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The free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends July 29, and Microsoft wants to make sure that all users that haven't yet upgraded are aware they have a limited time to do so for zero dollars. To that end, Microsoft has er, upgraded the upgrade prompt to a violet-colored full-screen version, clad in the company's Metro Modern styling.Unlike some previous versions, the new upgrade request has four clearly-defined options: "upgrade now," "remind me later," "notify me three more times," and "do not notify me again." Despite the prompt being a full-screen interruption, the changes in ...Read more...

Late yesterday, AMD addressed concerns regarding the bus power draw of its Radeon RX 480 graphics card in a statement to the press and in a post on the AMD Gaming Facebook page. The upcoming Radeon Software 16.7.1 update will include changes that lower the amount of power the card draws through the PCIe slot. That update will also create an option to reduce the total power consumed by the card called "Compatibility Mode," presumably for the lowest-end systems out there. AMD says that Compatibility Mode will have "minimal" performance impact.Radeon Software 16.7.1 also includes a set of optimizations for the Polaris architecture that purportedly increases performance by as much as three percent in ...Read more...

Nvidia's GeForce Experience is probably a utility familiar to many a PC gamer by now. At least on my Nvidia-equipped PCs, the software helpfully reminds me when a new driver update comes down the pipe, but I don't really do much else with it. The company's next version of GeForce Experience, version 3.0, is in beta now, so I figured I'd give it a shot and see whether this software has what it takes to earn a pin to my notification area.The first I noticed upon firing up the beta version of GFE is that Nvidia appears to require an account to use the app this time around. Past versions of GFE could be used without any kind of registration, but it appears version 3.0 is where we'll begin seeing ...Read more...

Valve has its latest Steam Hardware Survey numbers up, and for the most part, they show that past trends are continuing. Windows 10 adoption is still on the rise: 45% of Steam users are now on Windows 10 64-bit. That number is up by 3.4% from May. Quad-core CPU adoption is rising too, albeit slowly—46% of respondees have CPUs with four physical cores, versus 47.2% with two. Intel still dominates the CPU sockets of over three-quarters of Steam users, while Nvidia GPUs occupy a PCIe slot in more than half of those folks' machines.Valve's preliminary information on VR headset adoption is perhaps most interesting among the numbers it's collected. Apparently, two-thirds of VR users on Steam are using a Vive. No doubt ready supplies of the headset are a key driver of sales for HTC, ...Read more...

Earlier this year at Computex, we took a peek at Thermaltake's Core P3, a wall-mounted case that puts the hardware inside on full display. Thermaltake has now officially released this open-frame chassis. ...Read more...

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 offers monstrous performance, but as impressive as it is, let us not forget that the GTX 1080's GP104 is not the biggest Pascal GPU. That honor goes to the GP100, which first debuted aboard the Tesla P100. Now, VR-World is reporting that part of the next generation of Quadro and Titan products will be built with that same GP100 GPU, and they'll arrive in August. ...Read more...

Details of custom-cooled Radeon RX 480s are starting to trickle out. We've already seen a teaser of Asus' take on the card, and now Sapphire's Nitro+ RX 480 has surfaced at British retailer Overclockers UK. This handsome card sports a twin-fan cooler with a metal backplate, an RGB LED logo on its side, and an eight-pin power connector that might put some minds at ease following news of the power draw characteristics of the reference RX 480.

AMD's Radeon RX 480 offers compelling performance for its price, but some reviewers have discovered a potentially troubling behavior from the card's power-delivery subsystem. Controversy arose when Tom's Hardware and PC Perspective discovered that the reference RX 480 is drawing more power than might be considered reasonable from the PCI Express slot's 12V rail.The fine folks over at PC Perspective are especially insightful on this point. The site notes that the PCI Express specification limits connected boards to drawing no more than 5.5 ...Read more...

Happy first of July, gerbils. It's Friday once more, and that means it's time to take a break from buying fireworks and take a look at some sweet tech deals.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...

Gigabyte's Aero 14 notebooks caught my eye at Computex with their bright colors and slim profiles. We're now learning what specs those machines will ship with in the USA. The Aero 14 will be powered by the potent combo of a Core i7-6700HQ and a GeForce GTX 970M with 3GB of VRAM—more or less identical to the much larger P57W we just reviewed. That's a good thing, since the P57W is quite the performer already. ...Read more...

Stubby versions of full-sized GPUs meant for small-form-factor PCs have been around for a while. Gigabyte already shrank the GTX 670 and GTX 970 down for tiny cases, and it's carrying on the tradition with its GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC. The shorty version has the same GPU and 8GB of GDDR5 memory as the full-sized card, now in a convenient 6.7-inch-long package. ...Read more...

