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As you’re fully aware, we have a lot of experience testing and reviewing displays, however we mostly cover gaming monitors not laptop displays, so this is going to be a little different. We’re going to run through some tests and provide our thoughts on how good this display is as someone that looks at lots and lots of displays each year. There are two versions of the new MacBook Pro and we’ve got the 16-inch version, although the 14-inch model’s display is very similar just smaller and with a different resolution....

Something to be noticed immediately about the Retina system is how quickly it booted. I’m used to working with systems that use flash storage as all of my computers boot from SSDs but this computer is flat out fast. The unit booted fully into OS X in just 18 seconds. For reference, it took the Air roughly 44 seconds to accomplish the same feat. During my testing, I also installed a copy of Windows 7 using Boot Camp....

Apple has announced that developers can now request to submit unlisted apps on the App Store. The feature, rolled out across all supported regions, should come in handy for when an app is meant to be used only within an organization, for research studies, special events, or as an employee resource or sales tool. The support document explains that developers can request to have their existing (listed) and new apps hosted this way....

In a recent post on Twitter, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said his latest survey indicates all new (2023) iPhones will ditch the Lightning connector and switch to USB-C. Only the two flagship models, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, will support high-speed transfers. The two standard iPhone 15 models will max out at USB 2.0 speeds, Kuo added. Furthermore, Kuo said he predicts the two flagships will support at least USB 3....

While most of us can’t afford to transition entirely to flash storage, it’s increasingly common for enthusiasts to house their operating system and certain programs on a relatively inexpensive low-capacity SSD. The obvious drawback is that you’re still forced to rely on an HDD for large applications and media, which won’t enjoy the same performance benefits. Seagate first demonstrated SSD caching technology with their Seagate Momentus XT series. The hybrid drives utilize “Adaptive Memory” to automatically move frequently accessed data to a 4GB NAND flash module....

x2 2GB Kingston DDR3 PC3-12800 Asus E35 M1-M Pro (AMD Hudson M1) OCZ GameXStream (700 watt) Seagate 500GB 5400-RPM (Serial ATA 3Gb/s) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - AMD Graphics Driver V8.792.0.0 AMD Desktop System Specs: Hardware - AMD Phenom II X2 560 - AMD Athlon II X2 250 x2 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 Asrock 890GX Extreme4 (AMD 890GX) - AMD Radeon HD 4290 (AMD 890GX) OCZ GameXStream (700 watt) Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA 3Gb/s) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 10....

Asus has added a new high-end gaming monitor to its lineup, the ROG Strix XG32UQ. It features a 32-inch IPS panel with quantum dot technology, a native resolution of 3840 x 2160, and ships with a 144Hz refresh rate, although you can “overclock” it to 160Hz by toggling a switch in the OSD. The ROG Strix XG32UQ has 10-bit color support and covers 96 percent of the DCI-P3 color space and 130 percent of the sRGB color space....

Most basic 24-inch 1080p displays clock in around $150, and these days you can even get 144 Hz monitors in the $200 to $300 range. The PG258Q, however, is significantly more expensive: for those that want 240 Hz and Nvidia’s variable refresh technology, you’ll need to hand over a massive $599.99, which effectively restricts this display to all but enthusiast gamers. So what do you get for your $600? Well, in true Asus ROG Swift fashion, the PG258Q features many gamer elements....

When upgrading from 144 Hz to 240 Hz, there is only a minor difference to input lag and responsiveness, and those who are mostly casual gamers might not benefit significantly from this improvement. However, for competitive gamers that rely on fast reaction times and zero input latency, the additional speed provided by 240 Hz may give a competitive advantage. And for those still stuck on 60 Hz, jumping to 240 Hz will blow your mind....

What makes these cards different to the Radeon HD 5450 is that you shouldn’t expect to play games with a card in this price point. It wasn’t possible before and that hasn’t changed today. Looking at the current market we have the GeForce GT 220 retailing for $60 (512MB) and $70 (1GB), while the Radeon HD 4650 is priced at $50 (512MB) and $60 (1GB). Both graphics cards are considerably faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in gaming scenarios, but once again we would recommend spending an extra $30 for true gaming-level performance and not the extra $10 for either of these – (Ed....

