Techreport

In a shocking announcement, Intel has confirmed that former Radeon Technologies Group head Raja Koduri will join the company as a chief architect and senior vice president of its newly-formed Core and Visual Computing Group. In that role, Intel says Koduri will bolster Intel's leadership in integrated graphics processors and—incredibly—complement those products with "high-end discrete graphics solutions for a broad range of computing segments."With what is sure to be a wide-ranging mandate, Intel says Koduri will be responsible for delivering "differentiated IP across computing, graphics, ...Read more...

Qualcomm announced that it's begun commercial shipments of its Centriq 2400 family of server CPUs today. Fabricated on Samsung's 10-nm FinFET process, the Centriq 2400 die crams a whopping 18 billion transistors into an area of 398 mm². Centriq CPUs will have as many as 48 single-thread, 64-bit-only ARM v8-compliant cores (a custom design that Qualcomm calls Falkor). Those cores will have 2.2 GHz base frequencies and peak frequencies of up to 2.6 GHz on the Centriq 2460 product. ...Read more...

Virtual reality is all fun and games until you step on the cords, possibly adding insult to injury by getting tangled in them. A while back, TPCast promised an add-on for the HTC Vive that would get rid of the rat's nest of wiring in favor of a sleek wireless unit that couples to the headset. The company is now letting North American customers know that they can finally preorder the adapter and enter the age of wireless VR. ...Read more...

Gerbils who've been looking for a video card upgrade in anticipation of Assasin's Creed: Origins might want to cast their eyes towards Asus' limited-edition GeForce GTX 1080 Ti themed after the popular title. The card includes Nvidia's second-fastest gaming GPU and all its goodness, including the 3584 stream processors and 352-bit-wide path to 11 GB of 11 GT/s GDDR5X memory. The card has the same 1708 MHz boost clock as the "regular" GTX 1080 Ti Strix card, but it's clad in a unique game-themed fan shroud and backplate. ...Read more...

Cryorig first showed its Taku Mini-ITX case-slash-monitor-stand all the way back during Computex 2016 and sought feedback from the marketplace with a Kickstarter campaign early last summer. The Kickstarter didn't reach its funding goal, but Cryorig and its manufacturing partner Lian Li are going ahead and building the chassis anyway. ...Read more...

One upshot of the last three generations of Intel's CPUs having roughly the same graphics processors is that the same driver works on all of them. Folks who have Skylake, Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake-R, and Coffee Lake CPUs (including applicable chips from the Celeron, Pentium, Core, and Xeon families) can go ahead and grab the Intel Graphics driver for Windows version 15.60. The new driver's headlining feature is support for Netflix HDR and Youtube HDR. Additionally, Windows Mixed Reality headsets and some new games also get some love in this driver revision.

Hexus reports that AMD Radeon Technologies Group honcho Raja Koduri has left the company. In a message to employees apparently obtained by the site, Koduri says he made the "extremely difficult decision" to leave his role after forty days into the sabbatical he began in September. AMD independently confirmed Koduri's departure to me this evening.After a long career at ATI and some time spent working for Apple, Koduri returned to AMD's graphics unit in April 2013 as part of a sweeping change in management at the company, led by then-CEO Rory Read. Notable moments in Koduri's tenure included the launches of the Hawaii, ...Read more...

Thanks to its single-vendor nature, you might reasonably expect G-Sync to have limited appeal. That's not really the case, though. GeForce gamers are spoiled for choice, and there are displays in almost every common shape and size available packing Nvidia's variable-refresh-rate technology. Unfortunately, high-refresh-rate monitors in 3840x2160 resolution still haven't shown up in stores yet, so G-Sync fans can pick up the next best thing: a display like the ROG Swift PG27VQ. ...Read more...

A fairly specific image for a strangely specific day.

Season's greetings, gerbils and gerbilettes. As you may have noticed, it's now dark by 5:30 PM and sleep schedules everywhere are taking a beating. The TR staff is bleary-eyed and just barely mumbling along the daily work (not that big a departure from the normal state of affairs, really), but we still managed to do some solid digging looking for hardware deals. Here's what we found. Can I go nap now? ...Read more...

Wireless Bluetooth connectivity is convenient, but the latency it adds renders it less-than-ideal for gaming. SteelSeries latest Arctis 3 Bluetooth gaming headset offers gamers the ability to connect to wired and Bluetooth audio sources simultaneously. The four-pole 3.5-mm jack can connect to just about any source, including current-generation game console controllers. The integrated Bluetooth adapter can connect to a second latency-insensitive source like a PC running Discord. The retractable microphone boom permits wearing the headset outside the house without visually screaming "gamer" to surrounding bystanders. ...Read more...

