Techreport

Hey, folks. My review of the Radeon R9 Fury is coming soon. I just need to write words to go with everything else. I will try to make them low-quality and therefore quick to produce. Sit tight!Read more...

Devoted listeners and watchers, tonight's TR Podcast live stream is postponed until further notice. Scott is working furiously on a graphics card review for tomorrow morning, and we'd like to talk about the results of that testing in-depth on our next episode. We're hoping to make it up to you early next week. Stay tuned for more info.Read more...

LG has pulled back the curtain on its midrange G4 Beat phone, an offshoot of the flagship G4 handset. The company wants to "[deliver] terrific value" with the G4 Beat, which slots in below the specs (and presumably, price) of the flagship G4. ...Read more...

7 Up

Phanteks has added a new member to its case lineup, called the Enthoo Pro M. It's a windowed mid-tower chassis with plenty of room for liquid-cooling setups. ...Read more...

OCZ is introducing a new family of SSDs today. These Trion 100-series drives feature TLC flash based on the same Toshiba A19 19-nm NAND we've come to know and love, and the primary benefit should be lower prices all around. OCZ hasn't used its own Barefoot controllers in these drives—the Trion 100s use a Toshiba-branded brain instead. ...Read more...

Developer Caged Element has released a first look at Grip, a futuristic combat racer inspired by Rollcage games of old. The trailer takes players through a tunnel race track and bursts into an open desert landscape. The gameplay features plenty of stunts and gunfire. The developer promises diverse landscapes across multiple worlds and loads of different weaponry and vehicles. Check it out:...Read more...

Google's Chromecast HDMI streaming dongle just got a nice optional upgrade in the form of an official Ethernet adapter. As with any wireless device, the Chromecast's performance depends on the Wi-Fi signal quality in the spot where you have your TV. A bad or intermittent signal can turn the whole streaming experience from "this is great!" to "why won't this work?!" ...Read more...

The next leap for semiconductors after the 10-nm process node is 7 nm, and it appears that IBM Research is helping to pave the way. According to a report by Ars Technica, the company has announced successful production of 7-nm test chips at its joint research facilities at the SUNY Polytechnic Insititute.Ars reports that the test product uses 7-nm FinFETs with silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloy channels. This new alloy is apparently one of three advancements ...Read more...

AMD released its Catalyst 15.7 graphics drivers today. This WHQL driver enables FreeSync with CrossFire multi-GPU setups, and it's also supposed to provide some Windows 10 feature support like HEVC decode for Xbox Video Player, game streaming from Xbox One consoles to the PC, and WDDM 2.0.Other features in the new release include Frame Rate Target Control, which can reduce power consumption and lower heat output by capping frame rates. FRTC was previously available for certain 300-series cards in the Catalyst 15.15 beta, and it's ...Read more...

AMD has announced the FirePro S9170, its new flagship "server GPU." This new model comes with 32GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, double that of the previous FirePro S9150, on a 512-bit bus for a claimed 320GB/s of throughput. With all that GDDR5 memory, it's a pretty safe bet that Fiji is not a good candidate for this market, given its memory capacity restraints. The extra RAM is supposed to improve the performance of applications that need to keep large data sets as close to the GPU as possible. ...Read more...

AMD has announced the FirePro S9170, its new flagship "server GPU." This new model comes with 32GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, double that of the previous FirePro S9150, on a 512-bit bus for a claimed 320GB/s of throughput. With all that GDDR5 memory, it's a pretty safe bet that Fiji is not a good candidate for this market, given its memory capacity restraints. The extra RAM is supposed to improve the performance of applications that need to keep large data sets as close to the GPU as possible. ...Read more...

Eight Is Enough

AOC announced its new U2870VQE 28" 4K display today, at a budget-friendly suggested price of $349. The display features a matte, eight-bit TN panel with frame-rate control dithering (FRC), good for an effective 10 bits of color depth, or 1.07 billion colors. The panel also boasts a 1ms response time and 300 cd/m maximum brightness. ...Read more...

