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By now, it’s no secret that AMD’s recently released Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card is widely regarded as the most disastrous product launch in the company’s recent history. We expected that Navi 24 would be a low-end GPU with modest capabilities. Still, the resulting desktop graphics card is a product that can only exist in today’s heated GPU market, where miners and scalpers make it difficult for gamers to upgrade their hardware....

After several months of rumors, AMD today formally announced three new Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards — the RX 6650 XT, RX 6750 XT, and a new RDNA 2 flagship, the RX 6950 XT. But more importantly, Team Red seems to have adjusted the MSRP of the new models to the current market reality instead of allowing ample room for sticker price shock once they reach store shelves....

The Radeon HD 7770 and HD 7750 have aggressive core and memory clocks by default, but there’s still plenty of headroom for overclocking. We pushed the former from 1000/1125MHz to 1150/1250MHz and the latter from 800/1125MHz to 950/1250MHz. Both were decent overclocks to be sure, but they only resulted in another 1-3fps in Crossfire. We usually expect multi-GPU configurations to be at the bottom of our consumption graph as they are notoriously power hungry....

The Radeon R9 285 enjoyed its biggest win over the GTX 760 when testing with Thief at 1920x1200 where it was 23% faster. The R9 285 was also 9% faster than the R9 280 and just 3% slower than the R9 280X. Finishing up, we tested with Watch Dogs and the R9 285 averaged just 33.8fps, 9% faster than the R9 280 and 5% slower than the R9 280X while it was 14% faster than the GTX 760....

Instead of targeting the 115-150W power range for big beefy laptops, the idea is that these efficient parts will target around 80-100W, so they can be included in thinner and more portable systems like the Asus Zephyrus G14 that we are using for today’s test. Setting aside the naming issues we see with Nvidia mobile graphics offerings, the company has seen success with their low-power GPU variants. Various ultraportable gaming designs like the Razer Blade, Gigabyte Aero and MSI Stealth, are all using them....

Tom’s Hardware estimates the fans on the mystery card are likely in the 82-83mm range, making them slightly bigger than those on a reference RX 6900 XT. A second image showing the top of the cards highlights the two eight-pin power connectors. If you recall, AMD recently confirmed upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs would not use the 12VHPWR connector that has been associated with melting RTX 4090 power adapters. The red-striped card is also lacking a PCB backplate and has pins protruding from the rear like those commonly found on engineering samples for development purposes....

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is super CPU intensive game and it’s the only DX12 title I know of right now that can be tested using an Nvidia GPU without completely crippling Ryzen. That said it’s still by far the best example we have of a well made DirectX 12 title. Anyway, using the GTX 1080 Ti we find some mighty impressive results with the 1400. Before any overclocking happened, the 1400 had no trouble knocking off the Core i5-7400 and even the overclocked Core i3-7350K....

As was the case with first-gen Ryzen, AMD offers seriously strong performance in core-heavy productivity workloads. Both stock and overclocked configurations of the 2700X beat the 8700K in most workloads, though there are times where the higher clocked Coffee Lake CPU will pull ahead. It’s fair to say they trade blows. The 2700X did have the advantage of slightly higher clocked memory in these tests, but I have gone back and checked a few of the benchmarks with the 8700K using DDR4-3400 memory and the gains are extremely small, sometimes non-existent – and remember, the 3200 memory operates at tighter timings....

Since they were announced earlier this year, everyone’s attention has been fixed firmly on the 32-core/64-thread 2nd Gen Threadripper part, now known as the 2990WX, coming in at $1800. There will be two models in the WX series and for those wondering the ‘W’ signifies that this is a workstation series and the ‘X’ the usual xtreme nonsense we suppose. Along with the 2990WX there will also be a 24-core/48-thread model known as the 2970WX, though that model won’t be available until October....