Belgian cooling vendor Calyos is showing off a completely fanless workstation, and it looks fantastic. The workstation uses a proprietary cooling system, but it's otherwise built entirely from off-the-shelf parts, including a Core i7-5820K hexa-core processor and a GeForce GTX Titan X GPU. That's some heavy-duty hardware to cool passively, yet Calyos purports to keep both the CPU and graphics card under 75° C while running 3DMark and Prime95. ...Read more...

Back when the Samsung Galaxy S7 phones first appeared, they impressed reviewers all around. However, one thing that might have put a damper in interested buyers' enthusiasm was the fact that the models on sale were all locked to a specific carrier and phone contract—and loaded down with carrier bloatware. That's now changing, however. A number of US retailers have started selling fully unlocked versions of both the S7 and S7 edge phones. ...Read more...

We got a first look at a rumored GTX 1060 reference card this week, and now the graphics leakers at VideoCardz claim to have gotten their hands on a slide deck from Nvidia that details the card's specifications. If that information is correct, the GTX 1060 will have 1280 Pascal SPs, a boost clock of 1.7GHz, 6GB of 8 GT/s GDDR5 memory, and a board power of 120W—the same as today's GTX 960.

Remember that awesome air-bearing heat exchanger that Sandia National Laboratories developed way back in 2011? Coolchip Technologies partnered with Cooler Master to bring out a similar cooler back in January of last year, but that partnership seems to have been for naught. Undaunted, Coolchip is bringing out a smaller design that appears to be based on the same concept. ...Read more...

If the reference cooler on your Radeon RX 480 isn't performing up to expectations, EK Waterblocks is ready with a solution, as it usually is. The company teased a full-coverage water block for the card on its Facebook page yesterday. ...Read more...

Back at its I/O conference, Google called for the Android community to submit names for its upcoming Android N release. Android has traditionally been named after sweets, so it's not surprising the company settled on Android Nougat for its next release. The company made the announcement in a celebratory Tweet that we've embedded below.Introducing #AndroidNougat . Thank you, world, for all ...Read more...

We didn't publish DirectX 12 performance results in our recent reviews of the GeForce GTX 1080 and the Radeon RX 480. It's still relatively early days for Microsoft's low-overhead API, and we still think DX11 performance is the most relevant metric to go by for most gamers. That omission doesn't mean we aren't able to collect performance data, though. We wanted to share some early results of our benchmarking methods for DirectX 12 using Rise of the Tomb Raider as our platform. Let's dive in....Read more...

Back in 2013, the Wi-Fi Alliance created a certification program for 802.11ac devices to ensure interoperability. That program is now expanding with a new set of features that the Alliance is calling "wave 2." Rather than being a new Wi-Fi standard, the new features supplement the existing 802.11ac standard. ...Read more...

Nvidia is teaching its Shield Android TV new tricks for UHD and HDR content. The latest software update for the set-top box gives it the ability to play YouTube videos at 4K and 60 FPS, something the company says is a first for any media streamer. Another purported first is the Shield's readiness for Netflix HDR content. Nvidia says subscribers to that service will have 100 hours of HDR programming to sample by August. ...Read more...

In the unlikely event you're the new owner of a Radeon RX 480, AMD has a fresh batch of drivers for you. Radeon Software 16.6.2 adds support for the new card. It's also the first release of Radeon Software with AMD's new WattMan utility on board, a replacement for the older OverDrive overclocking and system monitoring suite. ...Read more...

We're pretty happy with the price-to-performance ratio the Radeon RX 480 offers after reviewing the card, but we feel that the cooling performance and noise numbers the reference cooler delivers both leave something to be desired. It seems Asus will be among the first to answer our call for custom-cooled RX 480s. The company teased a Strix version of AMD's newest card today. ...Read more...

Howdy! We're guessing you have absolutely no idea what a Radeon RX 480 is, nor have you been waiting for it with bated breath for six months. We're also certain you're not at all wondering if you can get your hands on a $240 graphics card that's performance-equivalent to a GeForce GTX 970. No, sir, not at all. And we totally did not look into if and where you can buy one right now.Newegg has by far the widest selection of RX 480 cards available among the shops we surveyed. Almost every model we've looked at precisely matches AMD's reference design, right down to the red "Radeon" lettering ...Read more...

The biggest question mark surrounding the Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been its release date—until now. Microsoft confirmed this morning that the update will hit Windows 10 PCs, tablets, phones, and Xbox Ones on August 2. That date is just a few days after the actual anniversary of Windows 10's release, July 29 of last year.In case you haven't been following the news, the Anniversary Update is bringing a whole slew of improvements to Microsoft's finest. Check out our previous coverage for details, but the short list includes extension support for Edge, huge ...Read more...

