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I first reached out to AMD about the possibilities of exploring 4K monitor technology in the fall of last year. It had been nearly a decade since I’d laid hands on a system that didn’t have an Intel CPU and Nvidia graphics card of some sort in it — I’d been sticking to my comfort zone. But with more and more boutique PC makers turning to AMD’s Radeon R9 series of graphics cards and the company’s exciting Mantle technology hitting the scene, I felt it was time to see how the other half lived....

The problem stems from the fact that Citrix built much of its early business on extending core capabilities for Windows, and many of those extensions were eventually subsumed by Microsoft into subsequent versions of the platform. As a result, the perennial question seemed to be: when would Microsoft just buy Citrix? Thankfully, the two companies continued to find ways to partner with each other at both a technology and business level, and this latest news makes it clear that the relationship between the two organizations is as strong as ever....

While the cost of these cases varies significantly, they’re all fairly similar in terms of stature in that their tall, rectangular profile resembles most other mid-towers. Mixing things up, Cooler Master’s latest mid-size enclosure breaks the conventional mold with boxier dimensions – in fact, the company describes it as a “LAN box”. Given the HAF XB’s cube-like figure, it’s no surprise that Cooler Master is pushing the LAN-friendly angle, which seems to be increasingly common among case makers....

Moving on, I have some more typical results, though some explaining will still be in order here. At 1080p we again see that the Core i7-7700K is quite clearly the better CPU in this title and interestingly Vega 64 actually does much better with the Intel CPU. The GTX 1080 was 5% faster than Vega 64 when using the 7700K but 10% faster with the R5 1600. Moving to 1440p things change quite a bit but this has less to do with the CPUs and more to do with Vega 64 coming on stronger at higher resolutions....

With less than stellar throughput performance we had low expectations for the application performance of the Crucial MX200 and BX100. The MX200 was 2 seconds slower than the MX100 while the BX100 was 3 seconds slower. The virus scan took 43 seconds to complete when using the MX200 and BX1000 drives making them both 2 seconds slower than the older MX100.

At 1920x1200 the GeForce GTX 560 Ti performance dipped to 74fps, while the GTX 285 averaged 65fps. The results were still strong across the board with the Radeon HD 4890 averaging 50fps and the GeForce GTX 260 with 51fps. However, many cards failed to meet our desired 40fps mark, including the HD 5750, GTS 450, HD 4850, 9800GT and HD 5670. It’s unlikely that anyone will want to play this game at 2560x1600 using lower-end quality settings, but we have provided the results for interest’s sake....

With a modest Radeon HD 7770, there was an absence of lower resolutions. Even with the latest Catalyst drivers (13.11 and 13.12) and the latest Dell monitor drivers/software installed, only the following oddball resolutions were available: 1920x2160, 1856x1392, 1800x1440, 1792x1344 and 1152x864. Unlike the lower-end Radeon HD 7770, our GeForce GTX 660 and GTX 770 offered a variety of 16:9 resolutions; however, making use of them was a different matter....

Back in January 2014 we reviewed Dell’s first flagship 4K monitor, the massive 32-inch UP3214Q. Despite being the most impressive monitor TechSpot had looked at to date, the UP3214Q landed squarely in the early adopter category as evident by its tiled design (essentially two screens stitched together), limited 60Hz connectivity options, and a wallet-weeping $3,500 initial MSRP. It was also met with a general lack of 4K compatibility, support, and content - none of which were really Dell’s fault, but facts nevertheless....

One simple but strange design choice makes a big difference: the XPS 13 2-in-1 uses a Kaby Lake Y-series processor, compared to the U-series used in the standard XPS 13, and the convertible Spectre x360. As Y-series parts have a reduced 4.5W TDP, compared to 15W, they’re slower and less capable. Before Kaby Lake, these Y-series processors used the “Core m” designation. The Core i7-7Y75 used in my review unit was 22% slower in CPU workloads, and 33% slower in graphics workloads, relative to the Core i7-7500U....

