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As noted on the previous page, Phenom II processors do not perform well when testing with WinRAR. As you can see, the hexa-core processors perform much like the Phenom II X4 965, which is considerably slower than the Core i5 750. Our custom Photoshop CS5 benchmark measures the time it takes for the radial blur filter to be applied to an 88MP image and is able to fully utilize six cores, or in the case of the Core i7 processors, eight threads....

The Crysis Warhead results revealed the Radeon HD 6870 to be 11% slower than the Radeon HD 5870, but it led the Radeon HD 5850 and GeForce GTX 470 by an 8% margin. Meanwhile, it destroyed the GeForce GTX 460, offering 32% more performance with an average of 41fps at 1920x1200. Battlefield Bad Company 2 Battlefield Bad Company 2 was tested using Fraps to record 60 seconds of gameplay from the level “Cold War”....

It didn’t take long for the GTX 680 a.k.a. Kepler to knock the Radeon HD 7970 off its perch, becoming the world’s fastest single GPU solution. AMD attempted to lessen the blow by cutting pricing of their 7900 and 7800 series lineups. Yet in the end, perhaps the best news for AMD came from the almost complete lack of GTX 680 stock. In fact even today getting your hands on a GeForce GTX 680 is no easy task and those that have, likely paid more than the retail list $499 price....

Dragon Age II’s results remain largely unchanged from most previous tests: the HD 7970 outpaced the HD 6970 and GTX 580 while landing behind the dual-GPU products – albeit with less favorable margins in most respects. Nonetheless, the new card gave us a respectable showing.

DiRT 3 isn’t a game that requires the power of the Radeon R9 295X2, as demonstrated by the 154fps at 2560x1600. The R9 295X2 was just 8% faster than the GeForce GTX 780 SLI cards, while it enjoyed a 46% performance advantage over the GTX 780 Ti and 62% over the R9 290X. Given that we are likely running into a CPU bottleneck at these frame tests it’s not surprising that the R9 295X2 is just 10% faster than the Radeon HD 7990 and 29% faster than the GeForce GTX 690....

Moving on to gaming and we found under heavy load with utilization hovering between 80 - 90% temperatures peaked at 63C degrees and during more typical loads dropped down to 59C degrees. So for stock performance the little Wraith Stealth does a good job, it’s also very quiet. For our 4.2 GHz overclock we strapped on the Corsair H150i Pro and this saw the peak temperature when running an hour long Blender workload reach just 67 degrees....

Apple’s revenue for the most recent quarter was up 8.1% year-over-year to $90.15 billion, beating estimates of $88.9 billion. Net profit was $1.29 a share, higher than the average analyst estimate of $1.27 a share. It was a bit of a mixed bag for the iPhone. While revenue from Apple’s handsets was up 9.67% YoY, the $42.63 billion figure still missed the expected $43.21 billion. Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the iPhone sold in record numbers during September, beating the company’s own expectations....

Apple is now manufacturing some iPhone 13 handsets in India in a continued bid to better diversify production. The Cupertino tech giant confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it is now producing the current-gen iPhone in India. A separate source told Reuters that contract manufacturer Foxconn is handling production in the town of Sriperumbudur in Southern Tamil Nadu state. Apple has been looking to reduce its reliance on China for years, but the going has been slow....

In a recent social media exchange, developer Aspyr was asked about an issue that prevents players from completing the game on the Switch. Aspyr said it was a known issue that will be addressed in the next patch but was unable to provide an ETA for when the fix might arrive. The developer did link to a support page detailing reports of a game crash occurring after the Basilisk Crash cutscene when landing on Onderon....

Although the Asrock P55 Extreme4 performed much like any P55 motherboard when paired with the ever popular Intel Core i5 750 processor, results were a bit underwhelming in a couple of tests. The P55 Extreme4’s auto-overclocking tools failed to work, whereas using the P55 Deluxe3 we were able to jump from the stock 2.66GHz frequency to 4.0GHz in no time using the easy overclocking BIOS feature. Shortly after we completed testing for this review Asrock released a newer BIOS revision which we haven’t tested yet and might improve overclocking results....

The Atom 330-powered Ion 330HT was blown away by the Core 100HT, which could be outfitted with a mobile Core i7. The Core 100HT was eventually trumped by the Sandy Bridge-based CoreHT series, and those models were replaced by the Ivy Bridge-based Vision HT 300 range. Naturally, this year’s Vision HT 400 series has moved on to Haswell’s mobile processors, though being that Haswell doesn’t bring too much of an improvement over Ivy Bridge, we assume it was hard for Asrock to justify creating and marketing something entirely new....

The OLED display is the highlight of the controller. Its size means the pixel count is just 128 x 40, but it will still be able to show customizable animations like moving wallpapers and text, as well as indicators such as battery life and microphone status, though its main use will likely be for switching profiles on the fly while gaming. The other big feature of the controller is its tri-mode connectivity, allowing users to connect via a choice of Bluetooth, a low-latency 2....

Now you might recall this monitor is actually a 144 Hz panel, so this throws up a bit of an issue. To achieve 144 Hz through DP 1.4, Asus has resorted to 4:2:2 chroma subsampling for HDR content above 98 Hz, and SDR content above 120 Hz. What 4:2:2 subsampling means is you are getting full 4K luminance resolution, but chrominance resolution is below 4K, approximately 1440p for simplicity’s sake....

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II uses the newer Essence Engine 2.0, which allows for more detailed models and textures. At 2560x1600, the Radeon HD 5970 averaged 72fps, making it 24% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 and 47% faster than the GeForce GTX 295.

Today I’ll be taking a look at the latest product from Audioengine, the A5+ Wireless Powered Speakers. Audioengine has had a long history of making high quality prosumer audio equipment for those that want audiophile-grade components, but at an affordable price. We recommended the original A5+ speakers in our Best Of feature last year in the studio speaker category. The A5+ Wireless is very similar to the A5+ with the added support for Bluetooth playback....

Let’s start with the motherboard tray. As expected, it’s fully removable and depending on your preference can be put back in upside down, though you’d have to fully disassemble the case. However, before you get all inverted there are a few customizable options for the more traditional layout, though these apply to the inverted layout as well. The motherboard tray can be repositioned vertically at one of three different heights to suit individual space requirements....

Israeli start-up Wi-Charge has been raising funds for its IR-based wireless charging system since unveiling it at CES 2020. The company claims it has made a more efficient, greener, and safer method of charging various small devices without cables. The Wi-Charge RI-100 plugs into a power socket and directly beams power to a receiver plugged into a device. That direct IR connection means the RI-100 doesn’t have to bathe an entire room in radio waves, and it doesn’t waste any of the transmitted electricity....

Over the weekend, Disney announced Iger’s return as CEO effective immediately. Iger, who is replacing Chapek, will help develop a strategy for renewed growth and work with the Board to forge a successor to take over at the end of his planned two-year term. Chairman of the Board Susan Arnold said Iger is uniquely situated to lead the company as it embarks on a complex period of industry transformation. “We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic,” Arnold added....

Although we have shown just one of many possible Thin Mini-ITX builds, it’s a pretty cool one. The Core i5-3470T provides plenty of grunt despite being a dual-core processor and the HD Graphics 2500 is powerful enough to handle 1080p content: YouTube, 1080p HD rips, it all played smoothly. Given load temperatures with the Core i5-3470T never exceeded 58 degrees, it is possible to get away with higher rated processors, such as the 45w Core i5-3570T or perhaps even the 65w models which range from the Core i5-3330S through the 3570S....