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Fast forward to today and the situation hasn’t changed all that much. AMD’s new flagship GPU, the Radeon VII is only able to match 2017’s GTX 1080 Ti, making it much slower than the RTX 2080 Ti. Also, it’s been largely unavailable since it launched a few weeks ago, though we have our review unit ready for testing. We thought it could be interesting to test out some popular games using the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8700K processors, pairing each with the Radeon VII, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080, as all three GPUs provide a similar level of performance....

The speedy CPU, loads of RAM, separate SSD / HDD storage as well as the large screen are great for gaming and productivity. But the GTX 960M will leave serious gamers looking for more. Although it’s not unreasonable to expect the larger Blade Pro model would be the higher-end gaming system, the fact of the matter is that this is less of a gaming powerhouse and more of a svelte workstation laptop that’s decent at playing games while retaining Razer’s aggressive chops and cool looks....

With over 200 million downloads on CNET alone, AVG Free is among the most popular free antivirus solutions on the market today. If you’re one of the countless users who find AVG’s notification area to be naggy (present since version 8.0), then keep reading to disable it once and for all. The workaround is as simple as renaming a couple of files in AVG’s main program directory - usually C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8 or AVG9, so head there now....

Last month, China’s immense Shenzhen tech hub was forced to go into lockdown due to a new outbreak of Covid-19 in the region. Millions of residents had to follow stringent stay-at-home restrictions and undergo several rounds of testing. As a result, several factories for consumer electronics and essential components had to suspend production. Manufacturers like Foxconn managed to partially resume operations after one week by implementing a so-called “closed-loop” management process....

A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has figured out how to “see” humans through walls using Wi-Fi router signals (again). The system can detect human shapes in 3D and interpret movements in real-time. The team started with tech co-developed by AI researchers at Facebook called DensePose. DensePose is an algorithm that can map the surface of the human body from a 2D photo (or video). With DensePose as the output, Carnegie Mellon researchers developed a deep neural network that maps the phase and amplitude of incoming and outgoing Wi-Fi signals to points on the human body, providing DensePose with the necessary input....

Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros adapted the Stable Diffusion (SD) algorithm to music, creating a new kind of weird “music machine” as a result. Riffusion works on the same principle as SD, turning a text prompt into new, AI-generated content. The main difference is that the algorithm has been specifically trained with sonograms, which can depict music and audio in visual form. As explained on the Riffusion website, a sonogram (or a spectrogram for audio frequencies) is a visual way to represent the frequency content of a sound clip....

On Monday, aerospace company Rocket Lab was partially successful in its mission to capture its Electron orbital launch vehicle mid-air using a helicopter. The mission, dubbed “There And Back Again,” launched from Pad A at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. It successfully deployed 34 satellites into space on behalf of multiple clients, but the real test was whether or not the company could execute a novel idea involving capturing the rocket booster mid-air as it fell back to Earth....

There are a number of uses to this, from simply test driving Linux to troubleshooting a Windows PC, or work on the go from someone else’s computer but running your own OS securely with all your personal files and settings. There are basically two options when it comes to running Linux from a USB drive: from within Windows using virtualization software such as VirtualBox, or creating a boot disk. This quick guide details both methods in a few easy steps....

But what if you have the Ryzen 5 3600? This is the question many have asked us after seeing the above results, so we went back to the test bench to go for it. For those that missed the previous review, we’ve got a 25 game benchmark at 1080p and 1440p using the Radeon RX 6950 XT and the more mid-range 6600 XT, with SAM enabled. The motherboard used for testing is the old MSI B350 Tomahawk using the latest BIOS revision based on the AGESA 1....

Earlier this month, someone curious enough to test Samsung’s Galaxy S22 performance claims found that they only held true while running benchmark apps. It turned out the company had been throttling thousands of popular apps on its flagship phones, presumably to preserve battery life and prevent them from overheating during heavy use. This prompted the developers behind popular benchmarking tool Geekbench to ban the last four generations of Galaxy S series phones, as many users complaining on Korean social media and Samsung’s support forums said they’ve also experienced this issue on older models....

