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on (#47S9H)
AMD sent us an e-mail to remind us of its Raise the Game Fully Loaded bundle, which gets you The Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, and the Resident Evil 2 re-make for free when you buy a Radeon RX 590 (or faster) graphics card, or a PC so-equipped. That's pretty cool, but the more interesting part of that e-mail was the bit where AMD told us that Radeon Software version 19.1.2 is out.
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The Tech Report
| Link | https://techreport.com/ |
| Feed | http://techreport.com/news.rss |
| Updated | 2024-05-14 18:49 |
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on (#47QEF)
G'afternoon folks. I hope you're feeling fine today, and devoid of any sniffing, puffy eyes, or a sore throat. I've been flu-stricken for a couple days now, and it's no fun at all. I keep oscillating between feeling energized and ready for the world, and thinking "I just want to sit or lie down and watch shows and play games." On the bright side, this is as good an excuse as any for partaking in those activities. There's no stopping the PC hardware deals train, though. Here's today's cargo. ...Read more...
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on (#47PN0)
G'afternoon folks. I hope you're feeling fine today, and devoid of any sniffing, puffy eyes, or a sore throat. I've been flu-stricken for a couple days now, and it's no fun at all. I keep oscillating between feeling energized and ready for the world, and thinking "I just want to sit or lie down and watch shows and play games." On the bright side, this is as good an excuse as any for partaking in those activities. There's no stopping the PC hardware deals train, though. Here's today's cargo. ...Read more...
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on (#47PAJ)
Until a few years ago, video game consoles were completely banned in China. Likely as a result of that reality, the Chinese PC gaming market—both hardware and software—is in full bloom. Colorful is one company that serves a lot of Chinese PC gamers, and while we don't talk about it much over here in the States, you can find its products worldwide. The latest graphics card releases from Colorful are a trio of GeForce RTX 2060 cards: the iGame GeForce RTX 2060 Ultra, Ultra OC, and Vulcan X OC. ...Read more...
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on (#47P57)
Our TR gerbils know that while I'm a big fan of Zotac's Zbox line of mini PCs in general, I have a few specific complaints about each model that I've used. The company just released a new machine that appears to address some of those complaints. Check out the Zbox Magnus EC52070D. ...Read more...
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on (#47P03)
Never used one of these, but I remember playing Odell Lake on an Apple II in what I think was kindergarten.
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on (#47M1H)
I'm not a standing-desk person myself (I sit for long stretches, then get up and pace around like a loon), but Lian Li knows there's a taste for the vertically gifted workstations. The company has been making them for years--no really, as far as back as 2015 at least, with new versions popping up over the years. At CES 2019, the case maker had a new version on display called the DK-04-F. ...Read more...
on (#47KJ7)
Do you have a GeForce graphics card? Do you also have a G-Sync monitor? If so, do you use it alongside displays connected over HDMI? Does your G-Sync display then flicker? If you answered "yes" to all of the preceding questions, Nvidia has a driver just for you. The green giant just released GeForce Hotfix Driver version 417.75, and its singular release note is that it should resolve flicker in the above situation.The new driver is for 64-bit editions of Windows 10 only, but unlike Intel , Nvidia still serves up its driver releases in "standard" and "DCH" formats. That means users who are still on older releases of Windows ...Read more...
on (#47KD1)
In the extreme mobile PC market, it was to be expected that Alienware, a company known for almost garish excesses, would have something to demonstrate at CES. It did not disappoint, showing the Area-51m, which could be the most powerful mobile PC under 10lbs on earth. This workstation isn't exactly thin, at 1.23" (31.2mm) thick, and it isn't light, at 9.7lbs (4.4kg). It's actually relatively fat and heavy and looks like the giant gaming laptops of a few years back, but boy, is it packing some powerful stuff under the hood. ...Read more...
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on (#47J5A)
Transcend isn't a name that comes up too often when discussing consumer internal storage, but the company boasts a wide array of solid-state products. The lineup has just expanded to include a range-topping NVMe drive. The MTE 220S is an M.2 stick powered by 3D NAND that pushes bits over a four lane-wide PCIe link to achieve sequential read speeds of 3500 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 2800 MB/s. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's likely 64-layer 3D TLC from either Micron or SanDisk, with a rebranded Silicon Motion controller like the SM2262EN along for the ride. ...Read more...
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on (#47HJ8)
Remember kids, it doesn't count as hot sauce unless it can actually cook your food.
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on (#47HCW)
DIYPC has been selling a whole range of computer cases in the U.S. for a few years now, but the brand has been most visible in the ultra low-cost segment. You can frequently find cases like the Zondda, Ranger, or Alnitak for under $40. Now the company has a case that looks poised to compete with its peers from big-name brands: the DIY-SD1-RGB. ...Read more...
