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Copying a large file locally on the NAS using the WD Red 1TB hard drives saw the QNAP TS-435mini sustain 81.4MB/s while the Synology DS414slim managed 56.9MB/s making it 30% slower. The QNAP TS-435mini was still incredibly fast in our game copy test when coupled with the 850 Pro, managing 91.2MB/s. Using the WD Red 1TB 2.5" hard drives almost halved that result with a throughput of 50.5MB/s. Once again the DS414slim was around 30% slower when comparing hard drive performance....

While the gaming landscape seems to have shifted toward consoles in recent years, many feel PCs are still where the action is. Naturally those looking to experience the hottest video games in all their glory will need the appropriate hardware powering their rigs. Besides adopting newer platforms, at some point, every gamer or hardware enthusiast worth their salt will upgrade or at least consider upgrading their graphics card. Of course, going for the latest and greatest (read: fastest and most expensive) is not always an option....

The GTX 660 Ti in SLI averaged 31% faster than the HD 7850 in Crossfire, and more importantly, 41% faster than the GTX 680. Although the HD 7850 Crossfire cards did well with an average of 58fps, they were 5% slower than the Radeon HD 7970. At 5760x1080, the GTX 660 Ti duo managed 36% more frames than the HD 7850s and it was again 41% faster than the GTX 680, while the HD 7850 in Crossfire was 6% slower than the HD 7970 but 4% faster than the GTX 680....

The GeForce RTX 4070 fell off the radar some time ago, but leaker Kopite7kimi has put it back on the map with a tweet listing its specs. Kopite has an excellent track record dating back to the GeForce 20-series and is as reliable as any anonymous leaker. That said, he isn’t infallible, and nothing is official until it’s been confirmed by someone wearing a leather jacket. Kopite claims that the 4070 will arrive with the same core count as the 3070 – but the cores are of a different architecture, and thus improved....

The Commerce Department found that among 25 immediate / end users of semiconductors, median inventory levels had dropped to fewer than five days by September 2021. For comparison, the figure was closer to 40 days in 2019 before the pandemic. Of course, we’re looking at data that is now at least four months old, so make of it what you will. Above all, the Commerce Department notes that the semiconductor supply chain remains fragile due to limited wafer production capacity....

The maker of the recently revealed GPD Win Max 2 says Valve reached out to it about bringing the Steam Deck’s operating system to the upcoming device. Collaboration could help turn it into a more appealing premium alternative to Valve’s handheld gaming PC. Valve’s SteamOS is a free Linux distro that the company encourages users to install on various devices, potentially even the Win Max 2. However, Valve has introduced optimizations to the Steam Deck software to improve that specific hardware’s gaming performance and give users more control....

To setup our virtual desktop, we chose Citrix XenDeskop to stream the virtual desktop and used Citrix XenServer as our base VM hypervisor. After installing XenServer onto our physical server, we followed the Configuring GRID on XenServer guide to install the Nvidia Virtual GPU Manager for the GRID cards. If you are actually going to be doing this yourself, we recommend checking to make sure there is not a newer version of the guide available as we came across multiple versions with slightly different instructions depending on the driver version....

IDC believes slowing demand is a result of a combination of factors including fear surrounding recession, rising inflation, increased consumer spending in non-tech categories and coming down from record growth over the last two years. As such, IDC has updated its full-year shipments forecast. The market research firm now anticipates growth to remain flat at 535.5 million units through the end of 2022. IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani said it’s unfortunate that heavyweights like Apple, Samsung and Google are focusing on premium smartwatches at a time when consumers’ appetite for higher priced products remains in question....

The internet changed drastically with the advent of the World Wide Web. All of those previously separate systems were connected, but the world needed a way to “browse” them—a “web browser” was in order. In April 1994, Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded the Mosaic Communications Corporation. Mosaic was the name of a software that allowed users to access different content on the web. Andreessen had worked on the project while he was with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois....

