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The surprise announcement from Halo community manager John Junyszek was a breath of fresh air for Halo Infinite fans that have found themselves stuck in a never-ending sea of grays and greens. The announcement said the team worked with 343 design lead Jerry Hook to address several community concerns raised since the game’s launch late last year. One of these gripes was that much of the free-to-play game’s more unique cosmetic skins were trapped behind a paywall....

It was only seven weeks ago when Cavill posted he was “back” as Superman following his brief appearance in Black Adam. Soon afterward, the British actor announced he would be leaving Netflix’s The Witcher series after season 3, which arrives next summer, with Liam Hemsworth taking on the role of Geralt of Rivia. Cavill never gave his reasons for leaving, though it was assumed filming Superman would have led to scheduling conflicts with the series....

Frame time data will still be included in our CrossFireX and SLI reviews. For this review we’ve tested at 2560x1600 exclusively. We are yet to include 4K results or higher because there isn’t a single-GPU solution available that can provide playable performance at this resolution. Test System Specs Intel Core i7-4770K (3.50GHz) x2 4GB Crucial DDR3-2400 (CAS 11-13-13-28) Asrock Z97 Extreme6 (Intel Z97) OCZ ZX Series (1250W) Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s) HIS Radeon R9 290X Hybrid IceQ (4096MB) Gigabyte Radeon HD 290X (4096MB) Gigabyte Radeon HD 290 (4096MB) HIS Radeon HD 280X (3072MB) Sapphire Radeon HD 285 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 280 (3072MB) HIS Radeon HD 265 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 7970 GHz (3072MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 (4096MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 (4096MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan (6144MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti (3072MB) Gainward GeForce GTX 780 (3072MB) Gainward GeForce GTX 770 (2048MB) Gainward GeForce GTX 680 (2048MB) Microsoft Windows 8....

Homeworld Remastered is surprisingly demanding even at 1080p. Once a lot of action takes place the frame rate dives and it takes a Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 680 to average 60fps. That said, the game is perfectly playable at 40fps, which means a lowly GTX 750 Ti or HD 7850 will suffice.

How do you transform a pile of sand into an advanced processor? Let’s find out. As we discussed before, processors and all other digital logic are made out of transistors. A transistor is an electronically controlled switch that we can turn on or off by applying or removing voltage from the gate. We discussed how there are two main types of transistors: nMOS devices which allow current when the gate is on, and pMOS devices which allow current when the gate is off....

On the front is a 5-megapixel (2560 x 1920) Samsung S5K5E2 1/5" CMOS sensor with 1.12 µm pixels, paired with an f/2.8 34mm lens! This choice of lens is particularly surprising, as f/2.8 will not allow in as much light as more typically-used f/2.2 or f/2.0 lenses, and the 34mm (effective) focal length is surprisingly narrow for a selfie camera. I was disappointed with the One X9’s camera in general, particularly for a system that includes OIS....

The HTC Sensation is the latest handset to show up to the dual-core Android smartphone party, boasting a 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen and an 8 megapixel camera to boot. The device hums along quickly and has plenty of UI tweaks, courtesy of HTC’s Sense 3.0. With other party tricks such as 1080p video recording and a distinctive beveled edge to the touchscreen, the Sensation certainly lives up to its name and provides the user with a very rich and customizable experience....

Not too long ago, Hyundai was in talks with Apple to build an electric car. The South Korean automaker seemed interested in lending its expertise to the Cupertino giant, which had long been rumored to be working on a self-driving car. However, those discussions quickly fell apart as Apple executives were worried about information leaks. Similarly, Hyundai executives remained divided on whether or not they saw Apple as a great fit for a potential partnership....

Reports of exploding batteries in mobile electronics like smartphones aren’t all that uncommon and often occur when the battery gets punctured. This creates a short circuit between the positive and negative layers, providing a path for all of the energy stored in the battery to flow through. Things can quickly heat up and if it gets hot enough, the electrolytes in the battery can decompose into flammable vapors that catch fire....

A recent tweet from a GTA insider claimed Rockstar was no longer working on remakes of Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV. Rockstar back in February confirmed that the next entry in the GTA franchise was well underway and suggested the scope will be significantly beyond what they have previously delivered. GTA V landed way back in 2013 and has enjoyed unprecedented longevity thanks in part to its expansive in-game world and attention to detail....

With the system left to idle the Pentium N3700 consumed 28% less power than the Pentium J2900. The Celeron N3150 saw even better savings (39%) over its Bay Trail-D equivalent, the J1800. With all four cores under full load the Pentium N3700 consumed 24% less power than the J2900. The Celeron N3150 did even better, consuming 41% less power than the J1800. What’s interesting is once we place full load on both the CPU cores and the GPU, the Pentium N3700 is just 5% more efficient than the J2900....

In a joint presentation, Intel and Broadcom linked a laptop running one of its processors to a Broadcom Wi-Fi 7 modem, achieving speeds of 5Gbps. The trial showcases a drastic leap over the current standard –Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) –which can reach up to around 1.7Gbps. In addition to allowing speeds up to 5.8Gbps, Wi-Fi 7’s new band frequencies and channel bandwidths give routers more stable simultaneous connections to larger numbers of devices....

The 18, 14, 12 and 10-core CPUs are all refreshes from chips that were released back in late 2017 as the 7000 series, codenamed Skylake-X. A year later these were relaunched as the 9000 series, still codenamed Skylake-X. As part of the refresh, the CPUs came with a small factory overclock and featured soldered rather than thermal paste for connecting the CPU die to the heatspreader. This essentially made them worse overclockers, but slightly better for everyone else....

Last year we did see the 10nm ‘Cannon Lake’ but it was a single processor, the Core i3-8121U, a measly dual-core clocked at up to 3.2 GHz with no integrated graphics. It was used in a single Lenovo laptop plus a small handful of NUCs. Because of its low-end specs, it never saw much traction. Thus in our book Ice Lake is Intel’s first true entry to the CPU market with the 10nm process....

The Core i7-4960X received a score of 24541pts in the 3DMark Cloud Gate test which made it just 4% faster than the older i7-3960X, so much of that gain can be attributed to the increased clock frequency. When compared to the Core i7-4770K and even the old Core i7-3770K the i7-4960X was just 6% faster. The 3Dmark 06 benchmark showed a more convincing 9% margin favoring the Core i7-4960X when compared to the i7-3960X, which just happens to be the same clock speed percentage increase....

The new CINEBENCH R11.5 benchmark on the other hand is able to make use of all six cores and as a result the 980X provides our best CPU score yet with 8.88pts. This is a 54% performance increase over the Core i7 975 EE. OpenGL performance remains much the same on both chips as the Core i7 980X EE and Core i7 975 EE delivered 34fps. WinRAR is another application that doesn’t appear to support more than four cores....

Both deals are also available as bundle packs for those who need a motherboard. The Core i9-12900K with an MSI MEG Z690 Unify-X Gaming is $876.98, while the Core i9-12900KF with an MSI MEG Z690 Unify Gaming is $834. Both motherboards support DDR5 memory. We love the Core i9-12900K, awarding it a score of 90 in our review. It packs 8 performance cores along with 8 efficient cores for a total of 24 threads....

Intel’s board kept pace with Asrock’s in the CINEBENCH R11.5 CPU benchmark, as both scored 3.2x points – less than half the score an i7-2600K setup.

Intel Apple Glen Test System Specs - Intel Core i3-2120 (3.30GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-10666 (CAS 9-9-9-24) - Intel DH61AG (Intel H61) - OCZ ZX Series 850w - Crucial m4 256GB Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 15.22.50.2509 LGA1155 Test System Specs - Intel Core i7-2600K (3.30GHz) - Intel Core i3-2120 (3.30GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20) - Asrock Z68 Extreme4 (Intel Z68) - Asrock Z68M-ITX/HT (Intel Z68) - OCZ ZX Series 850w - Crucial m4 256GB Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 15....

A datasheet released by Intel this month provides an in-depth look at the changes behind Intel’s Core processor lineup. The sheet details the most recent technologies and performance behind the new family of processors as well as a short list of deprecated features. The latter list includes the removal of Software Guard Extensions (SGX), a requirement for protected 4K UHD content. Digital rights management (DRM) solutions, such as those used in Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, rely upon SGX to facilitate secure communication and computation within a user’s system....