Posts

The AV1 hardware encoder in Intel’s new Arc A380 destroyed Nvidia and AMD’s H.264 encoders in initial real-world tests this week. The results are sorely needed good news for Intel’s entry into the GPU space and bode well for AV1’s future in content creation. Late last month, computers featuring Intel’s entry-level Arc Alchemist graphics cards hit the international market after weeks of delays. YouTuber EposVox bought one of the first available A380s and measured its AV1 encoding against multiple H....

Benchmarking BioShock Infinite with a GeForce GTX 980 shows minimal frame rate variation between the processors. The Core i5 and Core i7 were close enough to call even while the i3-4350 matched them at 1080p. In fact, the i7-4790 was just 3% faster than the i3-4160. Running the same test but with the GTX 960 delivered similar margins between the processors. This time the Core i7-4790 only matched the i3-4160 while it was 1% slower than the i5-4690....

Intel lists an MSRP of $330 (per 1,000 unit price) and we’re happy to report that retailers have been able to list it for $330. That makes the Core i5-13600K just $30 more expensive than the Ryzen 5 7600X and $70 cheaper than the 5800X3D. As for specifications, there are some noteworthy changes when compared to the 12600K. The P-cores have seen an increase in L2 cache capacity to 2 MB, while the E-cores see an even bigger upgrade, not only are there twice as many at 8, but the L2 cache has been upgraded from 2 MB per cluster to 4 MB for a total of 8 MB....

So while a bit disappointing, overall the 11600K did show strong gains over its predecessor for productivity workloads and a very small improvement in gaming performance. We deliberately skipped the 10900K for our day-one coverage as the 10600K just looked like the more reasonable product and it stood a chance against its Ryzen competition. Usually it’s the flagship CPU grabbing the headlines, but frankly, the Core i9-11900K at a list price of $540 (in 1,000 unit quantities) and a current retail price of $615 at places like Newegg, simply doesn’t stand a chance....

Intel revealed the Arc A750 benchmarks for 48 games in a new video on its YouTube channel. Forty-two of these are DirectX 12 titles that include Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, while six are Vulkan games such as Doom Eternal and Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Intel insists that none were cherry-picked. According to Intel’s results, the Arc A750 outpaced the RTX 3060 by 3% on the DirectX 12 games at 1080p with Ultra settings and by 5% at 1440p with high settings....

Intel’s internal testing suggested that the processor will hit 4.8GHz using the DX79SI motherboard. Sadly we were limited to 4.4GHz, but even at this frequency there were some pretty decent performance gains to be had. It’s worth mentioning that I also tried overclocking with the Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 but that proved to be even less successful. For whatever reason the board refused to accept the settings we were trying to input, which is a disappointing level of obedience from a military minded product....

Gaudi2 is made for Intel by Habana Labs, an Israeli company that it acquired at the end of 2019 for $2 billion. Habana actually makes two types of specialized accelerators: some for training neural networks, like Gaudi2; and others for running (i.e., “inferencing”) them, such as Goya and Greco. Performance Habana and Intel launched Gaudi2 in May but waited until last week to upload its benchmark scores into the public MLPerf database....

When it came to sequential write performance, the SSD 510 was far less exciting with a throughput of 209.1MB/s, which was 6% slower than the RealSSD C300, 9% slower than the SSD 320 and 19% slower than the Samsung 470 Series. The Vertex 3 widened that gap even further, overpowering Intel’s offering by 31%. The CrystalDiskMark random 512K test saw the SSD 510 deliver a read throughput of 318MB/s, making it 6% faster than Crucial’s last-gen C300 and 25% slower than the Vertex 3....

Intel’s 13th-gen Core processors are on the horizon, but they shouldn’t stray too far from their predecessors regarding microarchitecture. After all, Intel uses the same Intel 7 node as Alder Lake CPUs, so there isn’t much to be excited about — save for higher clocks and better overclocking capabilities. Meanwhile, Team Blue has been working on a much more exciting architecture called Meteor Lake, which will feature a chiplet configuration....

