Techreport

I picked up Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator last night and spent a couple hours fiddling with it. There are good times to be had there, and also a lot of potential to put some hurt on your PC. The battlefield I laid out with over 50,000 units made my i7-7700K cry. The frame rate sometimes dipped below 10 (even though my GTX 980 Ti was pretty "bored" much of the time). That said, performance was perfectly acceptable under less extreme circumstances, and the game is quite an entertaining sandbox to play in. I suspect it's also a great way to show off the computing prowess of some gerbils' shiny new eight-core CPUs. At any rate, there are certainly worse things to spend $15 on. Zombies vs. knights, just what I've always wanted.

Tomorrow may be Good Friday, but all that means for hardware-hungry gerbils is that today is Deals Thursday. The release of AMD's excellent Ryzen 5 CPUs probably has more than a few gerbils picturing a PC upgrade. We can offer to help with that. Oddly enough, today's deals aren't big on system components, but there are a couple surprises in store.That's it for today, folks! If you come across any juicy deals that we ...Read more...

So, uhh—remember that fancy Dell OLED monitor? As it turns out, rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated. In fact, you can buy one right now and have it shipped out in one to two weeks, at least if you're in the US. The UP3017Q 30" display is now available on Dell's website. ...Read more...

Nvidia briefly announced a few days that it had a macOS driver in the works that would support its latest 10-series graphics cards, and it appears the green team has made good on that promise. Driver release 378.05.05.05 is now available for macOS Sierra.Despite the Pascal support, the driver release is somewhat of an odd duck, as driver updates tend to focus on updates for new hardware and performance improvements for newly-released software. However, since Nvidia cards haven't been inside Apple products for several ...Read more...

Now that we have more-reasonably-priced Ryzen processors around, we have some affordable Ryzen motherboards, too. MSI is getting in on the act with no less than five new microATX motherboards based on the AMD A320 chipset. From the company's Performance Gaming series comes the A320M Gaming Pro, from the Arsenal series come the A320M Grenade and A320M Bazooka, and from the company's business-oriented Pro series come the A320M Pro-VD and A320M Pro-VD/S. ...Read more...

Graphics cards that come liquid-cooled out of the box are great. So are custom-CNC'd full-coverage waterblocks from companies like EK. However, sometimes a gerbil decides to water-cool a card only to find no one makes a waterblock for it. NZXT's original Kraken G10 bracket allowed users to bolt an all-in-one liquid cooler designed for a CPU onto a variety of graphics cards. The company now promises that the latest Kraken G12 model is easier to install than its predecessor and offers broader compatibility with AIOs from several different vendors. ...Read more...

Unigine, the team behind well-known benchmark software like Valley and Heaven, has released a new benchmark called Superposition. The Valley benchmark is going on four years old now, and it's time for something more modern. Superposition brings a bunch of new features while being able to more thoroughly stress modern cards in new and interesting ways that weren't common back in the ancient year of 2013....Read more...

When you hear "Republic of Gamers", you probably start thinking of high-end parts like the Maximus motherboards and Strix graphics cards. If that's the case, the two new motherboards coming from Asus' ROG division may be a surprise. Check out the B250H Gaming and B250G Gaming. Both of these LGA 1151 mobos use Intel's B250 chipset and provide budget-priced platforms for high-performance gaming rigs. ...Read more...

Microsoft launched its Windows Creators Update yesterday, but the date also marked the end of support for the maligned Vista release of the ubiquitous desktop OS. Windows Vista reached general availability in January 2007, and after just over a decade, Microsoft has pulled the plug on it. Internet Explorer 9 has caught a ride on that deprecation train, too. Redmond advises Vista and IE9 users to upgrade their OS and browser as soon as possible. ...Read more...

AMD's software teams have been busy lately. Between Radeon driver updates large and small, microcode updates for the Ryzen platform, assisting game developers with optimization for the Zen architecture, and writing new power plans for Windows, work doesn't seem to let up for AMD coders. Today's news on the company's software front is the release of Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.4.2, adding support for yesterday's Windows 10 Creators Update. ...Read more...

Late last week, Microsoft unloaded a whole bunch of information about its upcoming Xbox One refresh, currently codenamed Project Scorpio. It turns out that the company was keeping one more tidbit of info back to make sure the console got the attention it deserved. Project Scorpio will support both FreeSync 2 and HDMI 2.1's variable-refresh-rate standard. ...Read more...

PC hardware and computing

One of those new Ryzen 5 chips could make a pretty solid foundation for an office PC, and Biostar has just the motherboard for it. The company's new A320MH-Pro and A320MD-Pro are microATX Socket AM4 motherboards that Biostar says were designed with durability and reliability in mind. To that end, these boards keep it simple and offer just the basics for a Ryzen-based PC. ...Read more...

