spend the difference on the GPU. What if you are running a multi-GPU setup, does the CPU have a bigger effect? This was the question I set out to help answer./news/site-to-site-vpn-manual-ipsec-the-ubiquiti-diaries.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/site-to-site-vpn-manual-ipsec-the-ubiquiti-diaries.htmlSite-to-Site VPN: Manual IPSec Despite residing in the heart of Silicon Valley here in California, I have exactly one ISP offering speeds greater than 25 Mbps - Xfinity. For the last few years, I had been running shop with a 100 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up cable plan (which Xfinity has graciously upgraded recently to 400 Mbps / 20 Mbps). As mentioned in the previous section, I do run a relatively heavy network, thanks to the lab infrastructure in place for evaluating systems and storage devices in addition to serving the needs of a typical family of four./news/synology-ds1815-8-bay-intel-rangeley-smb-nas-review.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/synology-ds1815-8-bay-intel-rangeley-smb-nas-review.htmlIntroduction and Testbed Setup Synology started the roll-out of their SMB-targeted NAS units based on Intel's latest Atom platform (Rangeley) in September 2014. We have already looked at the 4-bay DS415+ in detail. Today, the 5-bay DS1515+ and 8-bay DS1815+ versions are being officially launched. As a recap, the Rangeley-based NAS units finally bring about hardware accelerated encryption capabilities to DSM in the desktop tower form factor. A host of other advantages pertaining to the storage subsystem are also provided by Rangeley / Avoton./news/test-setup-power-consumption-post-time-overclocks-asus-p8z77.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/test-setup-power-consumption-post-time-overclocks-asus-p8z77.htmlTest Setup Power Consumption Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration.  This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading./news/the-galaxy-nexus-hardware-and-aesthetics.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-galaxy-nexus-hardware-and-aesthetics.htmlThe evolution of Google’s Nexus line is an interesting one. Each year, Google choses both a silicon partner and an OEM to make a unique hardware archetype which it caters a specific build of Android to. We’ve now seen three Nexus handset designs from two OEMs and three silicon vendors - the Nexus One (HTC and Qualcomm’s QSD8x50), Nexus S (Samsung and Samsung’s S5PC110 ‘Hummingbird’), and today the Galaxy Nexus (Samsung and TI’s OMAP4460)./news/the-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-yoga-review-oled-and-lcd.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-yoga-review-oled-and-lcd.htmlDesign The ThinkPad brand is well established, and Lenovo is not making any dramatic changes with aesthetics. They’ve focused on thin and light, and that is what the X1 Yoga provides. The notebook has a carbon fibre weave in the top lid, but all of the surfaces are the normal matte black finish of ThinkPads. It would be nice to see them offer a model with a metal finish, but the metal is on the inside with a magnesium alloy frame which Lenovo refers to as 'Super Mag'./news/the-storage-devices-performance-moving-forward.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-storage-devices-performance-moving-forward.htmlThe Storage Devices & Performance Other than Apple's Thunderbolt Display, every other TB device we've tested has been some sort of storage device. In my lab I've got Promise's Pegasus R6, LaCie's 2big and Little Big Disk (SSD), Seagate's GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter and Elgato's Thunderbolt SSD. With the exception of the Pegasus R6, which currently lacks Windows drivers, all of the storage devices I tested worked with MSI's Z77A-GD80 under Windows./news/up-to-3-gbps-i-o.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/up-to-3-gbps-i-o.htmlYangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) on Monday unveiled key details regarding its Xtacking architecture that will be used for its upcoming 3D NAND flash memory chips. The company's technology involves building NAND chips using two wafers: one wafer containing actual flash memory cells, which are based on a charge trap architecture, and another wafer featuring CMOS logic. Traditionally, makers of NAND flash memory produce memory array as well as NAND logic (address decoding, page buffers, etc./news/xeon-plus-quadro-rtx-6000.htmlThu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xeon-plus-quadro-rtx-6000.htmlLenovo this week has introduced its new single and dual-processor “AI Workstations”, which the company is pitching at the artificial intelligence and deep learning markets. The new machines are based on the existing ThinkStation P520 and ThinkStation P920 workstations, and are powered by Intel’s Xeon processors as well as one or two of NVIDIA’s latest Quadro RTX 6000 professional graphics cards. The Lenovo AI Workstation lineup consists of two systems which specs are tailored for AI, DL, and similar workloads, according to the manufacturer./news/500w-and-700w-atx-psu-with-redundancy-capability.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/500w-and-700w-atx-psu-with-redundancy-capability.htmlFSP this week announced its new series of redundant PSUs called the 'Twins'. The new power supplies are compatible with standard ATX and PS2 tower chassis, but provide redundancy capabilities and can thus enable building non-stop servers using 'relatively affordable' components. The manufacturer positions the FSP Twins PSUs for home and SMB mail, web and intranet servers when building in a standard ATX or PS2 tower chassis. Like other redundant power supply units, the FSP Twins houses two hot-swappable PSUs and if one fails, another immediately kicks in, ensuring that the system never stops due to power supply failure./news/a-benchmark-for-virtual-reality-systems.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-benchmark-for-virtual-reality-systems.htmlToday Futuremark revealed that they are in the process of developing a benchmark for virtual reality hardware and displays. In the same naming style as PCMark and 3DMark, this new virtual reality benchmark will be called VRMark. According to Futuremark, VRMark will use a combination of software and hardware to evaluate a system's ability to provide a high quality virtual reality experience. Because virtual reality systems have many aspects that all need to be functioning properly to provide a good experience, the process of benchmarking them is different from how you would test a computer or a smartphone./news/a-bit-bigger-a-bit-more-refined.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-bit-bigger-a-bit-more-refined.htmlWith rumors swirling for the last few months a new high-end MacBook Pro laptop from Apple, the company this morning is making those rumors a reality, announcing and launching the 16-Inch MacBook Pro. Replacing Apple’s 15-inch model, the new laptop is a half-step of sorts for Apple to improve their flagship professional laptop, addressing some long-simmering critiques about the laptop, but not radically overhauling the unibody-built, Touch Bar-equipped laptop design that Apple has used since 2016./news/a-quick-look-at-the-gs5-lte-a-subpixel.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-quick-look-at-the-gs5-lte-a-subpixel.htmlWhile it was easy to make an educated guess that the Galaxy S5 LTE-A Broadband had a PenTile subpixel layout to support the higher pixel density, I didn't get visual confirmation of this until now. While this picture is rather boring, it's much more interesting to see the display when turned off. There are a few observations to be made from this photo. While it definitely looks disconcerting and creepy to some, it's possible to make out that there's something set in between the green subpixels when viewed diagonally./news/a-worthy-update-to-the-original-but-not-quite.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-worthy-update-to-the-original-but-not-quite.htmlA Worthy Update to the Original, but Not Quite Perfect By now it should be clear that there's plenty to like with the M11x R2. It upgrades some of the most important areas relative to the original, and with Optimus in place of switchable graphics we no longer have to worry about a lack of driver updates. If you're after a small gaming laptop, there simply aren't any other compelling options right now./news/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th-gen.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th-gen.htmlApple has been playing it cool on the WiFi side of things lately. It started with the previous Airport Extreme (Gen 4) which quietly introduced three spatial stream support, followed up by the Early 2011 MacBook Pro update which brought a three spatial stream compliant WLAN stack, and now has continued with an even more understated update for the Time Capsule (4th generation) and Airport Extreme (5th generation). Both updates launched just prior to this latest round of Apple launches, which included the Mac Mini, Macbook Air, and Thunderbolt Display, but unlike those three, the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme updates saw almost no mention./news/an-attempt-at-an-apple-airpower.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/an-attempt-at-an-apple-airpower.htmlWhen Apple cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat earlier this year, many users of the company’s latest devices got upset, yet spawned a number of third-party options that offer similar functionality. One of such products is the AirUnleashed wireless charging mat that looks like Apple’s AirPower and can charge up to three Qi devices simultaneously. There is a catch, of course. Unlike Apple’s AirPower (which reportedly used up to 32 overlapping charging coils), the AirUnleashed relies only on three coils that can deliver up to 15./news/anandtech-storage-bench-2011-plextor-m5-pro-256gb-review.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/anandtech-storage-bench-2011-plextor-m5-pro-256gb-review.htmlAnandTech Storage Bench 2011 Last year we introduced our AnandTech Storage Bench, a suite of benchmarks that took traces of real OS/application usage and played them back in a repeatable manner. Anand assembled the traces out of frustration with the majority of what we have today in terms of SSD benchmarks. Although the AnandTech Storage Bench tests did a good job of characterizing SSD performance, they weren't stressful enough. All of the tests performed less than 10GB of reads/writes and typically involved only 4GB of writes specifically./news/apple-15-inch-macbook-pro-late-2011-review.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-15-inch-macbook-pro-late-2011-review.htmlThe early 2011 MacBook Pro is honestly Apple's best effort to date. Only using quad-core CPUs on the 15 and 17-inch models, and offering an optional Thunderbolt Display that can act as a modern day dock makes this platform, particularly the 15-inch model, the perfect candidate for users who want the power and flexibility of a desktop with the portability of a notebook. Apple gets the mobile revolution in more ways than one, and its MacBook Pro/Thunderbolt Display combo is the perfect example of that./news/apple-mac-pro-mid-2010-review.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-mac-pro-mid-2010-review.htmlPerformance The new Mac Pro is fast, but then again so was the old one. Earlier this year I tried using the 15-inch Core i7 MacBook Pro as my notebook and desktop - my experiment lasted all of a day, I missed the performance. It’s not so much an issue of peak performance, but one of core count and noise. While I rarely run applications that demand four (or more) cores, running a lot of applications that each eat 5 - 25% of a single core at the same time adds up./news/asus-issues-statement-on-ryzen-7000x3d-processor-issues-possible.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-issues-statement-on-ryzen-7000x3d-processor-issues-possible.htmlYesterday we reported that MSI announced a wave of firmware updates designed to address and alleviate potential issues with users on AM5 using AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D processors with 3D V-Cache. One of the main changes with MSI's latest UEFI firmware for AM5 included voltage restrictions when using Ryzen 7000X3D series CPUs so that these chips couldn't be overvolted as the V-Cache packaging is somewhat sensitive to additional power. Further to MSI's announcement, ASUS has released a statement to experienced engineer and extreme overclocker Roman 'Der8auer' Hartung, which addresses the potential issue with using AMD's EXPO memory profiles in conjunction with the Ryzen 7000X3D series chips./news/bios-and-software-supermicro-c9z490-pgw-motherboard-review-comet.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-supermicro-c9z490-pgw-motherboard-review-comet.htmlBIOS Like other vendors, Supermicro hasn't changed much in its firmware design since the jump from Z390 to Z490. Using a very similar UEFI BIOS to the previous C9Z390-PGW, the C9Z490-PGW only differs in the menus' complexity, with a new set of options for Comet Lake's Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) feature. The SuperO firmware uses a uniform GUI, which includes a primarily black color scheme, with shades of grey and blue throughout./news/business-class-on-a-budget.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/business-class-on-a-budget.htmlIntroducing the Toshiba Tecra R850 Toshiba won't mind if we say that their previous business class notebooks looked...kind of cheap. They were bulky and unattractive, largely feeling like consumer notebooks with matte instead of glossy plastic. Yet when we visited with Toshiba to talk about their Tecra refresh, we were impressed, and Toshiba's reps were only too happy to put the new Tecras next to the old ones to demonstrate the stunning new weight loss plan the notebooks were put on./news/conclusionary-remarks-arm-v9-for-android.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusionary-remarks-arm-v9-for-android.htmlConclusionary Remarks: Arm v9 for Android When we move through significant revisions of Arm’s architecture, up to v8 and now v9, it’s important to note that the new features defined in the ISA do not always fundamentally improve performance – it’s up to the microarchitecture teams to build the cores to the ISA specifications, and the implementation teams to enable the core in silicon with frequency and power efficiency. Accomplishing that requires a good process node, design technology co-optimization, and then partners that can execute by building the best devices for that processor./news/cooler-master-hyper-6-universal-heatpipe-tower.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cooler-master-hyper-6-universal-heatpipe-tower.htmlHeatpipe tower coolers have performed very well in our cooler tests, so it is no surprise to have a top tower cooler from Cooler Master for review. Cooler Master is one of the largest case and cooling manufacturers in the world, with a catalog of many well recognized cases and CPU coolers that are very popular with computer enthusiasts.The Hyper 6+ is a top-line tower cooler that was initially designed to sell for around $50./news/corsair-force-ls-240gb-review.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-force-ls-240gb-review.htmlLike many manufacturers without a NAND fab or controller technology, Corsair's SSD portfolio has focused a lot on SandForce based SSDs, but Corsair has been exploring other options as well. Corsair has used controllers from SandForce, Marvell, LAMD and even Indilinx if we go all the way back to SATA 3Gbps times. In other words, that's most of the licensable controllers, although two of them are now out of the licensing game as Indilinx is owned by OCZ and SK Hynix acquired LAMD a while back (technically you can still get a license for LAMD's controllers but SK Hynix forces you to use their NAND)./news/examining-huawei-s-benchmark-optimizations-in-the-ascend-p7.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/examining-huawei-s-benchmark-optimizations-in-the-ascend-p7.htmlWhile benchmark optimization has been a hot topic, recently it has faded into the background as the industry adjusted. Previously, we saw changes such as an automatic 10% GPU overclock that was almost never achieved in normal applications, and behavior that would automatically plug in all cores and set the CPU frequency to maximum. Now, most OEMs have either stopped this behavior. Even if an OEM hasn't stopped such behavior, there are options that make it possible to use the altered CPU/GPU governor in all applications./news/final-words-conclusion-the-azio-retro-classic-mechanical-keyboard.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-conclusion-the-azio-retro-classic-mechanical-keyboard.htmlConclusion Once again, we should stress that Azio designed the Retro Classic for people who just want something aesthetically different; exotic even. The Retro Classic is a keyboard intended to win people over primarily via its design and materials. Aesthetics are a highly subjective matter, but we cannot argue that the Retro Classic does indeed stand a long way out of the crowd. The Retro Classic will especially match classic/retro designs and offices, especially alongside a custom wooden PC case or similar setups./news/htpc-and-digital-signage-credentials.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htpc-and-digital-signage-credentials.htmlThe 2022 Q4 update to our system reviews brings an updated media playback evaluation suite for systems. After doing away with the evaluation of display refresh rate stability and Netflix streaming evaluation, the local media playback configurations have also seen a revamp. This section details each of the workloads processed on the Intel NUC13ANKi7 (Arena Canyon). YouTube Streaming Efficiency YouTube continues to remain one of the top OTT platforms, primarily due to its free ad-supported tier./news/in-screen-fingerprint-oled-ddic.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-screen-fingerprint-oled-ddic.htmlAt CES 2018 we’ve had opportunity to visit Synaptics’ booth and check out what new technologies they had to offer. One of the big stories of CES 2018 in terms of mobile coverage of course was Synaptics’ and Vivo’s demonstration of the first under-screen fingerprint reader. The industry was waiting for some time now to see this technology brought to market so for Synaptics to be the first to actually achieve this is a major feat that deserves congratulations./news/macbook-port-expander-with-power-and-ethernet.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/macbook-port-expander-with-power-and-ethernet.htmlAUKEY has started to sell its latest USB Type-C hub for Apple’s MacBook laptops and other computers that need something more than USB-C and wireless interconnection technologies. The new CB-C55 hub expands the port allocation to provide outputs for displays, projectors, Gigabit Ethernet and traditional USB Type-A devices, along with supporting power delivery input to the main machine. Modern notebooks are very thin, whereas legacy ports like 8P8C/RJ45 (Ethernet) and D-Sub were designed in the seventies and the eighties when PCs only existed in desktop form-factors./news/microsoft-office-a-month-with-a-mac-a-die.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-office-a-month-with-a-mac-a-die.htmlMicrosoft Office And now we get to my least favorite part of my Mac experience; that is, with Microsoft Office 2004. While I read that many Mac users heralded Office 2004 as an improvement to the previous version of Office for the Mac platform, it doesn't even begin to hold a candle to Office 2003 on the PC or just about any previous version of Office.A number of my initial complaints about Office for the Mac have been resolved with Office 2004, but the most significant one remains: Office 2004 is an unacceptably slow application./news/msi-s-new-5kx2k-34-inch-monitor-with-98.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-s-new-5kx2k-34-inch-monitor-with-98.htmlModern enthusiasts often want one of two things from their monitor: high frame rates, or great color reproduction. MSI is certainly going for the latter in its new 5Kx2K display, the PS341WU. This is a 5120x2160 21:9 monitor that offers 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut with a DeltaE of under 3, and comes with HDR600 certification. The display also has an AdobeRGB mode (92-93%), and an sRGB mode. The unit has a nanoIPS display, supporting 4-way picture-by-picture./news/nvidia-underscan-ati-and-nvidia-quick-look-at-hdtv.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-underscan-ati-and-nvidia-quick-look-at-hdtv.htmlNVIDIA - Underscan We kind of went over NVIDIA's overscan compensation method, called "overscan shift", in our eVGA GeForce FX 5700 Personal Cinema review, but hopefully, this gives you a clearer sense of what is going on. We used the ForceWare 56.72 drivers, which is why we simply followed the instructions for the ForceWare 56.72 drivers to set up NVIDIA's overscan compensation method in the release notes under "configuring HDTV"/news/nvidia-geforce2-mx.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-geforce2-mx.htmlAs one of the main creators of the 6-month product cycles our gaming graphics card industry currently operates on, NVIDIA sort of owes it to everyone to produce both cost effective and extremely high performance parts.  If they expect us to keep on adjusting to new $300 graphics accelerators being released every 6 months they should also be obligated to provide a solution in the $100 - $150 range that doesn’t perform like most other “value” graphics cards./news/nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-titan-review-part-2-titan.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-titan-review-part-2-titan.htmlEarlier this week NVIDIA announced their new top-end single-GPU consumer card, the GeForce GTX Titan. Built on NVIDIA’s GK110 and named after the same supercomputer that GK110 first powered, the GTX Titan is in many ways the apex of the Kepler family of GPUs first introduced nearly one year ago. With anywhere between 25% and 50% more resources than NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 680, Titan is intended to be the ultimate single-GPU card for this generation./news/qualcomm-press-conference-live-blog-11am-pt.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-press-conference-live-blog-11am-pt.html01:51PM EST - Hello all, we're here for the second press conference we're covering today, with many more to come. This time it's Qualcomm's turn to talk about the newest development in 2020 and how the company's product strategies will evolve over the coming year. 02:00PM EST - The event is starting - intro video now. 02:01PM EST - Cristiano Amon taking the stage. 02:03PM EST - Recap over what QC did at the tech summit back in December./news/rampage-iv-extreme-overview-visual-inspection.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rampage-iv-extreme-overview-visual-inspection.htmlRampage IV Extreme Overview In my brief from ASUS regarding the Extreme, and from their marketing materials, we are to assume that the Rampage IV Extreme (RIVE) is something quite mad.  All the more esoteric features are to be plunged on the board – and as a result, it is larger than the standard ATX specifications, reaching into E-ATX (but not full E-ATX).  That gets the user 12 inch x 10./news/rosewill-apollo-rk-9100-rosewill-apollo-rk-9100-rgb80.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/rosewill-apollo-rk-9100-rosewill-apollo-rk-9100-rgb80.htmlRosewill Apollo RK-9100 The Rosewill Apollo RK-9100 is clearly the successor of the very popular Rosewill RK-9000 series. There are several versions of the RK-9100 available, varying by the type of the mechanical switch and the backlighting color. We received the RK-9100xR, the version with the Cherry MX Blue switches and red backlighting. Aesthetically, the Apollo RK-9100xR looks almost like a standard old-school 104-key keyboard. Only the company logo and the design of the notification LEDs on the right side make a visual difference when the keyboard is powered down./news/s3tc-nasty-looking-sky-fsaa-image-quality-comparison.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/s3tc-nasty-looking-sky-fsaa-image-quality-comparison.htmlS3TC = Nasty Looking Sky? As you've probably noticed in previous screenshots from the GeForce2 GTS as well as the GeForce and the GeForce2 MX, the sky definitely looks pretty bad. But on all competing cards, including the Voodoo5 5500 and the ATI Radeon the sky looks perfectly fine. Let's take a quick look at how bad the sky looks first: Pretty bad, no? But watch what happens when we disable S3TC, the GeForce2's Texture Compression algorithm that has been enabled in all 5./news/steelseries-launches-the-stratus-duo-controller.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/steelseries-launches-the-stratus-duo-controller.htmlToday SteelSeries is announcing a new controller in their stable of accessories dubbed the Stratus Duo, joining the Stratus XL from the company, and adding some new features and capabilities. The Stratus Duo is compatible with both Windows and Android, and offers both Bluetooth connectivity as well as a 2.4 GHz wireless adapter, and can switch between the two connections at the flick of a switch. The Stratus Duo will also be compatible with the new SmartGrip accessory which allows you to attach an Android phone to the controller for mobile gaming./news/system-wide-testing-and-gaming-the-snapdragon-8-gen.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-wide-testing-and-gaming-the-snapdragon-8-gen.htmlSystem-Wide Testing and Gaming For our system wide tests, we had time to go through Geekbench 5, PCMark, and GFXBench. For workload based testing, we see performance uplifts with the S8g1, and it is a noting that here we tested PCMark with both performance mode on and off, which gave a +10% increase in the score – we’ve seen this before running PCMark on both Arm and x86 devices where turbo and favored cores can have large effects on scores./news/test-system-and-benchmarks-benchmarked.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/test-system-and-benchmarks-benchmarked.htmlTest System and Benchmarks With that introduction out of the way, let's just get straight to the benchmarks, and then I'll follow up with a discussion of image quality and other aspects at the end. As usual, the test system is what I personally use, which is a relatively high-end Haswell configuration. Most of the hardware was purchased at retail over the past year or so, and that means I don't have access to every GPU configuration available, but I did just get a second ZOTAC GTX 970 so I can at least finally provide some SLI numbers (which I'll add to the previous Benchmarked articles in the near future)./news/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-and-ryzen-3-1200.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-and-ryzen-3-1200.htmlAMD has always promised that Zen is a core suitable for entry level x86 computers all the way up to high-performance server parts. Within that scale so far, AMD has launched EPYC for servers, Ryzen 7 for high-end desktop and Ryzen 5 for mainstream consumers. All that is left is Threadripper for super-high-end desktops, coming in August, Zen paired with graphics, coming in Q3/Q4, and Ryzen 3 for entry level desktops, being launched today./news/the-benefit-of-l3-cache.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-benefit-of-l3-cache.htmlThe Benefit of L3 Cache The K6-3’s low latency L1 and L2 caches give it the immediate advantage over its predecessors, however in the event that data being retrieved cannot be acquired from neither on-chip cache, the presence of the motherboard’s L3 cache becomes critical. As originally discussed in the K6-3 review, the cache on a motherboard equipped with a K6-3 processor immediately becomes the system’s L3 cache. Those of you with motherboards with 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of L2 cache on-board will soon have the ability to take advantage of 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of L3 cache if you make the upgrade to the K6-3./news/the-microsoft-surface-go-lte-review-unmatched-mobility.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-microsoft-surface-go-lte-review-unmatched-mobility.htmlMicrosoft’s Surface Pro lineup has been a design win for the company for several years now. The Surface Go was launched in July of 2018 as a lower-cost version of the Surface Pro, offering buyers a less expensive way to become a Surface customer, and by the nature of its smaller size compared to the Surface Pro, an even more portable convertible Surface tablet. When the device was initially announced, a model with LTE connectivity was also in the works, and the Surface Go LTE arrived in November 2018./news/the-msi-b350m-gaming-pro-review-micro-size-micro.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-b350m-gaming-pro-review-micro-size-micro.htmlAlthough most manufacturers have a primary focus on X470 chipset motherboards, AMD has made it clear that the B350 chipset will be sticking around for a long time. The MSI B350M Gaming Pro aims to offer gamers a low-cost option on the smaller mATX form factor, without all the glitz and glamour of RGB LEDs and over zealous power delivery configurations. The MSI B350M Gaming Pro Motherboard Overview The MSI B350M Gaming Pro targets the more budget conscientious gamer looking to use the B350 chipset, not just for an entry-level price, but also with a mATX form factor./news/what-s-new-in-sp1-a-second-shot-windows.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-s-new-in-sp1-a-second-shot-windows.htmlWhat’s New In SP1 Traditionally Microsoft has focused nearly exclusively on fixes in their service packs, with new features being few and definitely not the focus of a service pack - new features instead usually come with a different OS. When SP2 for Windows XP was released in 2004, it broke this mold with a highly atypical number of new and long-needed features to go along with the fixes it integrated./news/with-two-thunderbolt-2-too.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/with-two-thunderbolt-2-too.htmlInvesting in the top range motherboard should afford a few privileges. It should come with extra features, extra components in the box, and where possible the manufacturer should put time and effort into better performance. The ASUS Z97-Deluxe (NFC & WLC) tips the scales at $400, but comes with Thunderbolt 2, an NFC connection system, a Wireless Charging system, dual SATA Express, dual Ethernet ports, 2T2R 802.11ac WiFi, M.2. support and a total of 10 SATA/USB 3./news/zotac-zbox-ci540-nano-review-a-fanless-haswell-y.htmlWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zotac-zbox-ci540-nano-review-a-fanless-haswell-y.htmlIntroduction and Setup Impressions Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Zotac is no stranger to this segment. Even though the Intel NUC is credited with kicstarting the UCFF trend, the Zotac nano xs units actually came to the market before them. With the nano xs, Zotac redefined the small form-factor (SFF) PC./news/a-closer-look-at-performance-and-power.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-closer-look-at-performance-and-power.htmlHiSilicon’s Kirin 950 proved to be a breakout product for the Huawei subsidiary, ultimately finding a home in many of Huawei’s flagship phones, including the Mate 8, P9, P9 Plus, and Honor 8. Its big.LITTLE combination of four A72 and four A53 CPU cores manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm FF+ FinFET process delivered excellent performance and efficiency. Somewhat surprisingly, it turned out to be one of the best, if not the best, implementation of ARM’s IP we’ve seen./news/a-convertible-chromebook-with-premium-features.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-convertible-chromebook-with-premium-features.htmlASUS is certainly not new to Chrome OS-based PCs. But throughout its history with Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and other Chrome OS devices, the company has positioned them as entry level solutions. However, as Google and some of its partners are experimenting with more premium Chrome OS-powered devices, ASUS cannot stand still. To that end, the company has started to sell its Chromebook Flip C434, a premium Chrome OS 2-in-1. In terms of construction, the Chromebook Flip C434 is built around a CNC-machined aluminum body featuring diamond-cut edges./news/a-flagship-with-a-5-1-camera-array.