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on (#47H8Q)
German case and cooling manufacturer be quiet! already sells a whole series of fans, but today the Shadow Wings series got an upgrade to version two, while the Pure Wings 2 family gained some new members as well.
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on (#47H8R)
Hello there, folks! Do you happen to have a penchant for super-fast storage, like me? If that's the case, then you probably totally want to check out our review of Samsung's 970 EVO Plus. Spoiler alert: It's a darn good drive at an aggressive price. Go check out the review for more details. In the meantime, here's today's catch of hardware deals. ...Read more...
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on (#479GD)
Good afternoon, gerbils! I'm going to keep the intro short and sweet. Yours truly wrote up the latest iteration of the galaxy-famous Tech Report System Guide, and you should totally go and check it out if you're in the market for a new machine, or hand the link to someone who is. In the meantime, here's the current crop of extra-hot hardware deals, hand-picked for your enjoyment. ...Read more...
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on (#47912)
Those of you using Intel graphics, you're up next. The company just posted the latest version of its Windows 10 graphics driver (25.20.100.6519). These, and likely all future Intel graphics drivers, are once again Universal Windows Drivers, although Intel uses the more academic term "DCH" to signify that they're Modern drivers. That means it's only for Skylake and newer processors running 64-bit editions of Windows 10 that are updated to at least the Fall 2017 Creators Update (1709).
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on (#4774R)
I planned ahead for today by not making any resolutions. Does that count as a resolution?
on (#476ZF)
Opinions may vary, but personally, my first stop when picking out a PC that's both powerful and petite is Zotac's list of mini PCs. Using a mini PC—even one as powerful as a Zbox Magnus—still comes with a lot of compromises, though. If you want one without any compromises that's geared for gaming, Zotac can set you up with one of its Mek1 or Mek Ultra machines. At CES, Zotac showed us something that sits sort of in between the Zbox mini-PCs and the bigger Meks: the Mek Mini. ...Read more...
on (#476GB)
Did you know that Zotac gets its name from the words "zone" and "tact"? Me neither. That's just one of the many things we learned from running into the company at CES. We also saw some of the company's upcoming products, including a new graphics card: the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Ti ArcticStorm. ...Read more...
on (#476B5)
The Asus ROG Mothership (GZ700) is meant to be a CES darling, the sort of product that grabs attention at a trade show where thousands of devices are clamoring for the eyes of every journalist walking the halls. And grab attention it did, alongside another wild-and-wacky, super high-end convertible design in the Acer Predator Triton 900. The two have key differences, though, primarily in that the Predator Triton 900 is a convertible with a screen that moves into different positions, whereas the Mothership is like a super powered AIO...or maybe it's just a modified AIO or gaming laptop. Or a combination of all three.Seemingly heavily inspired by the Microsoft Surface Pro, the Mothership is basically a large tablet with a built-in kickstand on the back and a detachable keyboard ...Read more...
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on (#474TJ)
German water-cooling outfit Alphacool had a pile of new gear to show off at CES 2019, ranging from a unique showpiece prototype to liquid cooling for the data center.
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on (#473Z6)
If you're into hardware at all—and if you're reading this, we presume that you are—then you probably already know that Ryzen parts need fast RAM to maximize their potential. You probably also know that the more memory channels you pile on, the harder it is to maintain signal integrity (and thus system stability). That's more than likely the reason that Ryzen Threadripper doesn't usually match its single-die cousins' maximum memory transfer rates. G.Skill, never content to let things be as they are, just announced that it has new RAM on the way that takes all four of a Threadripper's memory channels to 3466 MT/s. ...Read more...
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on (#47224)
Hello, fine gerbils. It's with great pleasure that about three years on, I can finally enable FreeSync on my Acer XF270HU. Back when I bought this display, I kind of bet that Nvidia would support the technology, because, hey, why not? Alas, that didn't pan out, and I was left fuming for a good long while. A couple weeks ago, I was literally thinking of selling this monitor to a friend and grabbing a G-Sync monitor instead. Lo and behold, Nvidia announces the "G-Sync compatible" mode, and I'm now a happy camper. Today's deals are a little late because I, uh, had some testing to do. Here they are. ...Read more...
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on (#471XA)
I've tried this stuff in a number of different incarnations. It's ok, but not great. Are any gerbils true believers?
