Techreport

Oracle has launched its second-generation cloud infrastructure at the company's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Oracle CEO proclaimed that Amazon Web Service's (AWS) lead in the cloud infrastructure business "is over." According to Gartner, Amazon AWS is the market leader with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Services, and IBM taking up the remaining share.Oracle will offer cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in three different formats : Oracle Bare Metal, Ravello, and Container Cloud Service varieties. Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Services will provide access to ...Read more...

The ever-dropping TDPs of CPUs and GPUs of all types have led to a veritable explosion of pint-sized computers packing serious hardware. These days it's easy to spec out a Mini-ITX machine containing all sorts of "desktop-class" hardware. Syber Gaming is making the most of recent CPU and graphics card releases and has refreshed its C Series lineup of console-like gaming PCs. ...Read more...

Got some salt handy? Good. Videocardz.com is reporting that it's obtained information leaked from an internal GPU roadmap at AMD describing the Vega 10 and Vega 11 GPUs we have heard about before, as well as a new Vega 20 processor. The site says Vega 10 will be released in the first quarter of 2017, crushing the October date that's been rumored before. ...Read more...

As far back as a December 2015, GoPro posting teaser videos for the Karma drone. And what a tease it was. After nine full months, GoPro officially announced the Karma Drone alongside a new line of Hero5 cameras....Read more...

AMD announced the consolidation of its current trio of desktop APU/CPU sockets into a unified AM4 socket all the way back in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. At the time, AMD disclosed that future "Summit Ridge" and "Bristol Ridge" chips would arrive to fill this socket, but did not offer any additional information.In the intervening months, AMD has clarified that Summit Ridge represents the upcoming 14-nm Zen architecture-based processors ...Read more...

Korean electronics giant Samsung plans to resume sales of its maligned Galaxy Note 7 phablet in its home country beginning on September 28, but American consumers must prepare to wait the better part of a month to get their presumably large hands on an updated hardware revision of the phone. American sales of the handset are not expected to begin again until October 21, according to leaked Samsung planning documents acquired by VentureBeat.The embargo on Note 7 sales affects prospective buyers as well as those who already spent the $860 Samsung commands for its large format flagship smartphone. Samsung recalled all 2.5 million Note 7 phones shipped worldwide due to lithium ion batteries that could overheat and catch on fire ...Read more...

If you follow PC gaming at all, you probably heard that Gears of War Ultimate Edition launched on PC behaving much the same as the Xbox One version. That means it lacked even the most basic adjustments that PC gamers expect like v-sync control. PC Gamer's Tom Marks sat down with Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition last week, and he reports that the upcoming title avoids the console-port pitfalls of its predecessor. ...Read more...

PNY may not have the gamer cred of its rivals, but it's been selling custom-cooled GeForces under its XLR8 brand for many years now. The company just announced the GeForce GTX 1080 XLR8, and it looks pretty fancy. The card sports an edgy black-and-red fan shroud interrupted by three 80mm spinners. The XLR8 also only requires a single 8-pin power connector, unlike most custom-cooled GTX 1080s. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Saitek is a well-regarded brand of gaming peripherals, a fact likely known by the crowd that hangs around here. Roughly nine years ago, Madcatz figured it wanted Saitek's quality items and ponied up $30 million for the company. Now, after a few difficult quarters with operating losses, Madcatz figured it was time to let Saitek go live under Logitech's wing for $13 million in cash. ...Read more...

Dell has refreshed its competitor to Apple's Macbook (Air), the XPS 13 notebook. The updated model utilizes Intel's latest Kaby Lake silicon in place of Skylake chips. The existing XPS 13 can be optioned with Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. Core i3-7100U, i5-7200U, and i7-7500U Kaby Lake chips will be available when the updated XPS 13 begins shipping in the first week of October. All available CPUs in the existing and new models are dual-core, four-thread parts. ...Read more...

Happy Friday, gerbils. Good deals were especially hard to come by today, but we think we've scrounged up a few decent ones. Here's what we deemed worthy.That's it for this week's deals. On the off chance we missed a good ...Read more...

