At idle, the R9 290-equipped system consumed just 62 watts, which is the same figure we got from the R9 290X, placing both cards toward the middle of our graph. When playing Crysis 3, the R9 290 system consumed 300 watts, four less than the R9 290X. Again, we see very little difference between the power consumption of the R9 290 and the R9 290X in Max Payne 3, being separated by only a few watts....
You can’t do a 20+ gaming benchmark series these days without including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, could you just imagine the comments section, we mean guy can’t let GTAV go. Anyway a bit of a bloodbath here, AMD clearly has some more driver development work to do. The GTX 1070 storms ahead at 1080p delivering 27% more frames. Vega kind of comes back at 4K but by this point the frame rates are so low it doesn’t matter....
Instead of grouping all four CPUs into a single review we decided to take a closer look at each model, run a few interesting tests and compare each model to its competitors. The Ryzen 5 7600X is a 6-core, 12-thread processor that clocks between 4.7 GHz and 5.3 GHz depending on the load, it’s composed of a single 5nm Core Complex Die (CCD) along with a 6nm I/O die, packs 32MB of L3 cache, 6MB of L2, DDR5 support, 28 PCIe 5....
Our main conclusion from the previous article was that the type of SSD you have in your system has little influence over loading times. The performance difference between an entry-level SATA SSD and a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive in many cases was negligible, and even in the best cases, the fast SSD was only 30 percent faster than the slow SSD at loading games. So long as you have an SSD and not a hard drive - given hard drives can be more than twice as slow - you’ll be set....
Security firm FingerprintJS says that the bug is related to the IndexedDB API. In most browsers, a document from one domain’s database cannot be accessed by another website. However, the implementation of the API in Safari violates this “same-origin policy,” which could give a malicious website enough information to identify Safari users. FingerprintJS explains its proof-of-concept (POC) demo in a video posted on January 14 (below). It also put a live copy of the POC on the web for those curious to see it in action in real-time....
iPhone App of the Year honors go to BeReal, the French social media app that challenges users to capture and share a photo from their front and rear camera simultaneously. The catch is that you only have a two-minute window to snap your shot, and you don’t know when that window will open. Apple’s selection for iPad App of the Year is GoodNotes 5, a note-taking and PDF markup app that allows users to create hand-written notes and organize them into virtual folders and notebooks....
There aren’t too many applications that specifically support the new Retina display as of writing, but the handful of apps that do are pretty impressive. It’s also worth noting that even if an app doesn’t fully support the iPad’s super high-res screen, it might still use assets designed for the iPhone’s Retina display in the meantime. Apple’s robust image editing software iPhoto is available in the App Store for $4....
Apple has never been one to delve into too much technical detail, although based on data gathered from multiple benchmarking programs as well as a detailed chip analysis from Chipworks, we know the A8 is a dual-core chip clocked at a modest 1.4GHz with 1GB of system memory in tow. Graphics processing duties are handled by a quad-core PowerVR GX6450 GPU. That certainly doesn’t sound impressive on paper when you consider the top Android phones are shipping with quad-core processors rapidly approaching the 3GHz barrier, often with up to 3GB of RAM on tap....
Sources familiar with the matter told The New York Times that Apple and Ive’s company have agreed to end their partnership, completing a multi-year contract that Apple signed with LoveFrom reportedly worth more than $100 million. Per the publication’s sources, the deal prevented Ive from working on products that Apple thought would compete with its own offerings. As the contract came up for renewal in recent weeks, both sides decided not to push for an extension....
Sources familiar with the matter told 9to5Mac that the “Apple Studio Display” will sport a higher resolution than Apple’s Pro Display XDR, the 32-inch 6K (6,016 × 3,384 pixels, 218 PPI) resolution display that launched in late 2019. 9to5Mac last summer reported that Apple was working on a display codenamed J327 that would feature an integrated A13 Bionic processor. The chip could help connected Macs handle high-resolution graphics without taxing the computer’s main CPU, or enable smart features such as AirPlay....