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-flagship-with-a-5-1-camera-array.htmlHMD Global this week started sales of its new flagship smartphone, the Nokia 9 PureView, in the US, and select European countries. The new handset features an innovative camera featuring multiple sensors and promising very high-quality images. It also has a large pOLED screen, a premium SoC, and will costs less than $700 in the USA. The main feature of the Nokia 9 PureView is of course its exclusive main camera comprising of two 12 MP RGB sensors equipped with Zeiss optics, three 12 MP monochrome sensors using Zeiss lenses, and a time-of-flight (ToF) depth sensor./news/adrenalin-2019-improvements-2-radeon-overlay-and-display-features.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/adrenalin-2019-improvements-2-radeon-overlay-and-display-features.htmlAdrenalin 2019 Improvements Part 2: Radeon Overlay and Display Features The Radeon Overlay was another main feature of the original Adrenalin Edition, and offered users an in-game/desktop overlay of certain Radeon Settings options and tools, combined with OSD and performance logging/monitoring functionality. Adrenalin 2019 looks to expand the available options presented in Radeon Overlay. The Radeon Overlay ‘Display Settings’ tab has been reworked and now includes new Enhanced Sync controls, capable of per-game real-time adjustments./news/amd-fx-8370e-conclusion-amd-fx-8370e-cpu-review.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-fx-8370e-conclusion-amd-fx-8370e-cpu-review.htmlAMD FX-8370E Conclusion Since the bygone days of the GHz wars, energy efficiency is now a key part in any x86 CPU manufacturer handbook. When designing a CPU, parts can be engineered to either be all-out guns blazing on performance, or it can strike a balance between performance and power. When AMD first announced the FX-9590, it was presumed that the Vishera architecture was the former, given the large power increase to get to 5 GHz with turbo./news/amd-updates-driver-and-programming-tools-roadmap-for-supporting.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-updates-driver-and-programming-tools-roadmap-for-supporting.htmlIn our Kaveri review, we discussed HSA and that Kaveri brings many exciting hardware features such as true CPU/GPU shared memory (hUMA) and others such as heterogeneous queueing (hQ). However, at launch they were not really exposed in the drivers.  AMD has now provided an update on the driver roadmap for exposing the hardware features to various compute APIs. Today AMD is expected to release a beta driver for Windows that exposes some shared memory extensions to OpenCL./news/asus-prime-z390-p-intel-z390-motherboard-overview-50.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-prime-z390-p-intel-z390-motherboard-overview-50.htmlASUS Prime Z390-P In comparison to the above ASUS Prime Z390-A, the aesthetically more 'out-there' Prime Z390-P has a white and black theme stretching as if a wave of triangles flew through the air and splattered across the board in what can only be described as rays. This board also features a set of basic looking heatsinks without a rear panel cover with all of the appeal coming from the onboard set of controllers and componentry, with a clear focus on the value being the ulterior motive of this particular offering./news/battle-of-the-budget-tablets.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battle-of-the-budget-tablets.htmlThe Need For Budget Tablets When Apple announced the iPad in January 2009, the entry price for the tablet market was set at $499. I saw (and still see) the web tablet as the successor to the netbook, so I assumed that it would go down over time, and we would eventually see tablets settle in the $350-400 range that netbooks sold for in their brief period of atomic glory (see what I did there?/news/biostar-announce-the-ta890fxe-and-bioking.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/biostar-announce-the-ta890fxe-and-bioking.htmlOkay, I lied a little.  Biostar announce their new tech as ‘BIO-unlocKING’, a feature on their latest 8xx series motherboard to unlock the quad core Thuban based processors (such as the Phenom II X4 960T) to their hexacore variants.  Biostar cover themselves by noting that not all quad core Thubans will unlock.  This feature will also help with unlockable dual core chips. However, this is their new TA890FXE board.  Premiered at CeBIT earlier this year and upgraded since with a new (and better) color scheme, the ubiquitous combination of the 890FX and SB850 chipset will feature a 5+1 phase VRM, four PCI-E x 16 2./news/broadcom-launches-wi-fi-7-portfolio-for-access-points.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/broadcom-launches-wi-fi-7-portfolio-for-access-points.htmlThe last few years have seen heightened consumer focus on wireless networking. The industry has also been quite busy, enabling the operation of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) in the 6GHz band with Wi-Fi 6E. In parallel, the 802.11 Working Group had started work on 802.11be with a focus on extremely high throughput (EHT). Wi-Fi 7 is set to become the consumer-facing moniker for 802.11be. 802.11be aims to achieve high throughput primarily through a combination of three aspects:/news/broadcom-makes-unsolicited-105-billion-bid-for-qualcomm.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/broadcom-makes-unsolicited-105-billion-bid-for-qualcomm.htmlBroadcom on Monday said that it had proposed to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Qualcomm for $105 billion in total for cash and stock. If the buyout proceeds as planned, it will be the largest ever transaction in the semiconductor industry and will create the third largest supplier of chips after Intel and Samsung. The new company will offer products for hundreds of applications and will be among the largest suppliers of chips for the telecommunication market./news/btx-motherboards-from-asus-and-mitac.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/btx-motherboards-from-asus-and-mitac.htmlASUS seemed to do a good job of meeting BTX spec with their P5G6B design: Unfortunately the presence of the ATX power connector that close to the PCI Express x16 slot also does not do a good job of making room for large coolers on PCI Express graphics cards. Granted it is a bit of a puzzle as to how two-slot PCI Express graphics cards would fit in micro BTX systems like this one; there doesn't seem to be enough room to the left of the x16 slot to fit another slot cutout./news/cadence-and-micron-demo-ddr5-4400-imc-and-memory.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cadence-and-micron-demo-ddr5-4400-imc-and-memory.htmlCadence this week introduced the industry’s first IP interface in silicon for the current provisional DDR5 specification developed by JEDEC. Cadence’s IP and test chip us fabricated using TSMC’s 7 nm process technology, and is designed to enable SoC developers to begin on their DDR5 memory subsystems now and get them to market in 2019-2020, depending on high-volume DDR5 availability. At a special event, Cadence teamed up with Micron to demonstrate their DDR5 DRAM subsystem./news/cpu-performance-system-tests-intel-xeon-e-six-core.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-system-tests-intel-xeon-e-six-core.htmlCPU Performance: System Tests Our System Test section focuses significantly on real-world testing, user experience, with a slight nod to throughput. In this section we cover application loading time, image processing, simple scientific physics, emulation, neural simulation, optimized compute, and 3D model development, with a combination of readily available and custom software. For some of these tests, the bigger suites such as PCMark do cover them (we publish those values in our office section), although multiple perspectives is always beneficial./news/dell-inspiron-mini-9-reviewed-refining-the-netbook-market.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-inspiron-mini-9-reviewed-refining-the-netbook-market.htmlUbuntuThe entry level Mini ships with Ubuntu and a very elegant application launcher - this is the version I had for review. Once again, mimicking what ASUS did with its Eee PC, but improving at the same time. There's a much greater degree of polish to Dell's Ubuntu install than Xandros on the Eee PC, functionally the two are equally capable as presenting the netbook as an appliance and not a computer, but Dell's approach feels a bit more./news/faster-1-1v-ddr5-on-the-way-for-future.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/faster-1-1v-ddr5-on-the-way-for-future.htmlWhile DDR5 memory has been out and in use for a couple of years now, so far we haven't seen the memory reach its full potential – at least, not for rank-and-file standards-compliant DIMMs. The specification allows for speeds as high as DDR5-6400, but to date we've only seen on-spec kits (and processors) as fast as DDR5-5600. But at last, it looks like things are about to change and DDR5 is set to live up to its full potential, going by a new memory kit announcement from TeamGroup./news/foxconn-board-layout-foxconn-and-gigabyte-tackle-socket-am2.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/foxconn-board-layout-foxconn-and-gigabyte-tackle-socket-am2.htmlFoxconn: Board LayoutFoxconn has been around for several decades and is one of the largest manufacturers of electronics components in the world. They have provided motherboards for many OEMs in the past, but have only recently started to offer their boards on the retail market. Given their OEM provider roots, it's not too surprising that the initial Foxconn motherboards failed to cater to the enthusiast community. Over time, Foxconn has worked to correct this perception, and they have released several motherboards using their "/news/global-semiconductor-sales-hit-526-8-billion-in-2023.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/global-semiconductor-sales-hit-526-8-billion-in-2023.htmlThe global semiconductor industry saw its sales dropped around $47 billion to nearly $527 billion in 2023, according to estimations by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This was a sharp downturn from the record 2022, but good news is that sales picked up significantly in the second half of the year, showing signs of a strong recovery and positive expectations for the future. The semiconductor industry supplied chips worth $526.8 billion in 2023, an 8./news/graphics-and-gaming-sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/graphics-and-gaming-sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the.html3DMark 11 We're going to start the graphics benchmarks with the synthetic 3DMark test. The latest version, 3DMark 11, is still very GPU dependent. However, it does include a CPU Physics test and a combined graphics/physics test for simulating those types of loads. We’ll use the overall score with the three subtests to see if we can find any areas where memory performance makes a noticeable difference. The overall score, which is heavily based on the graphics tests, shows a mere ~1% change across the board./news/hp-s-elite-x3-windows-10-smartphone-to-cost.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-s-elite-x3-windows-10-smartphone-to-cost.htmlWhen HP introduced its flagship Elite x3 phablet earlier this year at MWC, the smartphone made a very positive impression mostly because HP decided to make a bold move and create a Windows Continuum device aimed purely at the business professional on a company contract. It drew a little ire from some industry analysts, thinking that HP building a Windows phone would never see the light of day. To them it was a paper announcement, but this week shows that the Elite x3 is still alive and well, and coming to consumers and business users./news/huawei-announces-the-mate-xs.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-announces-the-mate-xs.htmlToday Huawei is announcing the successor of one of 2019’s most talked about devices: the new Mate Xs. The successor to the Mate X refines the design of the predecessor, introducing a new more durable hinge as well as a new display protection material, as well as updating the internals of the phone to include the newer generation Kirin 990 5G SoC.     The Mate X last year made a big splash with its unique new foldable design, and was able to steal a lot of the thunder from the competition such as Samsung’s Galaxy Fold./news/intel-hd-4000-performance-starcraft-2.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-hd-4000-performance-starcraft-2.htmlStarcraft 2 Starcraft 2 can vary wildly from being very CPU limited to very GPU limited. As a result we've had to create two separate benchmarks. Heavy battles are often CPU limited, while scrolling around a map tends to stress the GPU more. SC2 shows us a smaller advantage over Sandy Bridge - generally around 20%. Llano is able to maintain a much larger 40 - 50% advantage as a result./news/intel-unveils-xess-image-upscaling-technology.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-unveils-xess-image-upscaling-technology.htmlAlongside a sneak peek at their forthcoming Xe-HPG architecture, the other big reveal today from Intel’s consumer graphics group comes from the software side of the business. Along with preparing Intel’s software stack for the 2022 launch of the first Arc products, the group has also been hard at work at their own take on modern, neural net-driven image upscaling techniques. The product of that research is Xe Super Sampling, or XeSS, which Intel is pitching as the best solution yet for high image quality and low processing cost image upscaling./news/intel-s-silvermont-a-new-atom-architecture.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-silvermont-a-new-atom-architecture.htmlBrooke Crothers broke a very important story today - he published the name Silvermont. Atom's first incarnation came to us in 2008 as a Pentium-like dual-issue in-order microprocessor. The CPU core was named Bonnell, after the tallest point in Austin at around 750 feet. Small mountain, small core. Get it? Bonnell and the original Atom were developed on a 5-year cadence, similar to how Intel ran things prior to the Core 2 revolution (the P6 to Netburst/Pentium 4 move took 5 years)./news/mac-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mac-benchmarks-compare-products-on-anandtech.htmlncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiZnqaTnXyxvs6drJysX2Z%2BcYOer6p2aWRsfQ%3D%3D/news/origin-pc-readies-an-all-glass-cube-compact-pc.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/origin-pc-readies-an-all-glass-cube-compact-pc.htmlOrigin PC demonstrated its all-new Cube desktop machine at CES. The fully-upgradeable computer comes in an all-glass compact chassis that can house a standard-length video card, a liquid-cooled factory-overclocked CPU from AMD or Intel, and seven storage devices. Measuring 28.6×27.3×33 cm (11.25×10.75×13 inches), the Origin Cube PC chassis features three compartments. One to house a Mini-ITX motherboard with an installed CPU and graphics card, one for a radiator of an liquid cooling solution and with seven storage devices, and a third for a PSU (probably featuring an SFX form-factor)./news/pc-club-enpower-sabre-extreme-e6600-made-easy.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pc-club-enpower-sabre-extreme-e6600-made-easy.htmlIntroductionWe recently looked at the ABS Ultimate X9 computer system and found it to be a fast but expensive system, as well as having some niggling stability issues related to the GPU water cooling. Other than the stability concerns, there was one major problem with the system for most of our readers: it's too expensive. If $4000 or more is way out of your league for computer prices, today's review will hopefully return to the realm of the possible./news/power-temperature-noise-nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review-the.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review-the.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise. With both the 600 series GK104 parts and the GK104 based GTX 770 as a backdrop here, we’re not expecting any great surprises here./news/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone.htmlThe sheer amount of choice you get in the Android smartphone market is overwhelming. Even if you stick within a single manufacturer like HTC, there are several releases to juggle all of which happen in a very short period of time. Below is a list of just the HTC Android phones that have come out in the past 12 months: Hero, Click, Bravo, Legend, Incredible, Espresso, Supersonic/EVO 4G, Buzz and Liberty./news/serious-sam-performance-ati-s-radeon-8500-7500-a.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/serious-sam-performance-ati-s-radeon-8500-7500-a.htmlSerious Sam Serious Sam is an excellent creation from a previously unheard of development house.  The game is a first person shooter in the purest form of the name.  It features high quality textures and a very flexible OpenGL engine that allows the end user to control virtually every performance and quality aspect of the game.  For these tests, every single quality option was set to the maximum level with the exception of anisotropic filtering which was disabled./news/the-android-tv-experience-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-android-tv-experience-the-nvidia-shield-android-tv.htmlThe Android TV Experience The focus today (coinciding with Google I/O) is obviously on Android TV. Google, having learnt from its previous Google TV initiative, brought forward the Android-based Android TV, a new Smart TV initiative, towards the end of 2014. It delivers a comprehensive app ecosystem across multiple devices - both first screen and second screen. Google's experience with voice search and personalized recommendations, combined with the users' Google Play movie and music collection, puts many pieces of the puzzle already in place./news/the-asrock-rack-z490d4u-2l2t-micro-atx-server-for.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asrock-rack-z490d4u-2l2t-micro-atx-server-for.htmlOff the back of the announcement of a substantial amount of Z490 motherboards designed for Intel's 10th generation desktop processors, ASRock Rack has announced a server-focused model. The ASRock Rack Z490D4U-2L2T offers an impressive array of Ethernet including two Intel 10 GBE and two Intel Gigabit Ethernet ports; all on a micro-ATX form factor PCB. With over 44+ Z490 models to choose from a variety of vendors, ASRock Rack has announced its intention to release a  server solution for LGA1200./news/the-chuwi-lapbook-14-1-review-redefining-affordable.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-chuwi-lapbook-14-1-review-redefining-affordable.htmlDesign One area where Chuwi has done very well, especially for this price point, is the design of the LapBook 14.1. The entire laptop is unsurprisingly made from plastic, but the plastic has a nice textured feel to it, making it very easy to hold, and it never feels like it’s going to slip out of your hands. The white color is a nice change from the traditionally black or gray PC market as well./news/the-difficulty-in-analyzing-gpu-turbo.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-difficulty-in-analyzing-gpu-turbo.htmlI still haven’t managed to get two identical devices with and without GPU Turbo. The closest practical comparison I was able to make is between the Huawei P20 and the Honor Play. These are two devices that use the same SoC and memory, albeit in different chassis. The differences between the two phones are not just the GPU Turbo introduction, but the Honor Play also includes a newer Arm Bifrost driver, r12p0, while the P20 had the r9p0 release./news/the-msi-x299-gaming-pro-carbon-ac-motherboard-review.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-msi-x299-gaming-pro-carbon-ac-motherboard-review.htmlMSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Software Over the last couple of generations, MSI’s main hub of options has switched from a combination of Control Center and MSI Suite to Command Center with a much cleaner interface and array of options. As this is a gaming based motherboard, there’s also a set of gaming related software bundled with the system with the usual stuff. One perennial favorite is Live Update, one of the best motherboard driver/software tools available from any of the motherboard manufacturers./news/the-rest-of-the-industry.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-rest-of-the-industry.htmlThe Rest of the Industry What repercussions does this acquisition have for the rest of industry? It is still not clear whether Intrinsity would continue to support any of their existing customers (AMD/ATI and AMCC -- whether they are still using FastCore technology is not known). However, we can safely say that the FastCore version of the Cortex-A8 on Samsung's 45nm node is the final Intrinsity product available for other fabless semiconductor companies to license./news/the-samsung-portable-ssd-x5-review.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-samsung-portable-ssd-x5-review.htmlThe rising popularity of Thunderbolt 3, coupled with the emergence of NVMe SSDs in the compact M.2 form-factor, has enabled a new class of portable bus-powered high-performance flash storage devices. Samsung is launching their first Thunderbolt 3 SSD, the Portable SSD X5, today. Unlike the recent crop of affordable TB3 SSDs that use a PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe SSD with a Phison controller, Samsung has gone in for a premium solution./news/twice-the-cache-17-higher-latency.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/twice-the-cache-17-higher-latency.htmlBoth the Pentium 4 6xx and the new Extreme Edition share the same core, meaning they also have the same L2 cache.  When Intel first launched Prescott we noticed that in the move to the new architecture that cache latencies went up tremendously.  The increase in cache latencies was to be expected, as one tradeoff of a larger cache is that it takings longer to find and access data.  So when we heard that Intel was moving to a 2MB L2 cache with the 6xx series, we wondered how much slower the cache would get./news/xbox-game-streaming-demonstrated-at-build.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xbox-game-streaming-demonstrated-at-build.htmlToday I got a chance to try the new game streaming ability of Xbox One at a breakout session. For those that are unaware, Xbox Game Streaming will allow you to broadcast your console gaming experience to any Windows 10 PC on the network, and with the Xbox controller drivers being built into Windows 10 now, it makes for a pretty interesting experience. Now let’s be honest. This is certainly not the first game streaming that has been announced, and some companies already have shipping solutions for this./news/xbox-one-to-get-tv-dvr-capabilities.htmlTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/xbox-one-to-get-tv-dvr-capabilities.htmlThose that never got to experience Windows Media Center as the hub of a home entertainment system likely wonder why there is such a vocal group of people who cherish it and what it brought to the living room. The ease of use of the wonderful ten foot user interface was one of those times where software architects just got it right. I built my first Windows Media Center PC about ten years ago, and it had capabilities that some cable providers still can’t match, including the ability to stream recorded content from the PC to an Xbox 360 (or a couple of other less successful Media Center Extenders) where it could be played back in another room, and you could quickly resume where you left off somewhere else in the house./news/a-diy-cooling-system-for-m-2-22110-ssds.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-diy-cooling-system-for-m-2-22110-ssds.htmlGELID has introduced a rather unusual product: an aftermarket heatsink designed for SSDs that use the server/workstation-oriented M.2-22110 form-factor. The SubZero M.2 XL aluminum heatsink is shipped with two thermal pads as well as silicone fixtures and is designed to keep these drives from overheating and and performing more consistently under high loads The majority of client SSDs these days use an M.2-2280 form-factor, as this is the largest drive that most desktops and virtually all notebooks can accommodate./news/albatron-px865pe-pro-865pe-875p-motherboard-roundup-june-2003.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/albatron-px865pe-pro-865pe-875p-motherboard-roundup-june-2003.htmlAlbatron PX865PE Pro Motherboard Specifications CPU Interface Socket-478 Chipset Intel 82865PE MCH (North Bridge) Intel 82801EB ICH5 (South Bridge) Bus Speeds up to 333MHz (in 1MHz increments) Core Voltages Supported up to 1.60V (in 0.0250V increments) I/O Voltages Supported N/A DRAM Voltages Supported up to 2.85V (in 0./news/asus-rog-strix-z370-g-gaming.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-z370-g-gaming.htmlThe 'Strix Z370-G Gaming' micro-ATX motherboard bridges the gap between the ATX and ITX segments and represents a balance of having key features of its bigger ATX brothers, but whilst having a slightly larger footprint and offering more room for expansion over its ITX siblings. This board has virtually identical specifications to the smaller Strix Z370-I Gaming board: the Strix Z370-G uses the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, renamed to the SupremeFX S1220A in accordance with their branding; they also share the same dual antenna 802./news/at-t-announces-4g-lte-plans.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/at-t-announces-4g-lte-plans.htmlAnand and I rushed from the LG press conference over to AT&T's, where CEO Ralph de la Vega has just announced the carrier's LTE plans for the future. Some 20 LTE devices, including tablets, modems, smartphones, and hotspots are coming throughout 2011. First up, AT&T has completed its HSPA+ deployment in the US, and will continue to expand backhaul - roughly 2/3rds of traffic is already being transacted over expanded backhaul, with speeds of 6 megabits/s being possible./news/big-power-for-small-form-factors.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/big-power-for-small-form-factors.htmlFor better or worse, the amount of power required by top tier PC gaming systems has been on the rise over the last few years. Lead in large part by a leap in video card power consumption – gone are the days where a flagship video card would draw just 250 Watts – the required and recommended wattages for high-end systems have started encroaching on the kind of power that dual GPU systems required barely half a decade ago./news/chipworks-confirms-xbox-one-soc-has-14-cus-with.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/chipworks-confirms-xbox-one-soc-has-14-cus-with.htmlIn our mini-review of the Xbox One I speculated that the shipping version of Microsoft's console featured 14 AMD GCN CUs (Graphics Core Next Compute Units), with two disabled to improve yields. Microsoft publicly stated that Xbox One development kits featured 14 CUs and Sony similarly had 20 CUs with only 18 enabled with the PS4. With Xbox One hardware in the wild, Chipworks went to task delayering the SoC/APU and confirmed the speculation - the Xbox One does indeed feature 14 CUs (pictured above)./news/conclusion-now-how-much-would-you-pay.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-now-how-much-would-you-pay.htmlConclusion Being the most expensive case we've yet tested by $100, the Cooler Master Cosmos II had to deliver. It had to be quieter and had to run cooler than anything else. It had to justify both its price tag and its sheer volume. Unfortunately, when you get to something this pricey, justifying the price tag and size becomes more a matter of personal preference and needs than anything that can be concretely quantified./news/dell-latitude-12-5000-series-review.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-latitude-12-5000-series-review.htmlDell sells the Latitude line as business class notebooks, and the 5000 series that we received is the mainstream line for business. The Latitude 12 is the smallest model offered, with a 12.5-inch 16:9 display in a fairly small form factor. This is no ultrabook though, with a starting weight of 3.44 lbs (1.56 kg) and a thickness of 0.9-inches (22.7 mm) but the thickness and mass lend the device to being stronger, and unlike ultrabooks, connectivity in the office is easier due to the inclusion of a full Ethernet port and a docking port./news/depth-and-stencil-with-hyper-z-hd.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/depth-and-stencil-with-hyper-z-hd.htmlIn accordance with their "High Definition Gaming" theme, ATI is calling the R420's method of handling depth and stencil processing Hyper Z HD. Depth and stencil processing is handled at multiple points throughout the pipeline, but grouping all this hardware into one block can make sense as each step along the way will touch the z-buffer (an on die cache of z and stencil data). We have previously covered other incarnations of Hyper Z which have done basically the same job./news/enabling-xmp-with-asus-gigabyte-asrock-and-msi-on.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/enabling-xmp-with-asus-gigabyte-asrock-and-msi-on.htmlEnabling XMP with ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock and MSI on Z87 By default, memory should adhere to specifications set by JEDEC (formerly known as the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council).  These specifications state what information should be stored in the memory EEPROM, such as manufacturer information, serial number, and other useful information.  Part of this are the memory specifications for standard memory speeds, including (for DDR3) 1066 MHz, 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz, which a system will adhere to in the event of other information not being available./news/ending-2021-on-a-high-note.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ending-2021-on-a-high-note.htmlKicking off yet another earnings season, we once again start with Intel. The reigning 800lb gorilla of the chipmaking world is reporting its Q4 2020 and full-year financial results, closing the book on an eventful 2021 for the company. The first full year of the pandemic has seen Intel once again set revenue records, making this the sixth record year in a row, but it’s also clear that headwinds are going to be approaching for the company, both in respect to shifts in product demand and in the sizable investments needed to build the next generation of leading-edge fabs./news/external-multi-display-upgrade-from-matrox.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/external-multi-display-upgrade-from-matrox.htmlIntroThe name, Matrox, conjures up some memories of older times in computer graphics, and we haven't heard from them in quite a long time. Matrox was a pioneer of PC gaming technology and they were known for the quality of their parts. One of the things that they were first to achieve in PC gaming was support for multiple monitors. They developed dual and triple head support on their graphics parts, and due to its success, other companies at the time also incorporated multi-head support on their hardware as well, making it a standard./news/features-and-specifications-hp-w2207-shiny-22-perfection.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/features-and-specifications-hp-w2207-shiny-22-perfection.htmlFeatures and SpecificationsFor those who are unfamiliar with some of the jargon we'll be using, we put together a short glossary of terms that we use in our display reviews. Manufacturer specifications can sometimes overstate the importance of certain factors, while at the same time omitting other important information, but we will do our best to separate the reality from the hype in our reviews. HP w2207 Specifications Video Inputs Analog (VGA)/news/gaming-performance-rocket-league-1080p-4k.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-rocket-league-1080p-4k.htmlRocket League Hilariously simple pick-up-and-play games are great fun. I'm a massive fan of the Katamari franchise for that reason — passing start on a controller and rolling around, picking up things to get bigger, is extremely simple. Until we get a PC version of Katamari that I can benchmark, we'll focus on Rocket League. Rocket League combines the elements of pick-up-and-play, allowing users to jump into a game with other people (or bots) to play football with cars with zero rules./news/gaming-tests-world-of-tanks.