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Later we moved on to the much more affordable GeForce GTX 1060 6GB which could comfortably be had for around $300, or $50 above the MSRP set 5 years prior. As ridiculous as that sounds – and it is – this is a decent deal and makes the GTX 1060 one of the cheaper and better value graphics cards you can pick up at the moment. However, if you’re willing to spend what should be RTX 3060 Ti money ($400) on an old GeForce GTX 1070, that means you could get to enjoy all the latest and greatest games using respectable quality settings....

All three cards are based on the same ‘Tahiti XT’ GPU and they all feature 2048 cores, 128 texture mapping units and 32 render output units, as well as the same GDDR5 memory interface using a 384-bit wide memory bus. The only real changes were made to the core and memory clock speeds, though the 7970 GHz Edition and R9 280X are similar, and again, are basically overclocked versions of the original 7970....

Recently, Corsair and Razer have both tried their hand at solving this issue with two very different products. The Corsair Lapdog is a seriously large gaming ’lap station’ that takes a full-size Corsair K70 gaming keyboard (purchased separately), and pairs it with a large mouse pad. The result is a large, expensive solution, especially after you add in the cost of the keyboard. While I did enjoy using the Lapdog for the most part, a few design oversights - such as the lack of a wrist rest - really hurt the experience....

The 4K threaded test upsets the Samsung 470 Series 256GB and again we see very poor read performance coupled with average write performance. AS SSD Benchmark can be used to measure access time and as you can see the Samsung 470 delivers strong read access times with an incredible write access time of just 0.058ms.

Atto Disk Benchmark’s sequential read results show consistently better performance out of the SSD 850 Evo compared to its predecessor. The SSD 850 Evo delivered similar results when measuring write performance, consistently delivering noticeable performance gains over the 840 Evo.

The 960 Pro 1TB drive maxed out at an impressive 2952MB/s in Atto Disk Benchmark’s sequential read test, a decent step over the 950 Pro’s max of 2582MB/s. Interestingly, the 960 Pro was slightly slower than the older drive during the 8K and 2K tests. The sequential write results are breathtaking. Here the 960 Pro reached 2121MB/s for the 32K test while the 950 Pro hit 1529MB/s.

The SanDisk Extreme II 240GB sustained a transfer speed of 312.5MB/s in our single large file copy test, second to only the Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB by a 5% margin – an impressive effort to say the least and 3% faster than the OCZ Vector 256GB as well as 37% faster than the Crucial m4 256GB. In our program file copy test the SanDisk Extreme II 240GB managed 200....

This week, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought five percent of Nintendo. By Bloomberg’s estimates, this makes it Nintendo’s fifth-largest shareholder. Nintendo said it only learned of the investment from news reports and declined to comment on individual shareholders. The PIF is a $500 billion fund that is part of Saudi Arabia’s domestic economic policy. The oil-rich country wants to invest over a trillion dollars in technology and other sectors by the middle of this decade....

All these revelations have made Internet privacy a burning issue, with many privacy-conscious users now turning to services that claim to be secure from prying eyes of the NSA and law enforcement. In this article, we take a look at some of the privacy-focused email and cloud storage services that have either sprung up or gained popularity in the wake of what has popularly been referred to as the Summer of Snowden....

Colossal Cave Adventure was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame as part of the 2019 class alongside other classics like Super Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat and Microsoft Solitaire, and was instrumental in helping to launch the commercial computer game industry. Like the original, the new game will task players with exploring an elaborate cave system in search of treasure. Along the way, players will encounter all sorts of characters including a giant snake, a dragon, trolls and perhaps even a bear or two....

Here’s an overview of the current most popular Linux desktop environments, so you can have a better idea about their core differences, what each has to offer and what could potentially suit you best. Gnome Gnome, which stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is one of the oldest and most widely used Linux desktop environments. Its design goals include simplicity, accessibility, and ease of internationalization and localization. The project was initiated in August 1997 by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena as a reaction against KDE....

The mod team behind Skyrim Together Reborn has set the project’s full release for Friday, July 8 (noon EST). The online co-op mod allows for groups of two-to-eight players, synching quest completion, experience points, NPCs, items, difficulty, and other features. Players can also manually enable PvP, but the modders don’t recommend it, as that wasn’t their main design goal. The Skyrim Together team has been developing a co-op mode for Bethesda’s single player mega-hit since 2016, completely scrapping it and beginning a rewrite in 2019....

User reports posted on Reddit and Twitter (via MacRumors) state that the iOS 15.7.1 Release Candidate released earlier this week is preventing Face ID from working on devices that include the iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and iPhone 13 Pro. One Redditor says that attempting to reset Face ID on their iPhone brought up a “Face ID Is Not Available” error, rendering the security feature completely unusable. A Twitter user who encountered the same issue is advising people to avoid the iOS 15....

Sources familiar with the company’s plans and internal documents seen by The Verge suggest the Sonos Ray (model S36 and codenamed Fury) will retail for around $249. To hit that price point, Sonos had to leave out key features like Dolby Atmos, built-in microphones and HDMI connectivity. The soundbar is also said to have fewer speakers than other models in the company’s lineup. Sonos is rumored to have at least a couple of other new products in the pipeline for 2022 including a set of wireless headphones and a subwoofer that’s smaller and more affordable than its existing offering....

Anonymous sources told Game Developer that studios planning to launch games priced higher than $34 must have a minimum two-hour trial version. Sony intends to include these in its PlayStation Plus Premium tier. Developers with games that meet Sony’s criteria must keep the timed trial active for 12 months after the title’s release. Alternatively, developers may pitch a custom demo instead of a timed version of the full game, but these are subject to Sony’s approval....

I suspect Sony was hoping the Snapdragon 820’s energy efficiency improvements would offset the smaller battery capacity of the Xperia X Performance. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, which leaves the X Performance with poor battery life compared to its peers.

However, nothing Sony has released thus far can be likened to the Xperia Z Ultra. For the first time, the Japanese company has released a phablet, one which truly straddles the line between high-end smartphones and small tablets. A gargantuan 6.4-inch display and powerful Snapdragon 800 processor headline a list of top-end specifications, in a body that’s easily the largest, but also the slimmest that I’ve ever seen. The phone is not alone in the large-display market though, going up against a seasoned competitor in the Galaxy Note, with a new version launching in just a few weeks time....

I was a little disappointed that Sony didn’t bother to give the Compact the same beautiful aluminium body as the upgraded Xperia Z3, but the functional design is still reasonably attractive and ergonomic. It’s always nice to have the peace of mind of water resistance, and although the necessary flap over the USB port can be annoying, the magnetic charging connector comes in handy. The Compact’s 4.6-inch display is easily the best I’ve seen of this size and class....

This week, SpaceX has quietly introduced a new and pricier tier for its Starlink service called Starlink Premium. The move was revealed on Twitter by none other than SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and it appears the new service tier is primarily targeted at business and enterprise customers who need more bandwidth. Starlink Premium includes a larger, higher performance antenna and promises download speeds between 150 megabits per second and 500 megabits per second, with a latency of around 20 to 40 milliseconds....