Like many other refreshed RTX laptops, there hasn’t been a significant change to the design on the Asus ROG Strix or most of the internal hardware. Previously I reviewed the 15-inch Scar II which came with either a GTX 1060 or GTX 1070, while now you can get an RTX 2060 or RTX 2070, albeit at different price points. Our review unit is the GL504GV that packs the RTX 2060 priced at $1,700....
Towards the end of last year, Nvidia launched a new graphics card, the GeForce GT 240. This forgettable product was supposed to sit between the GT 220 and 9800 GT in terms of both price and performance. However, much like the GeForce GT 220 that was released a bit prior, the GT 240 was a huge disappointment. For about $100, we saw no real reason why anyone would pick up this card other than to possibly use it as a dedicated PhysX card....
Out of the box, the Pentium G3258 is able to extract the maximum amount of performance from the R9 285, hitting 31.4fps at 3.2GHz. This meant without any overclocking the Pentium G3258 was still 3% faster than the Athlon X4 860K at 4.4GHz. Using the GTX 960 changes things quite a bit and here we see that both processors are able to deliver between 31 and 32fps regardless of clock speed....
Biden wrote in a White House statement that “based on evolving intelligence,” his administration is reiterating previous warnings that Russia could conduct malicious cyberattacks against the United States. “My Administration will continue to use every tool to deter, disrupt, and if necessary, respond to cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. But the Federal Government can’t defend against this threat alone,” Biden wrote. “I urge our private sector partners to harden your cyber defenses immediately....
Considering the success of its first entry, it came as no surprise when Gearbox revealed plans to produce a sequel that would address Borderlands’ shortcomings while expanding on its strengths. As you’re very likely aware, that follow-up launched to critical acclaim this week, earning a Metacritic score of 89 out of 100 on PC (even higher marks for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions at 92 and 90, respectively)....
Naturally, that cash buys a purpose-built box which installs fast, runs quiet, sips power and saves space, at least compared to repurposing an old PC, yet the inner DIYer in us is itching to build a NAS. Going that route seems like an easy way to save some cash considering a small desktop could be used as a four or eight-bay server, and there is plenty to value in the extra flexibility and expansion of a custom setup....
Possibly the best value component of this build is the DeepCool Tesseract SW as this mid-tower has plenty to offer at just $40. The FSP Group AURUM S 400W is also a quality power supply at just $55. Above we have the complete system minus the monitor, keyboard/mouse and speakers. Although we went with a mATX motherboard, there is room for a larger ATX motherboard if you wish, while the option to upgrade the CPU cooler is also a possibility....
Those with budget graphics cards will either want to lower the resolution or reduce the quality settings to improve frame rates. It is interesting to note that the Radeon HD 6970 was only a fraction faster than the older HD 5870 in this title, while the HD 5850 matched the HD 6950. Moreover, the Radeon HD 5850 was faster than the HD 6870. However in terms of value the GeForce GTX 560 Ti ranked quite well, while the cheaper Radeon HD 6870 with an average of 69fps was most impressive....
Recently we tested out the single player mode in Medal of Honor and found it was primarily GPU dependent, showing just a 9% increase in frame rate when going from 2.0GHz to 4.0GHz despite the 100% rise in frequency. Call of Duty: Black Ops on the other hand saw a massive 78% increase in performance when clocking our Core i7 processor from 2.0GHz up to 4.0GHz, and we continued to see a performance increase right up to the maximum tested frequency....
Activision announced CoD: Warzone for mobile on Thursday. The game aims to provide players with an AAA gaming experience featuring dynamic and large-scale battles between players on mobile platforms. Even though it’s a port of an existing title, Activision is building the game from the ground up rather than straight port over to mobile platforms. So it may be a while before it’s ready. Additionally, the company is looking for developers to work on the game, signaling that it is still in early production....