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-tests-world-of-tanks.htmlAlbeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky. The game offers multiple entry points including a free-to-play element as well as allowing players to pay a fee to open up more features./news/goldmont-cpu-6-skus-6-10-watts.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/goldmont-cpu-6-skus-6-10-watts.htmlEarlier this week was the formal unveiling of Kaby Lake, Intel’s 7th generation Core CPU architecture. And while Kaby Lake was the focus of Intel’s efforts for obvious reasons, as it turns out it’s not the only processor family the company has launched this week. Taking off alongside Kaby Lake is its budget counterpart, Apollo Lake. Built off of the latest generation of Intel’s Atom-derived line of CPU cores, Goldmont, Apollo Lake is destined for low-cost devices such as basic 2-in-1s, laptops, and netbooks./news/in-and-around-the-corsair-carbide-200r.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-and-around-the-corsair-carbide-200r.htmlIn and Around the Corsair Carbide 200R The Carbide 200R takes Corsair's design cues and refines them down to their most basic degree. In this market, oftentimes the best you can hope for is a black box with clean lines and fairly smart aesthetics, and that's what we have. It's been tough for me to really figure out exactly what sells and what doesn't since I mostly only have your reactions to cases to go by, and AnandTech readers are by default going to be a bit more well-informed than the garden variety consumer./news/input-latency-and-final-thoughts.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/input-latency-and-final-thoughts.htmlLag and Conclusions So what about lag on Kinect? It’s definitely there, but it isn’t nearly as big of a problem as it’s been chalked up to be. I decided to test how much that lag is by taking an extremely self-deprecating video of myself flailing my arms about in front of Kinect, and inspect the video to see how much delay there is between me sweeping my arm up, and the TV reflecting that change./news/intel-s-arctic-sound-m-server-accelerator-to-land.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-arctic-sound-m-server-accelerator-to-land.htmlRounding out Intel’s direct GPU-related announcements from this morning as part of the company’s annual investor meeting, Intel has confirmed that the company is also getting ready to deliver a more traditional GPU-based accelerator card for server use a bit later this year. Dubbed Arctic Sound-M, the forthcoming accelerator is being aimed in particular at the media encoding and analytics market, with Intel planning to take full advantage of what should be the first server accelerator with hardware AV1 video encoding./news/kodak-dx7590-specifications-easyshare-dx7590-kodak-s-second-ultra.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kodak-dx7590-specifications-easyshare-dx7590-kodak-s-second-ultra.htmlby Stephen Caston on February 11, 2005 12:03 AM EST 10 Comments | 10 Comments Kodak DX7590 Specifications Kodak DX7590 (Firmware Version 1.0100) Release Date August 2004 Price ~$430 Pixel Count 5.0 Million Camera Type Compact zoom Highest Resolution 2576x1932 Lower Resolutions 2576x1716, 2304x1728, 2048x1536, 1552x1164 Sensor Type CCD Sensor Size 1/2./news/lg-s-27gk750f-b-a-27-inch-esports-monitor.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-s-27gk750f-b-a-27-inch-esports-monitor.htmlLG has greatly expanded its lineup of monitors for gamers over the past few years. The company targets mainstream and premium segments of the market, but this month it decided to offer something for “eSports” gamers who demand maximum refresh rates and the lowest possible response time to hit their enemies first. In addition to the rather extreme peak refresh rate, the monitor also supports LG’s Motion Blur Reduction technology to make fast-paced actions look sharper./news/marvell-announces-first-mochi-architecture-modules-socs-go-to.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/marvell-announces-first-mochi-architecture-modules-socs-go-to.htmlMuch has been written over the last few years on the significant cost issues semiconductor companies are and will be facing over the coming years. While newer manufacturing nodes have increased transistor density and reduced power consumption, they have come at a cost of increased manufacturing and development costs for chips using these nodes. Yet more worrying for manufacturers, the costs of preparing chips for new nodes isn’t just rising but rising quickly, with mask sets already over a million dollars and expected to grow even further thanks to the high costs of developing masks for current multi-patterning technologies./news/microsoft-readies-game-mode-for-windows-10-creator-s.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/microsoft-readies-game-mode-for-windows-10-creator-s.htmlThe Windows 10 Creator’s Update was announced in October, at the same event where the Surface Studio was launched. It promises many new features for makers, but when makers want to unwind, they want to play a PC game. Today Microsoft is giving a glimpse at one of the new features also coming with the Creator’s Update, and it is Game Mode. Microsoft wants to improve the overall gaming experience, and they have focused on several areas where gaming on the PC is let down, especially compared to the console where the experience is known to all parties, be them developers, or end users, well ahead of time./news/pentium-iii-500-performance-quake-2-opengl-demo1-dm2.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pentium-iii-500-performance-quake-2-opengl-demo1-dm2.htmlPentium III 500 Performance - Quake 2 (OpenGL) demo1.dm2 One Underrated Weakness: The OpenGL ICD Pentium II 400 demo1.dm2 Comments Locked 14 Comments View All Comments ssvegeta1010 - Tuesday, August 2, 2005 - link Necro-comment. :) dac7nco - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link Gotcha Beat Thatguy97 - Sunday, May 3, 2015 - link Gotcha beat too lolipopman - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link Gotcha beat as well./news/perfect-multi-tasking-a-month-with-a-mac-a.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/perfect-multi-tasking-a-month-with-a-mac-a.htmlPerfect Multi-tasking So far, I've described OS X's multi-tasking as very similar to what is currently available under Windows, but where OS X sets itself apart is in a little feature called Exposé (note that typing an accented "e" is extremely easy under OS X - ALT-e followed by the "e" key or any vowel will do just that).By default, Exposé is activated by one of three function keys - F9, F10 or F11./news/performance-vs-transfer-size-samsung-ssd-850-pro-128gb.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-vs-transfer-size-samsung-ssd-850-pro-128gb.htmlPerformance vs. Transfer Size ATTO is a useful tool for quickly benchmarking performance across various transfer sizes. You can get the complete data set in Bench. To highlight the performance of each capacity, I decided to divide the ATTO graphs by each capacity, which should also make the graphs a bit more readable. IO size scaling remain very similar to the 840 Pro and EVO. It is only at the 128GB capacity where the V-NAND provides a substantial advantage and the 850 Pro is almost as fast as the 120GB Intel SSD 525, which is a SandForce based drive, so its high performance is explained by ATTO's use of compressible data./news/porsche-design-unveils-fanless-15-6-inch-ultra-one.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/porsche-design-unveils-fanless-15-6-inch-ultra-one.htmlJust like its parent company, Porsche Design specializes in the creation of devices that offer a unique set of features with an eye towards high-end styles. This month the company introduced its Ultra One laptop, which offers a 15.6-inch Full-HD touchscreen display in a chassis that is thinner than most 13-inch mobile PCs, and with a fanless cooling design, is also dead silent as well. In terms of design, the Porsche Design Ultra One comes in a magnesium chassis with polished stainless-steel elements; the body measures 359×249./news/preparing-for-p55-motherboards-memory-and-nvidia.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/preparing-for-p55-motherboards-memory-and-nvidia.htmlGigabyte invited us to their P55/Lynnfield press event in Los Angeles. I hadn’t been to LA since 2005. Gigabyte’s invitation provided me with an opportunity to rectify that. We find ourselves in an interesting situation with Lynnfield. Processors have been trickling out but motherboards aren’t available in North America. We know what the model numbers are, what the price points are and even what the processor boxes look like. For most of the past month we’ve been doing pictorial previews of the P55 motherboards that will be supporting Lynnfield./news/quad-core-choices-quad-core-intel-xeon-53xx-clovertown.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/quad-core-choices-quad-core-intel-xeon-53xx-clovertown.htmlQuad Core ChoicesTrue, a "dual dual core" is not really a quad core, such as AMD's upcoming quad core Barcelona chip. However, from an economical point of view it does make a lot of sense: not only is there the marketing advantage of being the "first quad core" processor, but - according to Intel - using two dual cores gives you 20% higher die yields and 12% lower manufacturing costs compared to a simulated but similar quad core design./news/redefining-the-base-line-at-130.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/redefining-the-base-line-at-130.htmlMSI’s motherboard range seems to expand every generation. Alongside the channel range, there’s the MSI Gaming, micro-ATX gaming, OC Certified, Krait, ECO, SLI PLUS, PC Mate and some I probably can’t think of. Each set can have a chipset mix, depending on their target market. The SLI PLUS line is relatively new, with the Z170A SLI PLUS in this review being the latest model. The goal of the SLI PLUS is form, function and application at a low price, with a few future-proof features and enough hardware for most PC enthusiasts systems./news/sandisk-professional-pro-blade-portable-ssd-ecosystem-review.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-professional-pro-blade-portable-ssd-ecosystem-review.htmlWestern Digital had unveiled the SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE modular SSD ecosystem in mid-2022 to serve the needs of the professional market. The PRO-BLADE family comprises of three product lines - compact and sturdy NVMe drives (PRO-BLADE SSD Mags), a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) enclosure for the mags (PRO-BLADE TRANSPORT), and a four-bay Thunderbolt enclosure (PRO-BLADE STATION) directly compatible with the mags. The mags are essentially M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs with a custom connector that directly exposes the internal PCIe Gen3 x4 interface, albeit with support for a higher number of mating cycles compared to the native M./news/tessellation-physx-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-480-and-gtx.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tessellation-physx-nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-480-and-gtx.htmlTessellation & PhysX We’ll kick off our in-depth look at the performance of the GTX400 series with Tessellation and PhysX. These are two of the biggest features that NVIDIA is pushing with the GTX400 series, with tessellation in particular being the major beneficiary of NVIDIA’s PolyMorph Engine strategy. As we covered in our GF100 Recap, NVIDIA seeks to separate themselves from AMD in spite of the rigid feature set imposed by DirectX 11./news/the-card-3dfx-voodoo5-5500.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-card-3dfx-voodoo5-5500.htmlThe Card The only VSA-100 based product currently available is the Voodoo5 5500 AGP, featuring two VSA-100 chips and a total of 64MB of SDRAM. The core and memory are both clocked at 166MHz. Because the two chips are working together in SLI mode, the 64MB of memory is split evenly between the two, and since they are essentially independent of one another, the textures in any scene must be duplicated in each set of 32MB of SDRAM./news/the-new-chipset-almador-m-intel-mobile-cpu-chipset.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-new-chipset-almador-m-intel-mobile-cpu-chipset.htmlThe new chipset: Almador-M Just as in the desktop's Tualatin-256 case, the mobile Tualatin will require a new chipset. This chipset comes in the form of a mobile version of the desktop chipset that Intel canned: the Almador-M. Slated to arrive in the third quarter of 2001, along with the Tualatin, the Almador-M chipset is the direction all Intel based notebooks will take. The Almador-M chipset comes with quite a few features that make it more powerful than the currently available 440 BX mobile chipset./news/thumb-drive-meets-massive-capacity.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thumb-drive-meets-massive-capacity.htmlSilicon Power's flash storage product line caters extensively to the entry-level market. In October 2023, the company introduced two new portable SSDs in a thumb drive form-factor. The MS70, with a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A interface, is now available in capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB. The DS72 (also available in the same capacities) has a dual-interface design with both Type-C and Type-A interfaces. Performance claims of 1050 MBps reads and 850 MBps writes land the MS70 and DS72 in the high-capacity high-performance UFD segment./news/ventura-ultra-480gb-sf-2281-and-atom-usb-sticks.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ventura-ultra-480gb-sf-2281-and-atom-usb-sticks.htmlOne of the first products we saw at Mushkin’s suite is their final USB 3.0 USB stick with a SandForce SF-2281 controller. Not everyone needs ultra-high performance from a USB stick, but if 39K IOPS of random read/write performance sounds enticing, this could be your solution. The Ventura Ultra has been quite popular apparently, remaining sold out at most online stores, and Mushkin is now brining a 480GB model to the party to join the already available 60GB, 120GB, and 240GB capacities./news/video-encoding-performance-quicktime-6-0-professional.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/video-encoding-performance-quicktime-6-0-professional.htmlOur final encoding test takes the same source file and encodes it to a MPEG-4 Quicktime file for streaming over the Internet. We used the Normal MPEG-4 settings for the conversion, and the time was recorded in minutes (lower being better). Quicktime 6.0 Pro Encoding Performance Converting DVD to MPEG-4 Internet Stream - Lower is Better | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 |/news/western-digital-to-use-risc-v-for-controllers-processors.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-to-use-risc-v-for-controllers-processors.htmlWestern Digital recently announced plans to use the RISC-V ISA across its existing product stack as well as for future products that will combine processing and storage. The company plans to develop RISC-V cores internally and license them from third parties to use in its own controllers and SoCs, along with using third-party RISC-V based controllers. To develop the RISC-V ecosystem, Western Digital has already engaged in partnerships and investments in various companies working on RISC-V projects./news/what-is-sata-express-testing-sata-express-and-why.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-is-sata-express-testing-sata-express-and-why.htmlWhat Is SATA Express? Officially SATA Express (SATAe from now on) is part of the SATA 3.2 standard. It's not a new command or signaling protocol but merely a specification for a connector that combines both traditional SATA and PCIe signals into one simple connector. As a result SATAe is fully compatible with all existing SATA drives and cables and the only real difference is that the same connector (although not the same SATA cable) can be used with PCIe SSDs./news/wolfenstein-ii-the-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-6gb-founders.htmlMon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wolfenstein-ii-the-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-6gb-founders.htmlWolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Vulkan) id Software is popularly known for a few games involving shooting stuff until it dies, just with different 'stuff' for each one: Nazis, demons, or other players while scorning the laws of physics. Wolfenstein II is the latest of the first, the sequel of a modern reboot series developed by MachineGames and built on id Tech 6. While the tone is significantly less pulpy nowadays, the game is still a frenetic FPS at heart, succeeding DOOM as a modern Vulkan flagship title and arriving as a pure Vullkan implementation rather than the originally OpenGL DOOM./news/akitio-launches-node-titan-egfx-thunderbolt-3-enclosure.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/akitio-launches-node-titan-egfx-thunderbolt-3-enclosure.htmlAKiTiO has introduced a new Thunderbolt 3 eGFX enclosure that has been designed specifically with professional users in mind. The Node Titan can house power-hungry professional-grade graphics cards due to its 650 W power supply unit. AKiTiO was among the first companies to introduce a TB3 eGFX chassis for video cards back in late 2016. A little over three years later, after learning from its customers about their needs, AKiTiO comes up with its Node Titan that upgrades the original Node in every possible way./news/amd-expanding-into-tesla-model-3-and-model-y.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-expanding-into-tesla-model-3-and-model-y.htmlOne constant theme throughout AMD’s recent resurgence into high-performance computing has been the messaging around the scalability of its platform. Building a processor that can scale both from single digit watts all the way up to big water cooled compute servers is no easy task, but also combining multiple types of processors into a single chip to also scale just adds layers of difficulty. AMD were keen to point this out at its recent CES presentation, stating that the RDNA2 graphics architecture is immensely scalable, from mobile to notebook to desktop to server, but also through to embedded, industrial, and automotive./news/amd-launches-the-radeon-hd-6950-1gb.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-launches-the-radeon-hd-6950-1gb.htmlGood morning everyone. Today AMD is launching the long-awaited 1GB version of the Radeon HD 6950. For reasons we can't really delve in to, the NDA for the 6950 is expiring here at 4am PDT, however we're not ready to talk about the 6950 1GB quite yet. We'll be back in a few hours with a full explaination, but in the mean time we can say that performance is virtually identical to the 2GB card throughout our test suite at 1920x1200 and 1680x1050./news/apple-s-server-hardware-and-server-monitor.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/apple-s-server-hardware-and-server-monitor.htmlOne thing to mention in a review of Lion Server is the state of Apple’s server hardware. As you may or may not remember, Apple discontinued its Xserve line of rack-mounted server hardware back in January, and slightly modified two of their desktop models to fill the void - Lion Server can be installed on any Lion-capable Mac, but these are the systems that are actually shipped with it installed./news/asrock-z390m-itx-ac-intel-z390-motherboard-overview-50.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-z390m-itx-ac-intel-z390-motherboard-overview-50.htmlASRock Z390M ITX/ac The ASRock is the only manufacturer to release two mini-ITX motherboards at the launch of the Z390 chipset and the Z390M ITX/ac stands out for quite a number of reasons. First of all the Z390M ITX/ac has dual Gigabit NIC with two LAN ports on the rear panel. Secondly, ASRock has managed to cram six SATA ports onto this board with every port featuring straight angled connectors. Memory support on the Z390M ITX/ac is provided from two RAM slots with a capacity of up to 32 GB and support for up to DDR4-4000./news/asus-drw-0402p-d-asus-joins-the-dual-format.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-drw-0402p-d-asus-joins-the-dual-format.htmlConstruction The drive shipped with an average amount of media, one 52X CDR, and a 4X DVD-R. We thought the 52X CDR was a little unusual since the drive is only capable of 16X CD writes. Cables, manuals and the drive were all present too, of course. Click to enlarge. For bundled software, ASUS went with a Sonic suite (bundled with Sonic DLA 4 and RecordNow DX 4.6). While Sonic is a good recording suite, we were a little surprised that ASUS did not bundle Ahead’s Nero with the drive (which they have bundled in any other optical drive that we have seen)./news/asus-launches-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1060-models-with.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-launches-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1060-models-with.htmlASUS has released graphics cards based on NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 and 1080 GPUs that are equipped with faster memory. The new add-in-boards (AIBs) are designed to offer greater performance in high resolutions than reference designs and enable ASUS to charge a premium for the higher FPS. Back in February when NVIDIA cut the price on the GTX 1080, the company also announced that they would be working with partners to sell factory overclocked cards with higher speed grades of memory./news/atom-s-fsb-and-multi-core-aspirations.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/atom-s-fsb-and-multi-core-aspirations.htmlAll Intel Front Side Buses (FSBs) use Gunning Transistor Logic; it produces a good signal that's clearly capable of reaching incredibly high speeds, presently up to 1600MHz. But remember, Atom isn't about being the fastest, just about being fast enough - leaving some room for improvement here. A GTL FSB uses on-die termination to deliver a very clean data eye each clock, necessary when operating at very high frequencies. Atom isn't the most data hungry processor in the world and thus it can get by with a 400MHz or 533MHz FSB, thus the GTL FSB ends up being overkill./news/biostar-ta990fxe-overview-and-visual-inspection.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/biostar-ta990fxe-overview-and-visual-inspection.htmlBiostar TA990FXE  Coming in at the cheapest 990FX board of this roundup, we have AnandTech’s first Biostar board in almost a year and a half.  To me, as an enthusiast, when I hear the name ‘Biostar’, certain adjectives come to mind – the most prominent of which is ‘inexpensive’.  As a home system builder and enthusiast, I have come across Biostar offerings when looking at motherboards online, and they are usually quite cheap./news/black-and-gold-for-amd-50.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/black-and-gold-for-amd-50.htmlWith a theme that fits in with AMD's 50th anniversary, MSI has unveiled the MEG X570 Ace motherboard. With a black and gold design for a more elegant look, it also has a good range of features including triple PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, and active cooling integrated into its chipset heatsink. The MSI MEG X570 Ace motherboard represents its premium MEG range and as we've seen from its range on the Intel Z390 chipset, MSI has followed the same naming structure for users to easily identify which each range signifies./news/cambridge-soundworks-digital-2-1-speakers.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cambridge-soundworks-digital-2-1-speakers.htmlToday's computer speaker market leaves the end-user a bit out of breath. You have a multitude of features to choose from. Cambridge Soundworks has been one of the top players in this market for quite some time now. Offering everything from 2-channel to 5.1 channel speaker solutions. The demand for more power and more speakers has been met with an onslaught of 4 and 5 channel-based solutions. But what about the user that just needs a couple of speakers and a sub?/news/dell-ultrasharp-u2711-quality-has-a-price.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-ultrasharp-u2711-quality-has-a-price.htmlWe haven't had a display review since our desperately seeking quality LCDs article. That doesn't mean there haven't been interesting displays released during that timeframe, but the trends highlighted in that last article have continued. TN panels are everywhere and are by far the cheapest option, although they do have a bit of competition from E-IPS displays. For example, we have 1080p 23" TN LCDs starting at under $200, compared with 1080p 23"/news/dispelling-sata-myths.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dispelling-sata-myths.htmlScott Wasson and I were wandering the IDF Tech Showcase area last month and ran across the SATA International Organization booth. This booth in particular caught our interest because they were showcasing the latest SATA spec, SATA 2.5. We were both curious to see what had changed with SATA 2.5, and what ensued led me to make this post. When the first SATA spec that we started seeing on drives and motherboards was revision 1./news/display-measurement-power-the-huawei-mate-8-review.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-measurement-power-the-huawei-mate-8-review.htmlDisplay Measurement The Mate 8 sports a 6” diameter 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution screen manufactured by JDI. This is again an IPS-Neo LCD screen which is supposed to offer higher contrast ratios compared to other LCD technologies. The display driver IC is NovaTek’s NT35695, the same one found in other devices such as last year’s Mate 7, the P8 or HTC One M8. The DDIC supports and is run in MIPI command mode, thus supporting panel self-refresh (PSR)./news/dream-system-buyer-s-guide-high-end-systems.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dream-system-buyer-s-guide-high-end-systems.htmlDream System Not having to worry about price is a luxury few people have, but it never hurts to dream up what you would buy in such a situation.  Or maybe you've just won the lottery.  Perhaps it's not even your own money involved thanks to a grant or simply an ungodly budget.  Whether dreaming or actually looking to buy, putting together the dream system can be a tricky, but fun, proposition./news/far-cry-5-the-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-6gb.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/far-cry-5-the-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-6gb.htmlFar Cry 5 (DX11) The latest title in Ubisoft's Far Cry series lands us right into the unwelcoming arms of an armed militant cult in Montana, one of the many middles-of-nowhere in the United States. With a charismatic and enigmatic adversary, gorgeous landscapes of the northwestern American flavor, and lots of violence, it is classic Far Cry fare. Graphically intensive in an open-world environment, the game mixes in action and exploration./news/final-words-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-3-showdown-amd.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-3-showdown-amd.htmlFinal Words Two laptops. Two platforms. It is rare to have a chance to see a manufacturer offer such equal footing to both AMD and Intel by outfitting a premium laptop with processors from both. It represents a rare opportunity to get to test the latest processors from AMD and Intel in a laptop in such an apples-to-apples fashion. In the laptop space, design, cooling, and a manufacturers requirements can play a big part in how a particular chip performs, thanks to adjustable power level settings, surface temperature adjustments, and more./news/gpu-performance-hot-stuff.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-hot-stuff.htmlGPU Performance This generation GPU performance uplifts of the new Snapdragon 855 were relatively muted in devices that we’ve tested until now; Qualcomm had only promised and managed an average improvement of 20% over last year’s Snapdragon 845, even though the chip came on a new process node that should have enabled it for larger power and performance improvements. The OnePlus 7 Pro thus seemingly shouldn’t be any different than the S10, G8 or other S855 phones in terms of the peak performance of the phone./news/intel-confirms-some-details-about-28-core-5-ghz.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-confirms-some-details-about-28-core-5-ghz.htmlWhen Intel demonstrated its 28-core system running at 5 GHz at the Computex 2018 keynote this week, there were many questions surrounding the hardware and what was required in order to showcase this. The presentation was relatively light on details – perhaps purposefully so – however Intel SVP and GM Gregory Bryant stated that the processor was set to come out during Q4. You can read our coverage about the launch in this article:/news/intel-launches-ssd-dc-s3610-s3710-enterprise-ssds.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-launches-ssd-dc-s3610-s3710-enterprise-ssds.htmlLate last week Intel updated its enterprise SATA SSD lineup with the 'Data Center' DC S3610 and DC S3710. At the time of the announcement the details of what exactly had changed were rather scarce, but I just got off of the phone with Intel and have a better understanding of the announcement. The S3610 and S3710 are based on Intel's second generation SATA 6Gbps controller, which was first introduced in the high capacity (1.2TB & 1./news/introducing-the-firepro-w-series.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/introducing-the-firepro-w-series.htmlIntroducing the FirePro W Series Altogether AMD will be launching four cards for the FirePro W series. All of these cards are based on AMD’s Southern Islands GPUs, specifically their Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs. For the purposes of this article we’ll be reviewing two of these cards, the FirePro W9000 and its younger sibling the W8000, the two Tahiti cards of the family. Meanwhile, in keeping with past FirePro cards AMD is holding steady on their sales & support methods./news/iwill-xa100plus-aladdin-v-super7-board.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/iwill-xa100plus-aladdin-v-super7-board.htmlThe Super7 Motherboard Market is DEAD.  Try telling that to the thousands of Socket-7 AGP and Super7 advocates around the world and see if you don't get confronted with a nice little mob.  AMD has incredible plans for the future of Socket-7 and the Super7 standard, however they cannot be carried through if mainboard manufacturers don't realize that there is a demand for high-end Super7 motherboards.  If AMD is going to treat the Super7 platform in its dying years as a potentially high-end arena, and if AMD is going to challenge Intel using an interface that dates back to over 2 years ago, motherboard manufacturers are going to have to take the risk with AMD./news/more-setup-altec-lansing-ada-890.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/more-setup-altec-lansing-ada-890.htmlMore Setup Once the connections within the speaker system have been made, it is time to interface the system to the source. Included with the system are a variety of adaptors, cables, and diagrams designed to make the process easier. There are a couple of ways to connect the system to a standard computer system sound card that encompasses both digital and analog connections. For four channel gaming, where the sound processing is done in the soundcard and software, the output takes the form of two stereo audio streams./news/motorola-moto-g-review.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/motorola-moto-g-review.htmlI like what the new Motorola is doing. It seems like an eternity ago, but I remember when phone launches with Motorola meant a variety of variants all with their own idiosyncrasies. Since re-launching itself, Motorola has launched just two new lines of device – the higher end Moto X, and its mass-market cousin, the Moto G which we’re taking a look at. That’s a bit of a simplification, as Motorola is still selling five Droid-branded handsets, but it’s a huge consolidation that’s much easier to follow./news/msi-meg-z690-ace-ddr5.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-meg-z690-ace-ddr5.htmlMSI MEG Z690 Ace (DDR5) As it stands at the time of writing, the MSI MEG Z690 Ace is the brand's premier flagship model, until the Godlike hits the shelves, which is likely to be after Alder Lake's launch. Rolling back to the Ace, and it's jam-packed full of premium features as we've come to expect over the years including the previous MSI MEG Z590 Ace. Looking at the aesthetic, MSI has gone with a black and gold theme without the need for integrated RGB LED lighting./news/new-stuff-power-management-nehalem.