If you're fond of the Samsung CF791 but find its $950 price tag a bit much, maybe check out one of Samsung's new curved business monitors. The CH711 series includes a 32" model and a 27" model, both bearing a fairly typical 1800R curvature. We're not sure exactly what type of business benefits from a curved monitor with FreeSync, but perhaps that's Samsung's way of saying that these monitors are high-end offerings with only some of the features and cost trimmed away. ...Read more...

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 is a cool customer for a graphics card, delivering meaty performance while keeping power draw and noise levels down. The smaller GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB is roughly neck-and-neck with the 4 GB version of AMD's Radeon RX 470 in performance but comes out ahead in terms of power efficiency. With this backstory in place, the arrival of Asus' somewhat-diminutive GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Phoenix graphics card makes a lot of sense. The Phoenix capitalizes on the GTX 1060's efficiency by using a smaller, less complex cooler than the company's other GTX 1060 offerings.

Just a few days back, Google published some interesting benchmarks of its Tensor Processing Unit, a custom-made ASIC targeted at AI inference applications. The numbers were pretty impressive. Google claimed that its TPU was roughly 15 times faster than an unspecified GPU (which we took to mean a Tesla) when running inference tasks, and a whopping 30 to 80 times better when it came to performance-per-watt. As the CEO of a prominent GPU vendor, it was only natural that Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang would want to weigh in on the performance numbers that Google shared.Nvidia agrees with Google on a lot of points, namely the fact that the existence of dedicated hardware is what makes many modern AI applications scalable at all. However, Huang notes that the Google engineers compared their TPU to ...Read more...

A tool is no good if you don't have anything to use it on. That goes doubly so for something as unique as Microsoft's Surface Dial. Application developers do need to add specific support for the Dial in their wares, though. To make sure that artists using the Surface Studio and its Dial aren't lacking in options, Microsoft has announced partnerships with developers of a host of both new and updated creativity applications. ...Read more...

A tool is no good if you don't have anything to use it on. That goes doubly so for something as unique as Microsoft's Surface Dial. Application developers do need to add specific support for the Dial in their wares, though. To make sure that artists using the Surface Studio and its Dial aren't lacking in options, Microsoft has announced partnerships with developers of a host of both new and updated creativity applications. ...Read more...

Tripping over cords and cables is one of those things that can ruin a virtual reality experience. Mobile VR setups may offer inferior graphical quality compared to the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, but they also have the cabling situation mostly sorted out. AMD has now acquired intellectual property and engineering staff from Austin-based wireless specialist Nitero, in a presumed effort to untangle users of PC VR systems from their mess of cables.Nitero's website doesn't mention specific products, but the company apparently has specialized expertise in multi-gigabit wireless communication over a 60 GHz band. According to AMD, millimeter-wave wireless ...Read more...

Seems like this weekend was ripe for rumors. The folks over at BenchLife have some juicy tidbits about Intel's purported X299 platform, along with a little data on the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X CPUs that will supposedly go with it. According to the site's sources, the new chipset and its accompanying processors have been rescheduled to launch more than a month before their original launch date.

NAND flash write endurance seems to decrease as manufacturing processes get smaller. The time between process shrinks seems to grow with every node, even at big research spenders like Intel. With these two limitations in mind, one way to increase the capacity and performance of NAND flash chips is to stack more layers on each die. This is the approach SK Hynix has taken with its latest 256 Gb (or 32 GB) 72-layer 3D NAND chips. ...Read more...

The Radeon RX 500 series is not yet upon us, but it's clearly close. Over at the Baidu forums, user "liweizhaocc" posted up what appear to be some pictures of PowerColor's upcoming RX 580 Golden Sample graphics card. The original post has been removed, but we can still enjoy the card's photos courtesy of eTeknix.

Wi-Fi is a second-class service in my house, but even I am looking to replace my creaky old 802.11g access point. If like me, you're also looking for a new router (and have a terrible fear of space arachnids), you might have a look at Linksys' latest offering: the Max Stream EA8300. Linksys says this is its first AC2200 tri-band router with MU-MIMO support priced under $200. ...Read more...

IoT is a buzzword that either gets people excited about new levels of convenience or makes them nervous about new types of security problems. Gigabyte's Brix IoT fanless miniature PCs are made specifically for embedded applications. The company says these machines are powered by Intel Apollo Lake SoCs and are ideal for use in kiosks, point-of-sale systems, digital signage, and industrial applications. The entry-level GB-EACE-3450 packs a Celeron N3450 running at a 1.1 GHz base speed and capable of boosting up to 2.2 GHz. The higher-end GB-EAPD-4200 uses a Pentium N4200 that also runs at a 1.1 GHz base clock but can hit a maximum speed of 2.5 GHz. ...Read more...