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on (#471RP)
I probably don't need to tell you that today's the day for the GeForce RTX 2060's release to retail. New graphics card means new drivers, and to that end, Nvidia just unleashed GeForce driver version 417.71 fresh off the compiler. Predictably, this driver adds support for the new upper-midrange Turing cards, but perhaps the more exciting news is that this is the first driver to enable any sort of support for FreeSync and VESA Adaptive Sync monitors. ...Read more...
on (#471ET)
In case you've not been paying attention (or simply lost track of the days), today marks the release date for the GeForce RTX 2060. That means you can actually go order one, right now. Nvidia has the Founders Edition cards in stock for the regular $350 price, of course, but this time around they're not the only game in town. Many of the cards from our announcement roundup are already available.
on (#46ZK6)
That Lian-Li had a Mini-ITX case to show off at CES 2019 isn't that notable, but the TU150 we saw in the company's suite had a couple of nifty surprises. ...Read more...
on (#46ZBJ)
That Lian-Li had a mini-ITX case to show off at CES 2019 isn't that notable, but the TU150 we saw in the company's suite had a couple of nifty surprises. ...Read more...
on (#46Z2Y)
At CES this year, Acer announced a few new laptop models, but certainly its most interesting is the new Predator Triton 900. The Predator Triton series has been around for a few years, but prior models have been traditional clamshell designs. The 900 makes a significant departure, and it's a love-or-hate design. Essentially a unique and extremely powerful convertible, you can move the the 17" screen in many directions. You can close it, flatten it, flip it, tent it, or completely reverse it. Acer really wants people to know that this is due to a CNC-machined hinge it calls the "Ezel Aero Hinge." This isn't the first device Acer has used this type of hinge on—it made an appearance as far back as 2014 on the Acer Aspire R 13—but it's certainly the most eye-catching. ...Read more...
on (#46YXM)
It's been quite some time since we had a Mushkin SSD laid bare on our testbench, but the company hasn't been sitting on its laurels since we gave the Reactor 1 TB our hearty recommendation. At CES this year, the company had a whole arsenal of drives on display. ...Read more...
on (#46X1D)
It's been quite some time since we had a Mushkin SSD laid bare on our testbench, but the company hasn't been sitting on its laurels since we gave the Reactor 1 TB our hearty recommendation. At CES this year, the company had a whole arsenal of drives on display. ...Read more...
on (#46T4A)
Be quiet! is a name better known to our readers outside of the U.S. than on our home turf, and yet the company's products have been finding their way to this side of the Atlantic more frequently of late. You can find the massive Dark Rock Pro 4 cooler over on Newegg right now, for example. For folks who find that giant block of aluminum fins to be too, uh, giant, be quiet! is about to release the Dark Rock Slim. ...Read more...
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on (#46SJN)
Asus showed a whole bunch of cool stuff at CES, including new systems, parts, peripherals, and more. But today, we want to gush about the company's three new ROG displays. The XG438Q, XG49VQ, and XG32VQR are all large gaming monitors based around VA LCD panels that support AMD's Radeon Freesync 2 HDR standard.
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on (#46SDD)
The latest Radeon driver is the first release of 2019, and so it follows that it's called Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Driver version 19.1.1 is an optional release, and there's not a whole lot to it. However, if you (or your kids) like to yeet people off hastily-constructed stairways and then floss over their comically positioned ragdolls, then you'll probably appreciate this update's optimizations for Fortnite. AMD says this driver offers a staggering 4% performance uplift on Epic's mega-hit battle-royale builder.
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on (#46QVX)
Cooler Master showed off three low-profile keyboards at CES 2019, each one sporting Cherry MX RGB Low-Profile Red switches and wireless capabilities. Between the three models, Cooler Master has multiple layouts covered. The SK621 is a 65%, the SK631 is a TKL, and the SK651 is the full-size option. ...Read more...
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on (#46QC0)
Howdy, folks! The big announcements have been made at CES, so you'll soon be looking at multiple stories about some of the most interesting and just plain quirky bits of kit at the show. While we carefully brew said information, though, you'll of course want to peruse today's selection of sweet hardware deals. Here they are. ...Read more...
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on (#46PWT)
Coincidentally, we're signing loan documents today for 20 kW of solar panels going on our roof very soon.
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on (#46NW8)
Remember the Mini-STX form factor? Do you remember "5x5," then? Well, in any case, the smallest socketed desktop systems around are based on Mini-STX, a somewhat obscure size class for systems created by Intel. ASRock offers a few tiny barebones built around the form factor, but going 5x5 meant going Intel—until now, anyway. Check out the DeskMini A300. ...Read more...
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on (#46NG4)
There was a time, not that long ago, when not everything in the PC universe was brimming with RGB lighting. But as LEDs have crept into and onto everything from cases to keyboards to cupholders, the limitations of current popular lighting tech has begun to come into view. Corsair is trying to bring some leaner, meaner LED solutions into the market, and it's showing off those efforts at CES 2019 in its new Dominator Platinum RGB RAM. ...Read more...