When it comes to general usage, all of the tested SSDs deliver a similar experience and this is certainly what the PCMark 8 scores would suggest. Looking at actual throughput we see that the Samsung SSD 850 Evo 2TB was the fastest SATA SSD tested at 299.3MB/s. Despite its strong throughput, the 850 Evo 2TB only managed an average result in our Photoshop test, taking 359 seconds to complete the workload....

Big strides have been made in improving SSD performance with the introduction of NVMe, but to date few consumer grade SSDs support this new standard. There are also few native PCIe M.2 SSDs on the market, with the best example being Samsung’s own SM951, though technically this is an OEM-only product. Given what consumers were facing not that long ago, it’s almost hard to believe we can purchase a 2TB SSD for just $800 today....

Highlights from the 16-bit cartridge catalog include ClayFighter, Earthworm Jim 2, Fatal Fury 2, OutRun, Super Street Fighter II, Super Hang On, ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron, Virtua Racing and After Burner II. Curated games from the Sega CD library include Sonic CD, Ecco the Dolphin, Ecco: The Tides of Time, Final Fight CD and the FMV classic Night Trap. Seven bonus titles also come bundled with the console, most of which are ported from other systems or were never released....

Starting off, we installed the new Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard that was kindly supplied by Asrock for this build. The Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac and its I/O shield were quickly installed along with some DDR4 memory by G.Skill’s Ripjaws V lineup. Powering the system is Silverstone’s SX500-LG power supply, which we felt was a crucial hardware choice for this build as its 120mm fan will not only help draw in more air, but also help keep the operating volume to a minimum....

Even today I still have issues with losing connection to the server and at times not all progress is saved when I exit. If I was allowed to save multiple instances of a game to my computer, as I did back in the day with SimCity 2000, this would not be an issue. Although I only have an ADSL connection capable of a fairly sluggish 1MB/s, every game I have ever played online has been snappy....

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a known memory pig with the ‘Hyper’ quality settings enabled and here we really see the 3GB model suffering. This time the 3GB card was 37% slower than the 6GB version as the average frame rate was reduced to 33fps. Of course, things don’t improve at 1440p and here the 3GB model is again much slower than the fully-fledged 6GB model. Tom Clancy’s The Division is a seriously demanding game though this is a title where the 3GB GTX 1060 performs as expected....

Previous generation flagship products also find Singularity a breeze to run at this resolution. The GeForce GTX 285 averaged 115fps while the Radeon HD 4890 averaged 109fps. At the opposite end of the graph we have the Radeon HD 5570 which is not known for its gaming prowess with an average of just 35fps. However if you have a Radeon HD 5670 or GeForce 9600 GT you are in luck as it is possible to play Singularity in all of its visual glory at this resolution....

Reports indicate some reference cards are hitting hot spot temperatures of 110C. This is something you never want to see, especially from a $1,000 GPU. It’s worth noting that Hardwareluxx only shared temperature issues involving the 7900 XTX, so we don’t know if the RX 7900 XT is suffering from related problems. Given how similar these GPU models are, it wouldn’t be surprising if the XT model is also problematic....

For that reason StarCraft II needs no introduction. This sequel has been in the making for what seems like forever, although it was only officially announced in 2007. One way or another, the delays do not seem to have discouraged anyone from wanting to play the game, and if anything, it has made us more desperate to get a taste of it. On usual TechSpot fashion, now with the game out in stores we are taking an in-depth look at how your gaming system will handle StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty....

The TechSpot PC Buying Guide offers an in-depth list of today’s best desktop PC hardware, spanning four unique yet typical budgets. Whether you’re a first time builder seeking guidance or a seasoned enthusiast, we have you covered. The Budget Box The Entry-Level Rig The Enthusiast’s PC The Luxury System