If you're one of those people who hated black bars when trying to watch widescreen movies on 4:3 televisions back in the day, you're going to hate the new ultra-wide panels that Samsung is reportedly making. The monitor experts at TFTCentral got some info on the goodies.Samsung is apparently prepping up 49" and 44" displays meant to mimic a pair of side-by-side monitors in a single frame. Fine details are still sparse, but we know enough to get a good idea of what ...Read more...

The big hardware news this week was the surprise release of Nvidia's newest new top-of-the-line desktop graphics card, the 2017 Titan Xp. Along with the graphics card itself, Nvidia tersely announced that it'd be making a driver available for the card on macOS. Nvidia's press release doesn't mention any cards other than the Titan Xp by name, but Jeff Benjamin at 9to5 Mac got word from the company indicating that all Pascal cards will be supported. ...Read more...

Fair Friday to you, dear gerbils. Can you feel the tension in the air? Do you sense the impending explosion of frametime graphs, value charts, and endless discussions about the upcoming Ryzen 5 CPUs? Of course you do. You need something to soothe your mind, focus on something else. How about some deals?That's it for today, folks! If you come across any juicy deals that we ...Read more...

If there's one thing that system administrators like, it's convenience. AMD is serving that up for folks running VMware's vCenter with the new Radeon Pro Settings plugin....Read more...

AMD has updated its long-named Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition software to version 17.4.1. Judging from the release notes, the main focus for this release is delivering smoother virtual reality experiences through API magic. The headlining features are support for Oculus' Asynchronous Spacewarp on Radeon R9 290 series, R9 390 series, and R9 Fury series graphics cards, along with support for SteamVR Anynchronous Reprojection on Radeon RX 470 and RX 480 graphics cards under Windows 10. The new release is not as comprehensive as the major feature improvements introduced last December, but then again, driver updates seldom add anywhere near that much new stuff. ...Read more...

The trend for all-in-one PCs seems to be moving to ever-larger integrated display panels. Apple's iMac and Microsoft's Surface Studio, to cite two popular examples, are both available with 27" displays. Asus is throwing its hat in the ring with the 27" Zen AiO, a machine with specs roughly in line with its competitors. The main difference is that the Zen's 1920x1080 screen resolution isn't in the same league as the high-pixel-density offerings from Apple and Microsoft. ...Read more...

PC hardware and computing

The sharp-eyed rumor hawks over at Videocardz have spotted listings at a couple of web shops for purported Radeon RX 580, RX 570, and RX 550 cards from Sapphire, MSI, and Asus. Both 4GB and 8GB memory capacities are represented for the RX 570 and RX 580, while the RX 550 appears to come in 2GB or 4GB varieties.

Apple's compact, cylindrical Mac Pro was a tour de force when it launched in 2013. That tiny system housed as many as 12 Ivy Bridge Xeon cores and a pair of AMD FirePro graphics cards powered by Tahiti or Pitcairn GPUs. Despite those beefy specs and compact dimensions, the Mac Pro ran quietly thanks to an innovative "thermal core" cooling design. ...Read more...

At its Outshine the Competition event in Berlin, Asus revealed a few ROG-themed peripherals and accessories to go with its graphics cards and monitors. Among those accessories are the highly-customizable ROG Pugio mouse, the ROG Areion 10-Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and the ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 wireless router. ...Read more...

The utility of M.2 SSD coolers has been something of an up-and-down phenomenon, but that hasn't stopped drive manufacturers from making SSDs with big hunks of finned aluminum strapped on top. PC component makers both large and small are also making aftermarket cooling gear for use on M.2 devices. Aqua Computers has unveiled a pair of options for system builders obsessed with keeping their storage on proverbial ice. The company's kryoM.2 micro is a pretty standard take on the M.2 cooler idea, while the kryoM.2 EVO leverages a PCIe riser card to allow for the use of a rather large heatsink assembly. ...Read more...

If you've been itching to get on the VR bandwagon but don't fancy the steep price of the HTC's VR headset, there's some good news. On Wednesday, April 5, the Vive kit will be selling for $100 off its regular price, putting it at $699. To wit, the kit includes a VR headset, two touch controllers and their base stations, earbuds, a breakout box, and all the necessary cabling.April 5 is being branded Vive Day, according to the Vive Blog . The temporary $100 cut isn't the only thing happening during ...Read more...