Japanese VR startup Fove Inc is showing off its newly-named Fove 0 head-mounted display at the Tokyo Game Show right now. Along with the headset's name, Fove also revealed that pre-orders for the new headset will begin November 2 at its website. The company hasn't talked pricing yet, nor has it confirmed when the new headsets will be shipping. ...Read more...

Two weeks after it first came to light that the batteries in some Samsung Galaxy Note 7s could short out and cause a fire, the company has officially partnered with the United States' Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue a recall through that agency. The CPSC estimates that about a million Note 7s are affected by its recall. The move comes after 92 incidents with the devices' batteries were reported to the agency, comprising at least 26 incidents where owners were burned and 55 incidents where property was damaged.USA Note 7 owners now have a somewhat clearer set of instructions for exchanging their potentially dangerous devices. Samsung USA has set up a portal with an IMEI database ...Read more...

Cord cutters with a desire to own and operate their own digital video recorder (DVR) and a phobia for the x86-based systems the enthusiast community typically employs for this purpose have a unique option thanks to the combined efforts of HDHomeRun network TV tuner manufacturer SiliconDust, Nvidia, and personal media streaming software company Plex. The latest beta release of Plex Media Server for the Nvidia Shield set top box now supports Plex's recently-added DVR functionality. ...Read more...

Let it never be said that InFocus sub-brand Kangaroo makes uninteresting products. We reported before on the original Kangaroo, a Windows 10 mini-PC that used an iPad for a display. Now the company is showing off the Kangaroo Notebook, which at first glance appears to be a pretty standard 11.6-inch Windows 10 notebook. Spoiler alert: it isn't. ...Read more...

In mid-June, Microsoft published some results of its in-house battery life testing from streaming a video to Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera's eponymous web browser. In these tests, Microsoft's Internet Explorer replacement lasted nearly 7.5 hours—70% longer than playing the same video in Chrome. Microsoft didn't publish its testing methods, though.Opera secured second place in Microsoft's testing, but the company made a point to challenge the opacity of Microsoft's methods , and it even went so far as to craft a battery-life testing video of its ...Read more...

NEC is a well-known purveyor of quality displays for business, digital imaging and medical professionals. The company has a new member in its Multisync lineup, the EA245WMi, a 24" model with super-thin bezels targeted at professionals requiring dual and triple-monitor setups. ...Read more...

GlobalFoundries recently announced it would be adding a 12-nm node to its FD-SOI roadmap, and it's now announcing a more mainstream node for high-performance silicon: 7-nm FinFET. That move follows reports that the company would make exactly this move last month. Surprisingly, GloFo says it'll achieve this shrink using optical lithography alongside "EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) compatibility at key levels." The move to 7-nm transistors is claimed to offer 30% higher performance and two times more logic density compared to GlobalFoundries' 14-nm FinFET process.The company also expects to re-use much of its existing 14-nm infrastructure to produce 7-nm parts at its Fab 8 campus in New York. Even with that re-use, GlobalFoundries will still ...Read more...

According to rumors and reports, the Oculus Touch hand controllers are hopefully appearing in the next few months, enabling room-scale experiences with the Rift headset. When you're gaming in room-VR, though, one of the concerns is simply not smashing your head into things. Nate Mitchell from Oculus let the Twittersphere know that the company is adding Guardian, a boundary-checking system, to the Rift SDK in the upcoming version 1.8.Guardian is meant to alert the player in case he's wandering a little too close to walls or objects. RoadtoVR recently took Guardian out for a spin and came away impressed with a demo ...Read more...

The saga of Eurocom's absurdly powerful pseudo-laptops continues. The curiously-named Sky X7E2 Mobile Supercomputer—curious because there was no Sky X7E—is a 17.3-inch desktop replacement packed tight with desktop CPUs and desktop graphics. ...Read more...

In our component testing, we put a lot of emphasis not only on how fast a given graphics card can run, for example, but also how quiet it is in the process. We like CPU coolers that balance high performance with low noise and cases that keep parts cool without contributing lots of decibels to a system's sound pressure levels. Furthermore, we're sticklers about the quality of the noise those parts produce—coolers and fans that make a broad-spectrum sound win higher marks from us than those that make whiny or growly noises.While we're quite particular about these characteristics of PC components, we're curious how many of the system builders and PC gamers that read TR feel the same way. At least one of our writers, who shall remain nameless, thinks the rest of us are crazy for caring so much about system noise and feels ...Read more...