The comparison did not favor the venerable GeForce though as the much newer Radeon was on average 20% faster at 1080p and 14% faster at 1440p. Still, it was impressive to see that after six years the GTX 1080 remains a capable graphics processor, even if it’s not something you should be on the lookout for on the used market. This got us thinking though. Seeing that GTX 1080s generally sell for ~$200 used, or around what you’d pay for a used Radeon 6600, how does the newer GeForce RTX 3050 compare in all this?...
One important element of that work involves deciding how to best leverage the data assets that are available. Recently, many companies are starting to consider the idea of what many are calling data lakehouses. As the name suggests, a data lakehouse combines some of the characteristics of a data lake and a data warehouse into a single entity. Data lakes typically have huge amounts of unstructured and semi-structured data consisting of text, images, audio, video, etc....
According to a report from CNBC, the company had already invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the project. The New York Times notes CNN had plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next four years to hire more employees and rent out an additional floor of office space in Manhattan to support the venture. Andrew Morse, who led the push at CNN, is also stepping down and will be replaced by Alex MacCallum, who currently serves as CNN+ general manager....
When you’re packing the latest and greatest hardware, you expect to be able to play new games in all their glory at some pretty extreme resolutions, so it’s needless to say that we were more than a little disappointed when the GTX Titan offered only 45fps at the lowly setting of 1680x1050. This meant that cards such as the GTX 770 and GTX 680 were only borderline playable if you accept an average frame rate of 30fps....
Considering you’ve just met, we assume most of you aren’t ready to clear a dresser drawer for Windows 8. Overwriting your current stable OS with pre-release code could be a recipe for disaster, though at least one TechSpot staffer is taking the plunge. Dual booting is popular, but in our experience, rebooting into a separate environment is more trouble than it’s worth when you’re just trying to sample beta (err, “preview”) software....
Oddly here is another game where the 7800X is much slower than the 7700K and yet overclocking doesn’t help close the margin. I can’t really explain why that is, maybe one of you has a theory. The 7700K doesn’t gain any extra performance either but I would have just assumed at this point we were running into a GPU bottleneck. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is another game that’s primarily GPU bound, at least using the ultra quality settings at 1080p with a GTX 1080 Ti....
AS SSD Benchmark confirms the results reported by CrystalDiskMark, though this time the Agility 4 gets closer to its claimed 420MB/s with 386MB/s. The v4 managed to top its quoted speed of 230MB/s at 239.2MB/s, but it was still 61% slower than OCZ’s budget drive. The Agility 4 does very well again when measuring sequential writes, despite missing its listed speed of 410MB/s by around 40MB/s. Keeping the pattern going, Crucial’s drive beat its listed speeds by about 25MB/s, but it was still 42% behind the Agility 4....
On Friday, anime streamer Crunchyroll announced it was removing simulcast content from its ad-supported tier. To continue watching new episodes of a series, viewers must lay down at least $8 per month or more for one of Crunchyroll’s premium tiers. Previously, the free tier had ads, and episodes were on a one-week delay compared to premium subscriptions, which gets them an hour after the episode debuts in Japan. It was a fair compromise for getting to watch shows that would otherwise not make it to Western countries....
Inside, you’ll find a massive motherboard tray that is non-removable – though that’s okay, given how spacious the HPTX-ICE is. Towards the front are seven 3.5" drive bays with one 3.5" to 2.5" adapter for a pair of SSDs. Above the HDD bays are five 5.25" bays and the bottom two are populated with an adapter for another two 3.5" drives. In total, the HPTX-ICE supports five 5.25" drives, nine 3....
Before wrapping up benchmarking we tested this theory using a single GTX 980 Ti graphics card in The Witcher 3. As you can see a single GTX 980 Ti is fully tapped even with DDR4-2133 memory. The ultra-quality settings paired with HairWorks are too much for this GPU configuration to take advantage of the CPU processor power provided by all that additional bandwidth. Gaming aside, we saw gains in a number of applications, most notably HandBrake and Photoshop CC....