We cover a lot of gaming content at TR since that's the main activity for most powerful PCs these days. Gaming isn't a computer's only potential task, though. Photographers, video editors, graphic designers, and other professional image-manipulating persons need high-quality hardware too. Nothing in their setups is more important than the display. The need for a wide range of accurate colors leads those folks to select screens like BenQ's new SW271 Adobe RGB Color Management monitor. ...Read more...

Star Wars fans, take note. Nvidia is releasing two limited editions of its Titan Xp übercard today that commemorate everybody's favorite galaxy far, far away: one for fans of the Jedi Order, and another for adherents of the Galactic Empire. ...Read more...

Jonsbo's CR-601 RGB CPU cooler might be just the ticket for air-cooling die-hards looking for the sleek appearance and illuminated flair offered by the latest generation of closed-loop AIO coolers and custom waterblocks. Where most tower coolers have a top with a hodgepodge of aluminum and copper, the CR-601 covers it up with a black anodized shroud set off with diffused RGB LED lighting. ...Read more...

Xigmatek is the latest company to announce a computer case with tempered-glass panels, although this isn't the company's first glass case. The distinguishing feature of the new Glare 7A is a single tempered glass panel that makes up the front panel. The side panel is a single sheet of smoky acrylic. Besides the clear sides, the Xigmatek Glare 7A is a fairly standard steel ATX mid-tower chassis. ...Read more...

Lian Li has been famed for decades for its love for lightweight aluminum cases. The company's Alpha line of chassis veer in the opposite direction, with heaping helpings of thick, heavy tempered glass laid on top of a steel framework. Last week we reported on the company's Alpha 550, and over the weekend the company took the wraps off the more-affordable Alpha 330. ...Read more...

Not even a year after the launch of Starcraft: Remastered, the second Starcraft game is now going free-to-play. That's right—the full competitive multiplayer experience as well as the first third of the game's single-player campaign will be completely free. Furthermore, both current and future playable commanders for the co-op game mode are also going to be free-to-play up to level five. ...Read more...

A name like "fitlet" brings to mind something compact and cute, and Compulab's fanless fitlet2 delivers on those promises. The compact computer measures just 4.4" wide and 3.3" deep (11.2 cm x 8.4 cm) and packs Intel's latest Apollo Lake Atom and Celeron processors. ...Read more...

Mmm, crow. Intel announced this morning that it's collaborating with AMD to deliver one of its eighth-generation Core processors paired with a semi-custom Radeon graphics chip on one package. The semi-custom Radeon GPU and Intel processor cores will be joined together for the first time by Intel's Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, a way of connecting discrete dies across a 2.5D, high-bandwidth on-package interconnect. The combined package will include a stack of HBM2 memory alongside the CPU and GPU cores. ...Read more...

Mmm, crow. Intel announced this morning that it's collaborating with AMD to deliver one of its eighth-generation Core processors paired with a semi-custom Radeon graphics chip on one package. The semi-custom Radeon GPU and Intel processor cores will be joined together for the first time by Intel's Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, a way of joining discrete IP blocks across a 3D, high-bandwidth on-package interconnect. The combined SoC will include a stack of HBM2 memory alongside the CPU and GPU cores. ...Read more...

Broadcom issued an unsolicited proposal this morning to acquire mobile technology giant Qualcomm for $70 per share in a monster cash-and-stock deal that's valued at $130 billion. Broadcom president and CEO Hock Tan says the combined companies would stand "as a global communications leader with an impressive portfolio of technologies and products." Broadcom CFO Thomas Krause touts his company's "proven track record of rapidly deleveraging and successfully integrating companies to create value for our stockholders, employees, and customers" in a rosy vision for the deal. Were it to close, the offer would dwarf Dell's $67 billion merger with EMC that closed in September of last year.Qualcomm should be a household name to many TR readers. The company designs the Snapdragon mobile platforms that power Android handsets ranging from entry-level to flagship-class, and it also provides the cellular modems that go into some iPhones, among many other technologies. Recently, though, Qualcomm has become embroiled in ...Read more...

I have a sickness, and the only cure is more mouse buttons. My current mouse is a SteelSeries Rival 500, and before that I was rocking a Corsair Vengeance M95. Like many gamers, though, my first many-buttoned mouse was a Razer Naga. Razer's MMO-oriented mouse has been through a few revisions: the Naga Hex had fewer buttons, and the Naga Chroma variants carried RGB LED illumination. The company is revisiting the concept yet again, and this time calls it the Naga Trinity. Alongside the new rodent, the company also has second edition of the Tartarus gaming keypad. ...Read more...