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-stuff-power-management-nehalem.htmlNew Stuff: Power ManagementAt this year’s IDF the biggest Nehalem disclosures had to do with power management. Nehalem’s design was actually changed on a fairly fundamental level compared to previous microprocessors. Dynamic domino logic was used extensively in microprocessors like the Pentium 4 and IBM’s Cell processor in order to drive clock speeds up. With Nehalem, Intel has removed all domino logic and moved back to an entirely static CMOS design./news/noise-and-thermal-testing-dedicated-gpu.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/noise-and-thermal-testing-dedicated-gpu.htmlNoise and Thermal Testing, Dedicated GPU With our dedicated GPU testing, I decided to mix things up a bit with the BitFenix Prodigy and put the screws to it a little more. BitFenix designed this case to be able to support high end gaming systems, so I tested it with the usual Zotac GeForce GTS 450 Eco; however, I also tested with the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti we ordinarily use for full ATX enclosures./news/nvidia-tegra-k1-preview-architecture-analysis.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-tegra-k1-preview-architecture-analysis.htmlNVIDIA has taken to using CES as its platform for launching members of its Tegra mobile SoC family. This year was no different as it shifted branding a bit in its announcement of the Tegra K1, formerly known as Project Logan. With Tegra 2 NVIDIA’s big selling point was being first to dual-core in Android. Tegra 3 attempted to do the same with being first to quad-core. Tegra 4 just made things faster./news/radeon-open-compute-platform-rocm-1-3-released-boltzmann.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/radeon-open-compute-platform-rocm-1-3-released-boltzmann.htmlKicking off this week is SC, the annual ACM/IEEE sponsored supercomputing conference in the United States. At this show last year, AMD announced the Boltzmann Initiative, their ambitious plan to overhaul their HPC software stack for GPUs. Recognizing that much of NVIDIA’s early and continued success has been due to the quality of the CUDA software ecosystem, AMD set out to create an ecosystem that could rival and even interact with CUDA, in hopes of closing the software gap between the two companies./news/seagate-barracuda-7200-10-750gb-size-does-matter.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-barracuda-7200-10-750gb-size-does-matter.html"We are what we repeatedly do." This statement by the famous Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, and zoologist Aristotle expresses our beliefs about the technological capabilities of Seagate. Seagate has been at the forefront of storage design, manufacturing, and service capabilities while attaining the status of the world's largest supplier of hard disk drives with their acquisition of Maxtor a few months ago.Seagate recently announced the Barracuda 7200.10 as the successor to their Barracuda 7200./news/smartphone-audio-testing-htc-one-m8-and-samsung-galaxy.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/smartphone-audio-testing-htc-one-m8-and-samsung-galaxy.htmlSince our initial turn in testing smartphone audio, I’ve had a lot more time to play with the APx582 from Audio Precision. I’ve also received far more feedback than I ever expected to on this subject. I have made a few changes to the testing method that I’m going to outline along with discussing some of the reasoning behind the changes. All tests are now run manually instead of automated over USB For most phones, running over USB and running them manually provide the same results./news/soc-analysis-cpu-performance-the-apple-ipad-pro-review.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/soc-analysis-cpu-performance-the-apple-ipad-pro-review.htmlSoC Analysis: CPU Performance Now that we’ve had a chance to take a look at A9X’s design and a bit on the difference between the x86 and ARM ISAs, let’s take a look at A9X’s performance at a lower level. From a CPU perspective A9X is just a higher clocked implementation of the dual-core Twister CPU design we first saw on A9 last year. As a result the fundamentals of the CPU architecture have not changed relative to A9./news/sweet-nectar-haze-ps3-exclusive.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sweet-nectar-haze-ps3-exclusive.htmlSweet Nectar… Members of the Mantel force are suited up in full body armor trimmed in bright yellow and wear helmets with shiny yellow face shields that give the appearance of giant bumblebees. No doubt the game's developers saw the irony between the soldiers' appearance and the drug, Nectar. The Nectar used by Mantel is contained in packs worn on the soldiers' backs and is injected intravenously into the back of their necks./news/system-performance-the-asus-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-asus-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming.htmlSystem Performance Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to the manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested./news/system-performance-the-dell-xps-15-9550-review-infinity.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-dell-xps-15-9550-review-infinity.htmlSystem Performance The XPS 15 is offered with three processor choices. The base model is the 35-Watt Intel Core i3-6100H, which is a dual-core Skylake chip with a 2.7 GHz frequency and 3 MB of cache. While I’m sure that it’s fine for most tasks, the base model is also lacking a discrete GPU and means you are only going to be using the integrated graphics, which in this case is the HD 530./news/test-design-searching-for-the-memory-holy-grail.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/test-design-searching-for-the-memory-holy-grail.htmlTest Design One of the difficulties in testing memory is that most of the memory benchmarks available are synthetic. While synthetic benchmarks can be useful in comparing performance, they can also paint a distorted picture of real-world performance. This is the reason why AnandTech has always preferred benchmarking with real applications. Benchmarks using games are dependent on many system components for their results, including the CPU speed and Video Card, which have a major impact on the final scores./news/the-amd-athlon-too-hot-for-pc-amd-cpu.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-athlon-too-hot-for-pc-amd-cpu.htmlThe AMD Athlon: Too hot for PC As it stands, the Athlon is quite an attractive processor, especially in the retail market.  The perfect example of this is the fact that you can currently pick up a 1GHz Athlon, using the Thunderbird core, for under $300.  Because of its extremely competitive price, retail boxes feature the CPU in systems that range from $1,400 - $1,600 in overall system price (not including a monitor)./news/the-compass-understanding-the-iphone-3gs.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-compass-understanding-the-iphone-3gs.htmlThe CompassThe new iPhone 3GS has one more piece of hardware: a digital compass. When Apple made the 3GS announcement I kept IMing my friends and saying about how I couldn't wait to use the sweet new compass, yes, sometimes my sarcasm isn't very thinly veiled. If you fire up the compass app you get, well, a compass. Hold it in front of you, move around and it tells you what direction you're pointing in./news/the-sound-and-the-fury.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-sound-and-the-fury.htmlAlienware's Medium-Sized Monster Understanding that many users would just as soon want to be able to game on the go without having to lug a ten pound land monster with them, Alienware offers the M14x, a notebook that offers portable performance without breaking your back in the process. Featuring support for quad-core Sandy Bridge mobile processors and a reasonably fast GeForce GT 555M, the M14x promises an awful lot of power in a reasonably small package./news/understanding-dual-domain-pixels-in-the-iphone-6-and.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/understanding-dual-domain-pixels-in-the-iphone-6-and.htmlIn the launch announcement, Apple announced that their new display had dual domain pixels, which improved viewing angles. Unfortunately they dropped the subject at this, which make for a lot of room for confusion. Anyone that does a cursory analysis through Google will only find references to this type of display in monitors for medical use or similarly technology used by IBM monitors. However, dual domain pixels are actually not as complicated as they seem./news/z490-z390-8-core-cfl-in-q4.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/z490-z390-8-core-cfl-in-q4.htmlWith Computex just around the corner, a lot of thought is being put to exactly what are we expecting to see at the show. There are questions about AMD’s next generation Threadripper parts, and when Intel is going to launch the Z390 chipset whose name has been floating around for a number of months now. Due to a video published online by bluechip Computer, an IT Distributor based in Germany, some more information is starting to come through./news/zen-4-execution-pipeline-familiar-pipes-with-more-caching.htmlSun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zen-4-execution-pipeline-familiar-pipes-with-more-caching.htmlFinally, let’s take a look at the Zen 4 microarchitecture’s execution flow in-depth. As we noted before, AMD is seeing a 13% IPC improvement over Zen 3. So how did they do it? Throughout the Zen 4 architecture, there is not any single radical change. Zen 4 does make a few notable changes, but the basics of the instruction flow are unchanged, especially on the back-end execution pipelines. Rather, many (if not most) of the IPC improvements in Zen 4 come from improving cache and buffer sizes in some respect./news/1440-1600-per-eye-and-120-144-hz-lcds.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/1440-1600-per-eye-and-120-144-hz-lcds.htmlValve this week started to take pre-orders on its next-generation Index VR headset that was developed entirely in-house. The product significantly improves all the capabilities of the HTC Vive (the first Steam VR headset) when it comes to screen quality, controllers, ergonomics, and tracking (according to the developer). One of the key part of every VR headset is its display subsystem. The Valve Index is equipped with two LCD screens featuring a 1440×1600 resolution per eye (2880×1600 combined resolution), an up to 120 Hz refresh rate (as well as 144 Hz in overclocked mode), and an expanded field of view of around 130°./news/4-4-pounds-of-gaming-performance.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/4-4-pounds-of-gaming-performance.html4.4 Pounds of Gaming Performance In all of our synthetic metrics, the Alienware M11x R3's updated processor and GPU helped it put in a strong showing against even full-voltage chips from the Arrandale generation. Sandy Bridge's aggressive Turbo Boost seems to be paying big dividends towards helping the line finally get out from under being heavily CPU-limited, so let's see how that pans out once we start using it for what it was intended for: gaming./news/a-closer-look-at-the-kabini-die.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-closer-look-at-the-kabini-die.htmlWith our review done I did the one thing I've been keeping myself from doing for the past week: I pulled the heatsink off my Kabini review notebook and grabbed a shot of the SoC. I guess this is technically the world's first consumer quad-core x86 SoC. Haswell will come in a single-chip solution as well but only as a dual-core part. Kabini needs no companion platform/IO controller chip, everything is integrated on this single piece of silicon./news/amd-overdrive-the-anandtech-guide-to-video-card-overclocking.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-overdrive-the-anandtech-guide-to-video-card-overclocking.htmlAMD Overdrive The first utility we're going to look at is AMD's OverDrive utility. This utility is automatically included with AMD’s Catalyst software suite. OverDrive is AMD’s take on overclocking and is designed to work with all AMD based graphics cards, so let's take a look and see what OverDrive has to offer. First off, before you can use OverDrive you are prompted to review and accept AMD's license agreement./news/amd-releases-radeon-software-adrenalin-edition-18-8-2.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-releases-radeon-software-adrenalin-edition-18-8-2.htmlToday, AMD released Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.8.2, featuring support for Strange Brigade, which releases tomorrow, as well as F1 2018. This update also supersedes the Strange Brigade Early Access driver that quietly released a couple days ago, and for that game AMD is observing up to 3 – 5% performance uplift compared to 18.8.1 on the Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX 580 8GB. Otherwise, 18.8.2 brings a number of bugfixes, including those for Far Cry 5./news/arm-announces-ethos-n78-npu-bigger-and-more-efficient.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-announces-ethos-n78-npu-bigger-and-more-efficient.htmlYesterday Arm released the new Cortex-A78, Cortex-X1 CPUs and the new Mali-G78 GPU. Alongside the new “key” IPs from the company, we also saw the reveal of the newest Ethos-N78 NPU, announcing Arm’s new second-generation design. Over the last few years we’ve seen a literal explosion of machine learning accelerators in the industry, with a literal wild west of different IP solutions out there. On the mobile front particularly there’s been a huge amount of different custom solutions developed in-house by SoC vendors, this includes designs such as from Qualcomm, HiSilicon, MediaTek and Samsung LSI./news/asrock-teases-phantom-gaming-graphics-cards.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-teases-phantom-gaming-graphics-cards.htmlASRock has uploaded a video to its YouTube channel that promotes its upcoming Phantom Gaming brand. While the footage does not say anything directly, some of the elements shown in the video imply that the company is about to introduce its first graphics cards. The video epicts a set of various features and contours of different shapes and colors along with words “Fast”, “Mysterious”, and “Unpredictable”. No actual product is exposed and the adjectives rather imply on general features of the Phantom Gaming brand than on a particular device./news/bios-screenshots-and-interesting-settings.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-screenshots-and-interesting-settings.htmlBIOS Screenshots and Interesting Settings ASUS boards are known for their high level of customization and the Rampage Formula is no exception. The main menu that provides a majority of the options normally associated with overclocking is renamed "Extreme Tweaker", which we feel is entirely appropriate. Users can adjust everything from here, from bus speeds to voltages and memory timings to MCH parameters. Although a few options with indeterminate purposes still exist (for example, "/news/cellular-wifi-speaker-noise-rejection.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cellular-wifi-speaker-noise-rejection.htmlCellular and WiFi With the advent of MSM8974 comes the third generation of Qualcomm’s LTE modem, in this case what 8974 brings over the second generation is new Category 4 LTE (up to 150 Mbps on the downlink) over the previous generation’s Category 3 maximum, 3GPP release 10 carrier aggregation, up to 3 carriers of HSPA+ aggregated, and of course the requisite CDMA 1xAdvanced/EVDO, GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Of course it’s up to each operator and handset maker to make their own decision regarding what features they want implemented via the choice of frontend RF components, and in the case of the Note 3 those insights will really have to wait until someone tears one down./news/corsair-releases-the-new-ironclaw-rgb-wireless-gaming-mouse.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/corsair-releases-the-new-ironclaw-rgb-wireless-gaming-mouse.htmlAdding to their ever-growing range of PC gaming peripherals, Corsair has unveiled its Ironclaw RGB wireless gaming mouse. Similar to its predecessor, the Ironclaw RGB, the new wireless variant adds its Slipstream Wireless technology and features an 18,000 dpi optical sensor. Performance wise, the Corsair Ironclaw RGB Wireless mouse features the same PMW 3391 sensor as its wired counterpart and allows users to push the sensitivity all the way up to 18,000 dpi./news/cpu-performance-short-form-the-gigabyte-h370n-wifi-review.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-short-form-the-gigabyte-h370n-wifi-review.htmlCPU Performance, Short Form For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC for the supported frequency of the processor for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default./news/dfi-lanparty-nf4-sli-dr-features-and-layout.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dfi-lanparty-nf4-sli-dr-features-and-layout.htmlDFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR: Features and Layout  Specification  DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR CPU Interface Socket 939 Athlon 64 Chipset nForce4 SLI (single chip) BUS Speeds 200MHz to 456MHz (in 1MHz increments) PCI/AGP Speeds Asynchronous (Fixed) PCI Speeds 100MHz to 145MHz in 1MHz increments Core Voltage Auto, 0.8V to 1.55V in 0.025V increments (Normal) PLUS *104%, 110%, 113%, 123%, 126%, 133%, 136% (Special - to 1./news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-290x-review.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-amd-radeon-r9-290x-review.htmlFinal Words Bringing this review to a close, going into this launch AMD has been especially excited about the 290X and it’s easy to see why. Traditionally AMD has not been able to compete with NVIDIA’s big flagship GPUs, and while that hasn’t stopped AMD from creating a comfortable spot for themselves, it does mean that NVIDIA gets left to their own devices. As such while the sub-$500 market has been heavily competitive this entire generation, the same could not be said about the market over $500 until now./news/gaming-performance-1080p-the-amd-ryzen-9-7900-ryzen.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-1080p-the-amd-ryzen-9-7900-ryzen.htmlGaming Performance: 1080p Moving along, here's a look at a more balanced gaming scenario, running games at 1080p with maximum image quality. We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 7000 series 65 W SKUs, as well as the other Ryzen 7000 processors tested, at the following settings: DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 13th Gen DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000 DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with DDR4./news/gigabyte-z390-aorus-pro-wifi-conclusion.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z390-aorus-pro-wifi-conclusion.htmlAs it's been mentioned numerous times throughout this review, the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI sits in a highly competitive segment with a variety of models in the $180-200 price bracket. GIGABYTE themselves have three models in this segment with this model at $200, the non-Wi-Fi Z390 Aorus Pro ($190) and the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Elite with a slightly cheaper price of $180. One of the main benefits and what sets it aside from its other models of the Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI is the inclusive Intel 9560 802./news/hands-on-with-intel-vroc-the-intel-ssd-dc.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hands-on-with-intel-vroc-the-intel-ssd-dc.htmlTest System For this review, we're using the same system Intel provided for our Optane SSD DC P4800X review. This is a 2U server based on Intel's current Xeon Scalable platform codenamed Purley. The system includes two Xeon Gold 6154 18-core Skylake-SP processors, and 16GB DDR4-2666 DIMMs on all twelve memory channels for a total of 192GB of DRAM. Each of the two processors provides 48 PCI Express lanes plus a four-lane DMI link./news/htc-droid-incredible-4g-lte-review-one-alternative.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htc-droid-incredible-4g-lte-review-one-alternative.htmlThe original Droid Incredible was released as the third wave in Verizon’s push to battle Apple’s iPhone with modern, capable Android phones. Though its internals and display were almost plucked straight from a Nexus One, the exterior of the device took on a more aggressive and playful tone, with crimson red accents around the camera and under the battery cover. The 1 GHz Snapdragon SoC, large (for the time) 3.7” AMOLED display, and cutting edge 8MP camera made the phone worthy of its place as a ‘halo’ device on Verizon./news/improving-on-expandable-cpu-cooling.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/improving-on-expandable-cpu-cooling.htmlMany businesses devoted to the design and delivery of liquid cooling systems for PCs were established when the trend of liquid cooling emerged in the 1990’s. One of them was Alphacool, a German business that expanded their product lines to include liquid coolers for use in both industrial and medical applications. Using liquid-based cooling systems into a home PC faced very low adoption rates at the time. The complexity of liquid cooling, which necessitates considerable additional effort and user awareness, possibly was the largest drawback of most products available at the time./news/interview-with-aicha-evans-intel-s-chief-strategy-officer.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/interview-with-aicha-evans-intel-s-chief-strategy-officer.htmlExpanding into several different new markets has challenges that only the most well positioned and structured companies can achieve. Having covered the growth of Intel over the last ten years, the nuances of how Intel has expanded over the last 2-3 years require more analysis than ever before. The goals of each of Intel’s different business units, aside from making the company money, are multi-faced and sometimes orthogonal – sometimes as a journalist it makes life easy to be hyper-focused on one segment of the company!/news/matrox-s-headcasting-technology-matrox-millennium-g550-matrox-s.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/matrox-s-headcasting-technology-matrox-millennium-g550-matrox-s.htmlMatrox’s HeadCasting Technology At this point the G550 looks like nothing more than a G450 with an odd T&L engine but it’s this “odd” T&L engine that Matrox is centering the main feature of the G550 on; that feature is HeadCasting. Matrox is positioning the G550 as the centerpiece to being able to do Graphics over IP, essentially low bandwidth video conferencing.  The problem with video conferencing over the net right now is the lack of bandwidth between the users engaging in the video conference./news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-samsung-960-evo-1tb.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-samsung-960-evo-1tb.htmlMixed Random Read/Write Performance The mixed random I/O benchmark starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. The queue depth is 3 for the entire test and each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. As with the pure random write test, this test is restricted to a 16GB span of the drive, which is empty save for the 16GB test file./news/msi-announces-windpad-110w-with-new-amd-z-01.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-announces-windpad-110w-with-new-amd-z-01.htmlThe tablet market is expanding every bit as rapidly as netbooks did when they first arrived, and then some. MSI has announced their entry into the market today, and it's a very different breed of tablet compared to the largely Android-based units available. The new WindPad 110W has a heck of a lot going on under the hood, including some new kit from AMD. Unlike the Android-based tablets that have been multiplying in the market, the WindPad 110W is running a full-on Windows 7 Home Premium installation, and a peek under the hood reveals a beastly amount of hardware for a tablet./news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-coming-in-january.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-coming-in-january.htmlWhile we've been holding our breath for a die-shrunk GT200, in the first announcement of something really new since the introduction of GT200, NVIDIA is promising a single card multi-GPU solution based on a GPU that falls between a GTX 260 core 216 and a GTX 280 in terms of performance. The fact that the first thing we hear after GT200 is another ultra high end launch is interesting. If the end result is pushing the GeForce GTX 260 under $200, and the GTX 280 under $300, then we can definitely get behind that: it would be sort of a midrange re-introduction by pushing current GT200 parts down in price./news/nvidia-riva-128-riva-tnt.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-riva-128-riva-tnt.htmlIt's All About Looks - Riva 128 The predecessor of nVidia's latest chipset, the Riva 128 gained its fame for dethroning the 3Dfx Voodoo as the fastest overall 3D accelerators of its time.  The Riva 128 is still an average performer by today's standards, while it's not going to give the next generation chipsets a run for their money, it gives you what you need, and lots of it.  The Riva 128 features proven Direct3D and OpenGL support, and a generally welcomed presence among games./news/return-of-the-ultrapixel-the-htc-one-m8-review.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/return-of-the-ultrapixel-the-htc-one-m8-review.htmlReturn of the UltraPixel As I mentioned earlier, the One’s primary camera sensor remains unchanged from last year’s model. The M8’s primary shooter is a 4MP “UltraPixel” camera with 2.0µm square pixels. As Brian (correctly) theorized last year, there were two sources for HTC’s UltraPixel camera: ST (VD68969) and OmniVision (OV4688), the latter being the limited second source. Due to quality control problems with the ST sensor the M8, like later models of the M7, uses the OmniVision sensor exclusively./news/samsung-970-pro-2-tb-ssd-model-listed.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-970-pro-2-tb-ssd-model-listed.htmlAt least two retailers have begun listing a 2 TB version of Samsung’s 970 Pro SSD. One of the highest performing drives on the market – and one of the only remaining MLC drives – a larger 970 Pro will give high-performance users another option for high-capacity SSDs, eliminating the need to sacrifice performance for capacity – at least at the 2 TB tier. When Samsung introduced its 970 Pro and 970 Evo SSDs last year, it got itself into a paradox situation./news/sandisk-extreme-portable-ssd-v2-and-wd-my-passport.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-extreme-portable-ssd-v2-and-wd-my-passport.htmlExternal bus-powered storage devices have grown both in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Thanks to rapid advancements in flash technology (including the advent of 3D NAND and NVMe) as well as faster host interfaces (such as Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.x), we now have palm-sized flash-based storage devices capable of delivering 2GBps+ speeds. While those speeds can be achieved with Thunderbolt 3, mass-market devices have to rely on USB./news/seagate-announces-barracuda-consumer-sata-ssd.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seagate-announces-barracuda-consumer-sata-ssd.htmlSeagate has pretty much always been a major player in the storage market, where they're known primarily for their hard drives. They haven't been completely absent from the SSD market, but they have focused almost exclusively on the enterprise SSD market. It has been quite a while since we've seen a consumer-oriented SSD from Seagate, but the new BarraCuda SATA SSD brings them back into play. The BarraCuda SSD comes with minimal technical specs, but what we have so far points to a mainstream SATA drive that probably uses current-generation 64L 3D TLC NAND flash memory and a controller with the usual DRAM cache./news/state-of-the-part-cpus.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/state-of-the-part-cpus.htmlShort Introduction to CPUs and Terminology There are many elements that go into any modern computer: the CPU/APU, motherboard, memory, (optional) GPU, storage, case, and power supply. While some items like the case and power supply don't usually have an impact on performance, the CPU is one of the core elements and should be carefully selected. The goal today is to give a short overview of the level of performance you can expect across a large selection of CPUs/APUs./news/syncing-rgb-leds-with-g560-speakers-and-g513-keyboard.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/syncing-rgb-leds-with-g560-speakers-and-g513-keyboard.htmlLogitech has introduced its new Lightsync technology designed to add immersion to games as well as to visualize music or movie audio using RGB LEDs inside peripherals. The first two products to feature Lightsync are the G560 speaker system as well as the G513 mechanical gaming keyboard. Synchronizing ambient lighting with on-screen actions is a way to add immersion to games or movies and is something that has been on the table for a while now./news/t-mobile-announces-uncarrier-7-0-personal-cellspot-wifi.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/t-mobile-announces-uncarrier-7-0-personal-cellspot-wifi.htmlWhile it was alluded to in the iPhone 6 announcement, today T-Mobile is announcing WiFi Unleashed, which enables WiFi calling and texting for all Simple Choice customers and seamless hand-off of calls to cellular. In addition, T-Mobile is also partnering with GoGo to provide free text messaging and visual voicemail in flights that use GoGo to provide WiFi. On the Personal CellSpot side, T-Mobile will give a free Asus 802.11ac WiFi router with 25 USD refundable deposit to Simple Choice customers starting on September 17th, which also acts as a femtocell and will provide signal to improve capacity and coverage of the network./news/the-a10-7800-a8-7600-and-a6-7400k.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-a10-7800-a8-7600-and-a6-7400k.htmlBack in January when AMD launched their first Kaveri APUs, we tested the A10-7850K and the A8-7600, with the former being at the top of the product stack featuring two Steamroller modules and 512 GCN cores with a 4.0 GHz turbo frequency. This part, along with the A10-7700K that was also released at the same time, has a nominal TDP of 95W. The interesting element in the mix was the 65W A8-7600, which AMD provided as a sample to review at the time, but was to be released ‘at a future date’./news/the-amd-coolers-battle-of-the-cpu-stock-coolers.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-coolers-battle-of-the-cpu-stock-coolers.htmlThe AMD Coolers Five AMD-specific coolers are going to be tested in this review, four being stock coolers that accompany AMD’s CPUs and one being a cost-effective cooler from Cooler Master. Vendor Cooler Common Bundle Core Fins Fan (mm) Mass (g) AMD 1A213LQ00 AMD “Kabini” AM1 Alu Alu 50 75 FHSA7015B Several AMD Lines Alu Alu 70 164 AV-Z7UB408003 Black Edition Phenom Alu /news/the-asrock-z490-taichi-motherboard-review-punching-lga1200-into.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-asrock-z490-taichi-motherboard-review-punching-lga1200-into.htmlOverclocking Experience with the ASRock Z490 Taichi With Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake-S processors, overclocking on Z490 is very similar to Z390 in terms of settings and behaviour. The new processors run pretty hot under load and react differently depending on the quality of CPU cooler used. For optimal performance and based on our testing, it's recommended to use at least a 240 mm AIO with the Intel Core i7-10700K, with at least a 280 mm AIO on the Core i9-10900K./news/the-microsoft-surface-book-review.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-microsoft-surface-book-review.htmlWhen Microsoft first launched the Surface Pro, they decided to tackle a market that was pretty much untested. Sure, tablets had been around for a while already, but no one had packed a full Ultrabook inside of a tablet. True, the initial Surface Pro had some compromises made due to the hardware available at the time, but Microsoft started to build a brand with Surface, a brand that they lifted from another product line altogether./news/tsmc-s-3d-stacked-soic-packaging-making-quick-progress.