Techreport

The long-standing free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends next week. To encourage the remaining holdouts to jump ship to the new operating system, Microsoft is offering an interesting promotion. If the company isn't able to provide a same-day Windows 10 upgrade to your device at one of its Microsoft Stores, it will give you a free Dell Inspiron 15 laptop.There are some limits to this offer, of course. Devices brought to the store must actually be eligible for a Windows 10 upgrade, and they need to be brought to the store before noon. If the store in question doesn't finish ...Read more...

Opera Software, best known for its desktop and mobile browser, may soon become Chinese instead of Norwegian. The company is inking a $600 million deal with the Chinese Kunqi consortium (which includes Qihoo 360 and Kunlun) for the acquisition of a number of Opera's divisions.Kunqi is offering the money in exchange for Opera's mobile and desktop browser software, its "performance and privacy apps" division, technology licensing business, and the company's stake in nHorizon. Both companies expect to ink the deal in "late third ...Read more...

Opera Software, best known for its desktop and mobile browser, may soon become Chinese instead of Norwegian. The company is inking a $600 million deal with the Chinese Kunqi consortium (which includes Qihoo 360 and Kunlun) for the acquisition of a number of Opera's divisions.Kunqi is offering the money in exchange for Opera's mobile and desktop browser software, its "performance and privacy apps" division, technology licensing business, and the company's stake in nHorizon. Both companies expect to ink the deal in "late third ...Read more...

Our inner Star Wars fanboys pined for a chance to give the Trials on Tatooine VR demo a shot when news of the experience broke a couple months ago, but its creators suggested that the demo would never see a commercial release. Some time between then and now, somebody at ILMxLAB changed their mind and decided to make the demo a free download on Steam for Vive owners, available today. My inner five-year-old is eternally grateful....Read more...

XFX is one of a few graphics card vendors that exclusively deals in AMD's Radeon GPUs. It comes as no surprise that XFX appears to have its own custom RX 480 in the late stages of production. Courtesy of Korean hardware site Quasar-Zone, we have some pictures of the "Double Dissipation" board XFX could be releasing soon. ...Read more...

Details of Apple's next-generation iPhones have leaked with greater and greater accuracy as time has worn on, and this year's model is no exception. Those leaks have tended to be especially reliable as they converge on a single design, and it appears we may have now reached that point. One MacRumors post from last week details a video that could show off the rear of the next iPhone, and French site NWE nabbed a video from Chinese social network Weibo that also purports to show a mock-up of the next iPhone's exterior. Both videos show practically identical handsets.NWE via MacRumors ...Read more...

Japanese telecoms provider SoftBank has agreed to purchase chip design and IP firm ARM Holdings for £24 billion ($31.8 billion) in cash, or £17 ($22.52) per share. That value represents a 43% premium on ARM's last closing share price. The deal will be subject to approval by ARM's shareholders and UK regulators. ARM's board of directors has "unanimously confirmed" that it will advise shareholders to approve the buyout.SoftBank says "ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the 'Internet of Things.'" SoftBank intends to "at least double" the number of employees ...Read more...

Wow, it's been a while since we've done one of these. Unless you've had your head in the sand for the past couple weeks, you probably know someone who's playing Niantic Labs' Pokémon Go—presuming you aren't tromping around your neighborhood to catch 'em all yourself. On the off chance you have had your head in the sand for weeks, Pokémon Go is a mobile app for iOS and Android devices that lets you hunt Nintendo's cash cows cuddly companions in the real world. It's probably the breakout app for augmented reality so far.I must admit that I haven't tried the latest craze in pocket-monster training yet. Outside of some brief flirtations with Pok ...Read more...

Nvidia released a big driver update for several new VR applications earlier this week, but some small fixes got lost in the carnival festivities. A week or so, it came to light that the DisplayPorts on Pascal cards weren't playing nice with the breakout box for HTC's Vive VR headset. The SteamVR application, which manages the Vive experience on the PC side, couldn't see the Vive headset through the DisplayPort for whatever reason, leading to an application error and a non-functional headset....Read more...

Despite our ongoing efforts to the contrary, time continues to pass. Because of that inevitability, we find ourselves in the thick of another Friday. There is a silver lining, though: another Deals-of-the-Week post. We've scoured the web extra hard today to find you the best deals on computer hardware available. Take a look at what we found.There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. 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 with Newegg , but ...Read more...