This year marks MSI's thirtieth anniversary providing PC builders with fine computer components, and the company is celebrating the date by announcing a collaboration with EK Water Blocks. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 30th Anniversary combines an MSI-designed board with one of Nvidia's GP104 GPUs and a full-coverage waterblock designed by EK. The new card's cooler is a closed-loop design, and the whole thing comes fully assembled in what EK calls a "maintenance-free" setup. ...Read more...

Whether you bleed GeForce green or Radeon red, we can all agree that the potential performance gains to be found using the lower-level DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs are significant. Crytek, creator and curator of the ever-popular CryEngine, is doing its part to further adoption of the new APIs. The folks at OC3D noticed that Crytek has updated its online roadmap for the engine. That document shows DX12 multi-GPU and Vulkan support as "on target" for upcoming releases.Chinese-exclusive martial arts MOBA King of Wushu was the first DirectX 12-enabled CryEngine title when it debuted earlier this year, but CryEngine still doesn't support multi-GPU systems in DX12 mode. That ...Read more...

Apple is still carrying the torch for wearable technology, but the current generation of Microsoft's Band fitness devices might be the last. According to a report from ZDNet, consumers shouldn't expect a new Band device from Microsoft this year, and it appears that a Band 3 isn't in the company's long-term plans either.The original Band device caught our attention because it offered a better feature set than the average fitness wearable. After two generations of the device, though, Microsoft might be refocusing ...Read more...

Mini-ITX PCs seem to be growing in popularity of late, but there aren't many of those tiny motherboards to choose from with Z170 chipsets. Biostar is throwing another option into the ring with its Z170GTN. This board, part of the company's premium "Racing" series, offers just about everything a Mini-ITX builder might want. It's got an M.2 2280 slot on its back side with four PCIe 3.0 lanes hooked up, an M.2 2230 connector for Wi-Fi cards, and the now-requisite RGB LED lighting on its chipset and VRM heatsinks. ...Read more...

The RGB craze that's gripped the custom PC industry of late is unrelenting. NZXT is continuing the onslaught of bright colors with its new Aer RGB fans. These PWM fans come in 120-mm and 140-mm sizes, both of which include fluid-dynamic bearings. Of course, the headline feature is the fans' ability to synchronize their software-configurable RGB lighting using NZXT's own Hue+ controller. Each Aer RGB fan includes eight LEDs arrayed around its housing for maximum Technicolor enjoyment. ...Read more...

If you've recently spent any time online, you've almost certainly heard about all the fireworks surrounding Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 handsets and the company's related product recall. At least for its South Korean customers, Samsung has stoked its forge and crafted a software fix to limit the battery capacity of existing Note 7s to 60%. That move might reduce the likelihood of the phones spontaneously combusting, but it seems more likely to annoy stubborn users into exchanging their devices for new phones without the fire risk.According to the Associated Press, the fix was advertised in a South Korean newspaper and will be rolled out on September 20. There's currently no word ...Read more...

At the GPU Technology Conference in Beijing, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the next two cards in the Tesla family of high-performance compute accelerators. The Tesla P4 is built on top of the same GP104 silicon as the GeForce GTX 1080, while the Tesla P40 uses the GP102 silicon used in the newer Titan X. ...Read more...

ReCore, a combined effort from Armature Studio and Comcept, is the first title in Microsoft's new Xbox Play Anywhere initiative. While that program, which allows gamers to buy a title once and play it on both the Xbox One and the PC, is a welcome development, ReCore itself is apparently a bit of a misstep. Going by the opinions of several reviewers, it seems the game simply isn't that good. We haven't played the game ourselves, but we've read the reviews and picked out some of the juiciest tidbits for you.