Microsoft has announced plans to restructure its phone hardware business, including the elimination of 7,800 jobs. The restructuring effort will result in a one-time charge of $7.6 billion related to assets acquired with Nokia's Devices and Services divsion, a deal that was finalized only 15 months ago. It will also take a restructuring charge of between $750 million and $850 million. The company says these changes should be mostly completed by the end of 2015, and completely finalized by the end of its next fiscal year.An additional charge related to the "impairment of assets and goodwill in [Microsoft's] Phone Hardware segment" will ...Read more...

These days, companies seem to be all about reinventing themselves. Today, it's Logitech's turn. The company has unveiled a new corporate identity and logo, along with a new product line called Logi. First, have a look at the new logo in all of its glory: ...Read more...

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Flash vulnerability, the leak of internal documents from Hacking Team has revealed another zero-day vulnerability, this time in a Windows kernel component. Attackers can exploit it to gain administrator privileges on a target system. All versions of Windows from XP up to 8.1 are reported to be affected, in both 32 and 64-bit variants.The vulnerability resides in the Adobe-provided atmfd.dll, which is a kernel-level driver for rendering OpenType fonts . TrendMicro has a page up with a brief technical description about the vulnerability (which is essentially a ...Read more...

We've been hearing about commercially feasible memristors—a type of electrical component that's persistent like flash memory, but as fast as DRAM to access—for quite some time now. Most prominently, HP got its proof of the memristor's existence published in Nature back in 2008, and it partnered with SK Hynix to produce memristors in 2010, but there's been little new fruit on that front since (aside from the HP Labs project called "The Machine," which has since been redesigned around more conventional technologies). Now, a new startup called Knowm is taking its own shot at bringing the memristor to market, this time as part of a machine-learning solution.At the hardware level, Knowm is taking a different tack than HP's "crossbar" memristor design, according to this EE Times article . Instead, the company builds memristors using a technology it calls "Thermodynamic RAM," which appears to be fabricated using ...Read more...

Nvidia has released firmware version 1.3 for its Shield Android TV set-top box. The update is meant to fix issues with Wi-Fi connectivity and connectivity with the Shield wireless controller. It also adds support for newly released apps and games, including Half-Life 2: Episode 2.Still missing from this update is a workaround to allow read and write access to microSD cards. According to a post by Nvidia support on the Shield forums, Android TV is missing a component that allows applications to have read and write access to the entire card, and ...Read more...

A recent leak of internal documents from gray-hat software developer Hacking Team has revealed another zero-day vulnerability in the Flash plugin. As Ars Technica reports, the vulnerability has been verified by anti-virus maker Symantec and is known to affect Internet Explorer, though Symantec believes it can affect Flash in other browsers, as well. If exploited, this vulnerability could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targed machine.In Symantec's blog post on the topic, the company warns, "Given the source of the proof-of-concept code, it is possible that this vulnerability has already been exploited in the wild. Following its disclosure, it can be expected that groups of attackers will rush ...Read more...

7 Up

No Man's Sky developer Hello Games visited with IGN to give an updated look at the open-world universe exploration sim. You can watch the studio's Sean Murray narrate through 18 minutes of gameplay in this video....Read more...

Oculus says it'll start selling its Rift VR headset beginning in Q1 2016. A fundamental problem with selling VR gear to most consumers is that they'll want to see it in action, or else they'll be left wondering what the fuss is all about. It appears that Oculus has already given a lot of thought to this issue. RoadToVR interviewed CEO Palmer Luckey at E3 2015, and they learned that he wants to solve that problem with in-store displays that will provide shoppers with a first-hand demo experience.There's no word on whether the demo spots will be assisted or completely unmanned, and RoadToVR thinks that poses an issue for potential buyers. At trade shows, Oculus assistants take care of focusing the lenses and wiping the headsets between each user's time with the device, ensuring ...Read more...