The continual refrain ever since the Radeon RX 480's launch has been that the Polaris 10 GPU is solid, but prospective purchasers should wait for non-reference boards. As it turns out, the wait is almost over. Asus announced today that it will be releasing the ROG Strix Radeon RX 480 in "the middle of August." The card will come equipped with a DirectCU III cooler and a custom board design. ...Read more...

3DMark Time Spy, the built-from-the-ground-up DirectX 12 graphics benchmark we talked about late last month, is now available from Futuremark. The benchmark was stealthily released via Steam late last night to owners of 3DMark on that platform. It's also been added to the stand-alone installer that you can pick up here....Read more...

Motorola seems to be releasing phones to fit every use case of late. The company's latest revelation is palatable to all wallets. The company revealed a refresh of its super-affordable Moto E handset, now called the Moto E3, yesterday. ...Read more...

Twitch.tv, the world's most popular video-game livestreaming portal, has finally taken the first steps toward ending its much-maligned reliance on its awkward Adobe Flash-based player. The company is launching a closed beta for a new HTML5 player that promises better efficiency and improved support for high-frame-rate broadcasts. A limited number of users will be able to opt-in to the HTML5 player beta, but Twitch says more users will be invited to try it out throughout the summer. ...Read more...

The iPad Pro may not be the gaming PC of the future just yet, but Razer isn't waiting for the platform to churn out desktop gaming performance to get in on the fun. The company is showing off a keyboard case for Apple's top-end slate that features what are claimed to be the world's first mechanical key switches for a mobile device. ...Read more...

Nvidia's latest Game Ready drivers are out this morning, and version 368.81 is all about VR. This update is optimized for Raw Data, Obduction, Everest VR, and The Assembly. The fun doesn't end there, though. Nvidia is also releasing its VR Funhouse demo today to show off what's possible with its VRWorks APIs....Read more...

Taiwanese monitor manufacturer AOC is eagerly striding into the enthusiast market. The company announced the C3583FQ 35" ultrawide display yesterday, and back at the end of April we saw the first release in the company's Agon gaming brand. Today, the company is announcing two more models under that marque: the AG241QG and AG241QX. The AG241QX supports FreeSync and a 144Hz refresh rate, while AG241QG is equipped with G-Sync and a slightly higher 165 Hz refresh. ...Read more...

Following the epidemic success of Pokémon Go, Nintendo is delivering another concentrated shot of nostalgia with a reissue of its Nintendo Entertainment System console. The NES Classic Edition is basically a shrunken-down version of the iconic system. Don't blow the dust out of your NES cartridges, though—this compact console comes pre-loaded with 30 games from the system's back catalog. Polygon has the full list, but Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong, the Super Mario Bros. series, The Legend of Zelda, and Kirby's Adventure are some of the highlights.The NES is coming back to stores! Pick up the new mini ...Read more...

If you've just picked up a brand-new Radeon RX 480, you may want to take a look at AOC's new monitor, too. The C3583FQ is a gently-curved 2560x1080 LED-backlit monitor with a 35" diagonal. It features a vertical-alignment (VA) panel with a 4ms response time, and it supports 144 Hz operation at its native resolution. FreeSync is supported too, but there's no word on the sync range, so we've asked AOC for clarification on that point. ...Read more...

Doom's Vulkan rendering path became available to the public this week, and its arrival appears to be a boon for Radeon owners. German site Computer Base ran some new benchmarks with Vulkan turned on for Doom, and the results are rather surprising. At 1920x1080 with graphics settings maxed out, the top-end Radeon R9 Fury X churned out 160.4 frames per second with Vulkan, a 66% increase over its 96.7 FPS showing with OpenGL. The Radeon RX 480 gets a 46% boost or so with Vulkan on, too. It runs the game at 122.6 FPS with the low-overhead API, compared to 83.8 FPS delivered with OpenGL. ...Read more...

The Civilization family of games is without a doubt one of the most popular and long-running franchises out there for the PC. Developer Firaxis has big plans for the next title in the series, Civilization VI. Owners of Radeon graphics cards will be pleased to learn that AMD and Firaxis have joined forces to implement a DirectX 12 rendering path for the game, including explicit multi-adapter and asynchronous compute support....Read more...

