Techreport

Intel introduced its Broadwell-based Xeon D server SoC earlier this month, and already, the chip has popped up in a couple of interesting Mini-ITX boards. Super Micro's X10SDV-TLN4F and X10SDV-F both feature the Xeon D-1540, which has eight cores, 16 threads, and a peak Turbo speed of 2.6GHz. Here are some painfully small board shots pulled from Super Micro's website: ...Read more...

It's a little hard to believe that Half-Life 2 came out in 2004. The game has aged pretty well, but a devoted member of the Half-Life fan community, Filip Victor, wanted to bring HL2's graphics quality closer to modern standards. Victor's first stab at that goal came out in 2009, as the Half-Life 2: Update mod, and he's continued his work since. The latest version hits Steam today. It maintains the distinctive look and feel of the original game while improving the lighting and environmental effects. Have a look:...Read more...

Update: It's over now. Thanks to everybody who joined us!Tonight's' TR Podcast recording session is underway, and we're streaming it live on Twitch . ...Read more...

NUC season is officially open. We went in-depth with Intel's reference NUC last month, and yesterday, MSI released a NUC-inspired mini-PC of its own. Today, Gigabyte joins the party with a new generation of Brix barebones PCs that offers a range of Broadwell CPUs and storage options. The company has an informative video about the new machines, as well:...Read more...

7 Up

About a week ago, a number of graphics card manufacturers announced 4GB versions of the GeForce GTX 960. Now, those 4GB cards are beginning to show up online, and an important piece of the value puzzle—the price—is also in place. ...Read more...

Our series of game impressions videos continues with Renegade X, a long-in-development shooter that's completely free to play. Here's the scoop....Read more...

We had an exchange in the comments earlier this week that seems to me like it's worthy of a little more attention. TR reader "ermo" asked me the following question:Do you have any informed speculation to offer on whether we will see AMD update the R9 280X (GCN 1.0) ...Read more...

E-tailers have cut prices on loads of big-screen TVs as part of their March Madness promotions, but we still managed to find some sweet PC hardware in the discount aisle.Thanks to SlickDeals for the tips on the hard drive and tablet. If ...Read more...

AMD just released its reference guide (PDF) for generation three of its Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, also known as Volcanic Islands. The Reading through the document offers some insights into exactly how GCN3 works.The document also resolves a bit of a mystery about AMD's Carrizo APU —namely, what generation ...Read more...

For years, a well-funded startup called Magic Leap has been working in secret on new augmented reality technology. The company was founded by former biomedical engineer Rony Abovitz, and according to the New York Times, its proprietary tech beams "3D light sculptures" onto your eyeballs. Pretty neat.Although Magic Leap has shared few details about its plans, the company has posted an ...Read more...

7 Up

We learned some details about Nvidia's next-gen Pascal GPU architecture at last year's GTC. After today's GTC keynote, we now know a little more about how Pascal will operate. We also have new info about its memory capacity and bandwidth. ...Read more...

During today's GPU Technology Conference keynote, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the wraps off the Titan X graphics card. Be sure to read Scott's in-depth review for more details on Nvidia's uber-Maxwell. The Titan X was only the beginning of the topics that Huang discussed. ...Read more...

Since 2012, a group of industry heavyweights including AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Imagination Technologies has been working on on a development platform that lets software more effectively use the diverse range of computational resources available in modern processors. Dubbed HSA, or Heterogeneous Systems Architecture, this open standard is designed to harness CPU, GPU, and even DSP resources. It also defines a virtual address space that allows CPUs and GPUs to access each others' memory.Version 1.0 of the specification is now complete , and interested parties can grab it from the HSA Foundation's website . This initial release includes three documents: the system ...Read more...

Among the many improvements expected in Windows 10, we now have another to add to the list. In a new post on its Blogging Windows blog, Microsoft says Windows 10 will take up less space on disk by compressing system files when possible and doing away with on-disk recovery images.Microsoft describes the new space-saving ...Read more...

Despite strong growth in PC shipments during the fourth quarter of last year, IDC has lowered its forecast for 2015. The market research firm expects worldwide shipments to fall 4.9% this year, a 1.6-point decline from its previous projection. IDC blames "economic and product changes" for the short-term downturn, and it says shipments will begin to level off the following year. That trend is supposed to continue through 2019.Here are the figures ...Read more...

We're recording the podcast a day early this week. You can watch the live stream on TR's Twitch channel right now.Read more...

7 Up

Google's Chromebook Pixel has always been kind of a contradiction in terms. Whereas most Chromebooks ply the $300-and-below waters of budget laptops, the original Pixel was a high-end affair selling for well over $1000. Despite that contradiction, Google apparently had enough success with the concept to refresh the Pixel with Intel's Broadwell CPUs and reversible USB 3.0 ports. And it also knocked $300 off the starting price. ...Read more...

