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Valve’s Samuel Pitoiset has been changing the Radeon Vulkan (RADV) driver to offer more control over how variable rate shading (VRS) works. Phoronix notes that the higher degree of control might relate to whether a Steam Deck is running on its battery or connected to AC. Microsoft introduced VRS to DirectX 12 in 2019 as a performance-saving feature. Essentially it can make a game render different parts of the screen with varying levels of clarity and precision depending on how important they are....

Ampere Analysis was founded in 2015 and hasn’t yet witnessed a year-over-year dip in video game spending. Spending on video games soared during the pandemic as people sought to entertain themselves while staying at home. In 2019 before the pandemic, category spending hit $151 billion. The following year, consumers collectively shelled out $182 billion on games, content and services. Viewed another way, spending increased 26 percent – by nearly $40 billion – from 2019 to 2021....

The security flaw, dubbed RollingPWN by researchers, exploits a component of Honda’s keyless entry system. The current entry system relies on a rolling code model that creates a new entry code each time owners press the fob button. Once issued, the previous ones should be made unusable to prevent replay attacks. Instead, researchers Kevin26000 and Wesley Li discovered the old codes could be rolled back and used to obtain unwanted access to the vehicle....

Most of the high-end SSDs we’ve tested complete this test in 43 or 44 seconds, and while the Black2 was only a few seconds behind, it was still the slowest SSD tested while its HDD’s 65-second run was worse than WD’s other disk drives. Installing Red Orchestra 2 the Black2 took 109 seconds, 10 seconds behind the 840 Evo and only one second away from tying Intel’s 520 Series with the worst SSD time recorded while the Black2’s HDD remained at the bottom of our graph....

But just like gaming laptops have become thinner and more portable over the years, integrated GPUs in most ultraportables are not as useless as they once were. It is actually possible to game on an ultrabook, it’s just a matter of choosing the game and its settings carefully such that it’s not too intensive for the 15W Intel CPU in most low-power laptops. With this in mind, we’ve tested 34 games on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon: from current AAA titles to older 2D platformers, to give you an idea of what games are actually playable on modern ultraportables....

This may not be news to you if you’ve tried to buy Kindle books from either application over the last 6+ years, but this recently came up again as an obstacle to a few family members and friends, so we thought it was still worth sharing the workaround. Granted, we can file this one under better late than never, but coverage seems warranted considering the fact that the issue has persisted for so long and isn’t looking to be resolved in the immediate future....

Wine 7.16 includes many bug fixes for software designed to run on Windows. Several issues with games are fixed as well, which will surely make Linux users happy. As the developers used to point out in the past, Wine “is not an emulator” but an open-source compatibility layer for users that need to run Windows software on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The “trick” behind the magic: Wine implements the Windows API by using 100% non-Microsoft code, even though users can provide external DLL files – even the ones included with Windows....

Now with 4xAA/4xAF enabled the Radeon graphics cards look a bit better as the Radeon HD 4870 X2 takes second place. This dual-GPU monster was still slower than the GeForce GTX 285. Furthermore, the Radeon HD 4890 trailed behind the GeForce GTX 260, while it was easily outclassed by the GTX 275. Not much changed at 1920x1200 and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 remained the second fastest graphics card tested, sitting between the GeForce GTX 285 and the GTX 275....

Microsoft introduced carbon-aware updates to Xbox with this week’s Xbox Insider update. The Xbox Series consoles’ new energy-saving shutdown mode will reschedule overnight game and OS updates to times when a user’s local energy grid is drawing the most renewable energy. With this setting, when an Insider’s internet-connected console is shut down at night, Microsoft will use available online regional carbon intensity data to determine the best time to turn the Xbox on to check for updates....

But nothing compares to the Xiaomi Mi Max, a gigantic 6.4-inch smartphone/phablet that dwarfs what most people carry with them. This phone is, quite simply, ridiculously large. While this handset’s size will suit only a small fraction of phone buyers, there’s actually a lot to like about the hardware inside. For just under $250 from Gearbest, who helped us acquire this phone for testing, you’re getting a massive display, a metal body with a fingerprint sensor, a 16-megapixel rear camera, and a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 SoC....