In World in Conflict we see the Radeon HD 5830 fall behind the Radeon HD 4890 for a third time, with an 11% performance margin between the two. The Radeon HD 5830 was only able to match the 4870, and was as much as 20% slower than the 5850 at 2560x1600.

Although unable to defeat the dual-GPU cards, the Radeon HD 5870 was the fastest single-GPU graphics card in Call of Duty: World at War. When you consider that even the Radeon HD 4890 is slower than the GeForce GTX 260 in the 2560x1600 test, the Radeon HD 5870 result is very positive. Overall, AMD’s latest offering was up to 60% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 and 43% faster than the Radeon HD 4890....

Testing Resident Evil 5 at 2560x1600 with 8xAA enabled the Radeon HD 5970 rendered 97fps. This made it around 37% faster than the GeForce GTX 295 and 39% faster than the Radeon HD 5870. However, it was just 11% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2.

The Radeon R9 285 can only render a maximum of 40fps in Crysis 3 at 1080p using the quality settings we tested with. As you can see the Pentium G3258 was able to achieve this target without any overclocking while the Athlon X4 860K could only render 34.3fps out of the box and overclocking pushed it to 39.2fps. Overclocked, the Pentium G3258 is 3% faster than the Athlon X4 860K but given that equates to just 1fps, it’s fair to say that in their overclocked state both CPUs deliver similar performance in Crysis 3 with the R9 285....

Not only are PCs increasingly more powerful, but they’re also becoming more popular – one of the many effects of the pandemic. In our latest update to TechSpot’s Best Monitors guide, we’ve included several new 4K displays at various price points. There are top-level options for professionals, enthusiast products that are great for both work and play, monitors designed purely for gaming, and some noteworthy budget options that come with features once found only on expensive flagships....

Gates revealed his love for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 in a Reddit AMA last year, saying that it was both a great portable PC and phone. If you’re wondering why he didn’t opt for a Microsoft Surface Duo 2, it’s probably because it isn’t very good and not a proper foldable as the device uses two separate panels connected by a hinge. Gates took part in another Reddit AMA yesterday, where he was asked if he’s using a new phone as a regular daily driver....

Bitcoin started 2022 at close to $48,000. That’s down from its highest-ever price of almost $68,000 a few months earlier, but it was still welcome news for those who invested a few years prior when BTC was under $10,000. However, the last 12 months have been some of crypto’s worst. The collapse of stablecoin TerraUSD and its support coin Luna crushed the industry in May. It led to huge crypto businesses such as Celsius going bankrupt and the market dipping below $1 trillion as the price of Bitcoin and other digital assets crashed....

Controller = Indilinx Amigos (IDX100MO1-LC) Cache = Elpida S51321DSH-5ATS-F (64MB) Memory = Intel 29F32G08AAMDB (32GB 34nm MLC) Read/Write = 135MB/s - 70MB/s (64GB model) Read/Write = 125MB/s - 70MB/s (32GB model) Given that the 32GB and 64GB models are priced at under $150 we have included them both in our round-up. The drives use the Indilinx Amigos (IDX100MO1-LC) controller supported by an Elpida S51321DSH-5ATS-F (64MB) cache. They also use the same memory featured in the OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 drives along with the ADATA S596 Turbo....

Unfortunately, a single copy of HandBrake can’t fully utilize 40-threads, so for the sake of this benchmark we ran three copies of the program simultaneously. The E5-2630 v4 processors completed the workload 12% faster than the older E5-2670 processors and 26% faster than the 6950X. The Xeon E5-2630 v4 processors rendered an average of 5.36fps in our 4K test using Hybrid x265. This made the duo 18% faster than the older E5-2670 processors and 21% faster than the 6950X....

As we have come to expect from the Asrock 8 series range and from our experience with the Asrock Z87 Professional, H87 Performance and Z87E-ITX, the Z87M Extreme4 is a very complete motherboard. The UEFI BIOS is very well laid out making it easy to navigate, there are loads to tweakable options and features. Asrock always seem to be right on top of BIOS updates and provide numerous methods for applying them....