Want to relive the defense of White Forest or smack down some Hunters from the comfort of your couch? If you own a Shield Android TV console, you'll soon be able to. Half-Life 2: Episode Two arrives on Nvidia's Shield Hub app store today, along with a handful of other new titles. ...Read more...
Gigabyte's one of several graphics card makers with Mini-ITX-sized graphics cards in its lineup, but the coolers on those cards are usually tiny, single-fan affairs. That all changes today, as Gigabyte has introduced a pair of sawed-off Nvidia GeForce GTX 960s with a new dual-fan Windforce cooler on board. ...Read more...
We've covered amazing Unreal Engine 4 demo videos before, and more examples have been popping up as artists find new ways to bend its power to their will. This time around, instead of beautifully-lit apartments, we have something a little different....Read more...
Hold on to your hats. Acer just unleashed the XR341CK, a 34" 3440x1440 IPS monitor with FreeSync onboard. If this display looks a tad familiar, it's because a G-Sync version is already on the way to market for a September release. ...Read more...
AMD wasn't kidding when it told us that Radeon R9 Fury X owners would be able to customize their cards' dimpled, rubberized top plates by way of a 3D printer. The company has posted a guide to removing and reinstalling the plate, along with the schematic files that you'll need to get started down the road to the custom cover of your dreams. ...Read more...
The Formula One season is in full swing, and Codemasters is right there with it. The studio has released a new teaser trailer for F1 2015, which you can check out below:...Read more...
Microsoft has quietly added a new member to its Surface Pro 3 family, packing an Intel Core i7 CPU, a 128GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM for $1,299. Previously, the cheapest Core i7 Surface Pro 3 was a much dearer $1,549, although it comes with a 256GB SSD, as well. ...Read more...
If you're a Google Chrome user with an Nvidia graphics card who's experiencing browser crashes or other stability issues, the green team may have a solution. A new hotfix driver, version 353.38, quietly made its way online last week, and it's supposed to fix Chrome crashes, freezes, or timeout detection and recovery (TDR) errors related to GPU-accelerated features in the browser.According to this Reddit thread , the hotfix does appear to alleviate Chrome crashes for the subset of users that are reporting in on the issue. The other fix in ...Read more...
Nary a day goes by without news about new battery technologies, it seems, and today is no exception. Samsung and LG have both announced new advancements in this field, each of them targeting different problems from distinct angles.Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology has a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing process that relies on graphene layered over silicon, which it claims makes for a new-state ...Read more...
After sales of Batman: Arkham Knight were unceremoniously halted last week, it would appear that the game's development team is hard at work ironing out some of the game's wrinkles. In a post shared on the Steam Community forums Saturday, WB Interactive vice president Gary Lake-Schaal announced the first patch for Arkham Knight, which contains the following fixes:Lake-Schaal also shared a roadmap for other planned Arkham Knight ...Read more...
Owners of Samsung PCs who use the company's own software update utility will soon be able to breathe easier. After the revelation that Samsung's software deliberately disabled Windows Update for reasons we still can't quite fathom, the company told VentureBeat that it'll be patching its software to restore recommended Windows Update settings (which is to say, on and automatic) to affected machines.Based on Samsung's statements to VB, the patch will arrive "within a few days" through the same SW Update utility. After the initial story broke, Samsung claimed that it was disabling Windows Update to "[provide] users with ...Read more...
So this is novel. OnePlus, the phone company that brought us the cheap-but-powerful One phone, is launching a new model, the OnePlus 2. So far, so run-of-the-mill. But the twist is, they're doing it in virtual reality. ...Read more...
Special guest David Kanter joins us this week to talk about the Radeon R9 Fury X. In the wake of our detailed review, we discuss the Fury X's performance, noise levels, and power use. We then dive into the GPU's architecture and consider why it performs like it does compared to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti....Read more...
Battleborn has been making some waves, mostly due to its pedigree—after all, it's being made by Gearbox, the same people that brought us the Borderlands franchise. They recently posted a 23-minute gameplay video, originally shown at E3:...Read more...
Happy Friday, gerbils. It's time to sift through the mountain of deals and discounts from this week to find the very best. Here's what we came up with:That's all we found this week. If you find a bargain that we ...Read more...
Gaming peripherals company Tesoro has announced its newest mouse, the Thyrsus. It packs six thumb buttons, and it's targeted mainly at MOBA and MMO players. ...Read more...