It seems that manufacturers may have found themselves a new market to explore: business- and classrooms. Not to be outdone by Microsoft's Surface Hub, Dell has now joined the fray with its C7017T "interactive conference room monitor." ...Read more...

Custom GTX 1070 cards are hitting the market now, and all of the usual suspects are looking to get in on the action. Today's reveal is the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Windforce OC, a simpler and presumably more affordable version of the company's triple-fanned GTX 1070 G1 Gaming. ...Read more...

A new wave of Chromebooks is hitting the market, and one of the more popular features appearing on the spec sheets of those machines is a touchscreen. That trend should come as no surprise to anyone watching the market, since Chrome OS will be getting support for Android apps downloaded from Google Play in the near future. HP's latest Chromebook offering is the Chromebook 11 G5, which the company says is its first 11.6" Chromebook to offer a touchscreen. ...Read more...

Get your saltcellars ready, folks. Now that the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 are on the market, it would only make sense that Nvidia has plans to begin filling out its lower-end lineup with Pascal GPUs, as well. A poster on the r/nvidia subreddit apparently got in touch with someone in possession of a reference "GeForce GTX 1060" card recently, and they were able to grab a high-resolution snap of the purported card. Feast your eyes:

The GeForce GTX 1080 is an awesome card by any measure, but not everyone has $600 or more burning a hole in their pocket. The graphics card power-per-dollar sweet spot tends to fall in a lower price bracket, as evidenced by the historical success of the GeForce GTX 970. Asus has a fresh take on the GTX 970's unofficial successor for our perusal today: the Turbo GeForce GTX 1070. Let's take a good look at this little beastie, shall we? ...Read more...

MSI is adding two new Micro-ATX motherboards to its gaming stable: the B150M Bazooka Plus and Mortar Arctic. As their names suggest, both of these value-oriented motherboards wield Intel's B150 PCH. Low-end motherboards like these may not have all of the features of their more expensive siblings, but they may be all you need for simpler builds or a Wintendo machine. ...Read more...

Microsoft's Surface 3 tablet was notable for its move away from ARM SoCs and Windows RT to an Intel Cherry Trail Atom CPU and unfettered Windows. Reviewers praised its build quality and performance, but its high price when paired with a Surface Pen and Type Cover was a major source of complaints. Despite that mixed value proposition, Microsoft told ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley that it's seen "strong demand" for the tablet since its introduction—but it's also planning to discontinue the Surface 3 by December of this year, regardless. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Eight is Enough

We've reported in the past on the ongoing saga regarding game exclusivity on the Oculus Rift and user group LibreVR's attempts to break that exclusivity. Way back in April, LibreVR released a patch, called Revive, that allowed Vive users to play Oculus-exclusive games. The two have been firing back and forth ever since. Oculus added DRM to defeat Revive, and LibreVR proceeded to update its tool to get around that restriction. The last big volley from Oculus made Rift titles check for a connected Rift headset before launching. Now in a statement to Ars Technica, the company says it will drop that practice.Last time we talked about Revive, it looked like we were in for a protracted battle between Oculus and LibreVR over the software, so it's all the more surprising that Oculus has changed its mind. While this is a huge shift in Oculus' ...Read more...

Family and friends can attest to the fact that I caught "BBQ brain" early this year. There's just something about a ten-year anniversary that feels so significant, so I can't help but get even more wrapped up in planning for this year's TR BBQ than usual. Now, with a scant one month left to wait, all that preparation is coming to fruition as things shape up to be better than ever. Now that the BBQ is nearly feature-complete I wanted to tale a moment to share some of this year's change log.Thanks to Asus, the cottage's Wi-Fi is vastly improved (and we have a review of that equipment coming soon). The upgrade to the live stream , courtesy of the Ricoh Theta S , means that gerbils who can't make the trip can at least attend vicariously. Based on feedback from the BBQ thread, we've got a fully stocked arsenal of Nerf weapons and a separate cornhole tournament just for the kiddos . I've mentioned the cotton candy ...Read more...

Gentlemen, I am sorry to inform you that your wallet will remain under siege for the time being. Yesterday's Steam Summer sale offensive is getting reinforced today by the Newegg and Best Buy divisions. They brought entire platoons of fresh and powerful deals, ready to rip through your credit card accounts like a hot knife through butter. You have been warned. Now, onto the battle plan.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...

Preeminent benchmarking tool 3DMark is getting a new game-like benchmark to test DirectX 12 performance soon, according to the Futuremark blog. The new test, titled "Time Spy," is a look back to older 3DMark benchmarks with an original soundtrack by Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen from Finnish rock band Poets of the Fall....Read more...