On Monday, HP Inc. made two major announcements for its commercial printing business. HP Inc., which comprises the former personal systems and printing businesses of Hewlett Packard, revealed that it would not only acquire Samsung's printer business for $1.05 billion, but also that it is releasing a new line of A3 (yes, the paper size) multi-function printers (or MFPs) that are meant to go head-to-head with purportedly less-versatile and more complicated A3 copiers from other manufacturers.Through the $1.05 billion deal with Samsung, HP will take on Samsung's portfolio of printers, its 6,500 printing patents, and a workforce of 1,300 researchers and engineers. With these assets, HP hopes to "disrupt and reinvent the $55 billion copier industry." HP thinks that customers have grown frustrated with the ...Read more...

Quad- and hexacopter drones have exploded in popularity over the last couple of years in applications ranging from toys to Hollywood productions. Japanese company Prodrone is all business, though. Going by its website, the company has built custom drones that can land on water, launch nets at other drones, and inspect infrastructure like bridges, among other tasks.Prodrone has taken all that expertise and produced a rather frightening-looking new drone platform called the PD6B-AW-ARM . This hexacopter does away with the gimbal mount typical of ...Read more...

Have you ever taken a look at common MOBA and MMO-oriented mice and thought "that cluster of buttons looks like an unmanageable mess?" Well, Steelseries was probably thinking along the same lines of late. The company has tackled that problem with its Rival 500 mouse, which joins ranks with the Rival 700 and Rival 100. ...Read more...

Back in July, we reported that Nvidia had reached a preliminary settlement with a group of gamers who were incensed enough by the GeForce GTX 970's unusual memory configuration to sue the company. It now appears the settlement in that class-action proceeding has gone forward. Folks in the United States who purchased one of the cards between September 1, 2014 and August 24, 2016 can now file a claim form for a $30 reimbursement using a dedicated website. The claims administrator says forms must be submitted or postmarked by November 30, 2016.The plaintiffs in the suit alleged that the card "was sold to consumers (directly or indirectly through retailers) based on inaccurate or misleading information regarding the GTX 970’s specifications, performance and capabilities." ...Read more...

The Tokyo Games Show starts in less than 36 hours, and we're already hearing about some of the products that will be there. MSI sent us the most interesting thing so far. The company will be showing its VR One thin-and-light VR backpack at TGS. This mobile PC uses Pascal graphics and hot-swappable batteries to offer an untethered VR experience. ...Read more...

European retailer Media Markt has quasi-officially let the cat out of the bag. The Oculus Touch hand controllers might appear in stores on November 21, carrying a price tag of 199€. It's not far-fetched to imagine the US will see these controllers sooner—perhaps for $199—as so often happens with consumer hardware. ...Read more...

There's bound to be slack time after every product recall announcement where some affected owners haven't heard about the issue, and Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 7 recall apparently hasn't caught everybody's attention just yet. One Galaxy Note 7 owner has blamed the phone for burning his Jeep to the ground after he left the device charging in its center console.

Happy Friday, gerbils. It seems like many retailers saved their best bargains for the Labor Day weekend that just passed, but we've still turned up a few good deals this week. Here's what we think is the best of what's around.There's a chance you're looking for a deal on something we didn't feature here. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership ...Read more...

Expert Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft may launch a Surface-branded all-in-one device in October of this year, according to her sources. She suggests this Windows 10 computer has an internal codename of "Cardinal," and that it may be a consumer version of the massive (and massively popular) Surface Hub. Her sources tell her that "Cardinal" may be available with up to three screen sizes, ranging from 21 inches to 27 inches, and that it may be positioned as a product that can "turn your desk into a studio."To support the idea, Ms. Foley points out a patent for a modular all-in-one PC that Microsoft published early this year. The new PC will purportedly launch alongside a bevy of partners' devices at a Microsoft event in the last week of October. Ms. Foley posits a ...Read more...

One question that it seems like every iPhone fan is asking in the wake of the iPhone 7 announcement is how they'll charge their next iDevice while listening to music at the same time. That's because Apple killed the 3.5-mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7, and wired audio now has to pass through a Lightning-connector-equipped pair of headphones or through a Lightning-to-3.5-mm dongle. There's obviously just one Lightning port on the iPhone 7, however, so the charging-and-listening-at-once problem is real. ...Read more...