Enermax just announced the ETS-T50 AXE, a new heatpipe-based tower cooler with a 120mm fan attached. The company says this tower is suitable for CPUs with up to 250W TDPs. Yes, that's right—an air cooler which can handle an AMD FX-9590. 250W is a lot of dissipation for a single-fan, single-radiator cooler, and Enermax says it has achieved that number through advanced technology. It claims seven patents went into this "blizzard master." If you're curious about what Vortex Generator Flow, Pressure Differential Flow, and Dust Free Rotation mean, you can watch Enermax's video below....Read more...

Enermax just announced the ETS-T50 AXE, a new heatpipe-based tower cooler with a 120mm fan attached. The company says this tower is suitable for CPUs with up to 250W TDPs. Yes, that's right—an air cooler which can handle an AMD FX-9590. 250W is a lot of dissipation for a single-fan, single-radiator cooler, and Enermax says it has achieved that number through advanced technology. It claims seven patents went into this "blizzard master." If you're curious about what Vortex Generator Flow, Pressure Differential Flow, and Dust Free Rotation mean, you can watch Enermax's video below....Read more...

Hello, good folks! We're interrupting your scheduled programming to let you know about some early deals of the week. No need to check your clocks, it really isn't Friday yet. Newegg and Adorama are running some fine sales on all sorts of computing hardware, almost surely in response to Amazon's Prime Day. Most of these offers are limited, so let's get down to business.That's all for today, folks. Many of these deals are likely to ...Read more...

Cooler Master's MasterCase 5 is a favorite of ours for higher-end systems, but its $105-and-up price tag is rather spendy for budget builds. Cooler Master is making some of the MasterCase's modularity more accessible for basic builds with its MasterBox series of cases. These enclosures feature a mostly wide-open interior design that won't get in the way of large components. ...Read more...

Razer is making its dizzying range of gaming mice more accessible today. The Abyssus V2 offers a 5000-DPI optical sensor, three-color backlighting (in dark blue, light blue, and Razer's trademark green), rubberized side grips, and four programmable buttons for a fairly wallet-friendly $50. ...Read more...

Seagate reported some preliminary financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter today. The company took in $2.65 billion in revenue on 37 million hard drives sold during the quarter, with a gross margin of 25%. Seagate further expects growth in demand for storage to exceed the areal density growth of its products "for the foreseeable future," meaning it expects to continue selling lots of hard drives. Despite that outlook, however, Seagate is also announcing a new restructuring plan today that will result in an estimated 6,500 layoffs by the end of its fiscal 2017. That number represents 14% of the company's employees, according to its own data.Seagate says it's making this move to consolidate its global operations, which span Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. The company says it'll record pre-tax charges of about $164 million as part of the ...Read more...

After our head-nerd-in-charge Jeff was delighted with the Chromebook Flip, we've been keeping an eye out for new machines running Google's lightweight OS. B&H Photo Video has a pre-order listing up for an Asus Chromebook C301SA, and it looks like a pretty good value from here. While Jeff's Chromebook Flip is a tiny 10" device with a 32-bit ARM processor, this is a 13.3" machine with a 1080p display and an Intel Celeron N3160 inside. ...Read more...

After a bumpy beginning to its VR revolution, Oculus appears to be sailing on smoother seas. The company says it's finished fulfilling Rift pre-orders, and it now expects new Rift orders from the Oculus store to ship within two to four business days. This milestone comes a little over a month after competitor HTC announced it could get a Vive order out the door in two to three business days. ...Read more...

To say that Nvidia expects to throw some shade on the RX 480 launch with the GeForce GTX 1060 might be quite the understatement. The battle for the $200-$250 price point is as hot as it's ever been, and Zotac has now decided to join in with its custom takes on the GTX 1060. Meet the company's GeForce GTX 1060 Mini and GTX 1060 Amp cards.

It seems MSI saved its best for last. After bringing out the Gaming- and Gaming X-series cards for the green team's finest, MSI is announcing the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Gaming Z series. These cards come with the highest clock speeds in MSI's graphics card arsenal. The GTX 1080 Gaming Z has a 1911-MHz boost speed—nearly 200 MHz over the reference card's 1733-MHz figure. The GTX 1070 sees a similar bump, to 1860 MHz from the reference 1683 MHz. Just don't forget to enable "OC mode" if you want to see those numbers. ...Read more...

