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It was August 2020 when Texas-based OnwardMobility announced its intention to launch a new BlackBerry after it licensed the brand name. The 5G handset, which reportedly took a lot of design inspiration from the 2015 BlackBerry Priv, was due to arrive last year, but we’re still waiting. Early last month, OnwardMobility published a post titled “Contrary to popular belief, we are not dead.” It admitted that the company encountered various delays preventing it from shipping in 2021, but it would still be bringing an ultra-secure enterprise phone to market....

The HD texture pack was disabled this time when testing Far Cry Primal and I lowered the visual quality to the normal preset. Doing so allowed the GTX 1050 to render 58fps on average, or 14% faster than the RX 560 – a disappointing result for AMD here despite offering playable performance. Tom Clancy’s The Division was tested exclusively using the DirectX 12 API and this gave AMD the edge as the RX 560 averaged 57fps to the GTX 1050’s 51fps....

The Callisto Protocol has been called a spiritual successor to Dead Space (not to be confused with the latter’s upcoming remake), so we can expect plenty of gore and gruesomeness involving monstrous creatures called Biophage. It seems the viscera was all a bit too much for CERO, Japan’s equivalent of the North American ESRB. Developer Striking Distance was asked to make cuts that would allow an edited version to be released in the region, but it refused....

Ranganathan and other Google engineers looked at the overall picture and realized transcoding (for YouTube) was consuming a large fraction of compute cycles in its data centers. The off-the-shelf chips Google was using to run YouTube weren’t all that good at specialized tasks like transcoding. YouTube’s infrastructure uses transcoding to compress video down to the smallest possible size for your device, while presenting it at the best possible quality. What they needed was an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC – a chip designed to do a very specific task as effectively and efficiently as possible....

There have been some smartphones that have come close to exactly what I want in a daily driver - the Google Nexus 6P, Apple iPhone 6s and Samsung Galaxy S6 are all great examples - but I’m yet to see the elusive ‘perfect’ device; the phone with no compromises in hardware or software. And after everything I’ve seen over the past year, and considering what tech we can expect in 2016, I truly believe it’s possible for a company to produce an ideal, perfect smartphone this year....

Not all that long ago Rise of the Tomb Raider was considered a highly demanding video game yet today there are single GPUs such as the GTX 1080 that can deliver over 100fps at 1440p. The Titan X kept the frame rate above 80fps at all times and went on to average 129fps. Adding a second Titan X for SLI only boosted performance by 36% at 4K. Still, it’s hard to compare with an average of 175fps....

The panel itself is secured using six thumb screws and those wall mounting or laying the case horizontally might want to replace these with flush fitting screws. As expected, at the rear we find a VESA mount and Thermaltake has included plenty of screws for wall runners or brackets. It’s a hefty case though, and with water-cooling thrown in too, you’ll easily be needing a wall mount capable of 20kg+....

Inside is a 5,000mAh battery that can run the system for more than six hours as well as a host of ports for connecting phones or a game console. There’s even a microSD card reader for expanded storage. The chassis measures 311mm x 210mm x 14.9mm and weighs 1.2kg, or around 2.65 pounds. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a hybrid laptop / smartphone concept. More than a decade ago, Motorola tried something similar with its Atrix 4G smartphone and Webtop concept but it never gained traction....

You can use these tools to study your wireless network at home, work, or in public areas. Identify rooms or spots where there is signal weakness, interference between wireless devices, obstacles that might cause dips in performance, and rogue connections stealing your Wi-Fi. For gamers, they can help prevent lag, and in public areas choose the safest connection available – if there was such a thing. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector Designed to provide real time monitoring of wireless network status, Wi-Fi Inspector 2....

According to the TSA, an agent noticed the knife hidden inside the man’s carry-on bag when it was x-rayed. The weapon couldn’t be found when the contents were examined, so each item was put through the machine individually until it was discovered concealed in a laptop. The man initially said he had no idea the knife was there, but later admitted it was his. “After obtaining tools that could disassemble the laptop, a double-edged knife was found to have been artfully concealed inside the guts of the computer,” the TSA wrote....

