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The new Radeon HD 5000 series is said to deliver around 2x more performance than previous generation Radeon cards, and brings DirectX 11 support to desktops for the first time. Even while Nvidia is downplaying the latter, AMD sees it as a great advantage and expects DX11-capable games to start shipping before the end of the year. Nvidia will also support DirectX 11 on future hardware of course, but the way things are going it looks as though we’ll still have to wait a few months before their response to the new Radeon HD line arrives....

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat uses version 1.6 of the X-ray Engine to provide full DirectX 11 support. Each graphics card was tested using the highest possible level of DirectX. This meant that the Radeon HD 5000 series cards were tested using DX11, and while the GeForce GTX 295 managed just 37fps at 2560x1600, the Radeon HD 5970 cranked out 68fps, making it a staggering 84% faster!

Australia has recently been hit with two of the largest data breaches in history. First was the hack on telecom giant Optus that saw the personal information of nearly 2.1 million customers leaked, then came the attack on private health insurance provider Medibank that compromised the records of 9.7 million current and former customers. The REvil-linked Russian hackers behind the Medibank attack have already released the records of more than one million people....

Channels, triggers, actions, ingredients, recipes… these are some of the terms used by IFTTT, and although it may seem complicated at first glance, it’s actually extremely easy to use. Here’s a practical example in case the whole concept doesn’t ring a bell yet… Say I want to keep up with how a certain country is doing in the London 2012 Olympics. First, I enable the ESPN channel and immediately I’ll be asked to set a trigger from a number of predetermined options....

Although Origins has received its share of criticism, it doesn’t seem to be an outright disappointment with respectable scores on most review aggregators, including our own (Batman: Arkham Origins 74 ). Additionally, it seems the PC version has received some special attention in the graphics department. Despite being built with Epic’s aging Unreal Engine 3, the developer used a heavily modified version of the software. Granted, we’ve heard that countless times from other studios at this point, but the tweaks do seem pretty substantial in this case, especially considering all of the game’s DirectX 11 and PhysX effects....

Gates made his comments at an event on climate change hosted by TechCrunch in Berkeley, California. “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely,” Gates said, referring to the popular and expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and the many other similar, simian-based images for sale. Gates echoed the statements of fellow billionaire and crypto/NFT-hater Warren Buffett in saying he prefers investments with tangible outputs, such as farms and companies that make products....

Developer Unihertz is a veteran when it comes to funding unconventional phones such as the tiny Atom and Jelly on Kickstarter. The Titan Slim might not be a super-small device, but its BlackBerry-style physical keyboard will make it stand out in the crowd. This isn’t the first Titan phone; it is joining the rugged Titan, which is a fairly hefty device, and the Titan Pocket, a smaller version of the original....

As expected, the memory bandwidth performance of the AM1 APU’s is rather limited due to its single-channel memory controller and the fact that the architecture just doesn’t perform well in terms of bandwidth. The Athlon 5350 achieved just 6.7GB/s making it slower than the 8.2GB/s of the A4-4000. Meanwhile, Intel’s Celeron J1900 managed 10.7MB/s, though it was still 15GB/s slower than the Celeron G1820. The Pentium G3220 reached 26.7GB/s making it only a fraction slower than the Core i3-4130....

Unfortunately, HandBrake wasn’t able to fully utilize the 16-core setup; CPU utilization only hovered around the 30% mark, which means that it was effectivly using around 10 threads. Still, we see a reasonable gain in performance and the Xeon E5-2670s are still able to outperform the 5960X. Since one copy of HandBrake couldn’t make full use of the dual Xeon E5-2670 processors, we decided to run three simultaneous instances to see how the 32-thread system handled the load....

Generally we like to test with three different quality presets, but in the absence of this option in CoDMW2 we just went on with what made the most sense to us. For example, adjusting the texture quality from Low to Extra provided a significant difference in visual quality, while performance only changed by a few frames per second. For those running lower-end hardware that tends to struggle in this game the best way to gain additional performance is to either reduce the resolution or turn shadows off....