Despite dominating the CPU-oriented charts, the CoreHT 252B wasn’t exactly unstoppable. If you intend to use this HTPC for a casual solution to PC gaming, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere as the Intel HD Graphics 3000 engine just doesn’t cut it. Relatively modern games such as Just Cause 2 are not even close to playable when using medium quality settings, with just 12fps at 1440x900, around three times less than what is required for an enjoyable experience....
The x264 HD Benchmark 3.0 is used to measure the performance of a 2-pass 1280x720 encoding, again displaying the results in a frame per second format. The results are all quite close in this test although P55 boards still came last. The Asrock P55 Extreme4 was found to be 2fps slower than the Asus P7P55D Deluxe in this test. Using TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress we converted a 715MB avi file to the mpg format and measured the time it took for each configuration to complete this task....
The compact design and attractive exterior helps it blend into any home theater setup, while its small footprint also allows it to fit just about anywhere. The system measures 200mm (W) x 200mm (L) x 70mm (H) making it a fraction wider and longer than previous models. It can be mounted either horizontally or vertically, although rubber feet are only on the bottom of the case. Based on the Mini-ITX form factor, it has an internal volume of 2....
It could be argued Intel’s accompanying 200-series chipsets saw more notable upgrades than the CPUs themselves, but even those were essentially limited to a few extra PCIe lanes and support for Intel Optane Technology. Making the release more exciting, board partners including Gigabyte and Asrock launched alongside some drool-inducing motherboards. Since then, Asrock has sent half a dozen new Z270 motherboards our way, so we thought it was about time we looked at a few of them....
Asus has updated its US website with the option to configure a few of its desktop systems with the Arc Alchemist A380 GPU. It markets one of them, the atrociously-named ROG Strix GT15 G15, a little generously: it calls the A380 “esports competition” capable, which it only barely is, and inexplicably places the A380 above the Nvidia RTX 3080 and other GPUs in its infographics. The second system is the business-focused ExpertCenter D7 Tower....
Anyone who purchases a Zephyrus should be very happy with the product, and I can’t wait to see what other Max-Q products we get in the future. Obviously the big drawback to a laptop like this is the size. We’re talking about a 15.6-inch display, 2.3 kg (5.07 lbs) of weight and just a 1.78mm thin body. Typical GTX 1080 laptops are 17-inch monstrosities, but the Zephyrus is comfortably the size of slim GTX 1060 systems like the Razer Blade and MSI GS63VR....
Asus has released OLED gaming monitors in the past, but they were a bit on the larger side for desktop use. The new ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM bucks that trend, as it features a 27-inch 2,560 x 1,440 OLED panel with a 240Hz max refresh rate. The company claims HDR content will look amazing on this monitor, as you might expect from an OLED display. It can reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits (up to a 3 percent average picture level) and has 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space....
Bidding for new flexible-use licenses in the 3.45-3.55 GHz band ended back in November but wasn’t finalized until January 4, 2022. The FCC said AT&T led the charge with 1,624 licenses won totaling $9.08 billion, followed by Dish Network (bidding as Weminuche LLC) with $7.33 billion spent for 1,232 licenses. T-Mobile finished in third place, agreeing to shell out $2.9 billion for 199 licenses. US Cellular picked up 380 licenses but only paid $598 million....
This time around we are afraid it’s a different story. AMD aimed too low with the Radeon HD 5670 – especially at this price point. Having slapped a $100 sticker on it, targeting the Nvidia GeForce GT 240 was a big mistake as this is a completely pointless product at the intended price range. Back when we reviewed the GeForce GT 240 we said the only way Nvidia could make this a worthwhile product was to slash the price....
With the Radeon HD 5830 we have a graphics card priced a bit above the mainstream mark that nonetheless delivers performance comparable to Nvidia’s single-GPU flagship product. Although the GeForce GTX 285 was released about a year ago, and at the time it was just an overclocked GTX 280, today a number of retailers keep selling it for around $400 in limited quantities. Nvidia appeared to abandon this product shortly after the release of the Radeon HD 5870, which as we know today is considerably faster while selling for the same price....