The hardware requirements for Windows 11, especially when it comes to the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and the messy PC Health Check app situation, were a black eye for Microsoft. But there are ways of getting around the demands, such as editing the registry to bypass some checks. However, Microsoft has long warned that it can’t guarantee devices running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware will receive updates, and it “recommends” against force installs....

On February 1, Samsung plans to host its first in-person Galaxy Unpacked since before the Covid pandemic. As usual, Samsung should unveil the latest Galaxy phones. This year it could also introduce its newest series of Galaxy Books — Samsung’s line of laptops. While most specifications are scarce, Samsung Display revealed some features of the upcoming Galaxy Book displays. Samsung plans to use its on-cell touch AMOLED (OCTA) displays on the upcoming Galaxy Books....

Interestingly, the DataTraveler pulled ahead in our game test, performing 8% faster than the Patriot Supersonic, while the Nobility N005 displayed a very weak write rate of just 27.6MB/s. Our program write test really hammered the drives, with ADATA’s performing especially bad at only 12.2MB/s. Patriot’s offering jumped up to 22.3MB/s writes while Kingston’s remained comparatively strong with a throughput of 37.8MB/s.

Valve announced its Steam Deck handheld console back in July 2021, and it’s no secret that it brought a lot of excitement to gamers who have been waiting to play their favorite PC games on a compact portable device. The concept proved intriguing even to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who called it an “amazing move” that will offer users the ability to install software of their choosing. However, the timing coincided with the ongoing situation where the tech supply chain has been struggling to meet demand for materials and components needed to make consumer electronic devices....

There doesn’t appear to be much concrete evidence online to help buyers decide between the two (2GB vs. 4GB). Yet we found most forum threads were full of users recommending buyers avoid the cheaper 2GB cards in favor of the slightly more expensive 4GB models, described as “faster” and that they “won’t limit performance.” It’s usually the $200 options that will find their way into most gaming rigs. That means the GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 380 will be the cards most will consider....

The same hardware that currently runs Windows 7 competently can be upgraded to Windows 10 with no issues whatsoever on the performance front. We can ensure that the operating systems were evaluated using the exact same hardware, benchmarking software and methodology. However, we can’t ensure that something such as GPU drivers didn’t cause variations in performance. Moreover, technologies such Intel’s Turbo boost feature can impact the accuracy of the results, though we generally run all tests at least three times, taking the average from multiple runs....

Consoles, just like graphics cards, have been plagued with sketchy availability and insane pricing because of the global chip shortage and scalpers. While the Xbox Series S and the Nintendo Switch have been easier to get for a while now, the PlayStation 5 remains as rare as ever. Buying an Xbox Series X can still be an ordeal 17 months after its release, but the situation has been improving as the console can sometimes be found at its $500 MSRP at some retailers....

The cameras included on this phone are about what I expected for the price: not as good as current-generation flagship phones, but perfectly fine for everyday usage. I believe the Moto G4 Plus has a better 16-megapixel shooter at a similar price, though the Mi Max is just behind. The 16-megapixel Samsung sensor exhibits average levels of detail. Photos taken with this camera are soft and lack fine detail when viewed at full resolution, however zooming out to 1080p or 1440p results in good sharpness and clarity....

According to its author, enabling FSR 2.0 via the mod just about doubled their 4K performance on a GTX 1080, to 45 fps. And, as you can see for yourself in the screenshot below, the quality is phenomenal compared to the game’s FSR 1.0. They explain briefly how it works on their page. In summary, both DLSS and FSR 2.0 use the same sorts of temporal data and the mod is a translator that converts the information meant for DLSS into FSR 2....

Fast forward today, and a typical graphics card might have 14 billion transistors, in a die 500 mm2 in size, and consume over 200 W of power. The capabilities of these behemoths will be immeasurably greater than their ancient predecessors, but have they got any better at being efficient with all this tiny switches and energy? A Tale of Two Numbers In this article, we’ll take a look at how well GPU designers have utilized the increase in die size and power consumption to give us ever more processing power....