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tsmc-s-3d-stacked-soic-packaging-making-quick-progress.htmlTSMC's 3D-stacked system-on-integrated chips (SoIC) advanced packaging technologies is set to evolve rapidly. In a presentation at the company's recent technology symposium, TSMC outlined a roadmap that will take the technology from a current bump pitch of 9μm all the way down to a 3μm pitch by 2027, stacking together combinations of A16 and N2 dies. TSMC has a number of advanced packaging technologies, including 2.5D CoWoS and 2.5D/3D InFO. Perhaps the most intriguing (and complex) method is their 3D-stacked system-on-integrated chips (SoIC) technology, which is TSMC's implementation of hybrid wafer bonding./news/two-fabs-in-construction-one-awaiting-government-approval.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/two-fabs-in-construction-one-awaiting-government-approval.htmlWhen Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is prepping to roll out an all-new process technology, it usually builds a new fab to meet demand of its alpha customers and then either adds capacity by upgrading existing fabs or building another facility. With N2 (2nm-class), the company seems to be taking a slightly different approach as it is already constructing two N2-capable fabs and is awaiting for a government approval for the third one./news/ultra-thin-convertible-laptop-for-699.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ultra-thin-convertible-laptop-for-699.htmlThis week ASUS has introduced its ZenBook Flip UX360CA convertible notebooks, the company’s first ZenBook with 360° hinge based on the Skylake-based Intel Core M processor. The system sports a 13.3” display in FHD or QHD, an ultra-thin design, and a 54 Wh battery: an impressive combo for a machine running an ultra-low-power CPU. What is important is that the price of the new ZenBook Flip will not break the bank./news/what-to-expect-with-windows-11-a-day-one.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/what-to-expect-with-windows-11-a-day-one.htmlTomorrow, Microsoft is officially launching Windows 11, the next installment of their operating system which underpins the majority of PCs in use today. Windows 10 has an install base of over 1 billion devices, and Windows 11 comes into existence in a much different place than its predecessor. After the much-maligned Windows 8 there was a sense of urgency and necessity which ushered Windows 10 into the world. Windows 11, on the other hand, comes into a market where most people are happy with Windows 10./news/a-crash-course-in-cpu-architecture.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-crash-course-in-cpu-architecture.htmlIt’s been years since I’ve gone through the life of an instruction, and when I last did it it was about a very high end desktop processor. I realize that not everyone interested in what’s powering the iPhone 3GS or Palm Pre may have been taken down this path, so I thought some of that knowledge might be useful here. Applications spawn threads, threads are made up of instructions and instructions are what a CPU “processes”./news/a-look-at-the-new-xbox-360.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-look-at-the-new-xbox-360.htmlAnd I thought the reason people bought consoles was to avoid dealing with the hardware nitty-gritty. Xbox 360 Revision CPU GPU eDRAM Xenon/Zephyr 90nm 90nm 90nm Falcon/Opus 65nm 80nm 80nm Jasper 65nm 65nm 80nm First let's get the codenames right. The first Xbox 360 was released in 2005 and used a motherboard codenamed Xenon. The Xenon platform featured a 90nm Xenon CPU (clever naming there), a 90nm Xenos GPU and a 90nm eDRAM./news/a10x-fusion-soc-for-10-5-inch-12-9.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a10x-fusion-soc-for-10-5-inch-12-9.htmlIn addition to showing off its latest OS and software updates, Apple made several hardware announcements at WWDC 2017, including a refreshed iPad Pro lineup. The smaller of the two Pros ditches the 9.7-inch screen, which dates all the way back to the original iPad, for a 10.5-inch panel that fits into a chassis only 10.6mm (0.42”) taller and 4.6mm (0.18”) wider than the outgoing model thanks to smaller bezels. The expanded all-aluminum chassis increases weight by 7% or 32 grams, just enough to notice if you’re familiar with one of the recent models./news/application-and-futuremark-performance-hp-envy-17-hp-s.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/application-and-futuremark-performance-hp-envy-17-hp-s.htmlApplication and Futuremark Performance While the Intel Core i7-720QM in our Envy 17 is a well known quantity by now, it's still nice to get a feel for how this overall system performs, and we're happy to be getting updated results from the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5850 into our suite. (We did look at MSI's GX640 back in June, but that used a dual-core i5-430M and 5850, and we don't have it for running updated results with our revised benchmark suite./news/application-performance-the-i7-640m-vs-the-i7-720qm.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/application-performance-the-i7-640m-vs-the-i7-720qm.htmlApplication Performance: the i7-640M vs. the i7-720QM The Clevo B5130M has brought with it an interesting point of contention that AVADirect was graceful enough to let us test: can Intel's fastest mobile dual-core, the i7-640M, outperform their slowest current-generation mobile quad, the i7-720QM? It's something worth exploring, because the 640M can actually be found for a reasonable price online for users daring enough to upgrade their mobile processors. The two are essentially at near price parity, but while the 720QM can turbo up from its nominal 1./news/are-nas-optimized-hdds-worth-the-premium.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/are-nas-optimized-hdds-worth-the-premium.htmlIntroduction and Testbed Setup Western Digital (WD) introduced hard drives specifically targeted towards NAS systems under the Red branding last month. Jason had some initial coverage at launch time. WD claimed to have put in a number of firmware features and some additional hardware aspects in the Red lineup to make it suitable for NAS usage. WD touted the following main points Less aggressive head parking (no IntelliPark feature) Configurable Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER), with a default of 7 seconds IntelliPower disk rotation speeds (comparable to Green drives) Vibration reduction mechanism in hardware 3-Yr./news/asus-rog-maximus-z690-apex-ddr5.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-maximus-z690-apex-ddr5.htmlASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex (DDR5) More aimed at extreme overclockers than other boards in the Republic of Gamers series, the Apex is back for Z690. Equipped with a typical ASUS ROG theme throughout, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex uses a primarily black color scheme, with a fancy ROG logo effect on the rear panel cover, integrated RGB built into the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink. It also features silver diagonal lines across the chipset and M./news/asus-tuf-z97-mark-s-bios.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-tuf-z97-mark-s-bios.htmlAs always with our motherboard reviews, the discussion when it comes to the BIOS is one of form and function. When we moved into the graphical BIOS era with UEFI implementations, it opened up a world of aesthetic and interactive capabilities. Some manufacturers were slow on the update in terms of the interactivity either by virtue of actually putting effort into the prospect or due to a lack of ideas at the core of the BIOS team./news/battery-life-excellent-adequate.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-excellent-adequate.htmlBattery Life Battery life of the OnePlus 8 Pro was a big question-mark for a lot of users given the phone’s 120Hz refresh rate. Several weeks ago I had reported on my initial power draw investigation results covering the different display modes of the screen: Much like on the Galaxy S20 series, the OnePlus 8 Pro incurs a large static power draw penalty when switching from 60Hz to 120Hz. This is a increase in the baseline power of the phone, no matter the type of content that you’re displaying, and will even incur on a pure black screen./news/bsp-trees-fillrate-and-vsd-visible-surface-determination.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bsp-trees-fillrate-and-vsd-visible-surface-determination.htmlBSP Trees & Overdraw As far as we are concerned, A BSP tree is a method of organizing polygon data. How does a BSP tree organize the polygon data? Despite the complicated name (BSP + Binary Space Partition), the *theory* behind the BSP tree is not that complicated: Construct a binary tree (bold face terms explained at the end of article) starting with a plane (the plane you would like to organize your data by) as the root node, and then classify each polygon as either behind the plane, or in front of the plane./news/cpu-performance-system-tests-the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-performance-system-tests-the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x.htmlCPU Performance: System Tests Our System Test section focuses significantly on real-world testing, user experience, with a slight nod to throughput. In this section we cover application loading time, image processing, simple scientific physics, emulation, neural simulation, optimized compute, and 3D model development, with a combination of readily available and custom software. For some of these tests, the bigger suites such as PCMark do cover them (we publish those values in our office section), although multiple perspectives is always beneficial./news/display-measurement-the-samsung-galaxy-s20-s20-ultra-exynos.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-measurement-the-samsung-galaxy-s20-s20-ultra-exynos.htmlDisplay Measurement The Galaxy S20’s screens follow the same recipe that we found on the S10 and Note10 series, and other than the 120Hz display modes, the new panels don’t have any major new changes to them when it comes to features or display quality changes. We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Galaxy S20 screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter./news/doom-and-quake-falcon-northwest-fragbox-sli-dare-to.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/doom-and-quake-falcon-northwest-fragbox-sli-dare-to.htmlDoom 3 v1.03Doom 3 has been around for quite a while, but the engine is still impressive and there are several upcoming games that will use tweaked versions it. We continue to use the included Demo1 file for testing - imagine, a demo file that shipped with v1.0 of Doom 3 that still works after three version updates! While Doom 3 was an incredibly stressful game in terms of GPU requirements when it launched, the configurations we're testing today have become almost completely CPU limited without enabling 4xAA./news/dynabook-unveils-satellite-pro-c50.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dynabook-unveils-satellite-pro-c50.htmlDuring CES 2021, Dynabook has unveiled its Satellite Pro series of laptops. A blast from the past, the new Satellite Pro C50 includes a professional design with a 15.6-inch screen with a thin bezel and is aimed more at professionals and SMEs. The Dynabook Satellite Pro C50 has a dark blue frame, which is basic yet elegant, with a coating of Ionpure antimicrobial designed to limit bacterial growth. It includes a large full-size keyboard including a numeric keypad, with an integrated HD webcam along the top of the bezel./news/final-words-am2-motherboards-part-4-ati-crossfire-xpress.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-am2-motherboards-part-4-ati-crossfire-xpress.htmlFinal WordsOver the last couple of months we have been evaluating motherboards that support the new AMD Socket AM2 processor released on May 23rd. This Part 4 completes our initial journey as we finally get a closer look at retail ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 motherboards. It is also in some ways the most interesting installment since, along the way, AMD announced to the world that it was acquiring ATI. That means these new RD580/SB600 motherboards for Socket AM2 are a precursor for what will be coming from the marriage of AMD and ATI./news/final-words-an-in-depth-look-at-4-ultra.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-an-in-depth-look-at-4-ultra.htmlFinal Words Throughout our time with these 4 cameras, it became very clear that the strongest performers were the Canon SD400, Nikon S1, and Sony T33 (we'll get to the Olympus IR-300 in a bit). These 3 cameras were very competitive with each other in numerous aspects. In terms of speed and responsiveness, the Canon SD400 and Sony T33 were incredibly impressive. Both had very fast startup and cycle times. In addition, both cameras proved to have outstanding battery life./news/final-words-the-ipad-2-4-review-32nm-brings.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-ipad-2-4-review-32nm-brings.htmlFinal Words If Apple's A5 is any indication, Samsung's 32nm HK+MG process is extremely capable. Assuming Apple didn't change any fundamentals of its microarchitecture, the iPad 2,4's gains in battery life can be attributed directly to the process. The gains themselves are significant. We measured a 15% increase in our web browsing battery life, a nearly 30% increase in gaming battery life and an 18% increase in video playback battery life./news/freesync-gaming-on-the-lg-34um67.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/freesync-gaming-on-the-lg-34um67.htmlThe LG34UM67 is a great example of what LG does right as well as where it falls short. FreeSync is a technology largely geared towards gaming, but LG strikes new ground in ways that can be both good and bad. The UltraWide 21:9 resolution can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the game – even in 2015, there are sadly numerous games where the aspect ratio causes problems. When it works, it can provide a cinematic experience that draws you into the game; when it doesn’t, you get stretched models and a skewed aspect ratio./news/hey-cortana-remind-me-to-explain-windows-ink.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hey-cortana-remind-me-to-explain-windows-ink.htmlCortana Microsoft’s digital personal assistant has been updated as well. The most obvious change is that Cortana can now be accessed on the lock screen. If you’re not too worried about others seeing the lock screen, such as on a home PC, you can even have Cortana access your calendar and email on the lock screen. If you enable voice control with “Hey Cortana” you could even ask Cortana to play a song from across the room./news/hp-zbook-14-review-mobile-workstation-meets-ultrabook.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-zbook-14-review-mobile-workstation-meets-ultrabook.htmlIntroducing the HP ZBook 14 Over the past couple of years since Intel first introduced their Ultrabook brand, we've seen many different designs, some good, some lacking in refinement. One thing that we haven't seen much of is Ultrabooks with discrete graphics, which isn't too surprising – it's difficult enough to fit all of the other components into a thin chassis and then keep it cool; adding a dGPU to the mix is just asking for trouble./news/in-depth-with-mac-os-x-lion-server.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-depth-with-mac-os-x-lion-server.htmlLike the client version of Lion, Lion Server is now a download from the Mac App Store, and as with Lion client this means that there are some changes in the installation process. A server upgrade install from Snow Leopard Server is performed the same way as a client upgrade install - fire up the App Store, download the installer, and let it do its thing. If you’re running the upgrade from a Snow Leopard server, the App Store is smart enough to prompt you to buy the Server app if you haven’t already./news/intel-z77-motherboard-review-with-ivy-bridge.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-z77-motherboard-review-with-ivy-bridge.htmlSo we have survived one of the biggest days of the year for all things computer performance related - the release of Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor.  It replaces Sandy Bridge in the landscape of all things processor related, with Ivy Bridge boasting better single threaded performance at lower power usage when at stock speeds.  Despite Ivy Bridge being in the same socket as Sandy Bridge, we have a new trio of chipsets to tackle./news/lakefield-in-terms-of-laptop-size.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lakefield-in-terms-of-laptop-size.htmlIn a traditional AMD or Intel processor designed for laptops, we experience two to eight processing cores, along with some graphics performance, and it is up to the company to build the chip with the aim of hitting the right efficiency point (15 W, or 35/45 W) to enable the best performance for a given power window. These processors also contain a lot of extra connectivity and functionality, such as a dual channel memory controller, extra PCIe lanes to support external graphics, support for USB port connectivity or an external connectivity hub, or in the case of Intel’s latest designs, support for Thunderbolt built right into the silicon without the need for an external controller./news/longsys-acquires-lexar-brand-from-micron.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/longsys-acquires-lexar-brand-from-micron.htmlLongsys on Thursday announced that it has acquired the Lexar brand name from Micron. The China-based supplier of NAND flash memory-based products will use the trademark to sell Lexar’s traditional devices — removable storage like memory cards and USB flash drives. The company believes that going forward usage of removable storage will expand. Micron announced plans to discontinue its Lexar business in late June, possibly because of its slow growth and Micron’s intentions to focus on businesses that are more profitable./news/mid-range-phones-with-flagship-camera.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mid-range-phones-with-flagship-camera.htmlGoogle’s Pixel smartphone line-up has been a mainstay of the industry for a few years now. We’re all familiar with devices such as the latest Pixel 3 which is Google’s latest entry in the high-end flagship market. In particular Google puts a lot of emphasis on the cameras of the Pixel devices, and last year in particular, Google, along with Huawei, have raised the bar in terms of what is possible to achieve thanks to computational photography./news/msi-pro-z690-p-ddr4-the-intel-z690-motherboard.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-pro-z690-p-ddr4-the-intel-z690-motherboard.htmlMSI Pro Z690-P (DDR4) As it stands, the MSI Pro Z690-P is the entry-level model for users looking to utilize Intel Alder Lake's power, but for a much lower price than some other Z690 models on the market. Due to this, the MSI Pro Z690-P DDR4 has a modest feature set and aesthetic, with small power delivery heatsinks, a combined rear panel cover and VRM heatsink, and a small chipset heatsink./news/new-196-aoc-portable-type-c-monitor-15-6.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-196-aoc-portable-type-c-monitor-15-6.htmlAOC has added another portable monitor to its lineup, this time powered by a USB Type-C connection. The 15.6-inch I1601FWUX has a Full-HD (1920x1080) resolution and is designed for portable users to be able to expand available screen area and quickly connecting through a single USB Type-C cable. The case is made of a die-cast metal alloy with a silver backing with the AOC name emblazoned on the back. AOC says the chassis is './news/nvidia-8600-and-8500-series-launch.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-8600-and-8500-series-launch.htmlIntroduction Incredibly high priced and high powered graphics cards are exciting. For geeks like us, learning about the newest and best hardware out there is like watching a street race between a Lambo and a Ferrari. We are able to see what the highest achievable performance really offers when put to the test. Standing on the bleeding edge of technology and looking out at what is currently possible towards the next great advancement inspires us./news/origin-pc-shows-off-high-end-notebooks-and-the.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/origin-pc-shows-off-high-end-notebooks-and-the.htmlCES now over, which means for a lot of the editors we can finally sit down and write about some of the stuff we saw during the week. If you follow me on Twitter, you were able to see a bunch of the products I looked at in pseudo-real-time, but Tweet limitations mean there’s often far more to be said. So rolling back to last Wednesday, let’s go over my meeting with Origin PC./news/overclocking-with-a-ryzen-7-1700.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/overclocking-with-a-ryzen-7-1700.htmlOverclocking Overclocking with a Ryzen 7 1700 on ASRock's B450 Motherboards As we have seen throughout our AM4 socket motherboard reviews, ASRock has generally performed quite well in the overclocking stakes; this is due to a combination of easy and user-friendly firmware. While not as overclocking focused as some of their other line-up such as the Taichi offerings which are some of the best the AMD side has to offer, not a lot of focus comes on overclocking from AMD, even though the more budget-focused B350 and B450 do openly support it./news/performance-cont-october-97-slot-1-motherboard-comparison.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/performance-cont-october-97-slot-1-motherboard-comparison.html  Windows 95 Performance - Business Winstone 97 - Intel Pentium II - 338 (75MHz x 4.5) Motherboard Business Winstone 97 ABIT LX6 66.9 AOpen AX6F Not Supported AOpen AX6L 68.4 ASUS KN97-X Not Supported ASUS P2L97 68.6 Chaintech 6FTM Not Supported Chaintech 6LTM/news/power-temperature-noise-amd-radeon-hd-7950-review-feat.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-amd-radeon-hd-7950-review-feat.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, we wrap up our look at a new video card with a look at the physical performance attributes: power consumption, temperatures, and noise. With the 7970 we saw what is possible with Tahiti when AMD is trying to maximize their performance, but how will things stack up with the lower power 7950? Let’s find out. Please note that we’ve decided to include our reference 7950 in these charts, even though none of AMD’s partners will be shipping a card in this exact configuration./news/random-performance-the-best-nvme-ssd-for-laptops-and.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/random-performance-the-best-nvme-ssd-for-laptops-and.htmlRandom Read Performance Our first test of random read performance uses very short bursts of operations issued one at a time with no queuing. The drives are given enough idle time between bursts to yield an overall duty cycle of 20%, so thermal throttling is impossible. Each burst consists of a total of 32MB of 4kB random reads, from a 16GB span of the disk. The total data read is 1GB./news/software-for-nvidia-htpcs-lav-cuvid-and-madvr.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/software-for-nvidia-htpcs-lav-cuvid-and-madvr.htmlThe author of the LAV Splitter / Audio Decoder has another nifty tool coded up for HTPC users with NVIDIA cards. Based on the CUDA SDK, it is called LAV CUVID. The video decoder is not a typical CUDA API and does not use CUDA to decode. NVIDIA provides an extension to CUDA called CUVID, which just accesses the hardware decoder. The only unfortunate aspect of LAV CUVID is that it is restricted to NVIDIA GPUs only./news/supermicro-x11sca-w-conclusion-the-supermicro-x11sca-w-motherboard.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/supermicro-x11sca-w-conclusion-the-supermicro-x11sca-w-motherboard.htmlSupermicro X11SCA-W Conclusion The Supermicro X11SCA-W is an ATX form factor motherboard based on the Intel C246 chipset. The main purpose of this green board is geared towards commercialuse as well as also being suitable for a workstation with a total of eight SATA ports, a pair of M.2 slots and a single U.2 port. Some of the Supermicro exclusive features of the X11SCA-W include the handy SuperDoctor 5 software which allows users to monitor various aspects of their installed hardware from an easy to understand browser-based GUI; it should be noted SuperDoctor 5 is Windows based./news/the-1100-lc-monoblock-flagship.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-1100-lc-monoblock-flagship.htmlIt is no secret that Intel's 10th generation processors are power-hungry. Intel has been squeezing every last drop of MHz out of the 14 nm process with its fastest desktop processors yet, but sometimes conventional air cooling just won't suffice for those wanting to push the limits even further. ASRock understands this, and building on the success of the elegant (yet wallet-emptying) AMD Aqua, the company unveiled an Intel version.  The Z490 Aqua comes equipped as a premium feature motherboard./news/the-700-flagship-for-threadripper.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-700-flagship-for-threadripper.htmlThe TRX40 chipset is designed to support all the current generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors including the 3990X which has 64-cores and 128-threads of processing power. On the test bench today is the MSI Creator TRX40 which is its current top-tier offering with a high-end feature set including four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots and supports up to three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives. With a feature set led by an Aquantia AQC107 10 gigabit Ethernet controller, and an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless adapter, MSI opts for a more content creator and professional theme for its flagship./news/the-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-review-a-simpler-slice.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-review-a-simpler-slice.htmlConclusion Last summer, AMD released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the first desktop chip to utilize AMD and TSMC's 3D V-Cache packaging technology. Although it had already been incorporated in AMD's 3rd Gen EPYC processors for servers earlier that year, it was a novel feature for desktop processors all the same. For this year, AMD has opted to expand their portfolio of 3D V-Cache-equipped processors, releasing three new chips that use the same 3D V-Cache technology as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, but based on top of the Zen 4 microarchitecture: theRyzen 9 7950X3D, the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and finally, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D./news/the-drive-the-test.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-drive-the-test.htmlThe Drive The Black2 consists of a 120GB SSD and 1TB dual-platter 5400rpm hard drive. It's not a hybrid drive (or SSHD) by definition like the Momentus XT because there's no caching involved. The SSD and hard drive appear as separate partitions, giving the end-user the power to decide what data goes to the SSD and what doesn't. WD calls the Black2 a dual-drive, which is a logical name for the drive because it's fundamentally two drives in one./news/the-gigabyte-z170x-gaming-g1-review-quad-sli-on.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-gigabyte-z170x-gaming-g1-review-quad-sli-on.htmlGIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 BIOS The graphical BIOS (or UEFI/EFI, we use BIOS for clarity) has been a permanent competitive fixture in the modern motherboard market – the ability to do more with less and provide a seamless experience to both enthusiasts and new users is a point that manufacturers can provide both a selling point and that unique aspect that makes it stand above the crowd.  The big four motherboard manufacturers have now all adopted the same philosophy of an easier mode for a front screen that sits above an Advanced mode which is more enthusiast focused./news/when-displayport-1-4-isn-t-enough-chroma-subsampling.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/when-displayport-1-4-isn-t-enough-chroma-subsampling.htmlOne of the key elements that even makes G-Sync HDR monitors possible – and yet still holds them back at the same time – is the amount of bandwidth available between a video card and a monitor. DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 increased this to just shy of 26Gbps of video data, which is a rather significant amount of data to send over a passive, two-meter cable. Still, the combination of high refresh rates, high bit depths, and HDR metadata pushes the bandwidth requirements much higher than DisplayPort 1./news/wi-fi-6-dual-pcie-4-0-m-2.htmlFri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wi-fi-6-dual-pcie-4-0-m-2.htmlAt Computex 2019, ASUS unveiled a number of ROG-branded motherboards aimed at gamers and enthusiasts for AMD's new X570 chipset. Most of them are ATX, but a small handful of models are designed for small form factor users and the ASUS ROG Strix X570-I Gaming is one such model with a mini-ITX sized PCB. The main features include Wi-Fi 6 support, dual PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and dual video outputs on the rear panel./news/10th-gen-ice-lake-and-new-scissor-keyboard.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/10th-gen-ice-lake-and-new-scissor-keyboard.htmlToday Apple is releasing new revamped versions of its 13” MacBook Pro line-up, most notably updating the series with the new scissor-switch style Magic Keyboard, as well as giving the option for Intel’s new 10th generation Ice Lake CPUs in the higher end models. Apple last winter had rolled out its new 16” MacBook Pro which had introduced the new Magic Keyboard, making the choice to drop the controversial butterfly switch keyboard back to a scissor switch design./news/a-network-for-the-nexus-6.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-network-for-the-nexus-6.htmlToday Google officially announced their previously rumored entry into the world of wireless service. This new endeavor is known as Project Fi, and it's exclusive to owners of the Nexus 6 who live in the United States. While carriers have offered branded mobile devices at times, the entry of a company making mobile phones into the business of providing the wireless service for their own devices is unprecedented. But unlike Google Fiber, Project Fi is not Google's attempt to build a new wireless network in the United States./news/a-new-30-contender-hp-zr30w-review.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-new-30-contender-hp-zr30w-review.htmlThe LCD market continues to be one of the frequently updated segments in the consumer electronics segment, as OEMs and vendors alike are eager to bundle their high-end, high performance displays with professional workstations. The ZR30w belongs to that same pro market, offering a 10-bit panel with 1.07 billion colors - for an advertised 99 percent coverage of the AdobeRGB 1998 gamut and 30-bit per pixel color. HP claims that the ZR30w is the first 30"/news/a-versatile-38-liter-atx-chassis.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-versatile-38-liter-atx-chassis.htmlDuring CES 2020, renowned chassis manufacturer Lian Li unveiled its latest chassis, the O11D Mini. Remodelling the popular O11 Dynamic into a more compact shell, Lian Li has made the new O11D Mini very space-efficient for an ATX case, with a total volume of just 38 liters. The Lian Li O11D Mini can fit ATX, Micro ATX, and Mini-ITX motherboards, and offers plenty of support for water-cooled systems. Depending on the form factor of the motherboard installed, the O11D Mini can house up to three 280 mm radiators with a mini-ITX motherboard installed, a 280 mm and 240 mm radiator with a micro-ATX motherboard, and two 240 mm radiators with an ATX sized board./news/amd-center-giveaway-asus-radeon-r7-250.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-center-giveaway-asus-radeon-r7-250.htmlLately there's been a lot of excitement around value video cards. Part of it is due to the simple fact that for low resolution gaming, you can generally approximate the experience of a modern game console with fairly low end hardware.  Late last year AMD announced its Radeon R7 250, an Oland based part priced at $89 for the value discrete market. The R7 250 also serves as an interesting Dual Graphics/CrossFire option for Kaveri users looking to increase the performance of their processor graphics (we'll have a look at this later this month)./news/amd-press-event-live-blog.