Eight is Enough

I'm sorry it's been so long since the last news post. I had to run and chase my wallet, it heard the words "Steam Summer Picnic Sale" and it stormed off. I managed to grab it by the tip of the credit card, and now it's snarling angry noises at me. I can understand why, as the sale has quite a handful of great deals on many popular titles. Let's take a good look at what's on offer.Virtual reality ...Read more...

So, you ordered that fancy black-and-white mobo, and a neat white case to go with it. Your fans are likewise color-coordinated, as is your graphics card. Oh, rats. The RAM you picked looks really ugly in that set. No worries, Corsair has just the thing for you: Vengeance LED DDR4 DIMMs. Check them out in the video below:...Read more...

Information about AMD's Radeon RX 480 graphics card has leaked like a sieve the past couple days. Along with the card itself, AMD sent us a note saying that it would be OK if, y'know, we took a few pictures of the RX 480 and shared them with you ahead of the NDA lift—as long as we didn't take it apart. Let's take a quick look at the RX 480's externals. ...Read more...

Samsung is sprucing up its Windows laptop offerings with the new Notebook 7 Spin family. This Windows 10 device comes in 13.3- or 15.6-inch flavors, and it's a flexible-hinge-type convertible with a 1080p touchscreen, a 1TB hard drive, and optional discrete graphics. ...Read more...

Here's something you don't see every day. TR photo enthusiasts will be plenty familiar with the concept of the mirrorless camera by now. These next-gen shooters do away with the bulky mirror box and prism assembly of the good old DSLR for an electronic viewfinder and on-sensor autofocus. Those improvements usually lead to wafer-thin bodies like those of Sony's Alpha lineup, or smaller camera systems in general, as one might get with a Micro Four Thirds body from Panasonic or Olympus. Fabled camera maker Hasselblad is taking the opposite approach today with its X1D system. It put a huge sensor in a tiny body to create what may be the world's first medium-format mirrorless camera. ...Read more...

File this one under "probably not a problem, probably." Rumor has it that while AMD's Zen processors are on track and "have a satisfactory yield rate," the chipsets for them, designed by Asustek subsidiary ASMedia, are having issues with signal quality on USB 3.1 connections. Specifically, Digitimes says "USB 3.1 transmission speeds drop dramatically as circuit distance increases."This problem would require motherboard vendors to use additional supporting hardware to maintain USB 3.1 performance, increasing the materials cost for affected boards. Digitimes claims that AMD ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Everyone loves a naked graphics card with all its parts laid bare for the world to see. The latest beauty to grace the front pages of websites everywhere is none other than the new hotness of the moment, the Radeon RX 480. Chinese website PConline somehow got their hands on what appears to be a Sapphire RX 480 8GB card, and it proceeded to do what anyone does in that situation: disassemble it and take pictures for voyeurs to gawk at.

A while back, we reported on a weird issue with GeForce graphics cards and multiple-display setups with refresh rates higher than 60 Hz. The short version is that connecting multiple high-refresh-rate displays to the DisplayPorts on a GeForce card causes it to run at much higher clock speeds than the Windows desktop would seem to demand, increasing power draw and heat production. As Pascal cards start to trickle into the TR labs, we figured it was as good a time as any to revisit this issue and see whether it's been ironed out. Sadly, the problem appears to persist with these next-gen cards.First, a brief word about our test setup. The particular graphics card we're using is Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming . My test bench has two monitors on it: my personal Eizo Foris FS2735 , a 144-Hz FreeSync ...Read more...

The rumor mill is all abuzz about AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 480 graphics card and its Polaris GPU. Until now, there was no information about the RX 480's clock speeds, even though we're mostly aware of all its other specifications. That may be about to change, though. A PC Perspective user apparently spotted a Newegg product page with a listing for an actual third-party RX 480 card, complete with detailed specs.The product page has unsurprisingly been pulled down, but not before the reader grabbed a screenshot . The listing detailed a VisionTek RX 480 card packing 8GB of RAM. More importantly, the purported card's GPU runs at 1120 MHz base and 1266 MHz boost clocks. While barstool ...Read more...

MSI released a statement today regarding the "review card doping" accusations leveled at the company by hardware review site TechPowerUp. In the statement, MSI denies any wrongdoing. It says that the "OC mode" setting enabled by default on the review cards is available to any owner of the company's Gaming X graphics cards using the MSI Gaming app. ...Read more...

Star Wars Battlefront has already taken players to the worlds of Endor, Hoth, Sullust, Tatooine, and Jakku. The latest update for EA's multiplayer space shooter brings the action to Bespin, home of Lando Calrissian's iconic Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. This patch adds four new maps, fresh weapons, "Star Cards," vehicles, a new game mode, and two new playable "heroes" from the Star Wars universe: Calrissian himself (voiced by original actor Billy Dee Williams) and bounty hunter Dengar (voiced by Simon Pegg)....Read more...