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It’s been quite a few years since Corsair has refreshed the Obsidian lineup but that changes today with the introduction of its new $150 Obsidian Series 500D. With the exception of the original 550D, every Obsidian model has followed the same general design cues, but the 500D throws everything out the window in what is a significant departure from the norm for the series. Corsair says the 500D is a state of the art mid-tower designed for enthusiasts, with notable features including smoked tempered glass side doors and a premium aluminum trim....

CINEBENCH R11.5 results also remain much the same for each processor when comparing clock for clock performance. The OpenGL numbers changed slightly as we see the Pentium G6950 now has an advantage over the Phenom II X2 555, while the Pentium E5400 loses out to the Athlon II X4 630 and Athlon X3 435 processors. The AMD Athlon II and Phenom II processors still dominate the Intel Pentium and Celeron parts, while the Sempron 140 is left at the bottom of the pack in Far Cry 2....

For comparison, we have included current generation SSDs such as the Intel SSD 510 Series, Intel SSD 520 Series, Crucial m4, and Samsung 830 Series. These SATA 6Gb/s drives were tested on the Sandy Bridge (LGA1155) platform for maximum performance. In addition to flash devices, we’ve added the Western Digital RE4 1TB HDD. Our testing suite consists of four synthetic benchmark programs and our own file copying and load time tests....

By testing at 1440p we are no doubt closer to the 60fps frames than we would be at 1080p with the frame cap removed. Granted this is a GPU bottleneck, but by running closer to the GPU’s limits any reduction in system performance will likely be more noticed with the 980 Ti on a knife edge. Either way, with the 60fps frame cap being comfortably reached by the 980 Ti at both 1080p and 1440p, it really shouldn’t make a big difference which resolution we use for testing....

Dell has just announced that their impressive-looking XPS 13 Plus is now available. The laptop is a futuristic redesign of the popular XPS 13, one of the best ultrabooks you can buy right now. Dell made the keyboard sit flush with the chassis and removed the space between individual keys, allowing each key to be slightly larger. At the top, there’s a row of capacitive buttons that can display either media controls or traditional function key labels depending on whether the Fn key is toggled....

Since we found that the Radeon cards churned out exactly the same performance using either MLAA or FXAA we decided to test with MLAA. The GeForce graphics cards also delivered similar performance when using either, though on occasion we saw a reasonable performance gain with FXAA, here are some comparisons using high-end cards… At 1680x1050 the AMD Radeon graphics cards delivered the same performance using FXAA and MLAA. This was also true for the GeForce GTX 580 SLI graphics cards though they were likely both CPU limited anyway....

Speaking during Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday, Musk called the robot “the most important product development we’re doing this year.” That’s a bold claim, considering the highly anticipated Cybertruck, which now isn’t set to arrive until next year, is one of its products in the works, as is the second-gen Tesla Roadster. The $200,000 sports car aims to be the quickest production car in the world, with a claimed 0-60 speed of just 1....

A 13G filing earlier this month revealed that on March 14, Musk purchased 73,486,938 Twitter shares, worth about $2.89 billion, giving him a majority 9.2% passive stake in the company. The acquisition was made public on April 4, but federal trade laws require investors who surpass a 5% stake in a company to notify the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within ten days. By delaying the announcement, Musk was able to buy more Twitter shares at an artificially low price, a move that is estimated to have netted him $156 million....

Since Epic unveiled Unreal Engine 5 in 2020, it’s chiefly been noted for features like the Lumen real-time global illumination system and Nanite micro-polygons. This week, the company announced these features and others are now ready. However, they are still insufficient for non-gaming applications like film and TV productions. One sample project Epic released alongside UE5 is City Sample, which lets users examine and explore an environment Epic built for The Matrix Awakens — the free UE5 demo released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles last year....

Earlier this week, the ALS Association announced FDA approval of AMX0035, also known as Relyvrio. The new treatment’s funding included donations from 2014’s ALS ice bucket challenge, which spread like wildfire across social media platforms worldwide. The ice bucket challenge gained traction following its popularization by Patrick Quinn and Pete Frates. As ALS patients themselves, they are responsible for considerable increases in awareness, engagement, and fundraising following the challenge’s 2014 rise....

In the next weeks we’ll dedicate a couple of articles to game streaming and provide you with a definitive answer on what sort of setup is the best, and what quality settings make the most sense to use. Today’s investigation is focused on streaming quality settings, we want to find out what encoding settings deliver the best balance between quality and performance, and how each of the various popular encoding modes differs in terms of results....

The newest game doesn’t offer many surprises, but it’s still enjoyable to play. Like the earlier games in the series, you control a beefy dude (or lady!) from a third-person perspective. You still take cover, still hunker down and “roadie run” from place to place, and still carefully time your active reloads to fill each clip with extra-powerful bullets. You still shoot at big, squishy enemies that burst open like gore pinatas....

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost was surprisingly slow when testing with Far Cry 3 at 1920x1200. With an average frame rate of just 25.6fps it was 15% slower than the Radeon HD 7850, though it did still manage to beat the 7790 by a convincing 16% margin. For a more playable 50fps we required a second GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics card. This meant that the GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI cards were 21% faster than the Radeon HD 7950, but 12% slower than the 7850 Crossfire cards....

However, with the onboard Intel SSD 311 20GB cache enabled the throughput was increased by 37%. Now with 69.2MB/s, the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3iSSD was faster than the OCZ Vertex 2 Pro 100GB SSD, which is quite impressive to us. We found the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3iSSD’s performance odd when using the Kingston SSDNow V+ 180 64GB SSD for caching, as its throughput fell to just 37.8MB/s, which was lower than the standalone Samsung Spinpoint F1 hard drive....

The European Commission’s more than decade-long fight for a universal charging solution appeared to be almost over in June when EU lawmakers finalized legislation that would see all phones, tablets, and other small electronics sold in the region feature USB-C charging ports, thereby reducing e-waste. The European Parliament voted on the rule earlier today, and, as expected, it passed by a landslide: 602 votes for, 13 against, and eight abstentions....

You can read more about the Snapdragon 808 in my review of the LG G4, but essentially this SoC is a hexa-core design featuring two ARM Cortex-A57 CPU cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, alongside four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.4 GHz. Both clusters use an ARMv8-A architecture, so they’re 64-bit compatible, and the SoC itself is built on a 20nm process. The GPU in the Snapdragon 808 is an Adreno 418 clocked at 600 MHz....

As expected, the Nexus 6P comes loaded with Android 6.0 ‘Marshmallow’ out of the box, bringing with it the stock Android experience. Without any manufacturer skins applied, the software is clean, visually appealing and responsive, and it fits in perfectly with Android’s design guidelines. Combined with a selection of functional stock apps, this is easily the best way to experience Android. Being a Nexus device, the 6P also has the advantage of receiving new versions of Android well before other devices....

The search giant shared renderings of its futuristic campus in 2015, and the finished product looks a lot like what we initially saw years ago. Bay View is an all-electric, net water positive facility sporting the largest geothermal installation in North America. Google said it polled employees about what they need from a workplace and used the feedback to help shape its design philosophy. “We found that they’re happy, productive and creative when they come together in teams, but need spaces that are buffered from sound and movement to get deep-focus work done,” said David Radcliffe, VP of real estate and workplace services at Google....

According to multiple South Korean publications, many Android apps in the country have started increasing in-app purchase prices to maintain revenues while paying the Google Play Store’s required commission fees. Google stopped exempting apps from using its billing system and paying its 15-30 percent sales cut on June 1. A 2021 law lets South Korean developers use third-party billers, but that incurs an 11-26 percent commission, which could still be significant for some companies....