All of the most successful gaming keyboards in the last few years have relied on mechanical keyswitches, usually from German manufacturer Cherry. Cherry switches have a lot of great qualities, but some folks do still prefer the softer feel of a rubber dome keyboard. Razer aims to cater to people on the fence with its new Ornata keyboard, which features what the company calls "mecha-membrane" switches. ...Read more...

Owners of the latest game in cyberpunk action series Deus Ex will no doubt already be aware that Steam has either queued up or downloaded the latest update. This update, v1.4 build 545.4_P5, mostly fixes "critical user-reported issues". Among the major issues fixed are a freeze during the subway loading scene, "massive stalls" in Prague, and a problem with saving for users who have run out of Steam Cloud space.Owners of Mankind Divided may not have noticed that this update also brings the first preview of the DX12 version of the game. To try out the DX12 preview, load up Steam, right-click the game in your library, select "Properties," and click over to the Betas tab. ...Read more...

Greetings, fellow AMD-loving gerbils. Those of you who have been busy murdering, sneaking, or hacking your way through future Prague in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be happy to hear that AMD's readied up new Radeon drivers with support for the game's upcoming DirectX 12 version (which, ahem, should have been out already.)Version 16.9.1 of AMD's Radeon Software also brings support for CrossFire in the DirectX 11 mode of DotA 2 . As usual, there's also a bevy of bug fixes. Flickering issues with 144Hz non-FreeSync ...Read more...

If you think of GlobalFoundries these days, you probably think about the company's 14-nm FinFET process and the AMD Polaris graphics cards fabricated on it. 14-nm FinFET is just one of several processes that GlobalFoundries offers, though. As just one example, the company also makes 22-nm planar transistors on a fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator technology—FD-SOI, or 22FDX in GloFo parlance.The company claims 22FDX is well-suited for devices that need to balance high performance and low power consumption with low cost, especially products that need to combine radio-frequency, analog, ...Read more...

As TR readers are no doubt already aware, the newest iPhones do not have 3.5mm headphone jacks. Regular old analog headphones can still be connected to Apple's latest phones through the use of an included adapter, but wireless headphones might be a more elegant solution. Apple certainly thinks so, and alongside its new flagship phones, the company introduced a pair of wireless earbuds that it calls AirPods. ...Read more...

Apple isn't just doubling the storage of its base-model iPhone 7 to 32GB today, as it's long been pressured to do. The company is bringing the double-density love to the iPhone 6S family and many of its iPads, as well. The eagle-eyed Apple watchers at Macrumors spotted the change, and it means that the $399 iPad Air 2, the $399 iPad mini 4, and the $269 iPad mini 2 now come with 32GB of storage on board. The step-up storage option for the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4 is now a $499 128GB tier. ...Read more...

The nascent smartwatch market still has yet to really take off, but that's not stopping Apple from spearheading the movement. The company has unveiled the Apple Watch Series 2, the successor to last year's Apple Watch (now called the Series 1). ...Read more...

The next version of Nvidia's GeForce Experience utility is coming out of beta today. Version 3.0 of the app, which we examined during its beta-testing phase, offers a revamped user interface, faster start-up times, and a freshened-up sharing interface compared to its predecessor. As we discovered during its beta phase, however, this version of GeForce Experience is also the first to require a user account to work, so get your Nvidia, Facebook, or Google account credentials ready if you want to take advantage of this update. ...Read more...

As Intel and AMD move more and more chipset features onto their processors, motherboard vendors have faced growing challenges to separate themselves from the pack. MSI is looking to stand out by offering what it claims is "the fastest USB 3.1 solution on the market." Its upcoming Z170A Gaming M6 will integrate the ASMedia 2142 USB 3.1 controller, a new chip that MSI and ASMedia apparently worked together to create. That controller can talk over two lanes of PCIe 3.0 instead of the single lane of PCIe 3.0 or two lanes of PCIe 2.0 that powered the older ASMedia 1142 chip used on many boards until now. ...Read more...

Apple is holding another one of its special events today, and we'll be live-blogging the live stream when the festivities begin at 10AM PT/noon CT. The rumor mill predicts that we'll see new iPhones at the very least, but new Macs, a revised Apple Watch, or further surprises might be possible. Whatever Tim Cook and company pull out of their bead-blasted-aluminium hats, we'll be watching. ...Read more...