It's time for another edition of our live video recording of The Tech Report Podcast. Come join us and special guest David Kanter as we discuss our review of AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card and the Fiji GPU....Read more...
A couple weeks ago, a Fallout 4 fan who goes by the Imgur handle GatorMacheteJr (not to be confused with Machete Sr.) sent all the bottle caps he'd been saving up along with a note to Bethesda, asking the company to accept them as payment for a Fallout 4 preorder. (For the uninitiated: in the post-apocalyptic Fallout series, bottle caps are currency.)And, well, it seems that someone at Bethesda has a sense ...Read more...
Every version of Windows brings a new default desktop background with it, one that'll be seen by millions of people. Microsoft tends to make a big deal out of the creation of these images, and the background for Windows 10 is no exception. In a video released today on the Windows YouTube channel, we get a look at the (admittedly, very neat) process behind the creation of the Windows 10 wallpaper, as well as a brief look at the image itself:...Read more...
Our Radeon R9 Fury X review is out, and we'll be talking about what we've learned on The TR Podcast live stream this evening. Join us at 9:30 PM ET/6:30 PM PT on our Twitch channel to take part in the conversation. Or, if you prefer, drop your questions into the comments below, and we'll see about answering them on the show.I think we might have a special guest ...Read more...
Thermal imaging company Flir's original One is a neat tool, but its bulky body only works with the iPhone 5 and 5S, and its 80-by-60-pixel thermal imaging sensor looks a little limited next to the 320-by-240-pixel units in some of the company's dedicated thermal cameras. A new, updated Flir One is available today, and it features a much smaller body along with a 160-by-120-pixel thermal sensor. A micro-USB version of the new One can be plugged into any Android device with such a port, too. ...Read more...
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is arguably one of the few remakes that actually lived up to its predecessor's legacy. Its sequel, XCOM 2, was demoed at E3, and an official gameplay video is now up. Check it out:...Read more...
If a new post by Chinese site Benchlife is to be believed, it seems that Intel may be running into problems with their 10-nm process, which could delay the release of the rumored Cannonlake platform. In the meantime, the company may release a third platform family based on the 14-nm node, called Kaby Lake.There isn't much information about Kaby Lake, but Benchlife has a product table and diagrams, detailing a family of CPUs that wouldn't look too dissimilar to some rumored specs for Skylake CPUs we've seen ...Read more...
Things just keep getting worse for Batman: Arkham Knight. After a slew of player complaints and a sort of tone-deaf suggested settings post issued earlier today, developer Rocksteady and publisher WB Interactive have apparently had enough for the moment. In another official forum post made this evening, WB Interactive announced that it's suspending sales of the PC version of the game while the numerous wrinkles are ironed out.Here's the core ...Read more...
EVGA shrank its Supernova G2 PSUs to more reasonable power levels a little while back, and the company is now turning its shrink ray onto its Supernova P2 80+ Platinum PSUs. Until today, the P2 family consisted of 1-kW, 1.2-kW, and 1.6-kW units, but more sane builders can now avail themselves of 850W, 750W, and 650W units, as well. ...Read more...
As we reported yesterday, Batman: Arkham Knight players are running into trouble in Gotham City on the PC. Developer Rocksteady has issued some recommended settings for the game that might alleviate some of the graphical hiccups, at least for those whose hardware meets the game's minimum and recommended specs. Testing for the ultra tier is ongoing, apparently.Here are the recommended settings for those whose PCs resemble the game's minimum system requirements. It should be noted ...Read more...
Another day, another Flash vulnerability. A team of researchers at security company FireEye has discovered that a security flaw in Adobe Flash is being actively exploited as part of a large-scale e-mail phishing campaign.The vulnerability in question is CVE-2015-3113 , and it can allow an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code. All ...Read more...
A researcher named Patrick Barker has discovered a piece of preinstalled Samsung software that silently disables Windows Update on the company's PCs, potentially rendering the computer vulnerable to security issues.Mr. Barker was helping a user in his forum when their troubleshooting revealed that something was randomly turning off Windows Update. After some digging, the ...Read more...
Don't have any Borderlands games in your Steam library yet? It might be a good time to head over and check out the latest Humble Bundle, which offers Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and a truckload of DLC on a pay-what-you-want plan. ...Read more...
Reports are coming in that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is capped at 30 FPS. It also appears to be plagued by performance and graphical issues. ...Read more...
