At $380, the Z97 XPower AC is a little out of our price range for this roundup so we have opted for the humbler $250 MPower Max AC. Cheaper still is the standard Z97 MPower at $185 and for costing a little over 25% less you don’t miss out on much. Absent are a few USB 3.0 ports and the ‘AC’ feature which includes Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and Intel Wireless Display....
One such change is a greatly expanded selection of quick setting toggles, which adds numerous options such as a flashlight, reboot options, network mode toggles and screen timeout buttons added to the stock menu. Most of these options are minor additions, but useful nonetheless for people who frequently head into the settings section. In said settings section, BenQ has added a few options to the stock offering. A few gestures have been added, such as the ability to flip over the phone to silence an incoming call....
On the left side of the machine is another large cooling fan ventilation slot, DisplayPort connector, VGA port, two additional USB ports, eSATA port, 1394 FireWire port and a Wi-Fi radio switch. Finally, the bottom of the Thinkpad T510 features a single battery latch and a separate lock and latch for the optical drive. There’s a docking port connector and additional ventilation slots. We were happy to find individual panels providing easy access to the expansion bays, but not so thrilled about Lenovo including just a single memory slot on the bottom of the machine....
During my time using the G Flex 2 as my daily driver, I thought the battery life of the device was okay, but not spectacular. The LG G2 still remains one of the best devices in terms of battery life, but in the past couple of flagship releases, LG hasn’t managed to replicate its battery performance. Let’s take a look at the benchmarks. As you can see, the LG G Flex 2 sits in the middle of most of our battery benchmark charts, typically performing above the LG G3, but below many other flagships....
The LG Gram 16 we’ve reviewed costs $1,450 though you can shave $150 off that price if you’re happy enough with a Core i5 processor. Those figures compare well with rival machines, although the competitive situation is a little strange when considering the Gram 16: think about other mid-sized notebooks and you can think about the likes of the Dell XPS 15, MacBook Pro 16 or ThinkPad X1 Extreme, but the Gram’s lightweight status also brings it into conflict with the smaller MacBook Air, XPS 13 Plus or Surface Laptop range....
As mentioned before, the N2A2 comes loaded with a pair of Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB hard drives. We haven’t had any experience with these drives so we wanted to see how they performed in our Windows 7 test system. We removed the drives from the N2A2, formatted them with our Windows 7 system and ran some tests. They performed quite well. Given that the N2A2 uses a Linux-based OS, the drives must be formatted using ext3....
The internals can look a bit intimidating at first but everything is positioned with reason. This is one of the easiest cases I’ve ever worked with. Tool-less everything virtually eliminates the need for a screwdriver with most installations. Cable management isn’t stellar but with so much room and no side panel window, there’s not much need to try and impress with perfect cable routing. Some of my favorite features of the Lian Li PC-V2120 include the modular drive cages, the top 120mm fan port covers, multiple hard drive / SSD support and the caster wheels....
As it did with Instagram, Meta is teaming up with a third-party company, Yoti, for the age identification system. It uses machine learning trained on “hundreds of thousands” of pictures to estimate a person’s age. You can try it out anonymously right here if you want to feel young/old. It was pretty accurate when estimating this writer’s age. The technology will be used to ensure those who sign up for Facebook Dating are at least 18 years old....
Meta’s earnings report shows it made $28.8 billion in revenue for the April-June quarter. That’s down 1% compared to the same period a year earlier, the first time Meta/Facebook has experienced a revenue drop since going public. The figure also fell short of analysts’ expectations of $28.92 billion. Net income, meanwhile, was down 36% YoY to $6.7 billion. Meta’s outlook for the rest of the year doesn’t paint a better picture....
Microsoft announced Tuesday that developers can now implement DirectStorage into their PC games. The update is essential to making games properly utilize ever-faster nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) SSDs. This week’s release gives developers access to Microsoft’s new compression and decompression systems, letting them offload some tasks from the CPU to the GPU. Before the end of the year, Microsoft will release code for asset compression on non-Windows systems. Intel, AMD, and Nvidia recently announced that their latest graphics card drivers support DirectStorage 1....