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on (#46N9W)
After the Radeon VII demo at its CES 2019 keynote, AMD CEO Lisa Su talked a bit more about gaming and then moved straight into the Zen 2 reveal. The new CPU core will naturally be finding its way into both datacenter and desktop processors, and AMD talked a bit about both. The company also demoed some early Socket AM4 silicon for us. ...Read more...
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on (#46MWD)
Even though the company will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, AMD's keynote today was its first ever at CES. During the show, AMD CEO Lisa Su announced the next high-performance Radeon graphics card: the Radeon VII.
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on (#46N69)
Toshiba's ball-grid-array SSDs offer OEMs a tempting blend of low cost, small size, and energy efficiency, but thus far those perks have come at the cost of speed. Historically, the company's BG-series drives skipped onboard DRAM and depended on NVMe's Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature to offset the performance implications of that omission. However, as we saw when we reviewed the BG3's consumer-facing cousin, the RC100, HMB isn't a perfect substitute for good ol' memory chips. Toshiba acknowledges that fact and consequentially equipped BG3 drives with only a two-lane PCIe link. ...Read more...
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on (#46M8D)
Toshiba's ball-grid-array SSDs offer OEMs a tempting blend of low cost, small size, and energy efficiency, but thus far those perks have come at the cost of speed. Historically, the company's BG-series drives skipped onboard DRAM and depended on NVMe's Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature to offset the performance implications of that omission. However, as we saw when we reviewed the BG3's consumer-facing cousin, the RC100, HMB isn't a perfect substitute for good ol' memory chips. Toshiba acknowledges that fact and consequentially equipped BG3 drives with only a two-lane PCIe link. ...Read more...
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on (#46M30)
Do you prefer your storage devices to be understated and out of the way? Well, too bad. Gigabyte's new Aorus RGB NVMe SSDs demand to be seen. The drives come in both M.2 and PCIe add-in-card form factors. Both version require four PCIe lanes, support the NVMe 1.3 protocol, and offer AES-256 encryption. The components powering the drives are Toshiba's 64-layer BiCS TLC NAND and an unnamed Phison controller, likely the E12. ...Read more...
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on (#46KFF)
HTC is already the lead dog in the VR world, and it continued its effort to separate from the pack by announcing two new headsets at CES 2019. One delivers eye tracking, and the other is an untethered device with inside-out tracking.HTC Vive ...Read more...
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on (#46K63)
Hybrid storage is nothing new. Back in the early years of SSDs going mainstream, some companies started to make drives and systems that sought to combine the blazing speeds of NAND flash with the cheap capacity of good old magnetic storage. There are basically two ways to go about this. The first is to just shove some NAND into an HDD and develop a controller smart enough to coordinate access between the flash and the rust, as Seagate did with its SSHD line. The second is to use physically distinct SSD and HDD devices, but present them as a single logical volume with some kind of software running the show. This is how Apple's Fusion Drive tech works. ...Read more...
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on (#46K3X)
While we all want to carry around the performance of our big towers in our backpacks, the reality is that laptops need to be svelte and long-serving, not just speedy. Dell's XPS 13 balances all of these requirements with remarkable panache. However, the last gen's low-slung webcam left us showing off our lovely septums to unfortunate video callers. That's just one of the things the company has patched up in the 2019 edition of its slimmest ultrabook, known as the XPS 13 9380. ...Read more...
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on (#46JJP)
Thermaltake is well known for their cases and cooling parts, among other things, but the company has expanded its reach once again. It sells RAM now. No, really—check out Thermaltake's WaterRam RGB liquid-cooling memory. ...Read more...
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on (#46J42)
Good afternoon, gerbils and gerbilettes. CES is in full swing and pretty much every manufacturer is looking to make as big as splash as possible. Just recently, Intel showed off its 10-nm wares and more ninth-gen CPUs, Nvidia made everyone's mouth agape by revealing it's supporting FreeSync displays, and we've reviewed Corsair's Harpoon and Ironclaw mice. It's easy to forget the important things in life in the middle of all the news though, like sweet hardware deals. Here they are. ...Read more...
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on (#46HR8)
Intel may have announced six new Core CPUs at its CES keynote in Las Vegas last night, but that's not really the company's most interesting announcement at the show. That title probably rests on the shoulders of four upcoming Intel products based on the company's beleaguered 10-nm fabrication process: the Lakefield low-power client processors, the Snow Ridge network SoC, and Ice Lake chips for every market segment. ...Read more...
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