Lenovo's ideacentre Stick 300 shows that size truly doesn't matter. This micro-PC provides a full-blown computer in a footprint that's not much bigger than a USB thumb drive, at 3.9" long by 1.5" wide by 0.6" thick (100 mm by 38 mm by 15 mm). Like Intel's Compute Stick, the Stick 300 can turn any TV or monitor with an HDMI port into a desktop PC. ...Read more...
A team comprised of Facebook engineers and Carnegie Mellon researchers has published a study covering flash memory failure rates over a four-year period, with data collected from SSDs in Facebook's servers. The paper doesn't tie the statistics gathered to particular makes and models of drives, but the results are still informative.
FreeSync monitors keep on coming. According to the folks at PC Monitors, AOC's latest gaming monitors, the G2460PF and G2770PF, offer FreeSync-infused 1080p panels in 24" and 27" form factors, respectively. Have a gander at the G2770PF: ...Read more...
For the longest time, it wasn't possible to buy a CPU based on Intel's Broadwell silicon outside of lower-power applications like notebooks or NUCs. Socketed desktop Broadwell parts are available now, of course, but Eurocom is making my head spin by taking the LGA 1150 Core i5-5775C and dropping it right back into its P5 Pro gaming notebook. ...Read more...
Batman: Arkham Knight is out tomorrow, and fans of the Dark Knight might want to update their graphics drivers ahead of time. Nvidia and AMD have each issued driver updates specifically related to the new game....Read more...
Market research firm Gartner has a report and some predictions on the growth of the hybrid PC segment (more commonly known as convertible or detachable PCs). The firm expects that hybrids will make up 12% of the overall mobile PC market in 2015, with sales of of 21.5 million units. ...Read more...
Project Cars is a favorite among TR editors, and the game has apparently achieved enough success to warrant a sequel already. Developer Slightly Mad Studios is kicking off a new crowd-sourced development and funding campaign for Project Cars 2 today through its World of Mass Development platform. ...Read more...
Motorola Mobility's Moto G has long offered decent specs in an Android smartphone for a couple hundred bucks or less, but recent phones like Asus' ZenFone 2 are muscling into that value-oriented space with more RAM, pixels, and storage on board for similar prices. It wouldn't be terribly surprising, then, if a newly leaked third-gen Moto G prototype ended up being genuine.The eagle-eyed folks over at nowhereelse.fr caught pictures of this new handset floating around Chinese social media, and they claim to have some specs to go with those shots. The new phone appears to have a five-inch 720p display, 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras, along ...Read more...
Samsung has started shipping their newest FreeSync-infused 4K displays, the 23.6" U24E590D and the 28" U28E590D. The former goes for an impressively low $399.99, while the latter will set you back $599.99. ...Read more...
Windows 10 arrives about a month from now, and many of you have no doubt seen the little "reserve your copy of Windows 10" icon in your taskbars. Of course, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for the first year after its release for owners of Windows 7 or 8.1, and there's no need to "reserve" a copy to be eligible, but it feels just a little bit more special to be on a PR email list on a server in Redmond. Or something.Still, this close to the release of a new version of Windows, it's probably a good idea to start thinking about your upgrade plans if you haven't already. Are you installing the new OS, warts and all, on ...Read more...
The march of Intel Braswell-powered mini-ITX mobos continues. Today's spin on the formula comes from Biostar, whose N3150NH mobo features a Celeron N3150 quad-core CPU for a suggested price of only $69. ...Read more...
This week's episode is dedicated to the new Radeon Fury cards, the Radeon 300-series refresh, and the Fiji GPU architecture. We take a ton of questions and dig deep into AMD's new graphics chip....Read more...
It's time for more Steam deals. Today, Valve has blessed us with a ton of well-beloved franchises on sale, most of which feature DLC-packed special editions. Let's get this show on the road:Whew, that was a lot of "special", "complete", and "edition". Post anything ...Read more...
Not green with Envy about HP's refreshed 15" laptop lineup? Take a look at the new Pavillion x2 10t, a Bay Trail Atom convertible with a 10," 1280x800 IPS display and a Type-C USB port. ...Read more...
It's that time again. We've sifted through the mountains of discounts and markdowns out there to find the most interesting deals to be had this week.Those are the best deals I could find this week. If I missed some ...Read more...
It's that time again. We've sifted through the mountains of discounts and markdowns out there to find the most interesting deals to be had this week.Those are the best deals I could find this week. If I missed some ...Read more...
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