LG is set to begin mass production of its Advanced In-Cell Touch (AIT) displays for notebooks. This technology embeds touch sensors within the LCD panel itself, in contrast to the traditional method of sandwiching a touch sensor layer between the display and its cover. ...Read more...

Samsung Electronics estimates that its Q2 operating income will decline on a year-over-year basis for the seventh consecutive quarter, falling short of analyst projections, CNBC reports. The company expects income of about $6.1 billion on revenue of around $42 billion. That operating income figure is approximately four percent below estimates of a Reuters poll of 39 analysts, and it also represents a four-percent year-over-year decline.Tom Kang, research director at Counterpoint Research , told CNBC that "Samsung's smartphone division is performing really poorly and its semiconductor business isn't outperforming because weak overall demand for handsets is limiting semiconductor demand." Kang also noted that after an initial surge in sales, ...Read more...

Among the march of Intel Braswell-based motherboards of late, ASRock has a pair of AMD Kabini-based boards for fans of the red team. The Mini-ITX QC5000M-ITX/PH and microATX QC5000M each sport a 15W A4-5000 APU with Radeon HD 8330 integrated graphics. ...Read more...

As you may know, reviewers and some of the initial buyers of Radeon R9 Fury X graphics cards have noticed a distinct, high-pitched whine coming from the card's liquid-cooling pump. We noticed this rather annoying sound when we were preparing our review of the Fury X, so we asked AMD about it. At that time, the firm issued a statement saying, "This problem has been resolved and a fix added to production parts and is not an issue."Unfortunately, the problem directly affected some proportion of the first Fury X customers, as we noted last week . Not only did a number of folks hear this high-pitched noise, ...Read more...

AMD is revising its Q2 2015 financial guidance. The company expects that sequential revenue and gross margin will both decline more than previously expected. Sequential revenue is expected to fall eight percent, as opposed to the three percent (plus or minus three percent) decrease that the company estimated at the end of the first quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter will end up around 28 percent, as opposed to the 32-percent figure provided previously.The reasons for the change in guidance are two-fold. First, the firm cites lower-than-expected ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

TSMC has made an important step on the road to validating its 10-nm FinFET design process with the awesomely-named "Product-like Validation Vehicle," according to a report by Nikkei (in Japanese behind a paywall) that was picked up by Kitguru. The foundry showed a quad-core Cortex A57 proof of concept at the 52nd Design Automation Conference in San Francisco last month. Details are still a little light; the firm didn't discuss real or expected clock frequencies.

As solid-state storage goes, more is better—and Samsung is providing a lot more today. The company has doubled the capacity of its biggest 850 Pro and 850 EVO SSDs to 2TB, making them the first such consumer-oriented drives available. ...Read more...

Telltale Games was at Minecon this past weekend with plenty to share regarding the previously-announced Minecraft: Story Mode. From what I can tell from the trailer, there's a plot—unlike the original game—and you can make a sword. Have a look at the trailer....Read more...

Windows 10 won't be coming to everybody who wants it on July 29, as Microsoft's official launch date might imply. Instead, the company will be conducting a more gradual rollout. A new post on the Windows blog by VP Terry Myerson details the exact schedule for the release that would-be upgraders can expect, and the reality is more nuanced than a monolithic launch date might lead one to believe. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Hey, folks. Today is a holiday in the U.S., so we won't be posting news according to the usual schedule. Some of us might be working behind the scenes a little, but I'm hoping we can get some time off to regroup and rest.Incidentally, the start of the long holiday weekend is the reason we didn't have a TR Podcast live stream last night. I apologize for not posting a notice about that fact ahead of time. I ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Star Wars: Battlefront's multiplayer alpha is underway. Because nobody can keep a secret, gameplay videos have already leaked online, courtesy of All Games Beta. The two videos depict a couple of different play modes, and they also showcase some of the weapons and vehicles on offer.The first video shows a survival mode in a desert setting. A team of Rebels holds off wave after wave of Imperial stormtroopers, along with the occasional AT-ST walker. Admiral ...Read more...