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-press-event-live-blog.html09:42PM EDT - AMD is having a press conference here in Taipei for Computex 2017. Starting in 20 minute or so 09:42PM EDT - AMD held it's Financial Analyst Day two weeks ago where they announced a few things like Epyc 09:42PM EDT - so I'm not sure exactly what's on the announcement list today 10:00PM EDT - It's very red in here, as you can see. And we've got the typical fare of AMD-powered systems throughout the room./news/anandtech-storage-bench-2013-samsung-ssd-840-evo-review.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/anandtech-storage-bench-2013-samsung-ssd-840-evo-review.htmlAnandTech Storage Bench 2013 When I built the AnandTech Heavy and Light Storage Bench suites in 2011 I did so because we didn't have any good tools at the time that would begin to stress a drive's garbage collection routines. Once all blocks have a sufficient number of used pages, all further writes will inevitably trigger some sort of garbage collection/block recycling algorithm. Our Heavy 2011 test in particular was designed to do just this./news/arm-cortex-a9-what-i-m-excited-about.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-cortex-a9-what-i-m-excited-about.htmlNVIDIA won't talk about Tegra GPU architecture, but ARM is more than willing to talk about the Cortex A9. I'm not used to seeing so much pipeline variance between microprocessor cores. The ARM11 core was introduced in 2003 and featured a single-issue 8-stage integer pipeline. Floating point was optional. The Cortex A8 was announced in 2005 and doubled the front end with. The A8 has a dual-issue in-order 13-stage integer pipeline./news/assembling-the-corsair-obsidian-650d.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/assembling-the-corsair-obsidian-650d.htmlAssembling the Corsair Obsidian 650D Amusingly, installing the testbed into the Corsair Obsidian 650D gave me a serious case of Groudhog Day (the movie). I'm so used to working inside the 600T, and the 650D's internal layout is nigh identical. First, installing the motherboard was a breeze. I've been championing pre-installed motherboard standoffs for a while and Corsair delivers, with standoffs in place for a standard ATX board. Not just that, but the centermost standoff isn't a standoff at all, but a nub that will actually help hold the board in place and makes lining the rest of the mounting holes up a breeze./news/asus-prime-b560m-a-ac-b560m-a.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-prime-b560m-a-ac-b560m-a.htmlMoving down the Prime series of models from ASUS, the Prime B560M-A AC and B560M-A are essentially smaller (micro-ATX) versions of the Prime B560M-Plus. The other difference between the two B560M-A models is the AC variant includes a Wi-Fi 5 CNVi. Both models include a black and silver patterned PCB, with silver heatsinks covering the CPU section of the power delivery. Providing power to the advertised 8-phase power delivery is a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input./news/calculating-value-performance-per-dollar.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/calculating-value-performance-per-dollar.htmlHave you ever wondered what you get for your money? Well, I suppose that's a silly question, as anyone reading this page could guess. There are a couple of ways to present this data, and we wanted something simple to understand. It is important to remember that the way we've presented this information, absolute performance is not accounted for at all: the only metric we are looking at on this page is how much you get for the money you spend./news/computer-hardware-info-guide.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/computer-hardware-info-guide.htmlNow I know you've used the terms Bits, and Bytes sometime in your computer-using lifetime, most likely with some mega or giga prefixes. But have you ever actually understood what you were talking about? Lets simplify this, in computer science, a bit is the amount of space necessary to account for a single comparison's outcome. Confused? A bit is the amount of space needed to store one digit in a binary number system (see Binary Number System), a 1 or a 0./news/conclusion-end-remarks-the-black-shark-2-review-a.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusion-end-remarks-the-black-shark-2-review-a.htmlConclusion & End Remarks The Black Shark 2 is actually the first “gaming” phone that I’ve gotten to dedicate a review to. Going into the review I had a few preconceptions of what this means and what the basic checkmarks of what a gaming phone should be and what it should deliver. First of all, in terms of design, the Black Shark 2 does put a checkmark on its “gaming aesthetics”, and the accentuated modern design elements of the phone very much remind one of the typical gaming products that consumers are accustomed./news/cpu-tests-legacy-and-web.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-tests-legacy-and-web.htmlIn order to gather data to compare with older benchmarks, we are still keeping a number of tests under our ‘legacy’ section. This includes all the former major versions of CineBench (R15, R11.5, R10) as well as x264 HD 3.0 and the first very naïve version of 3DPM v2.1. We won’t be transferring the data over from the old testing into Bench, otherwise it would be populated with 200 CPUs with only one data point, so it will fill up as we test more CPUs like the others./news/desktop-comet-lake-charges-up-with-ampere.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/desktop-comet-lake-charges-up-with-ampere.htmlZotac has been a pioneer in bringing compact small form-factor (SFF) machines to the market right since the ION days. The introduction of the ZBOX EI750 in 2014 marked the beginning of Zotac's foray into the SFF gaming PC segment. With the burgeoning market for compact systems (kickstarted by the success of the Intel NUC initiative), Zotac has also grown from strength to strength. The company now has around 8 different mini-PC families targeting different segments./news/enhanced-3dnow-amd-athlon.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/enhanced-3dnow-amd-athlon.htmlEnhanced 3DNow! AMD worked very closely with Microsoft as well as graphics card manufacturers to make sure that support for their Athlon was placed in Windows 98 SE and graphics card drivers. The support is not only for optimizing applications for the core of the Athlon, but also for the Athlon's Enhanced 3DNow! instruction set. If you recall from the discussions earlier, 3DNow! brought SIMD execution to floating point operations that helped mask the weakness of the K6-2 and K6-III FPUs by providing an elegant way of improving performance./news/favored-core-speed-shift-and-big-motherboard-issues.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/favored-core-speed-shift-and-big-motherboard-issues.htmlFavored Core For Broadwell-E, the last generation of Intel’s HEDT platform, we were introduced to the term ‘Favored Core’, which was given the title of Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The idea here is that each piece of silicon that comes off of the production line is different (which is then binned to match to a SKU), but within a piece of silicon the cores themselves will have different frequency and voltage characteristics./news/final-words-startech-standalone-hard-drive-eraser-and-usb.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-startech-standalone-hard-drive-eraser-and-usb.htmlFinal Words The StarTech Standalone Hard Drive Eraser and USB 3.0 Dock's feature set is great, and there are no obvious omissions. All of its features are easy to use and as self-explanatory as can be expected from a screen that only shows two lines of text; no manual is needed, but a one-page leaflet further clarifies how to use the device. The dock's performance is functional, but disappointing. The USB dock capability is clearly a secondary concern./news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-intel-nuc-12-pro-wall.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gpu-performance-synthetic-benchmarks-intel-nuc-12-pro-wall.htmlGPU Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks Intel did not make significant changes in the integrated GPU when moving from Tiger Lake to Alder Lake. Process maturity has allowed it to clock the iGPU a bit higher, but the number of EUs remains the same as in the previous generation. GPU performance evaluation typically involved gaming workloads, and for select PCs, GPU compute. Prior to that, a look at the capabilities of the GPU in the NUC 12 Pro kits is warranted./news/honor-launches-the-view20-a-48mp-camera-review.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/honor-launches-the-view20-a-48mp-camera-review.htmlLast week Honor launched its new 2019 flagship device: the Honor View20. The new flagship phone is the follow-up to last year’s View10, a new segment entry in Honor’s usual line-up. The View series is characterised by their early adoption of full-screen, minimalistic bezel designs; last year’s View10 was one of the early devices bringing 18:9 aspect ratio screens to the masses, while this year’s new View20 further improves the screen-to-body ratio with the introduction of a hole-in-display front-camera setup./news/hp-compaq-8200-elite-ultra-slim-the-littlest-desktop.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hp-compaq-8200-elite-ultra-slim-the-littlest-desktop.htmlIntroducing the HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-Slim If you've been following along for a while, it should be pretty clear that around here, we're fans of doing a little computing. Awkward turns of phrase notwithstanding, we thought we'd seen the smallest HP had to offer when we tackled the Z210 SFF desktop not too long ago. But we were wrong, and today we present you with the smallest desktop computer in HP's enterprise lineup./news/htpc-aspects-decoding-rendering-benchmarks.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/htpc-aspects-decoding-rendering-benchmarks.htmlOur decoding and rendering benchmarks consists of standardized test clips (varying codecs, resolutions and frame rates) being played back through MPC-HC v1.7.3 (which comes with LAV Filters 0.60.1.5 in-built). GPU usage is tracked through GPU-Z logs and power consumption at the wall is also reported. The former provides hints on whether frame drops could occur, while the latter is an indicator of the efficiency of the platform for the most common HTPC task - video playback./news/in-conclusion-a-c-ryan-playon-hd2.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-conclusion-a-c-ryan-playon-hd2.htmlWe are excited to have the first Realtek 1185DD based media player in our labs. The firmware is still in pre-release mode, and we expect to get a more consumer friendly version soon. In addition to putting the streamer through our test suite, we also plan to evaluate it as a NAS and a DAS (USB3). The firmware already happens to have some hidden easter eggs in the form of DTS-HD MA passthrough from both M2TS and MKV containers./news/in-the-box-test-setup-and-overclocking.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/in-the-box-test-setup-and-overclocking.htmlASUS Rampage V Extreme In The Box For the products that attempt to encompass both gaming and overclocking in one big mental Venn diagram, the box contents should be aptly scrutinized. Any extra has to be suitable to both parties in order to optimize the value of the product, but also the extras have to introduce a community feeling should users want to take that route. Perhaps ASUS could sell a plain packaged Rampage V Extreme and it would sell just as well, but for buying the big bundle we get the following:/news/intel-announces-record-quarterly-revenue-and-full-year-revenue.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-announces-record-quarterly-revenue-and-full-year-revenue.htmlThis afternoon, Intel announced their quarterly earnings for the fourth quarter of their 2016 fiscal year. Intel set a new record for revenue for this quarter, coming in at $16.4 billion. This is up 10% from a year ago. For the year, Intel brought in $59.4 billion, up 7% from their 2015 results. Intel’s gross margin fell 1.7 points to 60.9%, and they had an operating income of $12.9 billion, which is down 8% from a year ago./news/moto-voice-and-moto-display.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/moto-voice-and-moto-display.htmlMoto Voice One of the highlight features of the previous Moto X was Touchless Control, and Motorola spent a great deal of time trying to empahsize improvements in this feature with at the launch event. For those unfamiliar with Touchless Control in the previous Moto X, I would reference Brian's Moto X review. For those that don't want to read another review, the quick explanation is that Moto Voice acts as a voice command system, similar to Siri but with integration into Google Now and it works purely based on voice instead of long pressing a home button or a swipe gesture on the navigation keys./news/motorola-announces-the-new-moto-g.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/motorola-announces-the-new-moto-g.htmlToday, Motorola announced the successor to their Moto G, which has been their most successful phone in recent memory. It’s still called the Moto G, but this is the 2015 model which brings some long-needed updates to keep the Moto G fresh. These changes are far-reaching, and range from the SoC to the camera and design. In order to understand the new Moto G at a high level I’ve attached the specs below for those interested./news/msi-laptops-and-conclusion-computex-2007-hit-the-road.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-laptops-and-conclusion-computex-2007-hit-the-road.htmlMSIMSI follows ASUS in now offering overclocking support on one of their notebooks. The GX600 (MS-163A) features "Turbo" technology that will overclock the front side bus by 20%. Unlike the ASUS offering, however, MSI uses a standard mobile Core 2 Duo processor. They were demonstrating a T7200 overclocked to 2.4 GHz. The laptop also comes with GeForce 8600M GT 512MB graphics, 15.4" LCD, a webcam, a numeric keypad, and eSATA support./news/no-disassemble-gateway-p-6831-fx-best-midrange-gaming.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/no-disassemble-gateway-p-6831-fx-best-midrange-gaming.htmlNo Disassemble! For those of you who like seeing the innards of the various notebooks we review, the following might disappoint you slightly. You see, we didn't really feel it was necessary to completely disassemble the Gateway FX chassis. The reasoning behind this should be quite obvious, however: there are two access panels on the bottom of the laptop, which provide you the ability to upgrade all the critical components — including the CPU!/news/nvidia-geforce4-ti-4400-4600-roundup.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-geforce4-ti-4400-4600-roundup.htmlTaking a look back at the past several NVIDIA product launches we haven't been overly positive about any of their flagship GPUs for quite some time. We hounded NVIDIA for bringing an overclocked GeForce2 Ultra to the market in order to meet their self-imposed 6-month product cycles. And while we praised the GeForce3 on a technological level we never recommended buying it as enjoyable DX8 games were clearly months (that turned into years) away from its release./news/oh-no-it-s-glossy-apple-s-redesigned-macbook.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/oh-no-it-s-glossy-apple-s-redesigned-macbook.htmlOh No, It's Glossy Glossy screens are in, unfortunately. They look cooler and can improve contrast ratio in normal lighting conditions, but they are extremely reflective. Apple offered a matte option on the previous generation MacBook Pro, but both the base MacBook and the Air came with glossy screens standard. With the new MacBook and MacBook Pro Apple switched to a thin glass covering in front of the display, giving the system a more updated look./news/package-and-appearance-zippy-serene-gp2-5600v.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/package-and-appearance-zippy-serene-gp2-5600v.htmlPackage and AppearanceThe Serene comes in a similar box similar to the G1, and we need to complain about the same issue again. The box is a little too small for this PSU and therefore the two pins that hold the hook press against the box. We also didn't find any protective foam which could protect the power supply against force from outside. This means if the box is dropped or banged around during shipping, it is very likely that the PSU will have some form of damage./news/re-entering-the-flagship-market-with-a-bang.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/re-entering-the-flagship-market-with-a-bang.htmlToday Motorola announced its newest high-end devices for 2020 – and the company delivered quite the surprise, not only returning back to the flagship market, but also delivering some quite incredibly competitive hardware in this range for the first time in years. The new edge and edge+ from Moto are respectively premium and no-compromise flagship phones that are clearly meant to lure in customers who over the last few years might not have considered a Motorola phone in these categories./news/sandisk-s-extreme-pro-nvme-3d-ssd-gains-capacity.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sandisk-s-extreme-pro-nvme-3d-ssd-gains-capacity.htmlWestern Digital has quietly expanded its SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD range with a 2 TB model. The drive offers performance on par with other models in the family as well as the company’s WD Black SN750. The launch indicates that the SanDisk brand is still very popular among end users and 2 TB capacity is gaining popularity. Earlier this year Western Digital introduced its WD Black SN750 and SanDisk Extreme Pro M./news/sd-cards-for-uhd-and-360-video-capture.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sd-cards-for-uhd-and-360-video-capture.htmlThe SD Association, the multi-vendor consortium responsible for developing standards for Secure Digital flash memory cards, has unveiled the newest version of the Secure Digital standard, SD 5.0. The latest iteration of the standard has been released specifically to accomdate video capture, particularly the write speeds needed to record 8K (7680x4320) and 360° videos. To that end, the upcoming SD 5.0 memory cards will introduce the Video Speed Class labeling, as well as a newer protocol that takes into account new NAND flash architectures, enables higher transfer rates and supports multi-file recording./news/teamgroup-previews-new-15-36-tb-consumer-sata-ssd.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/teamgroup-previews-new-15-36-tb-consumer-sata-ssd.htmlThe two main angles that most SSD storage seems to be moving towards is performance or capacity. On the capacity front, we are starting to see the first 8 TB consumer drives coming to the market in a variety of formats. Always willing to jump ahead of the competition, TeamGroup has announced its new QX ‘Extra Large’ SSD coming in at 15.36 TB. This new SSD is equipped with 3D QLC flash NAND, allowing it to hit the high capacity./news/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review.htmlTo be perfectly honest, this past year has been remarkably boring in the mobile segment. For whatever reason, phones have either stood still or regressed when it comes to overall quality. There are a few stand-outs that have been worth talking about like the Galaxy S6 lineup and the Galaxy Note5 lineup, but for the most part every phone I’ve reviewed this year has been disappointing in some way. I carry an iPhone 6 to make sure I stay current on changes in iOS, but my primary phone continues to be an HTC One M7./news/the-fastest-processor-for-single-threaded-tasks.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-fastest-processor-for-single-threaded-tasks.htmlIn the past we’ve had to make concessions for single-threaded application performance on modern day quad-core processors. For example, $266 will buy you two 3.33GHz cores or four 2.83GHz cores from Intel. I generally recommend going the quad-core option but there’s no getting around the fact that you do give up some performance when an application can’t take advantage of more than two threads. With the Core i7 Extreme 975 the CPU can run at up to 3./news/the-joys-of-802-11ac-wifi.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-joys-of-802-11ac-wifi.htmlRecap: 802.11ac Wireless Networking We’ve had quite a few major wireless networking standards over the years, and while some have certainly been better than others, I have remained a strong adherent of wired networking. I don’t expect I’ll give up the wires completely for a while yet, but Western Digital and Linksys sent me some 802.11ac routers for testing, and for the first time in a long time I’m really excited about wireless./news/the-zotac-zbox-ci660-nano-fanless-mini-pc-review.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-zotac-zbox-ci660-nano-fanless-mini-pc-review.htmlZotac is a major player in the SFF PC space, and the emergence of the ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) NUCs has broadened the available market for ther mini-PCs. The company markets their passively-cooled machines under the C-series moniker. Their C-series nano units adopt a form-factor very similar to Intel's NUCs, providing performance and thermal efficiency commensurate with their size. The company's latest models, the CI6xx nano units, are based on the Kaby Lake-Refresh U-series processors, and they aim to improve on the older C-series units by adopting a larger form factor and adding more platform features./news/thickness-thermals-and-core-understanding-how-surface-pro-3.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/thickness-thermals-and-core-understanding-how-surface-pro-3.htmlEver since Surface RT showed up I've wanted Surface Pro but in the RT chassis. Microsoft seemed to consciously avoid any lower TDP Core processors in favor of Ultrabook SKUs, which pretty much kept Surface Pro thicker than its ARM-based counterpart. Surface Pro 3 changes everything with a rethinking of how Microsoft embraced the thermal constraints of a tablet. Surface Pro 3 is available with one of three CPU options: a Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7./news/virtual-windows-xp-windows-7-release-candidate-1-preview.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/virtual-windows-xp-windows-7-release-candidate-1-preview.htmlVirtual Windows XP As we mentioned previously, Microsoft’s big secret unveiled with Windows 7 RC1 is Virtual Windows XP (VXP for short). One of the issues Microsoft has been having in bringing business users over from Win2K and XP to Vista and beyond has been that Windows does not have perfect backwards compatibility. With consumer applications this is not such a big deal since most of those are wide-audience products that get updated regularly, but this is not always the case for business software./news/a-record-losing-quarter-goes-better-than-expected.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/a-record-losing-quarter-goes-better-than-expected.htmlKicking off our coverage of the first earnings season of the year for the tech industry, we as always start with Intel. The blue-hued blue-chip is the first out of the gate to report their results for the first quarter of 2023, with Intel picking up the pieces after a rough end to 2023, and a rather painful start to 2023. With revenue down on a yearly basis almost across the entire board thanks to a major, industry wide slump in client and server sales, Intel’s focus has been on battening down the hatches to weather this rough period, while preparing for an eventual (if modest) upturn in the market later this year./news/asus-maximus-vi-impact-review-rog-and-mini-itx.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-maximus-vi-impact-review-rog-and-mini-itx.htmlIn previous generations, the ASUS Republic Of Gamers (ROG) range has been split across three models – the micro-ATX Gene, the gaming oriented Formula and the more overclocker friendly Extreme.  With Haswell and the Z87 Chipset there are two new members to the family: the budget Hero and the miniature Impact.  Today we review the Impact, designed to hold true the ROG philosophy in a 17 cm x 17 cm PCB./news/asus-rog-zenith-extreme-alpha-x399-motherboard.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-zenith-extreme-alpha-x399-motherboard.htmlAt CES 2019, ASUS showed off its new top tier X399 model with support for the 2nd generation Threadripper processors, the ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha. The new model has some striking differences to the ROG Zenith Extreme model including a new design, dual LAN (with an Aquantia 10G NIC) and an ASUS AURA Sync LiveDash 1.3 inch OLED screen built into the rear IO cover. The ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha The ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha has a very clean and neutral look with the majority of the PCB covered with extensive heatsinks, an IO panel cover, and a new PCB cover around the PCIe slots./news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-z490-taichi-motherboard-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-asrock-z490-taichi-motherboard-review.htmlBIOS The firmware on the Z490 Taichi is very similar to what we've seen previously from ASRock, including in our ASRock Z390 Taichi review. The main difference comes in the GUI with a cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing look. It includes a black background with an ASRock Taichi cogwheel inspired logo on the right-hand side. The ASRock firmware is using which text with grey highlights, including a sky blue highlight along the top menu when navigating around various areas of the BIOS./news/concluding-remarks-what-is-next-for-g-hn.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/concluding-remarks-what-is-next-for-g-hn.htmlThe Comtrend PG-9172 G.hn powerline adapter gave us the opportunity to look at G.hn technology in real-world scenarios. Our evaluation shows that the technology is quite competitive in terms of performance. It shows better resilience to noise and performs better than HomePlug AV2 products from late 2014 in almost all scenarios. In particular, AFCI circuit breakers don't seem to cause as much performance degradation in the PG-9172 as they cause in HomePlug adapters./news/crytek-and-basemark-announce-new-benchmark-release.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/crytek-and-basemark-announce-new-benchmark-release.htmlVirtual Reality has definitely been playing the slow and steady race for a while now. Thankfully, with the approach of consumer VR headsets going on sale, more of us will be able to see the fruits of years of hard work. One very important aspect of any new consumer product is measuring its capability, and consequently the value. In the case of VR there are many pieces to the chain that can make or break the experience, so as a result Basemark and Crytek have taken that opportunity and teamed up to bring us VRScore, a new VR benchmark, which is being announced and made available to corporate customers today and to consumers later this year./news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-3-15-inch.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-analysis-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-3-15-inch.htmlDisplay Analysis Microsoft continues to be one of the few PC manufacturers that calibrates all of their device displays, from the lowly Surface Go, all the way to the ultra-expensive Surface Studio range. They’ve also fully embraced the 3:2 aspect ratio for all devices, which initially made their convertible designs better at being convertible, but also makes for a better experience on the Surface Laptop. The Surface Laptop 3 features a 3:2 2496x1664 display, offering a 200 pxiels-per-inch density./news/fsp-epsilon-80plus-600w.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/fsp-epsilon-80plus-600w.htmlIntroduction Many casual computer users might not be familiar with the name FSP Group (aka Fotron Source), but their power supplies are found in many PC systems from major system integrators. They come to you with bearing other names such as Zalman, OCZ, or be quiet!, but the actual products are produced by FSP. FSP is one of the largest manufacturers of power supplies in the world. I have been to their Taiwanese headquarters several times when I was living in Taiwan back in 2002./news/hardware-continued-and-cases-the-htc-one-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hardware-continued-and-cases-the-htc-one-review.htmlProbably one of the more polarizing design aspects of the HTC One is the inclusion of two capacitive buttons instead of the three we see on most other handsets that do include them. HTC’s rationale is that fewer buttons equates to less confusion for users, and as a result we have just back and home on the HTC One. For getting to the multitasking interface or task switcher, one double taps on the home button./news/honeycomb-and-xoom-google-s-android-event-analysis.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/honeycomb-and-xoom-google-s-android-event-analysis.htmlGoogle teased us (actually, more like flooded!) with what Honeycomb had to offer and multiple tablet announcements at CES last month. Today was more of a detailed look at what Honeycomb was about and what new features and paradigms it brings to the tablet form-factor. Also, unlike the Xoom tablets at CES which just looped demo videos, we got to see Xoom's running Honeycomb firsthand, although it was a 'supervised' hands-on./news/huawei-launches-the-p9-and-p9-plus.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-launches-the-p9-and-p9-plus.htmlToday in London, Huawei has launched the latest devices in its P-series line. The P9 and P9 Plus take cues from the previous P8 but also some hardware moves over from the Mate 8 in the form of the SoC base design. The two models come in various memory and storage variants to the EU and Asia, though some colors and high-end storage configurations will be Asia only. The new P9 and P9 Plus are aluminium unibody designs, with the two main features being the new Kirin 955 SoC and the Dual Camera design on the rear with Leica certification./news/huawei-mate-9-porsche-design-unboxing-and-hands-on.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/huawei-mate-9-porsche-design-unboxing-and-hands-on.htmlAlongside the Mate 9 launch a few weeks back, Huawei also announced the Mate 9 Porsche Design model. The presentation in Munich was heavily skewed towards the Porsche branded unit, despite the fact that it is a limited edition part to be sold at 1300 Euro, nearly twice as much as the Mate 9. Aside from a few things such as the camera and the internal SoC, the Porsche Design (PD) model shares little aesthetically with the Mate 9./news/ilife-05-apple-s-mac-mini.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ilife-05-apple-s-mac-mini.htmliLife '05 The Mac mini ships with the latest version of Apple's iLife application suite on DVD-ROM (it is a relief to actually have applications come on DVD; thankfully, it's always easier to turn a smaller ship).  The application suite is nothing short of massive, at just under 4GB for iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5, GarageBand 2 and iTunes 4.7.  Now, iTunes is free and is available for download outside of the iLife '05 package, but it is included on the DVD just to make sure that all OS X users have a copy installed, which is nothing to complain about./news/intel-9th-generation-8-core-35w-cpus-launch-may.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-9th-generation-8-core-35w-cpus-launch-may.htmlIt is always quite amusing when retailers pre-announce products before the company actually pushes out a press release. Embargo or not, the retailers want to advertise the fact they will be getting stock and want to sell early – in the gaming industry, people pre-order games, but in the PC industry, you rarely pre-order hardware. Nonetheless, today’s news comes from online UK retailer Kikatek, which has already listed some of Intel’s 9th Generation Core 35W CPUs as coming out on May 15th./news/ipad-autocorrection-withholding-the-answer-apple-s-ipad.