When Scott reviewed (and overclocked) Nvidia's Geforce GTX 960, he found it to be a more-than-capable performer for about $200. The GTX 960's 2GB of RAM might become a liability with future games, though. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One each have 8GB of RAM (shared between system and graphics duties). Developers of future console ports might want to make use of higher-quality textures on all platforms, and that extra information has to go somewhere.If you were holding off buying a GTX 960 due to RAM concerns, your wallet now has reason to fear. Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI have all announced ...Read more...

When you build a strong door and put something valuable behind it, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody comes along and tries to break it down. In today's drama, the gatekeepers are Apple and Microsoft, the valuables are personal data stored on iPhones and encrypted with ...Read more...

WD has introduced a new hard drive aimed at high-capacity datacenter applications. The Re+ scales up to 6TB, and the top model purportedly consumes just 6W. WD claims the drive draws less juice than any other high-capacity 3.5-incher on the market.

Microsoft's monthly patch ritual has reached its appointed time. This Patch Tuesday brings fixes for many of the critical flaws we've discussed with you over the past month.First up, Microsoft has fixed the Universal XSS flaw in IE that we discussed back in early February. The FREAK flaw for ...Read more...

SSDs keep getting cheaper. The latest budget offering to hit the market is Mushkin's Enhanced ECO2, a Newegg exclusive that's already marked down to $84.99 for 240GB and $159.99 for 480GB. Those prices work out to $0.35 and $0.33 per gig, respectively, making the ECO2 one of the most affordable drives out there.

Yes, an honest-to-goodness effort to reboot the PC gaming classic Descent has just hit Kickstarter. Descent was one of the original "3D" games, and its six-degrees-of-freedom maneuverability was demanding but awesome back in the day. It even gave birth to new types of controllers, like the Space Orb, specifically designed for six-axis control.I was never awesome at Descent , but I still remember some making some gratifying kills, even ...Read more...

We're a bit of a moving target lately, but we're getting stuff done. This week's edition of the TR Podcast will be live-streamed on our Twitch channel starting at 9:30PM ET/6:30PM PT on Wednesday evening.I figure we'll want to talk about the new Apple stuff, how the VR demos scrambled my brains at GDC, ...Read more...

Apple first revealed its smart watch way back in September. We didn't get too many details at the time, ahem, but Apple revealed much more during its "Spring Forward" event in San Francisco today, including information on pricing, availability, and battery life.Amusingly, CEO Tim Cook kicked off the discussion by confirming that yes, the Apple Watch can tell time. The ...Read more...

At Apple's press event today, the company returned its mid-line MacBook to its product lineup. And yes, it's the thinnest Apple notebook ever. But there's much more to the new wafer-thin MacBook than meets the eye. ...Read more...

The wraps came off of Vulkan, the next-generation rebuild of OpenGL, at the Game Developers Conference last week. Although the graphics API is still in development, we learned quite a bit about it in a conference session devoted to the topic. That session started with a fundamental truth: Vulkan is based on AMD's Mantle API, only it's been adapted and extended to work properly with a range of different modern GPU architectures.This adaptation work is particularly crucial for makers of mobile GPUs, since many mobile graphics cores simply work differently than big desktop chips like AMD's GCN-based Radeons. The folks at Imagination Technologies ship tons of PowerVR graphics cores in Apple's iOS devices, among other things, and Imagination's GPUs are tile-based deferred renderers, not immediate-mode renderers like most desktop GPUs. Tilers can be more efficient ...Read more...

Plenty of games have realistic-looking graphics, but the visuals don't always hold up when damage is added to the equation. That doesn't appear to be a problem for Star Citizen, whose revamped damage system produces some pretty impressive results. Check this promo video showing one of the game's ships being picked apart by a bunch of different weapons:...Read more...

MediaTek is one of the biggest SoC providers around. It currently offers a deep lineup of smartphone and tablets chips that pair ARM CPU cores with graphics based on either ARM's Mali tech or Imagination Technologies' PowerVR hardware. Now, the rumor mill suggests future MediaTek processors could incorporate Radeon graphics from AMD."Industry sources" cited by Fudzilla claim that AMD and MediaTek "have been working on an SoC graphics solution for a while." The site says the two companies are in "continuous contact," ...Read more...

This past week at GDC, Synaptics unveiled several touch- and fingerprint-sensing solutions that could make mice and keyboards more versatile—and potentially better for gamers. ...Read more...

