Techreport

Just a couple days ago, we covered an ongoing brouhaha over the Oculus Rift's privacy policy. The Rift's companion software installs a Windows service with system-level privileges. Some of the wording in the Rift's privacy policy has been interpreted as a license for Facebook to collect multiple types of user data and to claim ownership of content created using Oculus' services. Oculus has now responded to these concerns in a statement provided to UploadVR. The company believes its privacy policy was drafted in a way that makes it clear to users how their information will be collected and used, but the situation still seems about as clear as Vantablack.Oculus told UploadVR that "users and content developers own all the content and IP they create using Oculus services." The company says that its terms of service are meant to give it a "license to user-created content" in order to power some of is integration services, like sharing VR ...Read more...

Windows 10 Insider testers in the fast ring should be receiving preview build 14316 today. This update gives us an early look at the first round of updates in the Anniversary Update coming this summer, and it's a doozy. The big-ticket item in the new build is the first release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux beta, which will allow testers to download, install, and run the bash shell directly on Windows. ...Read more...

Reviewers around the web are talking up the room-scale immersion that HTC's Vive adds to the VR experience, but words alone don't really communicate just how cool it is. People who have used it say it really is something that has to be experienced to truly appreciate. Valve is trying to help prospective Vive users gain a better understanding of the experience with this mixed-reality demo video....Read more...

HTC and Valve's Vive VR headset may not have quite the buzz or name recognition in the mainstream as its direct competitor, the Oculus Rift, but it's been eagerly anticipated among VR enthusiasts. Everyone and their mother has now reviewed the Vive, even Fortune. That's rather fitting, given the kit's $800 price tag. We've filtered that truckload of reviews down for you. Early impressions of the headset were mostly positive, though the Vive isn't without its flaws. ...Read more...

Huawei's next flagship smartphones, the P9 and the P9 Plus, might raise the bar in the smartphone camera arena. These phones use not one, but two 12MP camera modules to capture data. They then combine the input from these sensors to make potentially more detailed photos. One of those sensors is a traditional Bayer-color-array module, while the other captures only luminance (or tonal) data. Since that monochrome sensor doesn't have a color filter, each of its photo sites can collect more light.The Huawei P9, the dual-lens smartphone co-engineered with ...Read more...

Holy mother of GPUs. If you've been reading the news today, then you know Nvidia has launched the Tesla P100, the HPC equivalent of the Schwerer Gustav mega-cannon. But really, who wants just one of those cards for crunching tons and tons of deep-learning data? Take a good look at Nvidia's DGX-1 Deep Learning System. ...Read more...

EVGA is joining ASUS in offering low-power GeForce GTX 950 graphics cards that don't require a six-pin power connector. The four variants differ in their clock speeds and their inclusion or exclusion of an extra DVI-D output. All of these cards have DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, and Display Port 1.2 outputs. Of note for small-form-factor PC enthusiasts, the cards are half-length, full-height, dual-slot affairs that measure 6.8" long by 4.4" wide. ...Read more...

During his GTC keynote today, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang introduced the company's Pascal GP100 graphics-processing unit on board the Tesla P100 high-performance computing (HPC) accelerator. The 610 mmGP100 is built on TSMC's 16-nm FinFET process. It uses 15 billion transistors paired with 16GB of HBM2 RAM to deliver 5.3 teraflops of FP64 performance, 10.6 TFLOPS for FP32, and 21.2 TFLOPS for FP16. ...Read more...

Intel has announced that two of its senior executives will be leaving the company. Doug Davis, who heads up Intel's Internet of Things Group, will retire after his successor has been named. Kirk Skaugen, the senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Client Computing Group, is moving on to a new career. Intel's current vice president and general manager of mobile client platforms, Navin Shenoy, will be taking over for Skaugen in the coming weeks.Both men have held significant leadership roles at Intel over the years. Davis started working for Intel in 1984 as a product engineer in the company's military division. While his recent work was mostly related to Intel's Internet of ...Read more...

HP just renewed the ongoing struggle for the title of world's thinnest laptop. Its latest entry in the high-end Spectre notebook family, the HP Spectre, features a folded thickness of just 0.4" inch (10.4mm). HP claims that figure makes the Spectre the world's thinnest. Given what this PC lacks in volume, it's also a featherweight at just 2.5 pounds. The machine's body is made out of aluminum and carbon fiber. Gorilla Glass shields a 1080p IPS display, a fine resolution for the machine's 13.3" size. ...Read more...