For the last few years, Elgato has been helping gamers get their gameplay out into the world, whether streaming on Twitch or doing a Let's Play-style series on YouTube. The company is best known for its capture cards but has lately been venturing into streaming accessories like green screens and camera adapters. One area that's been hard for gamers to tackle to this point, though, is easily grabbing 4K gameplay footage. Now, Elgato has an answer to that with its new 4K60 Pro internal capture card....Read more...

The launch of AMD's Vega-based graphics cards in August was a big deal for the company. The March release of the first wave of Ryzen processors was even more so. Both could be overshadowed in sales figures and importance by Raven Ridge, the APU that brings Ryzen and Vega together. The chip itself seems to have a compelling mix of CPU grunt and advanced graphics capabilities in a competitive 15 W power envelope, but getting design wins has often been a challenge for AMD's mobile offerings. HP has come forward with details about the Raven Ridge-powered version of its popular Envy x360 15 convertible laptop. ...Read more...

Just three days into the eleventh month of 2017, AMD has already banged out another graphics driver. Radeon Software version 17.11.1 offers game-specific support for Call of Duty: WWII and adds the RX Vega 56 to the list of graphics cards supported under the umbrella of XConnect external GPUs. The real purpose of this update appears to have been fixing bugs, though.

AMD launched its Radeon RX Vega graphics cards in the middle of August after a protracted buildup. Two-and-a-half months later, reference cards from various manufacturers are just beginning to remain in retailer inventory long enough for casual shoppers to pick them up. The only custom model we've seen thus far is a Strix card that Asus teased that's yet to see a retail release.XFX took to reddit yesterday to tease a couple photos of a rather unusual-looking Radeon RX Vega custom design with an abbreviated PCB and a long cooler. ...Read more...

Just minutes ago, Nvidia tweeted out a portentous video teasing some kind of Titan X Collector's Edition graphics card. Relive that 13 seconds with me:It's coming...a Collector's Edition. pic.twitter.com/PBWahqnRMG ...Read more...

Did you know BitFenix sells power supplies, gerbils? The company already has a lineup of fancy modular units with 80+ Gold certification, but not everybody needs or wants a modular unit. Serving those customers is the job of the new Formula Gold series, which would appear to be an update to the extant Fury series. ...Read more...

According to The Guru of 3D, the Lian-Li Alpha 550 is about to hit the market. We saw this case at Computex this year, and its model name alone might have tipped Lian Li fans off to that fact it marks a departure from the company's usual brushed aluminum styling. The Alpha 550 is an E-ATX computer case assembled from a steel frame and four tempered glass panels.

Sorry, I work with what I find.

Asus unveiled its ROG G703 Chimera gaming laptop two months ago during the IFA trade show in Berlin. The machine's full specifications are now available. The Chimera brings a lot of punch into gaming battles, including Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards and an overclockable Intel Core i7 CPUs. ...Read more...

Howdy, gerbils! The TR HQ is abuzz with the fans of multiple graphics cards as Jeff furiously works on finishing up the review of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Trust me, it's definitely more than worth waiting for. In the meantime, how about some hardware deals? Don't deny it, we know you're constantly looking for your next acquisition. We can save you the trouble of virtual window-shopping and price comparison. ...Read more...

HTC's U11 is a flagship smartphone with high-end specs and a shiny metallic body. The company is expanding the U11 family with the midrange U11 life and the larger U11+. Compared to the regular U11, the U11 life makes do with a power-sipping Snapdragon 630 SoC and an acrylic body. Meanwhile, the U11+ adds a bigger screen with a higher screen-to-body size ratio and a much larger battery.Both new members of the family retain the U11's best features, including access to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ...Read more...

As your inbox or Twitter feed will doubtless inform you, the review embargo for Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti lifted this morning. If you're just finding out by reading this post, it's because I'm still getting our article where I want it, and I think you'll find the wait to be worth it. ...Read more...

Razer's product lines are ever-expanding, and today the company added another category to its arsenal: smartphones. More specifically, the aptly-named Razer Phone. This is the first product of Razer's acquisition of Nextbit early in the year, and can be roughly described as a high-end Android smartphone with a twist. ...Read more...

Between Alphacool, EK Water Blocks, and Aqua Computer, it seems like the lion's share of custom open-loop water cooling hardware comes out of Europe these days. German outfit Watercool is also a part of this liquid-soaked techno dance party. The company's upcoming Heatkiller IV full-coverage CPU waterblock for AMD's enormous Threadripper processors is the company's latest salvo against high CPU temperatures. Watercool has three versions of the block, all CNC-machined in Germany from blocks of pure copper. ...Read more...

Raijintek is no stranger to tempered glass computer cases, but three new chassis from the company are less "case" and more "glass." The Coeus Elite, Coeus Evo, and Paean M are all ready for the luxurious LED-lit and water-cooled war machine of your dreams. All three cases are steel-framed offerings with a glass pane on every place where there'd be normally be an opaque panel. ...Read more...