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ipad-autocorrection-withholding-the-answer-apple-s-ipad.htmliPad Autocorrection: Withholding the Answer In my Nexus One review I talked about how great the iPhone’s autocorrection system is. About how it just lets you type and forget about spelling or punctuation errors. I figured this would translate very well to the iPad. Unfortunately, I was wrong The autocorrect engine on the iPad is far less aggressive than on the iPhone. You have to pay much more attention to what you're typing here./news/level-of-detail-lod-3dfx-voodoo5-5500.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/level-of-detail-lod-3dfx-voodoo5-5500.htmlLevel of Detail (LOD) A number of readers and websites have noticed how 3dfx cards have a tendency to look a bit blurry and/or washed out, regardless of resolution and now color depth. In the Voodoo3 days, this was partially blamed on the Voodoo3's 256x256 texture size limitation, it's 16-bit rendering, and the post frame buffer filter that 3dfx applies to all their 16-bit rendering to get their "22-bit equivalent"/news/lg-g-watch-and-samsung-gear-live-available-for.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-g-watch-and-samsung-gear-live-available-for.htmlToday at Google IO Google gave the world a sneak peak at some of the features of their upcoming Android Wear OS. They also announced that the first two smartwatches running the new operating system would be available for purchase from Google Play starting today. The first of these is the LG G Watch. Before today information about the G Watch was limited apart from the knowledge that it would be water and dust resistant and sport a 1./news/lg-g3-launch-and-hands-on.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lg-g3-launch-and-hands-on.htmlToday LG announced the LG G3, the successor to their 2013 flagship smartphone the LG G2. Like other OEMs, LG is emphasizing that the device is going back to the basics and focusing on the core smartphone experience. With that comes a large focus on improving the design and materials as well as the display, as those are the two aspects of a device that the user is constantly in contact with./news/lga1700-reports-of-bending-sockets.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/lga1700-reports-of-bending-sockets.htmlSince the launch of Intel's Alder Lake-based 12th generation Core processors, there have been several reports of high and abnormal temperatures, even at stock frequencies. The art in balancing out the integrated heat spreader (IHS) of a processor is one thing extreme overclockers have been working on for many years now. Typically called lapping, extreme overclockers finely sand down the IHS to make it a more flat and even surface. The aim is to reduce gaps by sanding out imperfections or curvatures./news/marvell-refocuses-thunder-server-platforms-towards-custom-silicon-business.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/marvell-refocuses-thunder-server-platforms-towards-custom-silicon-business.htmlYesterday during Marvell’s quarterly earnings call, the company had made a surprise announcement that they are planning to restructure their server processor development team towards fully custom solutions, abandoning plans for “off-the-shelf” product designs. The relevant earning call statements are as follows: "Very much aligned with our growing emphasis on custom solutions, we are evolving our ARM-based server processor efforts toward a custom engagement model. […] Having worked with them for multiple generations, it has become apparent that the long-term opportunity is for ARM server processors customized to their specific use cases rather than the standard off-the-shelf products./news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-team-group-delta-rgb.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/mixed-read-write-performance-the-team-group-delta-rgb.htmlMixed Random Performance Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%./news/msi-ps63-modern-notebook-a-15-6-inch-with.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-ps63-modern-notebook-a-15-6-inch-with.htmlDesigned with content creators and designers in mind, the new 15.6" MSI PS63 Modern looks to make a bold statement. The key feature for this new notebook is the specifications: under the hood we get Intel's latest Whiskey Lake processor, combined with a GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics card, a 15.6-inch 1080p display, and yet MSI claims that this system will hit 16 hours of battery life. That's one hell of a combination./news/netflix-streaming-roku-2-xs-review-streaming-videos-and.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/netflix-streaming-roku-2-xs-review-streaming-videos-and.htmlNetflix is undoubtedly the most widely used streaming service in the US. Most of the consumers looking to purchase the Roku 2 are probably looking for just a Netflix streamer. Keeping this in mind, we have a whole section devoted to the Netflix streaming experience. Roku 2 was introduced with some Netflix streaming improvements that finally brought it on par with the PS3 experience. To recount: Roku 2 XS and XD support 1080p Netflix streaming for selected titles Roku 2 supports Dolby Digital Plus 5./news/now-with-a-geforce-gtx-1060-gpu.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/now-with-a-geforce-gtx-1060-gpu.htmlGIGABYTE has introduced an upgraded version of its Aero 14 thin gaming notebook, upgrading to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060GPU with  6 GB of GDDR5 memory. The system has similar specs and features as the model introduced back in June, but now it offers better performance in games and GPU-accelerated workflows. The GIGABYTE Aero 14 is among the thinnest laptops on the market today. The PC comes in chassis made of aluminum and plastic available with three color options for the display lid: black, green and orange./news/pov-ray-3-7-beta-23-blender-par2.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/pov-ray-3-7-beta-23-blender-par2.htmlPOV-ray 3.7 Beta 23 Once again, the Phenom II is very competitive on a cost basis in this 3D rendering application while remaining very close to the Core 2 series on a clock speed basis. Multi-threaded par2 Archive Recovery Our Data Recovery test shows Phenom II equalling or bettering the Core 2 series due to a test that favors the IMC designs over the cache centric Core 2. Blender 2.48a Blender shows Phenom II less competitive than the other 3D rendering tests we've seen thus far./news/power-consumption-plextor-m6s-m6m-256gb-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-plextor-m6s-m6m-256gb-review.htmlPower Consumption In the ADATA SP920 review, I mentioned that I finally was collecting slumber power numbers for all the drives I have tested, but I hadn't tested enough drives to meet the strict deadline for the SP920 review. I now have the numbers to share. I'm only including the most relevant drives here but you can find all the results in out Bench. Note that these results differ from the ones Anand has published earlier due to the fact that we are using totally different testbeds./news/power-consumption-the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-consumption-the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7.htmlPower Consumption Power consumption is very low thanks to core power gating and Intel's 32nm process. Also, when the integrated GPU is not in use it is completely power gated as to not waste any power either. The end result is lower power consumption than virtually any other platform out there under load. I also measured power at the ATX12V connector to give you an idea of what actual CPU power consumption is like (excluding the motherboard, PSU loss, etc./news/power-temperature-noise-capsule-review-evga-geforce-gtx-780.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-capsule-review-evga-geforce-gtx-780.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise Having seen the gaming performance of the card, let’s move on to power, temperature, and noise to get a better look at the performance characteristics of EVGA’s new ACX cooler. This will also give us a chance to evaluate the costs of EVGA’s factory overclock with respect to power consumption. GeForce GTX 780 Voltages 780SC ACX Max Boost Ref GTX 780 Max Boost 780SC ACX Idle 1./news/qualcomm-s-8cx-gen-3-for-notebooks-nuvia-core.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/qualcomm-s-8cx-gen-3-for-notebooks-nuvia-core.htmlThere are many column inches detailing Qualcomm’s design wins and marketing strategy, however to paint it all with a broad brush, it has often boiled down to ‘where can we stick our advanced wireless technology?’. The company has had great success with smartphones, cornering a large chunk of US market and sizeable numbers worldwide, and in the last few years has pivoted to new markets, such as automotive and virtual reality, but also tried to reinvigorate existing markets, such as notebooks and laptops./news/road-warrior-toshiba-portege-r700.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/road-warrior-toshiba-portege-r700.htmlRoad Warrior: Toshiba Portege R700 Toshiba recently celebrated it’s 25th anniversary of manufacturing mobile computers, and in honor of the occasion, took the opportunity to bestow upon us the new Portege R700. The latest in a long and reputable line of superthin and superlight ultraportable notebooks, the R700 (and nearly identical R705 retail model) do not disappoint. At under an inch thick and just 3.2lbs, Toshiba claims that the R700 is the lightest 13./news/samsung-galaxy-note-2-review-t-mobile.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-note-2-review-t-mobile.htmlSo I have a confession to make. What seems like an eternity ago, I received a Galaxy Note review unit for AT&T, but never quite finished my review. While the reasons for that were no fault of the device and rather the result of some other personal failings, I spent a lot of time with the original Note really trying to size up the experience of using the world’s first smartphone that crossed over into tablet territory — a so-called “phablet./news/silverstone-sugo-sg08-mini-itx-case-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/silverstone-sugo-sg08-mini-itx-case-review.htmlIntroducing the SilverStone Sugo SG08 We've been looking at a lot of smaller enclosures lately, but some of you have pointed out, and probably correctly, that these Micro-ATX towers still aren't particularly small. They're smaller than the full ATX and super ATX monsters we've reviewed and certainly you could fit about thirty of them inside Corsair's gargantuan Obsidian 900D, but what if you want to go smaller? The BitFenix Prodigy is a popular option, but it's also on the large side for a Mini-ITX build./news/sk-hynix-mulls-differentiated-hbm-memory-amid-ai-frenzy.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sk-hynix-mulls-differentiated-hbm-memory-amid-ai-frenzy.htmlSK Hynix and AMD were at the forefront of the memory industry with the first generation of high bandwidth memory (HBM) back in 2013 – 2015, and SK Hynix is still leading this market in terms of share. In a bid to maintain and grow its position, SK Hynix has to adapt to the requirements of its customers, particularly in the AI space, and to do so it's mulling over how to make 'differentiated' HBM products for large customers./news/system-performance-the-msi-ge76-raider-review-tiger-lake.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/system-performance-the-msi-ge76-raider-review-tiger-lake.htmlSystem Performance For 2021, MSI has moved to Intel’s newest 11th generation Tiger Lake H-Series processors in the Raider lineup, which brings a lot of advantages over the 10th generation Comet Lake product. The new 10 nm processor features the newest Willow Cove cores which offer a lot of performance over the outgoing Skylake-based 14 nm generation. For the GE76 Raider, MSI offers up to the Core i9-11980HK processor which offers eight cores plus hyperthreading and a peak single-core boost frequency of 5./news/testing-methodology-arctic-cooling-accelero-hybrid-vga-cooler-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/testing-methodology-arctic-cooling-accelero-hybrid-vga-cooler-review.htmlTesting Methodology Testing something like the Arctic Cooling Accelero Hybrid is kind of tricky. I'm not fond of using an open testbed for a product that is never going to see the outside of your case, so I appropriated the testbed used for the radiator roundup (and radiator fan roundup) with a couple of minor changes for my own edification. Fan and Radiator Testing Configuration CPU Intel Core i7-2700K overclocked to 4./news/the-corsair-tx550m-80plus-gold-psu-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-corsair-tx550m-80plus-gold-psu-review.htmlCorsair started off as a high-performance computer memory manufacturer, but they evolved into one of the largest and most recognizable companies in the consumer PC market. Today the company markets an immense variety of products, including practically everything short of motherboards and processors. One of their most popular product ranges is that of power supply units (PSUs). The company released their first few PSUs back in 2006 but today they are offering a vast variety of products for every kind of user and application./news/the-intel-compute-stick-core-m3-6y30-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-intel-compute-stick-core-m3-6y30-review.htmlSmall and power-efficient computers in the form of NUCs and Compute Sticks have emerged as bright spots in the PC market over the last few years. The Compute Stick form factor is the x86 version of the popular ARM-based HDMI sticks. The first-generation x86 Compute Stick came from Intel and used a Bay Trail-T SoC. At the 2016 CES, Intel introduced a Cherry Trail version, as well as two Skylake Core M-based models./news/the-kinesis-tko-tournament-gaming-keyboard-review-a-compact.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-kinesis-tko-tournament-gaming-keyboard-review-a-compact.htmlKinesis is a computer peripherals manufacturer solely focused on the design and manufacture of ergonomic input devices. They are one of the first companies in the field, with their first ergonomic products released nearly three decades ago. That makes Kinesis one of the oldest peripherals manufacturers, with the brand establishing a solid number of followers over the years. Until recently, Kinesis designed and released products exclusively targeting professionals who work long hours in front of a computer./news/the-next-version-of-android.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-next-version-of-android.htmlGoogle I/O 2013 recently wrapped up, and I’ve been spending some time ingesting all the information from sessions during the event, including ones I couldn’t directly attend. While Google didn’t announce a new version of Android at the event, something nearly everyone speculated would happen, it did directly allude to new upcoming features that will be implemented in this still unnamed upcoming version. Google allegedly assigns version numbers late in the process, but what is known is that this next release will implement upcoming API level 18./news/toshiba-unveils-world-s-first-fc-mamr-hdd-18.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/toshiba-unveils-world-s-first-fc-mamr-hdd-18.htmlToshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption.  The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data./news/total-war-shogun-2-nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/total-war-shogun-2-nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review.htmlTotal War: Shogun 2 Our next benchmark is Shogun 2, which is a continuing favorite to our benchmark suite. Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. Even 2 years after its release it’s still a very punishing game at its highest settings due to the amount of shading and memory those units require./news/we-re-using-an-optimized-tsmc-5nm-process.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/we-re-using-an-optimized-tsmc-5nm-process.htmlWhen AMD started using TSMC’s 7nm process for the Zen 2 processor family that launched in November 2019, one of the overriding messages of that launch was that it was important to be on the leading edge of process node technology to be competitive. That move to TSMC N7 was aided by the small chiplets used in the desktop processors at the time, ensuring a higher yield and better binning curves for desktop and enterprise processors./news/3-way-low-profile-cpu-cooling-shoot-out-reeven.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/3-way-low-profile-cpu-cooling-shoot-out-reeven.htmlA good CPU cooler can usually be found at the top spots of an enthusiast’s shopping list, as stock coolers rarely are sufficient for the wants and needs of advanced users, especially when overclocking is involved. Choosing the right aftermarket product can be a little complicated, mostly depending on what the product’s focus is and the available budget. For example, some products have been designed to be as quiet as possible while others strictly aim for maximum thermal performance and neglect acoustic comfort completely./news/acer-ferrari-one-looks-nice-but-unimpressive.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/acer-ferrari-one-looks-nice-but-unimpressive.htmlAcer Ferrari One: Looks Nice, but Unimpressive Unfortunately, our time with Acer's latest Ferrari-branded creation ends in disappointment. The combination of mediocre performance, poor battery life (relative to the competition), high price, and unremarkable design/build quality is more than enough to sink this one. For the majority of this review, we've stayed away from making price comparisons, because the Ferrari logo definitely adds a price premium to this otherwise unremarkable notebook./news/amd-catalyst-14-6-beta-drivers-released-adds-new.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/amd-catalyst-14-6-beta-drivers-released-adds-new.htmlFor our second video card driver update of the week we have AMD, who is releasing their Catalyst 14.6 beta drivers today. Like NVIDIA’s driver release, this is first and foremost AMD’s launch driver for Ubisoft’s heavily promoted open world techno thriller, Watch Dogs. For Watch Dogs AMD has put together a number of performance optimizations, including single-card optimizations that can offer 25%+ performance improvements in AMD’s internal testing, and also the necessary profiles to enable Crossfire support./news/application-and-futuremark-performance-alienware-s-m17x-r3-an.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/application-and-futuremark-performance-alienware-s-m17x-r3-an.htmlApplication and Futuremark Performance The Intel Core i7-2720QM and AMD Radeon HD 6970M powering the Alienware M17x R3 should provide more than enough power for any task. Keeping with our updated testing suite, we'll start with the breakdown of PCMark 7 performance. Inexplicably, the Alienware M17x R3 hangs out in the middle of the pack for almost every test. When you get to the storage score, it's clear the RAIDed HDDs just aren't cutting it./news/arm-v9-2-redefined-for-3nm.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-v9-2-redefined-for-3nm.htmlAs the semiconductor industry continues to evolve, Arm stands at the forefront of innovation for its core and IP architecture, especially in the mobile space, by pushing the boundaries of technology to deliver cutting-edge solutions for end users. For 2024, Arm's year-on-year strategic advancements focus on enhancing last year's Armv9.2 architecture with a new twist. Arm has rebranded and re-strategized its efforts by introducing Arm Compute Subsystem (CSS), the direct successor to last year's Total Compute Solutions (TSC2023) platform./news/asrock-x570-phantom-gaming-x.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asrock-x570-phantom-gaming-x.htmlAnother of the most high-end options from ASRock is the X570 Phantom Gaming X. The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming X is a red, silver, and black themed premium gaming-focused model with some notable inclusions common to the Phantom Gaming branding. The most notable inclusion is the Realtek RTL8125AG 2.5 G LAN which is aimed at arming gamers with networking options.  In between the three full-length PCIe 4.0 slots is two PCIe 4.0 x1 slots, with support for up to three-way AMD CrossFire, and two-way NVIDIA SLI multi-graphics card configurations./news/asus-rog-strix-z690-i-gaming-wifi-ddr5.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-z690-i-gaming-wifi-ddr5.htmlASUS ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming WIFI (DDR5) For Intel's 12th generation of Alder Lake desktop processors, ASUS has only made one mini-ITX board available for the launch of its LGA1700 offerings, the ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming WIFI. Designed for users looking to harness the big P and little E cores on Alder Lake, but in a small package, the Z690-I Gaming WIFI offers a solid feature set in a small form factor-friendly package./news/athlon-ii-x4-635-phenom-ii-x2-555-athlon.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/athlon-ii-x4-635-phenom-ii-x2-555-athlon.htmlAMD is looking a lot more competitive in 2010 than I expected just a few months ago. Intel finally unveiled Clarkdale and thanks to the high cost of Core i5 ownership AMD hasn't really been threatened. The Core i3 530 is the biggest threat, but it only competes with one member of AMD's lineup at $113. Thanks to continued improvements in Global Foundries' 45nm process, AMD is delivering slight clock bumps for its dual, triple and quad-core processors while dropping prices of others./news/battery-life-the-google-nexus-7-review.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-the-google-nexus-7-review.htmlBattery Life The Nexus 7 has an integrated 16Wh battery, which despite its size delivers extremely good battery life. Our WiFi browsing test saw the Nexus 7 deliver 9 hours of battery life on a single charge, that's roughly half an hour less than the new iPad. The Kindle Fire comparison is even more impressive - the Nexus 7 outlasts the Fire in this test by nearly 70%. Battery life while playing back locally stored video is just as impressive./news/bios-and-software-the-msi-meg-x399-creation-motherboard.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/bios-and-software-the-msi-meg-x399-creation-motherboard.htmlBIOS MSI so far has retained the same BIOS UI throughout all of their Zen architecture motherboards, including the more entry-level B350 and B450 chipsets, as well as the more feature-rich X370 and X470 chipsets. It’s good to know that MSI follow a consistent pattern in regards to their UEFI BIOS, as their X399 chipset offerings carry the same UEFI layout which they call Click BIOS 5. The general layout consists of a black background with reddened highlighting, with white text to help to make the contrast work visually./news/conclusions-and-final-thoughts-samsung-fascinate-review-verizon-s.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusions-and-final-thoughts-samsung-fascinate-review-verizon-s.htmlFinal Thoughts The Fascinate ultimately leaves me with two completely conflicting final conclusions. On one hand, the hardware and platform itself is undeniably the best out there - Hummingbird and the SGX 540 make the whole experience incredibly fluid in places where it counts. There's absolutely no doubt about how snappy and smooth Android feels throughout, even on 2.1. The 1 GHz Hummingbird just does an awesome job. Everyone I've let play with the Fascinate says the same thing, it feels fast and fluid./news/cpu-tests-rendering-a-broadwell-retrospective-review-in-2020.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cpu-tests-rendering-a-broadwell-retrospective-review-in-2020.htmlCPU Tests: Rendering Rendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power. If a system is not properly configured to deal with the thermal requirements of the processor, the rendering benchmarks is where it would show most easily as the frequency drops over a sustained period of time./news/creative-labs-graphics-blaster-exxtreme.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/creative-labs-graphics-blaster-exxtreme.htmlCreative Labs, known for their popular and "high quality" sound cards, has recently embedded their market reach even deeper into the multimedia scene with products ranging from inexpensive Cirrus Logic graphics accelerators to the latest bleeding edge DVD packages, Creative Labs is looking for one thing, and one thing alone: complete domination of the market. Boasting the potential of some of the industry's giants with the marketing ability often compared to that of even Microsoft, there is much in store for the future of Creative Labs./news/evga-precision-x-the-anandtech-guide-to-video-card.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/evga-precision-x-the-anandtech-guide-to-video-card.htmlEVGA Precision X Next up is the recently released Precision X 16 utility from EVGA. This latest version of Precision X was introduced with the launch of NVIDIA’s next generation Maxwell video cards, the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980. Kicking things off, like many of the video card manufacturer developed overclocking utilities we’re looking at today, officially Precision X is geared towards EVGA video cards. However, like other utilities EVGA has not done anything to restrict Precision X to just their video cards./news/final-words-intel-core-i7-3820-review-285-quad.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-intel-core-i7-3820-review-285-quad.htmlFinal Words I see three reasons why you'd want the Core i7 3820: 1. You need PCIe 3.0 today and/or you need more PCIe lanes than a Core i7 2600K can provide, 2. You need tons of memory bandwidth for a particular application, 3. You want a 2600K but you need a platform that can support more memory (32GB+). If you fall into any of those categories, the 3820 gets the job done./news/final-words-the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-acer-nitro-5-review-renoir-and.htmlFinal Words So how much of a gaming laptop can you get for $669.99 USD? It turns out, you can get quite a bit. Acer’s Nitro 5, with a refreshed look, and upgraded internals, offers a surprisingly competent gaming system for targeting 1920x1080. The combination of the Ryzen 5 4600H with NVIDIA’s Turing-based GTX 1650 can handle most modern games at or near peak settings and still be playable at 1920x1080./news/firewire-usb-and-nic-performance.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/firewire-usb-and-nic-performance.htmlFirewire and USB PerformanceAfter looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk would be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput. We utilize a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removes almost all overhead from the serving end. We turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "/news/gaming-performance-hp-phoenix-h9se-the-pavilion-goes-beyond.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-hp-phoenix-h9se-the-pavilion-goes-beyond.htmlGaming Performance Since we refreshed our gaming benchmark suite, we've had to start from scratch on our gaming charts. Unfortunately that means we've seen two GeForce GTX 580-based systems and a single GeForce GTX 555, which is the reason why the "Unknown Sample" with its Radeon HD 7970 has been included. The recent Skyrim 1.4 patch and high resolution texture pack also invalidated some of our test results with AVADirect's silent gaming system, so those have been omitted./news/grand-theft-auto-v-the-amd-radeon-vii-review.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/grand-theft-auto-v-the-amd-radeon-vii-review.htmlGrand Theft Auto V (DX11) Now a truly venerable title, GTA V is a veteran of past game suites that is still graphically demanding as they come. As an older DX11 title, it provides a glimpse into the graphically intensive games of yesteryear that don't incorporate the latest features. Originally released for consoles in 2013, the PC port came with a slew of graphical enhancements and options. Just as importantly, GTA V includes a rather intensive and informative built-in benchmark, somewhat uncommon in open-world games./news/grid-2-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/grid-2-the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review-maxwell.htmlGRID 2 The final game in our benchmark suite is also our racing entry, Codemasters’ GRID 2. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, and with GRID 2 they’ve gone back to racing on the pavement, bringing to life cities and highways alike. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID 2 includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world./news/kingston-begins-shipping-2tb-uv500-series-sata-ssds.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/kingston-begins-shipping-2tb-uv500-series-sata-ssds.htmlKingston, who recently released their new UV500 line of SSD products, has announced it is now shipping a 2 TB capacity drive a 2.5-inch form factor. Kingston states the UV500 is their first 3D NAND-based SSD that features 256-bit hardware-based AES full-disk encryption as well as support for TCG Opal 2.0. The drives are specified to reach read/write speeds of up to 520MB/s and 500MB/s which match up on paper with many other SATA based SSDs./news/msi-prestige-x570-creation-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-prestige-x570-creation-the-amd-x570-motherboard-overview.htmlMSI Prestige X570 Creation The MSI Prestige X570 Creation is designed with content creators and enthusiasts in mind with similar aesthetics to its HEDT counterpart, the MSI X399 Creation, and implements them onto an E-ATX sized consumer desktop model. On the rear panel cover is a funky RGB enabled design, with the creation logo being the centrepiece. This covers the large power delivery heatsink which features an extended design from around the MOSFETs, down the side of the memory slots and into the chipset heatsink./news/new-macbook-macbook-pro.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/new-macbook-macbook-pro.htmlSetting Expectations An old middle school friend of mine is obsessed with Apple these days. She’s always asking me Mac questions or trying to get an idea of what’s coming down the pipe (Steve: if you’re listening, she’d drop her Palm in a heartbeat if she could edit Word/Excel docs on the iPhone). Lately she’s been asking me about the updated MacBook and MacBook Pros, mainly trying to figure out when they’d be shipping./news/nvidia-a100-performance-5-00pm-pt.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-a100-performance-5-00pm-pt.html07:58PM EDT - First talk of the GPU session is from NVIDIA, on the A100 performance and the Ampere architecture 08:00PM EDT - Open question if they'll talk about Ampere for environments other than HPC, but this session is also about 'Gaming', so you never know 08:02PM EDT - Intel's John Sell, ex-Microsoft, is the chair for the session 08:03PM EDT - Jack Choquette from NV 08:03PM EDT - A100: 54-56B transistors/news/nvidia-s-gtx-400-series-gets-a-launch-date.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-s-gtx-400-series-gets-a-launch-date.htmlAnd at this point that's all we know. Specifications, performance, pricing, launch quantities, etc remain to be seen. Perhaps more interesting is that this is on a Friday. We can't immediately recall a Friday GPU launch, even for a refresh part. Like everything else, the whether this has any significance remains to be seen. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIB3fJI%3D/news/power-temperature-noise-amd-radeon-hd-7990-review-7990.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/power-temperature-noise-amd-radeon-hd-7990-review-7990.htmlPower, Temperature, & Noise As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise. AMD for their part is clearly focusing on all of this with the 7990, both compared to the 6990 before it, and to the alternative unofficial 7990s that are already on the market./news/ryzen-pro-gets-down-to-business.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/ryzen-pro-gets-down-to-business.htmlA couple of months back Lenovo released the ThinkPad A285; a 12.5-inch business-class notebook featuring AMD’s Ryzen Pro mobile processor, complementing their 14-inch A485 Ryzen Pro powered model. These are the first two Lenovo ThinkPad models to feature AMD's Ryzen APU, and with it the latest generation of their Pro series, offering enhanced security, and manageability, over the normal consumer variants. As it so happens, this is also our first time looking at a Ryzen Pro APU./news/securifi-s-almond-802-11ac-touchscreen-wi-fi-router.