AMD is giving the world a sneak peek at its upcoming Bristol Ridge APU lineup this morning. Here's what we know. Bristol Ridge parts will still be fabricated on a 28-nm process, and they'll still use Excavator CPU cores and Radeon R5 or R7 integrated graphics. All that may sound familiar from Carrizo, but Bristol Ridge APUs still promise some performance improvements over their predecessors. ...Read more...

Skull Canyon pre-orders have begun. Newegg has Intel's most powerful NUC available for its suggested price of $649.99. The Skull Canyon NUC introduces a unique elongated form factor that breaks the squarish mold of the original. This barebones unit needs DDR4 SO-DIMM memory and M.2 SSD storage to be a complete PC. Once assembled, it seems capable of pulling duty as a HTPC or light-weight gaming rig. By adding an external graphics enclosure like the Razer Core, builders can turn this PC into a high-end gaming rig, too. ...Read more...

Rumors surfaced last year that Intel was preparing new Extreme desktop processors built on Broadwell-E silicon. Now that Intel has released its Broadwell-EP Xeon lineup, it appears those desktop chips may not be far behind. An Intel documentation leak more or less confirms that a Core i7-6950X will top the Broadwell-E desktop lineup. According to the leaked page, that part will have 25MB of cache and Turbo clock speeds up to 3.5GHz.While no other new information about the Core i7-6950X emerged today, past rumors have suggested it'll be a 10-core, 20-thread chip. Gigabyte previously confirmed that it'll be supporting desktop Broadwell-E with a BIOS update , and MSI has ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Nvidia's mobile GeForce GTX 980 graphics chip is the only game in town for folks who want a VR-ready laptop right now. Ahead of its GTC conference this week, Nvidia is taking the wraps off its Quadro M5500 mobile workstation chip, a part meant to bring the same kind of VR-capable power to graphics and CAD professionals who need to take VR work on the go.According to Anandtech , the Quadro M5500 will use the same fully-enabled GM204 GPU as the mobile GTX 980. That means 2048 stream processors, an 1140MHz boost clock, and a 256-bit path to 8GB of GDDR5 ...Read more...

The first retail Oculus Rifts are in a few users' hands now, but only a few. Many customers in the first wave of Rift pre-orders have been left wondering when they will receive their headset, with nary an update from Oculus on the status of their orders. Two days ago, Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus, tweeted this:First set of Rifts are going out slower than we orig ...Read more...

April Fool's day is here, and as usual, there's much silliness to be had around the web. We've gathered a few of our favorites. MSI's new 'The One' modular motherboard (featuring support for any CPU and RAM!) caught our Editor-in-Chief off-guard. Asus is unifying gaming platforms with the ROG Epic smartphone, ushering in the new era of mobile gaming. Asus is also letting Zenfone owners charge their Tesla autos, while the company's UK branch is showing off some feline-friendly VR tech. Speaking of cats, Backblaze is eager to help you back up your cat media, because we all know the work-safe internet is mostly cat pictures. ...Read more...

Everybody's jumping onto the virtual reality bandwagon these days, and Dell is no exception. The company has updated its lineup of Precision workstations with models aimed at VR content creation and "advanced commercial visualization." ...Read more...

Avast, ye landlubbers! There be booty in the seas, alright, but it's not much use if ye can't find it. Fret not, me pretties, your captain has scoured the seas far and wide and has already picked the best spots for plunderin'. Take a gander at this deals map 'ere.That's all for today, ye mateys. If you spot a good deal out there that your captain has ...Read more...

7 Up

Microsoft recently acquired cross-platform mobile development kit purveyors Xamarin. Today, there's a treat for mobile app developers worldwide: the Xamarin software is now included for free in all versions of Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE. ...Read more...

Along with its Xeon E5-2600 v4 CPUs, Intel took the wraps off two new datacenter SSD lineups today. The SSD DC P3320 and DC P3520 are Intel's first drives to use 3D NAND, while the SSD DC 3600 and DC 3700 are the company's first dual-port SSDs.The SSD DC P3320 uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and the NVMe protocol. It's meant for read-intensive applications for cloud storage and data analytics, according to Intel. That's borne out by Intel's performance specifications. The 450GB P3320 can perform sequential reads as fast as 1,100 MB/s and random reads at up to 130K IOPS. ...Read more...