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) warns that it will be unable to fulfill a request for the allocation of a large block of IPv4 addresses due to depletion of the available address pool. This is a first for the registry, which is changing its allocation policy in response to the event. Organizations requesting large address blocks may have to settle for smaller allocations instead—or join a waiting list with no promise of fulfillment.The global supply of IPv4 addresses has long been in peril. Other registries around the globe have all issued similar announcements in the past. ARIN states that IPv4 addresses are still available, but as their IPv4 countdown page ...Read more...

The executive suite at Intel is getting a major shake-up today. President Renée James is leaving the company to pursue an external CEO role, according to an announcement by CEO Brian Krzanich. In a separate memo that the company made public, James says she'll remain at Intel for several more months to ensure a smooth transition period.James isn't the only high-profile departure that the company announced this morning. Hermann Eul, VP of the Mobile and Communications Group, will be leaving ...Read more...

Security researcher Linus Särud has uncovered a security vulnerability in the popular NoScript browser extension that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary JavaScript in a victim's browser. An exploit of this vulnerability could expose private data or lead users to download malicious software.The attack works because NoScript has a limited whitelist of trusted domains, allowing the host browser to load commonly-used tools from ...Read more...

Security researcher Linus Särud has uncovered a security vulnerability in the popular NoScript browser extension that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary JavaScript in a victim's browser. An exploit of this vulnerability could expose private data or lead users to download malicious software.The attack works because NoScript has a limited whitelist of trusted domains, allowing the host browser to load commonly-used tools from ...Read more...

Windows 8.1 has finally passed Windows XP to become the second-most-used desktop operating system. According to Netmarketshare, Microsoft's current OS led its retired older sibling at 13.12% to XP's 11.98% for the June 2015 reporting period.That's all small potatoes compared to Windows 7, however. Win7 still commands nearly 61% of all desktop internet traffic. In fact, its market share is still growing, rising more than three percentage points from its already dominating ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

In my review of the Radeon R9 Fury X, I noted a rather annoying sound emanating from the card. I explained the problem like so:Despite its many virtues, our Fury X review unit does have one rather obvious drawback. Whenever it's powered on, whether busy or idle, the card emits a constant, high-pitched whine. It's not the usual burble of pump noise, the whoosh of a fan, or the irregular chatter of coil whine—just an unceasing squeal like an old CRT ...Read more...

GlobalFoundries has completed its acquisition of IBM's microelectronics division. The deal, which was announced late last year, transfers control of IBM's foundries in East Fishkill, New York and Essex Junction, Vermont to GlobalFoundries. GloFo also gets the division's personnel, over 16,000 patents, and $1.5 billion in cash as consideration for taking over, as well as a 10-year exclusive agreement to supply chips to IBM.IBM's researchers and engineers seem especially valuable to GlobalFoundries. The firm thinks that the human capital it's bringing on will be critical in its moves to the 10-nm and 7-nm process nodes. In addition, ...Read more...

A group of researchers from Sapienza University of Rome and Queen Mary University of London have published a study detailing significant security flaws in 16 commercial VPN services.The problems arise from the way these VPN services operate over dual-stack networks (those using both IPv4 and IPv6). Over half of the services were found to be ...Read more...

Remember Asus' top-end take on the Radeon R9 390X? It seems like the company's DirectCU III cooler isn't just a red-team exclusive. A Strix version of the GTX 980 Ti popped up yesterday with the same cooler on board, and it's one fearsome bird of prey. ...Read more...

I've been playing around with some semi-automated game testing options today, and among them, I tried out the integrated benchmark in GTA V. When I went to check out the log file with the results from my first test run, I found this: ...Read more...

Chris Roberts has published an update on Star Citizen's progress with some unfortunate news about Star Marine, its first-person shooter component. After blowing past a projected April release date, the game's FPS module has now been delayed indefinitely.Roberts explains that the team felt the quality of the experience wasn't up to par, which is why they chose to delay it for the time being. The development process ...Read more...

Eight is Enough