Broadcom began its existence as a spin-off of a spin-off. Twenty years or so ago, Hewlett Packard began its process of miniaturization. First spinning off Agilent which contained a hodgepodge of businesses that were not related to PCs or printers. Agilent in turn split itself into several more pieces, one of which was HP’s one-time internal chip business, rechristened as Avago. We followed Avago closely for many years as sell-side analysts....

Before we get too far, it’s important to understand that 802.11ax, also known as “high-efficiency wireless,” is the same thing as Wi-Fi 6. It’s just easier to say Wi-Fi 6 than 802.11ax. This is a new naming standard set by the Wi-Fi Alliance, with previous generations now being known as Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n). This labeling convention is expected to appear on devices as shown below. Technically, Wi-Fi 6 has a single-user data rate that is 37% faster than 802....

According to Microsoft, performing the wipe function “removes all personal and company data and settings” from a device. Upon further testing, Ooms found the operation did work as advertised with Windows version 21H1 but not 21H2. Worse yet, it didn’t take much work to be able to read the left-behind files and access potentially sensitive data as BitLocker protection is also removed. Not good. Ooms created a PowerShell Script to address the issue until Microsoft can introduce a formal patch....

The last batch of tests we ran using the high-end graphics cards focused on 8xAA/8xAF performance. At 1680x1050 the Radeon HD 4870 X2 was still the fastest graphics card, as the broken (no SLI) GeForce GTX 295 ended up behind the GTX 275 and GTX 285 graphics cards. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 opens up its lead over the GeForce GTX 285 at 1920x1200 averaging 14fps more. This time the Radeon HD 4890 performed within 2fps of the GeForce GTX 260, which made it 12fps slower than the GTX 275....

If you have an active Xbox Game Pass subscription and want some new games to play, you’ll be pleased to know about March’s collection of titles. Four of the eight games coming to the platform are brand new and on Game Pass at launch. These are Shredders, Norco, Crusader Kings III (Xbox Series X|S), and Weird West. In addition to these games, subscribers will also have the chance to play The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos, Tainted Grail: Conquest, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, and F1 2021....

Recently, Microsoft started testing ray tracing for the Xbox Series X|S version of Minecraft. The latest preview available to Xbox Insiders has “limited” ray tracing support. The build is marked as “optimized,” meaning that it’s almost ready to roll out to regular users. The Verge’s Tom Warren has been testing it out and notes that it is a bit tricky to get it to work on Xbox at the moment....

The Xbox One is a testament to Microsoft’s towering ambition. It represents their desire not only to occupy a place in your home entertainment center, but to lumber straight into the center of it. It is a black plastic tank, a hard-edged chunk of corners meant to conquer everything in its path. But for all its imposing physicality, it has a surprising number of weak spots. Microsoft stumbled when announcing the Xbox One, betting that users would be okay with an always-online Xbox that blocked used game sales and required a Kinect motion camera to operate....

At 428 PPI, the Mi 6 display still looks great despite its lower resolution. Naturally it’s not as crisp as top-end 1440p LCDs, however the LCD used here is still very sharp for viewing text and imagery, while the near-indistinguishable gap between fingertip and LCD provides a lifelike experience. Viewing angles here are also very good for this type of technology, with minimal color and luminance shift at off angles....

WhatsApp’s latest update lets users migrate their account information, profile photo, individual chats, group chats, chat history, media, and settings from Android to iOS. Unfortunately, peer-to-peer payment messages, call history, and display names can’t transfer. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the migration uses end-to-end encryption, so Meta and WhatsApp can’t see your data. Zuckerberg also said this was one of WhatsApp’s most requested features since the ability to move data from iOS to Android appeared last year....

Earlier this month, users on Reddit and YouTube started posting screenshots of the 2160p/4K resolution option for YouTube videos showing as a feature available only to YouTube Premium subscribers. It was theorized that Google was looking to make 4K content another benefit of its $12 pm/$120 per year service, which lacks the ads found on the free version of YouTube and comes with the music streaming service YouTube Music. YouTube has offered 4K videos for over a decade and even has an 8K option where available, so removing resolutions above 1440p was always going to cause a backlash....