Microsoft today announced it is acquiring Activision Blizzard, the well-known video game publisher behind franchises like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Candy Crush, and Hearthstone. The all-cash deal is valued at $68.7 billion, which makes it the largest acquisition in the company’s history. Previously, Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion, and last year it paid $19.7 billion for Nuance Communications. As part of the deal, Microsoft will get Activision Blizzard’s nearly 10,000 employees and will likely become the third most valuable video game company only behind giants Tencent and Sony....
Set during the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (released in 1998 and 1999), Capcom’s latest addition returns fans to the zombie-filled Raccoon City. Players will experience the main story as one of six playable Umbrella Security Service (USS) agents, whereas multiplayer will pit the USS versus US Special Forces (Spec Ops) and includes some familiar names such as Leon S. Kennedy and half a dozen others....
In 2016, Motorola has expanded the Moto G line to include three devices: the Moto G4, the Moto G4 Plus, and the Moto G4 Play. The new line-up is a little confusing, so let me explain it to you in dot-point form. The Moto G4 Play is the most economical handset, featuring a 5.0-inch 720p display. It’s basically the same as the 2015 Moto G, except for a downgraded camera and larger battery....
The build quality on both handsets has improved over the Moto G4 line, thanks to the inclusion of metal. The G5 Plus in particular feels nice to hold thanks to its slim design and fewer seams, while the Moto G5 trades off thickness for a removable battery. Bezels are still quite large and neither phone has the premium touch of some Chinese alternatives, but it’s clear Motorola has worked hard to improve the design of their budget phones....
The newcomers in this comparison include SteelSeries, Roccat, Mionix and Ozone. Since we have expanded our selection to embrace so many devices, we thought it would be worth adding into the mix some high-end models aimed at enthusiasts that are not necessarily targeting hardcore gamers. With price points ranging from the sub-$30 range all the way up to $130, users with varying budgets and needs should be able to find something that suits them well....
The combination of a GeForce GTX 1080 and an Intel Core i7-6820HK delivered outstanding performance at 1080p. Many games ran at well above 100 FPS and even the toughest games I tested surpassed 60 FPS at this resolution. This is the fastest gaming laptop I’ve tested and the GTX 1080 certainly makes good in offering an experience equal to a high-end desktop. The GTX 1080 is also well-suited to the 4K display options, although those who prefer high frame rates will love the base model’s 1080p 120 Hz panel with G-Sync....
In a Q2 2022 earnings interview, Netflix executives hinted that their plans for an ad-supported subscription would not include the entire VOD library when it launches later this year. The problem stems from the company lacking the licensing to move some content to the cheaper tier. However, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that if the company launched the new tier today, it would still have enough content to make for a satisfying experience for subscribers....
Most of our readers are familiar with Denuvo, which is among the most hated DRM and anti-tamper software solutions used by video game publishers with varying degrees of success. Chances are you’ve played a Denuvo-protected game in recent years, as there are over 200 titles that utilize it as of this writing. From 2014 titles like Fifa 15 and Dragon Age: Inquisition to recent games like Deathloop, Battlefield 2042, Dying Light 2, and Monster Hunter Rise, they all include some form of anti-piracy protection that supposedly helps publishers fight against people who wish to play without paying the asking price....
Shortly after the release of LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community Edition, The Document Foundation has started a new paid distribution of the office suite on the Mac App Store. LibreOffice remains free, but Apple users will pay a price to get their software from Apple official channels, while skipping the download of important dependencies which are available in the aforementioned community edition. The Document Foundation is the non-profit that promotes and manages LibreOffice, the open source productivity suite which started as a fork of OpenOffice....
According to Nvidia, an RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 is up to four times faster than an RTX 3090 Ti running DLSS 2, and efficiency gains mean it sticks with the same 450W power consumption as the RTX 3090 Ti. DLSS 3 is Nvidia’s latest Deep Learning Super Sampling neural-graphics technology. It is built on DLSS Super Resolution, and adds Optical Multi Frame Generation to create entirely new frames to significantly boost frame rates....