When Nvidia announced the all-conquering GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in March, the company also gave card manufacturers the green light to start cranking out GTX 1060 6GB and GTX 1080 cards with faster memory. Asus was the first company to respond with new models, but Gigabyte is now counter-punching with three new Aorus cards with faster RAM. The company is offering two new GTX 1080 models with 11GT/s memory, along with a single GTX 1060 6GB card with 9 GT/s RAM. ...Read more...

When Nvidia announced the all-conquering GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in March, the company also gave card manufacturers the green light to start cranking out GTX 1060 6GB and GTX 1080 cards with faster memory. Asus was the first company to respond with new models, but Gigabyte is now counter-punching with three new Aorus cards with faster RAM. The company is offering two new GTX 1080 models with 11GT/s memory, along with a single GTX 1060 6GB card with 9 GT/s RAM. ...Read more...

Besides the fancy new graphics cards, Asus also showed off some upcoming high-end monitors at its Outshine the Competition event. Along with the gorgeous ROG Swift PG27UQ that we've seen before, the company unveiled the PG27VQ and XG27VQ monitors. ...Read more...

Asus held a special event for its ROG sub-brand in Berlin over the weekend to celebrate the beginning of the gaming-focused moniker's second decade. The company showed off a handful of new monitors, networking components, and peripherals, but we're going to focus on graphics cards for now. The highlight of the entire event was the unveiling of Asus' ROG Poseidon GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, a different take on a hybrid-cooled graphics card. ...Read more...

In an explosive press release this morning, Imagination Technologies revealed that Apple, a long-time customer of its GPU designs, will no longer be using PowerVR GPU technology in its A-series SoCs. Imagination says that Apple will wind down its usage of PowerVR graphics IP within "15 months to two years time." That move will end Imagination's revenue stream from royalties on Apple SoCs.According to Imagination, the reason for this split is that Apple will be working on its own graphics processor technology for future A-series SoCs. That in-house development "will be reducing [Apple's] future reliance on Imagination's technology," according to the press release. That unusually frank disclosure from an Apple supplier might ...Read more...

AMD's Ryzen 5 processors don't launch until April 11, but a large box has made its way to my doorstep with a whole bunch of goodies inside. We can't talk about how Ryzen 5 CPUs perform yet, but we can show you what we'll be using to test them. ...Read more...

We aren't the only ones getting in on the April Fools' shenanigans early. Nvidia's putting its AI expertise to work for gamers with the new GeForce GTX G-Assist. Plug the USB G-Assist module into a machine with a GeForce GTX graphics card and enjoy the benefits of the included GeForce SoC (Supercomputer on a Chip)....Read more...

Gaming peripheral company Mad Catz is finally closing after filing for bankruptcy. As of yesterday, March 30, the company shut down and is now selling off its assets. Polygon notes that the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy rather than Chapter 11, meaning that it does not intend to restructure and will liquidate its assets. ...Read more...

There's really no argument to be had: the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is the fastest graphics card on the planet under a thousand dollars. Folks who really want to push it to the limit are going to stick it under water—or better yet, liquid nitrogen. For the rest of us who want to push it near the limit, MSI and Corsair have created the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Sea Hawk and its Sea Hawk X variation. ...Read more...

Afternoon's greetings, gerbils. If you're not aware, today is an early-April-Fools day, but that doesn't mean we're going to skip doing our weekly deals. That's right, even though we'd much rather be staring at pictures of gorgeous furry cases, we still did our duty and hunted down the best online promotions. These prices ain't no joke.That's it for today, folks! If you come across any juicy deals that we ...Read more...

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti may be the fastest gaming graphics card on the market, but that's not good enough for the folks at EKWB. The company has unveiled plans for waterblocks meant to attach to cards based on Nvidia's reference design, and unique models for at least four custom cards from Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. ...Read more...

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti may be the fastest gaming graphics card on the market, but that's not good enough for the folks at EKWB. The company has unveiled plans for waterblocks meant to attach to cards based on Nvidia's reference design, and unique models for at least four custom cards from Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. ...Read more...

Memory standards tend to stick around for a long time. The DDR3 RAM still supported by the memory controllers inside Intel's Kaby Lake CPUs first hit the scene all the way back in 2007, though the speeds have increased and the operating voltage and power consumption went down in the intervening years. A brisk three years after DDR4 hit the market, JEDEC has announced that it's working on a specification for DDR5 memory, and expects to publish the design standards sometime in 2018.The organization says that DDR5 memory will offer double the bandwidth and density of DDR4 along with increased power efficiency. Given the trend of increasing ...Read more...

Are you a PC gamer who likes Halo and Borderlands? Do you wish Borderlands was less wacky nonsense and more hard sci-fi? Then you're probably sad to have missed out on Destiny when it launched everywhere except on PC. Bungie and Activision have good news for us, though: Destiny 2 is coming to PC. Check out the story trailer below....Read more...