Everybody wants those MacBook looks, but nobody wants to pay those MacBook prices. Asus knows this, and that's why the Zenbook Flip UX360CA looks like a real fancy device. Despite the looks, it's a pretty basic Windows 10 convertible with a Skylake Core M processor and 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR3-1866 memory. As you might expect from those specs, the new Zenbook is passively cooled, which means it's also completely silent. ...Read more...

Corsair is bringing out a new series of case fans using magnetic-levitation bearings. The fancy bearings claim to reduce friction between the blades and the rotor hub to almost nothing, which could eliminate bearing noise and drastically prolong the life of the fan compared to typical sleeve or ball bearings. The ML series fans include 120-mm and 140-mm models, which come in basic or Pro varieties. While the fan motors and blades are unchanged, the ML Pro fans include rubber corners to dampen vibration. They're also available with red, white, or blue LED lighting. ...Read more...

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoC powers pretty much every recent high-end phone that's not branded with an Apple logo. Qualcomm wants to hang onto that dominance with a minor mid-cycle update called the Snapdragon 821. This SoC promises a clock speed increase of 10% over its predecessor, a boost that the company says is good for clock speeds up to 2.4GHz. Qualcomm also promises lower power consumption from the new chip.We haven't had the opportunity to perform a Snapdragon 820 deep-dive, but Anandtech has . The Snapdragon 820 is made up of four Qualcomm Kryo custom CPU cores . One pair of those cores runs at 2.2GHz, while the other, more power-sipping set runs at 1.6GHz. The chip also includes an Adreno 530 GPU , ...Read more...

Doom's Vulkan implementation made waves at the GeForce GTX 1080 launch. Developer id Software showed the Vulkan version of the game running with its settings cranked at well over 100 FPS, and now us common folk can try it out ourselves. A Doom update with the new rendering path is rolling out this morning. id Software says users with minimum-spec hardware will get "better performance at higher video settings," while folks with heavier-duty systems "will experience exceptional performance with Doom's advanced video settings cranked up to full effect." Players will be prompted to choose OpenGL or Vulkan mode upon starting the game with the new update installed.The release does come with a few caveats. Users will want to update their video card drivers to the latest versions available from Nvidia and AMD . Windows 7 users who have Nvidia graphics cards with 2GB of RAM on board can't enable the new API. GeForce GTX 690 owners won't be ...Read more...

We talk a lot here at The Tech Report about monitors with extremely high resolutions, super-fast response times, and fancy features like Adaptive Sync and Lightboost. As a result, monitors like BenQ's new PD2700Q don't always get the attention they deserve. This latest 27" display from BenQ is aimed squarely at graphic designers and other visual artists, with an emphasis on accurate color reproduction—specifically, reproduction of the sRGB and Rec.709 color spaces. ...Read more...

Samsung is making another big splash in the storage market this morning. The company is doubling the top-end capacity of its popular 850 EVO SSD to a whopping 4TB using its 48-layer V-NAND flash memory. The sequential speeds of this enormous drive are similar to the rest of the 850 EVO lineup: it's claimed to deliver 540 MB/s read speeds and 520 MB/s write throughput. The drive can perform 98K random read and 90K random write IOPS at QD32, while QD1 IOPS fall to 10K reads and 40K writes.

The PC market has long been suffering from a move away from traditional desktops and laptops. According to DigiTimes, major motherboard makers are now feeling the pinch of that segmentation. The site says that many of those manufacturers are projecting sequential drops in shipments as deep as 20% to 30% for the second quarter of 2016. DigiTimes attributes these anticipated market trends to a long-running slump in demand, exchange rate fluctuations, political uncertainty, and what it describes as a delay in the arrival of Intel's Kaby Lake CPUs and their associated platforms.For 2016 as a whole, DigiTimes' sources say that Gigabyte and Asus will experience a 5% year-on-year drop compared to last year's totals. DigiTimes says those companies expect to ship 17 million motherboards each in 2016. The site ...Read more...