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/securifi-s-almond-802-11ac-touchscreen-wi-fi-router.htmlIt isn't often that we write about products seeking crowd funding. We had written about ioSafe's Indiegogo campaign for the N2 NAS back in September 2012, and the review of that product went out yesterday. Unless a product has already been demonstrated in its full working state and is guaranteed to ship, we are hesitant to provide dedicated publicity and hype to ideas and concepts that may never reach the consumer./news/seeing-the-future-displayport-1-2.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/seeing-the-future-displayport-1-2.htmlSeeing the Future: DisplayPort 1.2 While Barts doesn’t bring a massive overhaul to AMD’s core architecture, it’s a different story for all of the secondary controllers contained within Barts. Compared to Cypress, practically everything involving displays and video decoding has been refreshed, replaced, or overhauled, making these feature upgrades the defining change for the 6800 series. We’ll start on the display side with DisplayPort. AMD has been a major backer of DisplayPort since it was created in 2006, and in 2009 they went as far as making DisplayPort part of their standard port configuration for most of the 5000 series cards./news/sse-vs-3dnow.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/sse-vs-3dnow.htmlStreaming SIMD Extensions Perhaps the most touted improvement the Pentium III has over it's older brother the Pentium II is the addition of Streaming SIMD Extensions, or SSE for short. As described in Anandtech's Pentium III review, SIMD is: SIMD, or Single Instruction Multiple Data (in this case SIMD-FP as it applies to FPU instructions, whereas MMX offered SIMD-Int for Integer instructions) allows a single command (or instruction) to be applied to multiple sets of data/news/tcl-waterfall-tech-demo-screen-edges-done-right.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/tcl-waterfall-tech-demo-screen-edges-done-right.htmlModern edge display technology is a compromise between screen real estate, comfort, and aesthetics. Personally, I’ve never owned a Note, or a device with an excessive edge with edge-related technologies: I find the hold compromised and the edge features often don’t justify the discomfort. TCL is aiming for its Waterfall display to solve that. The company was keen to point out that this isn’t a standard edge on a smartphone – the display wraps around to 80+ degrees, making it a more comfortable hold on both sides of the device./news/the-core-complex-caches-and-fabric.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-core-complex-caches-and-fabric.htmlMany core designs often start with an initial low-core-count building block that is repeated across a coherent fabric to generate a large number of cores and the large die. In this case, AMD is using a CPU Complex (CCX) as that building block which consists of four cores and the associated caches. Each core will have direct access to its private L2 cache, and the 8 MB of L3 cache is, despite being split into blocks per core, accessible by every core on the CCX with ‘an average latency’ also L3 hits nearer to the core will have a lower latency due to the low-order address interleave method of address generation./news/the-oc-lab-the-msi-hq-tour-design-101.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-oc-lab-the-msi-hq-tour-design-101.htmlNo visit to a HQ would be complete with a look at the dedicated overclock testing facilities. The concept of an OC Lab has been brewing, especially in the motherboard industry, for a number of years and especially in companies that hold world-wide overclocking competitions. While our previous visits to these labs are usually separate rooms connected to a generic office structure, MSI’s is part of an open-cubicle office, just with higher walls and more ventilation for liquid nitrogen vapor./news/the-samsung-ssd-830-review.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-samsung-ssd-830-review.htmlSamsung is a dangerous competitor in the SSD space. Not only does it make its own controller, DRAM and NAND, but it also has an incredible track record in terms of reliability. Samsung SSDs were among the first I reviewed and while they weren't anywhere near the fastest back then, every last one of those drives is still working without issue in my lab today. It's also worth pointing out that Samsung SSDs are also one of the two options Apple rebrands and delivers in its Mac lineup./news/virtual-raid-on-cpu-vroc-scalability.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/virtual-raid-on-cpu-vroc-scalability.htmlToday, Intel is introducing their 64-layer 3D TLC NAND to the enterprise SSD market with the new Intel SSD DC P4510 NVMe drive. They are also finally giving us a chance to test the Virtual RAID On CPU feature introduced with the Skylake-SP and Skylake-X processors last year. Intel has provided four 2TB P4510 SSDs to test against the 8TB model, plus the much sought-after VROC Premium hardware key to unlock the full range of NVMe RAID features on this platform./news/we-have-50-of-all-euv-installations-60-wafer.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/we-have-50-of-all-euv-installations-60-wafer.htmlOne of the overriding central messages to TSMC’s Technology Symposium this week is that the company is a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, especially at the leading edge process technology. To further hit the message home, TSMC showcased a slide indicating where it stands in relation to others: by using a combination of public ASML statements and their own internal purchase sheets, TSMC predicts that they have ~50% of all the active EUV machines installed worldwide./news/western-digital-introduces-wd-blue-and-wd-green-ssds.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/western-digital-introduces-wd-blue-and-wd-green-ssds.htmlFive months ago, Western Digital completed its acquisition of SSD and NAND flash manufacturer SanDisk, adding consumer SSDs and more enterprise SSDs to their existing portfolio of hard drives and HGST enterprise SSDs. WD is now introducing two families of WD-branded consumer SSDs, each derived from existing SanDisk product lines. The WD Blue SSD is based on the SanDisk X400 SATA SSD with minimal hardware changes but has modified firmware and different usable capacities./news/x3-reunion-new-rolling-demo-tested.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/x3-reunion-new-rolling-demo-tested.htmlIntroductionMuch of the focus in PC gaming these days is centered around action-oriented games and first-person shooters. While we are very much into these kinds of games, we are always interested in the different kinds of game genres there are out there. Games like Battlefield 2 and F.E.A.R. seem to be the types of games as of late that compel most gamers to upgrade their graphics hardware, but we've been lucky to see some strategy and simulation-type games (i./news/zenbook-duo-with-two-14-inch-oled-displays.htmlTue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/zenbook-duo-with-two-14-inch-oled-displays.htmlModern higher-end 14 and 16-inch-class notebooks offer performance that is enough for the vast majority of productivity and even content creation workloads. As a result, the main limitation of notebook's capabilities in many cases is their insufficient screen real estate. Over the past few years, several leading PC makers have made numerous attempts to fix this (e.g., Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i, Razer's Valerie, and Apple's Sidecar). Now, it is time for Asus to demonstrate its vision./news/200k-iops-1-5gb-s-for-1699.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/200k-iops-1-5gb-s-for-1699.htmlAlthough consumer SSDs are far from a mature technology, PCIe SSDs are even further behind on the growth curve. The upside is huge. As SandForce has already demonstrated with the right dataset a single SSD can nearly saturate the 6Gbps SATA bus. Rather than force OEMs into putting yet another very high bandwidth bus on the motherboard, SSD vendors everywhere (Intel included) turn their attention to PCIe as a solution to the problem./news/all-a-4090-can-be-for-3200.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/all-a-4090-can-be-for-3200.htmlWhen Asus teased its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card back at Computex, it was clear that the company's ambitions were to develop no less than the world's fastest graphics card. The company meticulously described the card's advanced printed circuit board design, voltage regulating module, and cooling system, but it never revealed two important details: actual clocks and price. This week it disclosed both: the board will clock the GPU at 2./news/arm-techcon-2018-keynote-live-blog-starts-at-1pm.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/arm-techcon-2018-keynote-live-blog-starts-at-1pm.html01:05PM EDT - We're here at the San Jose Convention Center for Arm's annual developer conference and tech showcase, TechCon. Arm of course needs no introduction, and while the company is an IP provider rather than a hardware manufacturer, the net result is that they have their finger in everything from servers to embedded devices. Which has presented the company with a lot of growth opportunities, but also no shortage of competition as everyone works to grab a piece of these markets./news/asus-p8p67-pro-uefi-overclocking-the-battle-of-the.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-p8p67-pro-uefi-overclocking-the-battle-of-the.htmlASUS bring a lot of innovation to the UEFI table over what I have seen from other vendors. The implementation of EZ mode (‘easy’ mode, for us Brits that pronounce that letter ‘zed’) gives the screen below on first entering the UEFI. At a glance, it gives vital motherboard information – CPU, speed, memory, temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, and boot order. The boot order is a great addition, allowing the user to drag-click the order they want./news/asus-pb278q-brightness-and-contrast.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-pb278q-brightness-and-contrast.htmlASUS PB278Q Brightness and Contrast ASUS says that the PB278Q can do 300 nits at maximum brightness, and that spec hits it right on the head. With a full white screen and the brightness pushed up all the way, I got exactly 300 nits of light output from the display. One of PLS' advantages over IPS is supposed to be the ability to let more light through, though this number is very close to what other 27” displays achieve./news/asus-rog-strix-hero-and-scar-gaming-laptops.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/asus-rog-strix-hero-and-scar-gaming-laptops.htmlASUS ROG Announces Updated Strix Hero and SCAR Edition Laptops ASUS has also announced updates for two of its more entry-level gaming laptops in the ROG Strix SCAR (GL703) and ROG Strix Hero (GL503). The laptops are similar in both styling and what comes under the hood with the main differences between the two is the type of monitor and size, graphics card options, and storage. Both will receive the latest Intel 8th Generation Coffee Lake CPUs, 120+ Hz FHD panels, support up to 32 GB of RAM, and are designed for gaming./news/battery-life-thermals-the-2013-macbook-air-core-i5.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/battery-life-thermals-the-2013-macbook-air-core-i5.htmlBattery Life I ran the i7-4650U based 13-inch MBA through the same suite of battery life tests as the un-upgraded base model. What's important to note about all of these tests is that the amount of work done per cycle of the test doesn't vary based on performance. There's enough idle time baked in to make sure that the Core i7 based 13-inch MBA isn't artifically penalized by having to do more work than the i5 model simply because it's faster./news/cat-announces-s60-rugged-smartphone-with-integrated-flir-thermal.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cat-announces-s60-rugged-smartphone-with-integrated-flir-thermal.htmlCAT, that company that is usually associated with heavy machinery, actually makes/sells smartphones too. It has announced a new flagship smartphone, which combines the ruggedness you might expect from such a company with up-to-date functionality (Android 6.0) as well as an integrated thermal camera made by FLIR. The CAT S60 handset is designed for utility and construction workers as well as those, who work in harsh environments. Despite expectations, the smartphone will cost about the same amount of money as flagship devices from other manufacturers./news/celebrating-anandtech-s-20th-anniversary-1997.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/celebrating-anandtech-s-20th-anniversary-1997.htmlThis morning we’re celebrating a rather special occasion over here at AnandTech: our 20th anniversary. Though in a lot of ways it seems like the years have gone by in a flash, the calendar doesn’t lie: it means we’ve now been doing this for two decades, starting from a quaint CPU review in 1997 and branching out to oh so much more by 2017. I’ve admittedly never been one for public sentimentality, but as the second Editor-in-chief of AnandTech and a reader for most of its history, it’s a milestone that makes me very proud./news/compatible-with-ryzen-3000-up-to-ddr4-4000.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compatible-with-ryzen-3000-up-to-ddr4-4000.htmlPatriot has expanded its memory offerings for enthusiasts with a brand-new family of products, the Viper 4 Blackout. The new lineup supports data transfer rates of up to 4000 MT/s and is tested for compatibility with AMD’s latest Ryzen 3000/X570 desktop platform. Equipped with matte black aluminum heat spreaders, Patriot’s Viper 4 Blackout memory will be available as 8GB and 16 GB dual-channel kits rated to operate in DDR4-3000 CL16, DDR4-3200 CL16, DDR4-3600 CL17, and DDR4-4000 CL19 modes at 1./news/compliant-with-sanctions-available-globally.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/compliant-with-sanctions-available-globally.htmlNVIDIA has quietly launched its RTX 5880 Ada Generation graphics card that is designed for professional graphics applications. The product is designed to be compliant with the latest U.S. export regulations for China and can be shipped to the People's Republic without restrictions. Meanwhile, it is set to be available globally and sit between the expensive flagship RTX 6000 Ada Generation and considerably less capable RTX 5000 Ada Generation. But there is a major catch about this product./news/conclusions-part-2-be-quiet-and-cooler-master.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/conclusions-part-2-be-quiet-and-cooler-master.htmlConclusions, Part 2 The second set of conclusions are for be quiet!'s ninja, the Dark Rock Pro 2, along with Cooler Master's stellar budget performer, the Hyper 212 EVO. be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 The biggest problem with be quiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 2 is that it's incredibly hard to find in the United States. At present, the only place you can get it as NCIXUS, and NCIXUS isn't exactly well known for their competitive pricing./news/cyberlink-launches-powerdvd-17-with-uhd-blu-ray-and.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/cyberlink-launches-powerdvd-17-with-uhd-blu-ray-and.htmlCyberLink has been regularly updating their multimedia playback software / PC DVD & Blu-ray players. While ArcSoft dropped out of the software Blu-ray player market a few years back, the only other legal (i.e, one that includes licenses for all required codecs) player - Corel's WinDVD Pro, receives fairly spaced out upgrades. As the HTPC market shifts from a local media-heavy scenario to one where OTT (over-the-top) content like YouTube and Netflix form the main part of the experience, it has become important for commercial software media players to evolve./news/dell-s-360-degree-latitude-9510-to-offer-30.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/dell-s-360-degree-latitude-9510-to-offer-30.htmlBuilding a workstation-class mobile PC that would be easy to carry around, but which would offer a proper screen, decent performance, robust connectivity, and a long battery life is extremely challenging. In fact, it takes efforts of multiple companies, not just one manufacturer. At CES, Dell is going to introduce two 15-inch Latitude 9510 designs, a laptop and a convertible, that promise to pack all of the hardware required into a 14-inch-class body that is up to 17 mm thick, and even add Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 5G modem on top as an optional extra./news/design-features-logitech-g5-laser-mouse-when-an-update.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/design-features-logitech-g5-laser-mouse-when-an-update.htmlDesign FeaturesIf you read through Logitech's marketing information one of the single most touted features on the G5 series is the tunable weight cartridge system. This creation from Logitech's rodent lab offers the ability to add up to 36 grams of weight to the mouse in order to "tune" the weight of the G5 to your personal preference. We are split as to whether this system seems a little too gimmicky or according to some adamant staff members, it really does make a difference in gaming performance./news/display-uniformity-doublesight-ds-277w-back-to-the-drawing.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/display-uniformity-doublesight-ds-277w-back-to-the-drawing.html27” panels so far have seemed to do better with display uniformity than smaller displays. The larger size requires a more powerful lighting system and in implementing this it has also been more uniform as well. Here the DS-277W does fairly well, with a couple of darker corners causing a drop but most of the screen staying fairly close to the 200nits we are targeting. With a black screen the uniformity continues to be decent, with light leakage on one side but the rest of the display keeping close to the same as the center./news/drivers-observations-the-test.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/drivers-observations-the-test.htmlWith the launch of a new GPU architecture also comes the launch of new drivers, and the teething issues that come with those. We’ll go over performance matters in greater detail on the following pages, but to start things off, I wanted to note the state of AMD’s driver stack, and any notable issues I ran into. The big issue at the moment is that while AMD’s drivers are in fairly good shape for gaming, the same cannot be said for compute./news/final-words-the-chromebook-pixel-2015-review.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/final-words-the-chromebook-pixel-2015-review.htmlFinal Words Despite its limitations, it's really hard to not like the Chromebook Pixel. Google has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into designing it, and what it does do it does really well. I think the move to USB Type-C is forward thinking, and makes the Pixel very versatile when it comes to connecting to both current and future displays and peripherals. The little details like tapping the top to see the remaining battery capacity, and the ability to charge on either side also help make it a very lovable laptop./news/gaming-performance-using-f-e-a-r-and-quake.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gaming-performance-using-f-e-a-r-and-quake.htmlGaming Performance using F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 F.E.A.R. shows the Pentium D 805 and the rest of the Intel crowd falling to the bottom of the chart. The Athlon 64 3000+ enjoys its largest margin of victory here, offering a 15% advantage over the Pentium D 805. We included Quake 4 with its new 1.1 patch because the patch enables SMP support; SMP was enabled on both Hyper-Threading and dual core CPUs, which is why you see them outperforming their single-core counterparts./news/gigabyte-z370-gaming-5-analyzing-z370-for-intel-s.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/gigabyte-z370-gaming-5-analyzing-z370-for-intel-s.htmlGIGABYTE Z370 Gaming 5 The next board from GIGABYTE is the Z370 AORUS Gaming 5. The Gaming 5 sits just below the Gaming 7 in the product stack with a few different features as well as some aesthetic changes. A cursory look at the board and for the most part it looks like the Gaming 7 but with a reduction in some of the features.  The Gaming 5 keeps the black PCB and the AORUS falcon stenciled across the bottom but the stencil appears to be shifted a bit lower on the board, ending at the top PCIe x1 slot./news/haswell-e-to-feature-8-cores-x99-ddr4.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/haswell-e-to-feature-8-cores-x99-ddr4.htmlThe second of Intel’s enthusiast-based announcements after the unlocked Iris Pro coming to Broadwell is one regarding Intel’s new high performance platform. Currently we sit with socket LGA 2011 featuring Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E CPUs on top of the X79 chipset using DDR3 memory. Intel are confirming today that the next stage in that process will be Haswell-E, supported by the new X99 chipset and flanked with DDR4 memory./news/hot-chips-31-analysis-in-memory-processing-by-upmem.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/hot-chips-31-analysis-in-memory-processing-by-upmem.htmlOne of the key critical future elements about this world of compute is moving data about. Moving data requires power, to the point where calling data from memory can consume more power than actually doing ‘compute’ work on it. This is why we have caches, but even these require extensive management built in to the CPU. For simple operations, like bit-shifts or AND operations, the goal is to move the ability to do that compute onto the main DRAM itself, so it doesn’t have to shuttle back and forth./news/how-x86-64-works-amd-s-voyage-into-the.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/how-x86-64-works-amd-s-voyage-into-the.htmlHow x86-64 Works AMD just today released the specifics on their x86-64 architecture allowing programmers to begin development for the platform. The 64-bit extension to the x86 ISA adds a number of advancements over the current 32-bit x86 ISA, the most notable improvements are 8 new general purpose registers (64-bit), 64-bit memory addressing, and of course 64-bit wide registers and instruction pointer. In addition to the 8 new general purpose registers (GPRs), the x86-64 ISA extends the existing registers to 64-bits much like the i386 extended the, at the time, 16-bit registers to 32-bits./news/intel-discontinues-performance-tuning-protection-plan-for-overclocking-warranties.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-discontinues-performance-tuning-protection-plan-for-overclocking-warranties.htmlAfter a 9-year run, Intel today has begun to wrap up its Performance Tuning Protection Plan service, the company’s optional extended warranty for CPU overclocking. As of today, Intel is no longer selling new PTP plans, and the program will be shifting to servicing existing warranties while those are still active. Intel’s warranty service was quite unique throughout the industry; given the potentially destructive nature of overclocking, it’s almost unheard of to be covered, even by optional warranties./news/intel-s-nehalem-versus-amd-shanghai.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-nehalem-versus-amd-shanghai.htmlA "beta BIOS update" broke compatibility with ESX, so we had to postpone our virtualization testing on our quad CPU AMD 8384 System. So we started an in depth comparison of the 45 nm Opterons, Xeons and Core i7 CPUs. One of our benchmarks, the famous LINPACK (you can read all about it here) painted a pretty interesting performance picture. We had to test with a matrix size of 18000 (2./news/intel-s-pentium-4-600-series-running-windows-xp.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/intel-s-pentium-4-600-series-running-windows-xp.htmlAlthough it wasn't heavily advertised, Intel had a 925XE system running the new Pentium 4 600 series with a 2MB L2 cache in their booth. As you undoubtedly know by now, the Pentium 4 600 series is still a 90nm Prescott but with twice the L2 cache, EMT64 (x86-64) support as well as all of the features available in the current 500 series. The Pentium 4 600 demo system Quite possibly the most interesting part of the demo was that it was running a version of Windows XP x64, a feature that we've never really seen Intel promote much publicly./news/metro-2033-the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review-feat.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/metro-2033-the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review-feat.htmlMetro: 2033 Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up./news/micron-to-launch-hbm2-dram-this-year-finally.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/micron-to-launch-hbm2-dram-this-year-finally.htmlBundled in their latest earnings call, Micron has revealed that later this year the company will finally introduce its first HBM DRAM for bandwidth-hungry applications. The move will enable the company to address the market for high-bandwidth devices such as flagship GPUs and network processors, which in the last five years have turned to HBM to meet their ever-growing bandwidth needs. And as the third and final of the "big three"/news/msi-b450-gaming-pro-carbon-ac.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-b450-gaming-pro-carbon-ac.htmlThe MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC sits as MSI’s premier and flagship B450 chipset motherboard and has a strong focus on gaming but moves away from the conventional MSI Gaming red and black theme. The B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC also uses a variety of premium controllers and chips including the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, an Intel 9260 dual-band 802.11ac 2T2R Wi-Fi adapter and an Intel I211-AT Gigabit LAN networking chip./news/msi-ge40-review-a-slim-gaming-notebook.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/msi-ge40-review-a-slim-gaming-notebook.htmlWith Intel’s Haswell launch officially behind us, we’re getting a steady stream of new notebooks and laptops that have been updated with the latest processors and GPUs. MSI sent their GE40 our way for review, a gaming notebook that’s less than an inch thick and pairs a Haswell i7-4700MQ with NVIDIA’s new GTX 760M GPU. At first glance, it has a lot in common with the new Razer Blade 14-inch laptop that we recently reviewed; on second glance, it has even more in common./news/nvidia-gives-jetson-nano-dev-kit-a-trim-2gb.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/nvidia-gives-jetson-nano-dev-kit-a-trim-2gb.htmlAs part of this morning’s fall GTC 2020 announcements, NVIDIA is revealing that they are releasing an even cheaper version of their budget embedded computing board, the Jetson Nano. Initially introduced back in 2015 as the Jetson TX1, an updated version of NVIDIA’s original Jetson kit with their then-new Tegra X1 SoC, the company has since kept the Jetson TX1 around in various forms as a budget option. Most recently, the company re-launched it in 2019 as the Jetson Nano, their pint-sized, $99 entry level developer kit./news/reaping-the-benefits-of-14nm-and-going-beyond-10nm.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/reaping-the-benefits-of-14nm-and-going-beyond-10nm.htmlAs part of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference every year, Intel brings forward a number of presentations regarding its internal research. The theme this year at ISSCC is ‘Silicon Systems – Small Chips for Big Data’, and Intel previewed a number of their presentations with the media and analysts last week before the conference. Hot topics being talked about include developments for 14nm features that could potentially be ported to real world devices, technological developments at 22nm using Tri-Gate CMOS for adaptive, autonomous and resilient systems and also a few quick words regarding 10nm and beyond./news/samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-2014-edition-review.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-2014-edition-review.htmlEver since the arrival of the Nexus 10, it’s been hard recommending other, lower resolution 10-inch Android tablets. Although not the knock out success that the Nexus 7 became, the Nexus 10 did offer a good alternative to the iPad at a lower price. Given that Samsung made the aforementioned 10-inch Nexus, complete with 2560 x 1600 display, we wondered when a similar panel might grace Samsung’s own tablet lineup. A few weeks ago we got the answer we’ve been waiting almost a year for./news/samsung-galaxy-s-4-qi-wireless-charging-pad-and.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/samsung-galaxy-s-4-qi-wireless-charging-pad-and.htmlFor a while now, wireless charging has been slowly gaining momentum, and one of the phones that includes support is Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 (SGS4). For the past week, I’ve been using a review unit of Samsung’s wireless charging accessory kit for the aforementioned smartphone which includes both a Qi compatible wireless charging pad and battery back. Using the wireless charging accessory is simple – you remove the stock battery back, snap on the new one, and plug the wireless charging pad into the Samsung charger that originally shipped with the phone./news/the-backlighting-and-final-words.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-backlighting-and-final-words.htmlBacklighting The backlighting of the Raptor K40 is by far its most notable feature. There are many illuminated keyboards available today but you are typically stuck with a single color, depending on which product you purchase. The Raptor K40 has multiple LED lights installed, allowing it to change colors and even mix colors. Corsair claims that there are 16.8 million possible colors and the software truly allows for 16.58 million combinations; however, this reminded us of the following popular picture:/news/the-lenovo-ideapad-y700-laptop-review.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-lenovo-ideapad-y700-laptop-review.htmlDesign Gaming laptops can sometimes have a very gaudy appearance, with numerous LEDs and lights everywhere. Lenovo has built in a bit of style, without going over the top on extras. The black aluminum body has a nice cross-hatch pattern machined into it, and when closed the only hints of the purpose of the Y700 are the red speaker grilles. Once opened, the Y700 features a display almost feels separate from the rest of the body, with angled edges where it meets the speakers, and it’s a nice effect./news/the-microsoft-band-2-review.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-microsoft-band-2-review.htmlAt the end of October in 2014, Microsoft surprisingly released a late night press release about a new device they were launching. It was the Microsoft Band, which is a fitness wearable that was a key component of their Microsoft Health service. It was their first real wearable, and it was packed with sensors to track everything from your heart rate to your sleep quality. At the Microsoft devices event in NYC on October 6th, Microsoft announced an updated version of the Band, known as Band 2./news/the-wireless-controllers-inside-microsoft-s-xbox-360.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/the-wireless-controllers-inside-microsoft-s-xbox-360.htmlThe Wireless Controllers Microsoft implemented a proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol for use with wireless controllers and the Xbox 360.  The $399 Xbox 360 comes with a single wireless controller, while the $299 core system features a wired controller; regardless of what it comes with, all Xbox 360 units feature support for up to four wireless controllers.  Click to Enlarge Amazingly enough, even loaded with a battery pack, the wireless Xbox 360 controllers are lighter than the smaller Xbox S controllers./news/wd-red-lineup-differentiating-features.htmlMon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000/news/wd-red-lineup-differentiating-features.htmlWD Red Lineup: Differentiating Features Western Digital has well-defined product categories for each market segment. The WD Black series caters to those requiring a lot of performance without power concerns. The Green series serves the opposite end of the spectrum, where performance is not that much of an issue (secondary drives for PCs / external enclosures), but heat and power could do with some reduction. The Blue series served the middle tier (everyday computing with optimal performance) and the notebook market.