Marcin: To some extent. Clearly from XP to Vista to Windows 7 there have been attempts to make machines more secure, with the introduction of User Access Control, for example. It was buggy in Vista and kept asking users over and over again if they wanted to allow a certain program to run. I think it wasn’t very clear to users what User Active Control really was. When people keep seeing the same prompt they don’t think twice, they just click yes....

Data 9to5Mac found in the iOS 16 beta concerning how it handles wallpapers corroborates rumors that the iPhone 14 Pro will include an always-on screen. The beta references the technology in other areas as well. The pre-installed wallpapers for iOS 16 will be multi-layered to have two modes. A “sleep” status displays each wallpaper in a dark, faded state, presumably to appear while an iPhone is in sleep mode. Only an iPhone with an always-on screen could use this function....

When Konami rebranded PES as eFootball, some fans saw it as an opportunity to elevate the franchise to new heights. However, others were not so happy with the change, criticizing the move to mobile platforms and implementing a free-to-play model with micro-transactions. At launch, eFootball 2022 was considered one of Steam’s worst-rated games by users. Konami tried to patch the major bugs with band-aid fixes, but that wasn’t enough to save it....

LastPass sent an email to users informing them that an unauthorized party had gained access to portions of its development environment. The unusual activity was detected two weeks ago. The hacker took portions of the site’s internal source code and documents relating to technical information. “After initiating an immediate investigation, we have seen no evidence that this incident involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults,” states a LastPass blog post....

Gaming performance from the GTX 460 was respectable, despite being a year-old mainstream card. There is room for additional graphics horsepower if desired as the microATX motherboard allows for SLI or CrossFireX setups, which can be purchased directly from Lenovo or configured on your own. Be aware that a high-end dual-card configuration will likely require you to upgrade the power supply as well. Instead we’d have preferred to have an alternate, more powerful single-GPU graphics card option to choose from Lenovo, but that’s not the case at this point....

As usual I started by installing the Mini-ITX motherboard. I used the Asrock Z97E-ITX/ac coupled with a Core i5-4690K processor. The motherboard tray does have the recommended large cut out area that allows for access to the rear side of the motherboard for installing aftermarket coolers. Aware of this I held of installing the Silverstone Argon AR05 until after the motherboard was in the PC-O5S. This turned out to be a mistake as the hole in the motherboard tray didn’t properly provide access to rear side of the motherboards CPU socket....

Logitech claimed that the G910 was the culmination of years of ongoing development by its engineering team. With feedback from gamers and eSport athletes the company set out to develop the next-generation mechanical key and the end result is what it calls Romer-G mechanical switches. While everyone else was busy ordering shiploads of Cherry MX switches, Logitech went about creating its own. For the most part, the G910 received positive reviews, though the main sticking points were the keycaps and the palm rest....

The system is hand-painted using high quality automotive paint. As you can see from the photos, the paint looks very nice in general but upon closer inspection, we found a few sections where it was subpar or a piece of debris was lodged in the finish – lint perhaps. Based on touch, some of the imperfections seem to be in the paint while others are attached to the clear coat....

All major search engines claim that they need to retain personal data, in part, to provide better services and improving results, while also taking countermeasures against web nuisances like click fraud and search poisoning (using elaborate SEO techniques to rank up scam websites on search engine indexes). Even if you trust that search companies will take your business seriously, there are various things you can do to adopt safe browsing habits and help protect your privacy....

To recap, a whistleblower revealed in 2018 that now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of almost 90 million users without their consent for targeted political ads during the 2016 US presidential campaign and the UK’s Brexit referendum. The controversy led to Mark Zuckerberg testifying before congress, a $4.9 billion fine levied on the company by the FTC in July 2019, and a $100 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission....

Micron announced that it has started shipping its 232-layer NAND to clients in component form and through its Crucial SSD consumer product line, regaining industry leadership when it comes to layer count. The company’s sixth generation 3D NAND uses two 116-layer decks in a string-stacked design. It has a density of 14.6 Gbit/mm2, over 40 percent higher than its previous 176-layer flash. Micron also claims its areal density is 35 to 100 percent greater than competing TLC products....