Rise of the Tomb Raider PC developer Nixxes is launching the seventh update for the game today on Steam and the Windows Store. This update brings multi-GPU support to the game's DirectX 12 renderer, which should make that small-but-very-vocal group of users happy. The Windows Store version of the game is finally getting a vertical-sync toggle, and Nixxes gave 3D stereo and multi-monitor setups some attention too. ...Read more...

Would you look at that? it's Friday again already. I guess that explains why we're spending our morning combing the web looking for the best deals on computer hardware. Take a look at what we've found.There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. 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 with Newegg , but ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

The GeForce GTX 1060 isn't even out yet, but Nvidia's board partners are already building up anticipation for their takes on the card. Nvidia's reference coolers aren't bad, but users who want to avoid the Founders Edition premium, or those who are simply looking for a bit more flash, might prefer to look elsewhere. Gigabyte and Asus have both posted teasers of their custom-cooled GTX 1060 cards for those who want something different. ...Read more...

Samsung's recent advances in the storage front have been nothing short of impressive. Not that long ago, the company announced a single-BGA-package NVMe SSD. Now, the company's storage division is at it again with its new UFS memory cards. While these slivers of storage may resemble microSD cards, they're actually a new standard that will likely require new slots or adapters to be useful. ...Read more...

Acer is adding another premium laptop family to its portable computing lineup today with the announcement of the Travelmate X3 series. The new laptops are quite thin and light. The X349 model that's debuting today is under 0.75" (19 mm) thick and weighs 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg). Acer's aesthetic choices with the X3 series remind of the Asus Zenbook UX305, which also has similar specifications. ...Read more...

There's been no small amount of talk in the past week or so surrounding the PCIe slot power draw from AMD's new Radeon RX 480 graphics card. Now AMD is releasing a driver specifically targeted at 480 owners who are concerned with the amount of power drawn from the PCIe slot on the motherboard. This update, update 16.7.1, was announced Tuesday, along with a number of details of the planned fix. ...Read more...

When Nvidia announced the GTX 1080 at Dreamhack back in May, the announcement overshadowed the fact that the company also teased a few upcoming software products. The Nvidia VR Funhouse demo is slated for release later this month, according to the Nvidia document that also heralded the forthcoming GeForce GTX 1060. Meanwhile, the Ansel in-game photo tool will be coming to Mirror's Edge Catalyst today, while The Witcher 3 will add the technology "later this month," according to Anandtech. ...Read more...

Nvidia unveiled the GeForce GTX 1060 this morning. The specs of this $249 Pascal card basically conform to what the rumor mill has been churning out over the past couple weeks. Here are the basics of the GTX 1060, compared to the GTX 1080:GPU

If you have a Pascal GeForce graphics card and an HTC Vive, it seems that trying to run the VR headset using the DisplayPort input on its included breakout box doesn't work right now. If a Vive is set up this way, the SteamVR software fails to detect the headset and presents users with an error message. Tom's Hardware broke the story yesterday after a Tom's editor's friend couldn't get his Vive working using a GTX 1080 and the card's DisplayPort output. We've confirmed this behavior with the HTC Vive and GTX 1080s in the TR labs, and it's worth noting that the issue has been circulating on the Steam forums for some time. ...Read more...

Today is apparently Nvidia update day. On top of a new set of Game Ready drivers, the company issued a software update for the Shield Portable handheld gaming device. The new software rolls up Android security updates for version 5.1 Lollipop, fixes a bug with the brightness setting for the LED logo on the device's home button, stabilizes the device's volume during video playback, prevents a hardware freeze when its lid is closed and reopened, and solves an issue where the device would improperly display an "Optimizing apps" notification during use. Nvidia says this is an optional update, but the fact that it contains security fixes means we'd go out of our way to install it. ...Read more...

Nvidia is keeping up the pace with its "Game Ready" driver releases, and today marks the release of the 368.69 WHQL driver. The big-ticket item this time around is support for Dirt Rally. The latest entry in Codemasters' rally-racing franchise briefly had VR support, but it was buggy and lacking in basic usability features like VR-friendly menus. Codemasters' next update to the game, due "any day now," will be reintroducing VR support with Oculus SDK 1.3, and the game will be debuting on the Oculus Home storefront, as well....Read more...