A Twitter user showed off a custom Lego brick containing a tiny display and then proceeded to play Doom on it. The 0.42-inch monochrome OLED screen features a resolution of 72x40, barely enough to see what’s happening in-game. The hollowed-out blue brick also contains an STM32F030F4P6 microcontroller with a single-core ARM Cortex-M0 running at 48 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, and 16 KB of flash storage. This hardware is required to drive the display, and it’s not enough to run Doom by itself, with some sprites within the game taking up more space than 16 KB....

During the session, Zuckerberg bluntly told the Meta workforce that “…some of you might decide this isn’t the place for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.” The statement highlights the company’s need to brace for additional economic hardships and coincides with a ~30% reduction in planned 2022 hires, down from the original 10,000 target to between 6,000 and 7,000 hires this year. Zuckerberg’s focus on increased performance and reduced hiring is designed to weed out poor performers and those who are unable to meet Meta’s new performance goals....

The Gigabit LAN support for example is provided by a Realtek RTL8111D, whereas Asus used the Realtek RTL8112L controller. The RTL8111D is a much more commonly used controller that utilizes the PCI Express bus. There is very little information available regarding the RTL8112L and therefore we are not exactly sure how these controllers compare. The same Realtek ALC889 HD audio codec has been used on both boards, offering support for 16/20/24-bit SPDIF input and output with up to 192kHz sample rate....

For many years now, a side panel of tempered glass has been a standard feature in most cases. That marked the end of side vents, just when M.2 drives that could benefit from them started becoming popular. That’s also limited the number of external drives (usually to zero) and internal 3.5" drives, both for aesthetic reasons and because filling the front of the case with drives when it has no side vents would destroy its thermal capability....

The GTX 980 Ti is now four years old, so you’d expect new GPUs around half the price to deliver a similar level of performance… or do they? Whereas the 980 Ti packs 2816 CUDA cores, the RTX 2060 has 32% fewer cores and the 1660 Ti 45% fewer cores. But those Turing cores are wider, allowing them to execute more instructions, and they’re also clocked higher. The Nvidia spec for the 980 Ti calls for a boost clock of 1075 MHz....

It’s almost twice as heavy and measurably thicker than truly thin-and-light systems like the 13-inch Samsung Series 9, its hybrid storage is slower than a genuine SSD, its optical drive seems out of place and many would argue that a 1366x768 screen has no business in a 15.6-inch notebook these days. While those facts make the M5 a lousy ultrabook, Acer still has a decent graphics-oriented mainstream notebook on its hands....

The only disadvantages were the relatively high price tag and lack of USB passthrough. Today the Thunder K7 is selling for $140, which we feel is a bargain for such a well equipped and unique gaming keyboard. However, if that is too much perhaps the Thunder K3 at $85 is more suitable. The interesting thing about the Thunder K3 is that it’s actually the Thunder K7, or at least a good chunk of it....

Back in 2016, crypto exchange Bitfinex was hacked. Thieves made away with approximately 119,756 bitcoin, which was then worth about $61 million but would be closer to $4.5 billion today. The DoJ seized about 94,000 BTC last week valued at roughly $3.6 billion. The DoJ alleges that Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, conspired to launder the stolen Bitcoin, which was transferred to a wallet controlled by Lichtenstein. Around 25,000 BTC were transferred out of that wallet and laundered through a series of small, complex transactions across multiple platforms, designed to conceal the path of the stolen crypto....

AMD 3D V-Cache CPUs Starting from the most recent reveal this morning, AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 3D V-Cache CPUs. V-Cache debuted on the popular Ryzen 7 5800X3D last year, stacking a cache die on top of the CPU chiplet to significantly increase L3 cache capacity from 32 to 96 MB. The same sort of technology is now being deployed to Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 processors as well. While before AMD only launched one V-Cache processor, with Zen 4 we are getting three new options....

Whereas the HD 7770 comes very aggressively clocked at 1GHz, the HD 7750 operates at a more conservative 800MHz, which is still 14% higher than the HD 6750. The HD 7750 still features 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1125MHz using a tiny 128-bit bus, supplying a bandwidth of just 72GB/s. The HD 7770 and HD 7750 differ greatly in their core configurations, as the latter features 512 SPUs, 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs....