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CrystalDiskMark’s sequential read results placed the Vector 150 slightly ahead of its predecessor with a throughput of 499.5MB/s, virtually the same result as the 840 Pro. The Vector 150 maintained its lead over the original drive in CrystalDiskMark’s sequential write test with a strong throughput of 496.2MB/s, the fastest SSD tested. OCZ’s latest offering was a fraction faster than last year’s Vector in CrystalDiskMark’s random 512K read test, with its throughput of 420....

Once again, the OnePlus 2 is slightly faster than the One M9 and LG G Flex 2 in GPU-heavy benchmarks. Both of these devices also feature 1080p displays, so there was no advantage in on-screen tests, and I’m yet to see the power of the Adreno 430 paired with a 1440p display. NAND performance results from the OnePlus 2 were decent but not outstanding, falling one rung behind the Galaxy S6 in sequential and random performance....

The wide-angle camera gets a 16-megapixel Sony IMX398 sensor with 1.12µm pixels and an f/1.7 lens, while the zoom cameras is a 20-megapixel IMX350 with 1.0µm pixels and an f/2.6 lens. There is a 1.25 stop difference in aperture between the wide and zoom cameras, as well as 20.3 percent smaller pixels, so it’s clear the zoom camera is not nearly as equipped for low light photography. Neither camera has optical image stabilization either, though OnePlus does cite electric stabilization as a feature....

Enough players had problems trying to log onto Overwatch 2 for the game’s launch that it became a meme. Employees at Blizzard say the company is fighting at least two DDoS attacks flooding their servers. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra pinned dropped connections on the first attack on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Blizzard’s Aaron Keller said the company would work through the night to deal with a second DDoS incident. They haven’t provided information on the severity of the attacks but said they are making progress toward restoring server stability....

Krafton said that in the week following the F2P transition, the game saw a 468 percent increase in new players. In some regions, such as Southeast Asia and South America, new user growth reached 537 percent. What’s more, the average playtime on PC and consoles increased by 100 percent week-over-week compared to the week prior to the F2P switch. On PlayStation, players logged a 400 percent increase in playtime. During the transition, PUBG was also the top-ranked game on Steam, we’re told....

Far Cry Primal generally goes the way of the green team and we certainly see this when comparing the 1060 and RX 570. I’m not saying the margins were extreme but the 1060 was faster at both resolutions and enjoyed a 9% advantage at 1080p. Tom Clancy’s The Division was tested exclusively using the DirectX 12 API and here the 570 was 3% faster at 1080p. Yes, Hitman has been included, much to the delight of all those hulk-colored fanboys....

The exact models used for testing included the EVGA GTX 1060 FTW+ and MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X+ as well as the MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8G and Aorus RX 580 Xtreme Edition. Of note, the EVGA FTW+ is aggressively clocked from the factory, featuring a base clock of 1632MHz, while the MSI Gaming X+ comes clocked at 1569MHz, potentially making it 4% slower. However, MSI’s GTX 1060 features 9Gbps GDDR5 memory that is clocked 12% higher, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of difference that makes when comparing the cards....

Cryptocurrency prices have crashed over the last couple of months. The biggest of them all, Bitcoin, which hit a record of almost $68,000 late last year, is now hovering around $20,000. The crash has been felt by companies that deal in digital assets, cryptominers, and even entire countries. The falling price of crypto is also being noticed by ransomware gangs who demand it as payment from victims. As reported by CNET, Mark Lance, vice president of cyberdefense and a ransomware negotiator at GuidePoint Security, writes that the criminals now have to ask for more crypto so they receive the same amount when it’s converted into dollars....

The GPU is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. This discrete graphics chip is essentially identical to the desktop equivalent, with 1280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. It’s clocked at 1404 MHz with a rated boost of 1670 MHz, slightly lower than the desktop GPU. Its 6GB of memory is clocked at 8000 MHz on a 192-bit bus for 192 GB/s of bandwidth. The main piece of hardware that can be factory configured is the PCIe M....

Our readers proved passionate on the subject, reminiscing about their favorite soundtracks and pointing out some glaring omissions (that we missed), whether through sheer ignorance of a particular game or it simply not making the cut. One thing was clear: a sequel was in order. We’re forging ahead with part two, which focuses exclusively on outstanding PC game soundtracks. And yes, we’ve got our hands full as there’s a lot of excellent material to consider....

The Titan eliminates concerns about potential GPU bottlenecks, which is great for showing how much of a performance difference there is when gaming on various processors. However, we can all agree that no gamers will be pairing a $110 CPU with a $1,650 GPU, and it also seems unlikely that any mid-range graphics will be on par with this level of performance in the near future. To better represent how Ryzen 3 compares to Ryzen 5 and Intel’s competing processors, we’ve benchmarked the GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 in nine different PC games....

Starting with the 720p results where we had the least chance of being GPU limited, we see that the Core i5-8400 was on average 13% faster than the stock Ryzen 5 2600. That’s not a huge margin but noteworthy enough. The frame time performance was closer but even here the 8400 was still 10% faster. Overclocking did hand Ryzen the advantage and now the 2600 was 7% faster for the 1% low result and 5% faster for the average frame rate....

Earlier this year we compared Intel’s Core i9-9900K and Ryzen 9 3900X using two 8GB modules versus four 4GB modules using the exact same memory timings. We found that when using rather slow DDR4-3000 CL16 memory, we were looking at a 3-5% performance uplift for the average frame rate at 1080p using an RTX 2080 Ti, but also gains as high as 10% when looking at the 1% low results....

However, I’m not quite sure Intel understands how competition works. Whereas AMD’s solution launched with an MSRP of $330 and can be readily purchased online for as little as $290 today, Intel is still asking $600 for the i7-7820X. Worse still, the cheaper Ryzen 7 1700 can be happily paired with a $100 motherboard, while the pricier Core i7-7820X requires one that costs $220+. Although it’s clear that the R7 1700 is considerably cheaper than the Core i7-7820X, we’ve been wondering just how much faster Intel’s solution is considering both chips have 8 cores and 16 threads....

There’s no denying that the 840 Pro was one of the most successful high-end SSD series over the past few years, offering strong performance, reasonable pricing and unquestionable reliability. For all those positives though, the drive wasn’t always at the top of its game with below average results in two of our copy tests. Samsung’s new 850 Pro, on the other hand, was fast everywhere, raising the bar in all three copy tests to beat the competition by as much as 30MB/s....

Returning an SSD can be a delicate process as data security can be of utmost importance – even more so in Europe where strict data protection laws have been in place for decades. However, a user from Igor’s Lab discovered a rather unconventional RMA policy when returning his Samsung 980 Pro SSD. Samsung Germany requested this user to destroy his 980 Pro with a drill or hammer before returning it for RMA....

For starters, Samsung’s skin has a much nicer visual design than any previous version of TouchWiz. The company is now using a clean yet unique style that looks like it belongs in a modern Android world. Every cartoon element that was a feature of TouchWiz in the past is now a more stylized, futuristic element, with a greater use of rounded edges and far fewer gradients. The design looks pretty good these days, and stands out from the crowd of other Android handsets....

While the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is awkward in use as a camera due to its size, it takes really nice 3 megapixel still photos and shoots very respectable 720p HD video with its main camera, which features autofocus and an LED flash. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the audio recorded with the videos. The user interface on the camera is different than the one found on the Motorola XOOM, and I prefer it....

Now more than a few generations into the game, Samsung has prepared its best offering to date, pairing TLC storage with two caching mechanisms, including one called RAPID that can tap into RAM. We weren’t impressed with the Evo series or its caching technologies in every test, especially when working with a single large file, but it held its own in most, including our program copy and real-world application tests, while it managed to top the graph in our game copy test as well as several synthetic benchmarks....

With less than 3% separating the fastest SSD from the slowest in PCMark 8, we wouldn’t place too much weight on these scores. The entire PCMark 8 storage benchmark was completed 17% faster with the Samsung SSD 850 Evo when compared to the 840 Evo. The 850 Evo was also 10% faster than the Crucial MX100. The Samsung SSD 850 Evo received a storage bandwidth rating of 291.3MB/s which was 37% higher than that of the 840 Evo and on par with the Crucial MX100....