Budget cards such as the GeForce GTX 460 and Radeon HD 6790 were still able to deliver playable performance with more than 50fps on average. The only cards that struggled here were the Radeon HD 6670, 6750 and perhaps the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. Anything north of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti had more than enough power to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution in all of its glory at 1680x1050....

The MaxxMem² performance is overwhelmingly strong on the DFI motherboards, with the LANParty UT X58-T3eH8 delivering 9% more write bandwidth than the Asus P6T Deluxe. How or why is not clear to us, as all motherboards were using the same OCZ memory which was clocked at the same frequency using the same timings. Even the read performance was noticeably better on the DFI motherboards. Here things get even more interesting as MaxxMem² claims that the same test actually took the longest to complete on the LANParty UT X58-T3eH8 despite it delivering the best bandwidth result....

In our tests we didn’t experience any significant bugs or other gameplay anomalies and as far as graphics optimization is concerned, Dirt 3 is a breath of fresh air compared to the other buggy titles we’ve tested in recent times. Crossfire and SLI worked perfectly out of the box, which is somewhat uncommon as gamers usually have to wait for a driver update. Enabling maximum visual quality with 4xAA, I’d say all graphics cards performed better than expected considering the astounding graphics....

On the bright side, if you’re actually interested in playing DNF, at low resolutions the game can be played using the highest visuals settings with budget graphics cards, such as the GeForce GT 430 and Radeon HD 5670. Neither are gaming cards but are able to score 60fps at 1440x900. Along with having low GPU requirements, you should be able to experience playable performance with a modest dual-core CPU. We imagine you could pair a $60 GPU with a $60 CPU and still play DNF as it was meant to be played....

Today, the Embracer Group announced it has acquired three of Square Enix’s development studios in a deal valued at $300 million. While it may look small next to recent deals like Microsoft’s $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition or Sony’s $3.6 billion purchase of Bungie, it’s still a significant change in the gaming industry’s landscape. The agreement will see Embracer get a hold of Square Enix Montréal, Eidos Montréal, and Crystal Dynamics....

We’re talking about APIs – the golden fleece to programmers around the world. Join us as we explain just what an API is, and take a quick look at where and how they get used. What’s in a name? The term API stands for ‘Application Programming Interface’ but, as we’ll soon see, it isn’t just for making applications (or to give them their full name, application programs – apps, for short)....

In a recent interview with IGN, Todd Howard confirmed that the studio’s next game will be The Elder Scrolls VI. This tidbit isn’t exactly breaking news considering Bethesda first teased the game at E3 2018, but he did add that the project is already in pre-production and will be coming after Starfield. Speaking of, Starfield was recently delayed along with Redfall into the first half of 2023 in order to give devs more time to polish the games....

The Pentium J2900 took 25.4 seconds to complete the Excel 2013 workload – 13% faster than the Athlon 5350 and 14% faster than the Celeron J1900 but 27% slower than the Celeron G1820 and 35% slower than the AMD A8-7600. PowerPoint 2013’s results favoured the Athlon 5350, as the Pentium J2900 was 8% slower despite being 16% faster than the Celeron J1900. The J2900 was also 6% slower than the Celeron G1820 and 29% slower than the AMD A8-7600....

At idle, the Pentium J2900 system consumed 29 watts, which is comparable to the AMD Athlon 5350 and 5150. Under full load the Pentium J2900 pulled 16% more power than the Celeron J1900 to match the Sempron 3850 at 37 watts. Still, this meant that the J2900 consumed 16% less power than the Athlon 5350 and 30% less than the Celeron G1820. The Pentium J2900 remained fuel efficient when measuring CPU and GPU load with a total system consumption of just 41 watts....

Then we have the GTX 1050 Ti and anything below it (such as the RX 560) which aren’t powerful enough to deliver playable performance using the ultra quality settings. Jumping up to the RX 570 is rather massive and again this card is found just trailing the GTX 1060 3GB. I should note that despite the 3GB frame buffer, the cut-down GTX 1060 did a great job at delivering 1440p in this title....