It is difficult to describe the modern VR experience to those who haven't had the pleasure. While screen-door artifacts and occasional motion glitches can distract you, when everything is working, VR is an unbelievably life-like trip. If you've been waiting for the right moment to jump in, there's never been a better time than now. HTC is offering a GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition graphics card bundled up with a full Vive VR set for just $799.

Now that pretty much every part of a gaming PC can be optioned with factory-fitted RGB LED illumination, manufacturers have started looking at accessories. One need look no further than Cooler Master's just-introduced MasterAccessory RGB Hard Gaming mouse pad for evidence of this trend. The top of the pad has a black low-friction silicone mousing surface set off by an aluminum bracket. The edges of the mouse pad are lit up by color-changing LEDs that can display nine different illumination patterns. ...Read more...

Apple and Qualcomm have been poking at each other for some time. This year alone, Apple sued Qualcomm for its licensing practices, while Qualcomm sought a US import ban on some iPhone and iPad and attempted to halt Apple manufacturing and sales in China. Now, Apple seems to be looking to cut the chipmaker out entirely. According to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, Apple is working on iPhone and iPad redesigns that would drop Qualcomm's chips in favor of other providers. ...Read more...

We wrote about Zotac's Zbox PI225 miniature computer early last month. The PI225 packs just enough computer power for most everyday tasks into a package about the size of a laptop hard drive. While extremely portable, the machine's only external connectors are a couple of USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C ports and a microSD slot. Zotac's latest Zbox PI335 puts essentially the same Intel Apollo Lake guts into a thicker enclosure studded with more traditional I/O connections. ...Read more...

My affection for hardware festooned in RGB LEDs is something of a meme among the TR staffers, and one that many gerbils are no doubt familiar with. Still, even I have to admit that motherboards glowing with rainbow light shows or bedecked with dragon accents can look decidedly tacky in a workstation environment. For that kind of machine, you'd do better to get a board like Asus' new WS-X299 Pro. This ATX motherboard has an LGA 2066 socket and all the connectivity you expect from a workstation offering without any gamer glitz. ...Read more...

Tell your jokes in the comments, but wait for the "who's there?"

Microsoft's Surface Pro convertible tablets are a great way to get work done when away from a conventional desk, but so far the machines have been unable to connect to the internet in the absence of Wi-Fi. That will change in December when the company ships Surface Pro devices with built-in LTE Advanced modems capable of pushing data at up to 450 Mbps. ...Read more...

Good day, fellow gerbils. I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath for our in-depth review of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Jeff's knee-deep in frame times, graphs, and copious amount of data. In the meantime, you should check out today's selection of deals. We know you're always on the lookout for your next piece of hardware, and we're happy to oblige. ...Read more...

We've had the ability to stack chips and create multi-die packages for a while. Cooling powerful chips is a hard task, however, and so far multi-layer designs have primarily been used for low-power products like NAND flash chips. That might change in the near future. Researchers at Purdue University, working under a grant from DARPA, have developed a new way of cooling microprocessors using boiling dielectric fluid passing through micro-channels in the chips themselves. ...Read more...

Drivers ready for the latest crop of games may get the lion's share of press time, but both AMD and Nvidia have dedicated teams working on drivers and supporting software for their respective lines of professional graphics cards. AMD's software engineers have readied up Radeon Pro Software version 17.Q4. Let's take a look at this comprehensive release. ...Read more...

Building a gaming PC is easier than it's ever been, but there's still a sizable part of the market that doesn't want to select individual components, turn a screwdriver, or have to call upon a merry-go-round of different companies in the event of a problem. MSI is catering to that group with its just-announced Infinite X gaming desktop. The Infinite X is built around the best gaming CPU on the market right now, Intel's Core i7-8700K. ...Read more...

BenQ's Zowie gaming division just released the EC1-B and EC2-B gaming mice. Like their predecessors, the two rodents are as barebones as they come and are focused on nailing down basic mouse functionality. Both models are five-button optical gaming mice using the beloved PMW3360 sensor by PixArt. That means they'll keep tracking during up to 50 Gs of acceleration and at speeds up to to 250 inches per second—and they'll do it without any glowy bits on top. ...Read more...

The number of choices available for the most particular typists and gamers has expanded again with SteelSeries' Apex M750 TKL. The new offering is a tenkeyless version of the company's 104-key Apex M750 that debuted just a couple of months ago. Like its big brother, the M750 TKL is built with SteelSeries' proprietary QX2 switches atop an aluminum base and offers per-key RGB LED backlighting. ...Read more...