Just like the Asrock, this Gigabyte budget motherboard looks very impressive and at first glance could easily pass as a more expensive high-end motherboard. The cooling setup is very similar to that of the Asrock. We have a reasonably large north bridge heatsink followed by a smaller south bridge heatsink, while the power phase circuitry has been left naked. Given that the AMD 870 is the most energy-efficient chipset of the new 8-series, using just 12....

At first glance you can tell this is an enthusiast and gamer-oriented product. Antec touts the LanBoy Air for its highly customizable and modular design. Weighing 20.3 lbs (9.2 kg), the case can be outfitted with an insane fifteen 120mm fans – so you know the “Air” moniker belongs in its name. Perhaps more intriguing, nearly every part of the case is modular, even the motherboard and PSU mounts. Moreover, the case’s “AirMounts” HDD mounting system suspends drives in mid-air for superior vibration and noise resistance....

The new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8 aren’t scheduled to ship until Friday, giving customers a few days to get a peek at iOS 16 and watchOS 9 before picking up their new devices. To download and install iOS 16 on your current iPhone, go to Settings > General > Software Update, then click Download and Install. To update your Apple Watch, make sure your iPhone is running the latest iOS....

Most people might assume that the screen simply operates at the advertised 2880 x 1800 resolution, but that assumption would only be partially correct. While the screen does operate at this high resolution, it wouldn’t be practical to simply let things be software-wise as text and dialog boxes would be too small for anyone to easily read. The solution applied by Apple is a backing scale factor of 2.0 for most elements on the screen....

But while each of the aforementioned products held their own in our 7-way motherboard round-up last year, today they’re starting to show their age with missing features such as SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0. As you’d imagine several models from most major motherboard manufacturers have since hit store shelves to accommodate for newer market requirements and deliver the very latest features to this affordable platform. Asrock currently has numerous P55 based products on offer targeting a variety of price points, starting with a mATX board known as the P55M Pro which sells for just $95 and the P55DE3 at $105....

For this next batch of power results we have removed the Radeon HD 5870 and are using instead the integrated graphics. We have also downgraded the processors to models that are more HTPC friendly. As you can see Intel still has an advantage and while the idle results are not bad, under load the results are quite terrible. Keep in mind the Athlon II X4 features 4 cores whereas the Core i3 has just 2....

Comparing the G752VS with the i7-6820HK to a Core i7-6700HQ gaming laptop, in this case the Gigabyte P34Wv5, presents the G752VS in a favourable light. The CPU is around 25% faster across our main CPU-limited tests, which is a decent gain helped by the factory overclock to 3.8 GHz. Considering the CPU sits around 75C when stressed I believe there is a bit more room for overclocking depending on what sort of tolerances you have for temperatures....

Fallout 3 appears to prefer ATI hardware as well and as a result the Radeon HD 4870 X2 fares quite well in this game. The Radeon HD 5870 came in second but still performed 19fps faster than the GTX 295 at 2560x1600 and 28fps faster than the Radeon HD 4870 – which only managed 31fps so that’s a huge 90% margin, mind you. In Far Cry 2, the Radeon HD 4890 managed just 18fps at 2560x1600, opposed to the 24fps of the GeForce GTX 285....

Reddit user rounakr94 (via BetaNews) earlier this week wrote that when they deleted CCleaner 5.91 from their PC, they noticed in the progress bar that some MSI, Steam, and Origin files were also being removed. Once the process was complete, Adobe reader, Afterburner, Aida64, Steam, Origin, Discord, HDsentinel, and more were all corrupted, though not uninstalled completely. rounakr94 then spent two hours reinstalling the deleted software and fully scanning his PC for any signs of malware—an action you would likely take in such a situation....

The GeForce GTX 580 was king of the single GPU cards with 58fps making it 14% faster than the Radeon HD 6970. Further down the chart we find the GeForce GTX 560 Ti averaging 43fps making it slightly faster than the 42fps of the Radeon HD 6870. Budget-minded cards such as the Radeon HD 6850, 5830 and GeForce GTX 460 still struggled to deliver playable performance when using the high quality settings at 1680x1050....