I was intrigued by the Steam machine Zotac announced earlier in the week, so I stopped by Valve's booth at GDC to talk with Zotac about the system. As we noted in our initial report, this particular Steam machine is a fairly high-end affair that looks to be a stone-cold console killer. ...Read more...

A lot of TR readers have lamented the drive toward slimmer devices that sacrifice battery life to shave a few millimeters. As it turns out, they're not alone. According to a poll conducted by HuffPost and YouGov, the vast majority of Americans would take a thicker handset with longer battery life over a thinner one with a shorter run time.The initial survey covered 1000 American adults, only 56% of whom actually have a smartphone. Among that subset, 73% would choose a beefier device with a bigger battery. And 93% of ...Read more...

The FREAK vulnerability isn't just placing Apple, Android, and OpenSSL users at risk. Microsoft has discovered that all current versions of Windows are also susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Here's what Redmond has to say about the vulnerability:Microsoft is aware of a security feature bypass vulnerability in Secure Channel (Schannel) that affects all supported releases of Microsoft Windows. Our investigation has verified that the vulnerability could allow an attacker to force the downgrading of the cipher suites used in an SSL/TLS connection on a Windows client ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

We have a few unexpected items in this week's deals post, plus some of the usual suspects.Those are the deals that caught my eye this morning. Don't forget ...Read more...

Wolfenstein: The New Order was a successful take on the classic series, and developer MachineGames now has another chapter to add to the story: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.The Old Blood appears to be a prequel to the 2013 game, and it trades its ...Read more...

The Pick 6

Scott is on the ground at GDC this week, and he spent this morning learning more about the Vulkan graphics API at Valve's glNext presentation. Most notably, Scott learned that Vulkan is indeed an offshoot of AMD's Mantle API. But that's not all:

Intel may soon stop pursuing mobile market share by offering massive discounts on Atom processors. In a press briefing about the new Atom x3, x5, and x7 CPUs last week, Aicha Evans, Corporate VP and General Manager of Intel's Communications and Devices Group, suggested that such "contra-revenue" tactics won't be necessary with some of the new chips—and that, in the future, we shouldn't expect Intel to engage in these tactics at all.In general, first of all, that was a very calculated move. I think our Chairman—the Chairman of our board—which was a pretty tough moment for us, stood up and said, "Look, ...Read more...

While we haven't yet had an opportunity to review a Phanteks case here at TR, the company has been making waves among enthusiasts with its Enthoo line of cases. Today, the company has added an ITX-only version of its Enthoo Evolv mini-tower to the lineup, the Enthoo Evolv ITX. ...Read more...

Moore's Law is an amazing thing, folks. Yesterday, SanDisk announced its latest high-capacity Ultra-branded microSDXC card, which crams 200GB of storage into a card that can fit within the circumference of a penny. That's a bit staggering to think about.

Free-to-play games are all the rage these days, so it's only fitting that development tools appear to be headed in the same direction. Epic has revealed that Unreal Engine 4 is now "available to everyone for free."The announcement comes nearly a year after Epic started selling Unreal Engine subscriptions for $19/month. The UE4 development community has "grown tremendously" since ...Read more...

Sony is the latest tablet maker with an uber-slender Android slate. The Xperia Z4 measures just 6.1 mm thick, allowing it to slip into the same dress size as Dell's Venue 8 7000 and Apple's iPad Air 2. It's a relative featherweight, too, at only 13.9 ounces (393 grams). And, unlike most tablets, it can be dunked under water for up to 30 minutes with no ill effects.

Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2015, Samsung announced the latest updates to its Galaxy S line of high-end handsets: the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. The new Galaxies feature a striking new design that incorporates metal and glass materials, a marked change from the more plastic-y bodies of previous Galaxy S phones. ...Read more...

At the Mobile World Congress today, Intel unwrapped a new line of Atom processors for entry-level phones and tablets. Known as the Atom x3 series, this lineup comprises chips formerly known under the SoFIA code name. These chips combine x86 Intel cores with integrated baseband modems and, oddly enough, graphics based on ARM's Mali IP.

With the Atom x3 series, Intel has made certain concessions to cost and time-to-market concerns. The company has made fewer compromises with the Atom x5 and x7 series, formerly known as Cherry Trail. These are the first Atoms built using Intel's 14-nm fab process, and they boast Intel Gen8 integrated graphics—the very same found in Broadwell.Where the Atom x3 lineup targets entry-level phones and tablets, Intel expects the Atom x5 and ...Read more...

Imagination Technologies is unveiling new products at the Mobile World Congress this week. Among them: the PowerVR Series5 family of video encoders, which are designed for 4K H.265 encoding and promise higher efficiency than the competition.Three different encoder IP products make up the PowerVR Series5 lineup. They target prosumer applications, ...Read more...