Today we’re putting that claim to the test by pitting the new Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage laptop up against a similarly spec’d desktop PC to see whether this all-AMD laptop from Asus is the better value buy for gaming. We’ve specifically chosen the Strix G15 because in our opinion is one of the best value laptops you can get, offering the Ryzen 9 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M in a decent package for under $1,700....

It wouldn’t be the first time silicon giants warned about the lack of government funding for their expansion efforts, but they’re once again sounding the alarm. Last month, companies like TSMC, GlobalWafers, and Intel warned that unless Congress unlocks $52 billion in funding for the domestic semiconductor industry, they won’t be able to execute on their current ambitions. Thus far, Intel looks like it will be the biggest beneficiary of the new subsidies, as the CHIPS Act is technically supposed to support domestic companies first and foremost....

Nearly 75 percent of consumer spending on subscription apps came through Apple’s App Store, with Google Play contributing just $4.8 billion globally. That said, Android users increased their spending on subscription apps by 78 percent compared to what they spent in 2020. iPhone users’ spending only increased 31 percent year over year. The growth of subscription app spending in the US largely mirrored what was seen globally, just on a smaller scale....

Intel Core i7-3930K Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 Heatsink Gigabyte X79-UD3 Kingston HyperX 8GB (4x 2GB) 2400MHz kit Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W PSU Noctua NF-F12 PWM Fans I’ve been a fan of NZXT’s Premium Cables for quite some time and when time came to put together this build (that I’m keeping for my personal use) I knew these would be the perfect complement....

Lacovone tweeted that the incident began last week with multiple text messages asking to reset his Apple ID password. He then received a phone call from Apple claiming there was suspicious activity on his account, as indicated by the messages. He suspected it was a scam, as we all would, but the caller ID showed the number as “Apple Inc.,” which is linked to the Apple Store. He called the number back just to make sure, and the person told him his account really had been compromised....

Given how punishing the first game was, we were excited to explore 2011’s CryEngine 3-based Crysis 2, but it was quickly apparent that the second installment wouldn’t be a repeat performance. Not to say it didn’t look better, but relative to Crytek’s first title, the sequel didn’t really set any new benchmarks. It was just another computer game that made great use of DX9, though DX11 was eventually patched in....

Denon has just unveiled its refreshed series of 8K AV receivers. It comprises seven SKUs with prices ranging from $399 to $6,499, and they all feature multiple HDMI 2.1 ports, allowing for 8K@60Hz, 4K@120Hz, HLG, HDR, Dolby Vision, and HDR10+ passthrough. They also have support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Quick Frame Transport (QFT), and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), making them great for connecting the latest consoles to your home theater setup....

Tests from PC Games Hardware show that Microsoft’s DirectStorage API can help NVMe SSDs load assets significantly faster than SATA SSDs. They also offer the enormous advantages of GPU-based decompression over CPU decompression. The site ran Microsoft’s publicly available Avocado-loading DirectStorage demo on a SATA SSD, a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, and a PCIe 4.0 NVMe. It also compared decompression speeds between three GPUs and a CPU –an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, an Intel Arc A770, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, and a 5....

Reuters reports that DJI has become the first major Chinese firm to pull its products from Russia. Ride-hailing company Didi Global had announced it was pulling out of Russia and Kazakhstan in February but changed its mind following pressure from social media users in China accusing it of succumbing to US pressure. A DJI spokesperson emphasized that, unlike the slew of US companies ranging from Apple to Intel, its decision was not a protest against Russia over its invasion....

The current heatwave has seen heat-related alerts and warnings across more than 20 states as the mercury continues to rise. Temperatures over 100 degrees have been recorded in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—parts of the UK exceeded 100 degrees for the first time on record. Despite being uncomfortably hot, some people are playing on their handhelds outside, and the companies behind them have warned against this practice....