Intel released its Broadwell-EP Xeons today under the E5-2600 v4 umbrella. These chips include a number of features that virtualization-administrator readers may be interested in, including some fancy cache-management tools. The Broadwell-EP "tick" moves to a 14-nm fabrication process, and Intel has used this die shrink to increase core count while maintaining single-thread performance and holding the TDP line, according to Anandtech's review. Maximum supported DDR4 speeds also increase from 2133 MT/s to 2400 MT/s on some chips. The 22-core, 44-thread E5-2699 v4 is the king of this lineup, and it includes a massive 55MB of last-level cache. That's just one chip in the lineup, though. ...Read more...

AMD's Radeon Pro Duo combines a pair of Fiji GPUs for 16 TFLOPS of workstation-class computing power on the desktop. Today, the red team is taking similar power to the data center with its FirePro S9300 X2. This card combines two fully-enabled Fiji packages, each with 4GB of non-ECC HBM RAM, in a server-friendly form factor. Each GPU runs at 850 MHz. That's good for 13.9 TFLOPS of theoretical FP32 compute performance in a 300W power envelope, according to AnandTech.As high-performance computing cards go, the S9300 X2 is targeted at applications that need the highest-possible single-precision (or FP32) performance available. FP32 performance is apparently especially important to modeling applications in the oil-and-gas industry. In a wave-equation modeling performance demonstration, AMD ...Read more...

Microsoft's Build 2016 developer conference kicked off today in San Francisco with the announcement that Windows 10 has reached 270 million installs. That apparently makes Windows 10's adoption rate the fastest of any Windows version to date. The company also says its operating system will be receiving its next large update, called the Anniversary Update, this summer.Microsoft is making a host of improvements in this update. The biggest changes will be coming to the Windows Store, which is being fully integrated across the company's Windows and Xbox platforms. Phil Spencer was on hand to announce that all of Microsoft's forthcoming games will be ...Read more...

Streacom has teamed up with HWBOT and Overclocking-TV to kick off the Open Benchtable Project. The group wants to produce a design a portable and customizable overclocking test bench. Milled from a single piece of aluminum, the table stores all of its mounting hardware, GPU supports, and even its legs in recessed areas on the bench top. Despite its travel-friendly size, the six-pound table can support full ATX motherboards equipped with heavyweight cooling hardware and a full complement of four graphics cards. ...Read more...

HyperX is officially launching its Cloud Revolver stereo gaming headset today. This update to the already-popular HyperX Cloud features a more aggressive design than its predecessors. HyperX also claims the Revolver's 50-mm drivers, large ear cups, exhaust vents, and closed design allow it to deliver a wide, detailed sound stage for a competitive edge in games. ...Read more...

Foxconn, a company best known in tech circles for manufacturing Apple's iPhone, has finalized its buyout of Japanese electronics company Sharp. The deal was finally inked after weeks of difficult negotiation, and marks the largest acquisition by a foreign company in Japan's tech industry.Bloomberg reports the original plan was for Foxconn to buy Sharp for around $4.3 billion. However, after learning of Sharp's financial woes, Foxconn decided to reevaluate the deal. The company ended up paying about $3.5 ...Read more...

Game streaming is bigger than ever, but all that video encoding is hard on a processor. Gamers playing on weaker machines, like your typical store-bought laptop or game console, may find that their rig isn't up to the task of streaming HD video. For most, the easiest solution to this conundrum is to use a dedicated video capture device like Razer's new Ripsaw. ...Read more...

The time has finally come. The Oculus Rift is shipping to consumers, and tech news sites have begun issuing verdicts on the VR headset. The Verge, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and Engadget all got their hands on review units, as did some general-interest publications like the Wall Street Journal. Considering that the Rift is a wildly-hyped, first-generation product, it's heartening to see the reviews so far are all fairly positive. ...Read more...

EVGA first gave us a look at its SC 17 gaming laptop back at CES. Today, this 17", overclocker-friendly machine goes up for pre-order. While EVGA has been making motherboards, graphics cards, and a host of other enthusiast-oriented gear for years, this is the company's first foray into in-house laptops. ...Read more...

Corsair's ever-expanding lineup of gaming mice has just welcomed a new member into its fold. Say hello to the M65 Pro RGB, which the company describes as its "highest DPI ever" mouse. That particular boast comes by way of the M65 Pro RGB's optical sensor, a sensitive bit of hardware with a whopping 12,000 DPI resolution—just the ticket for those 1440° no-scope kills. The sensor's surface-detection algorithm is configurable within Corsair's CUE utility, which also controls the mouse's three-zone RGB LED lighting and macro-recording functions. ...Read more...

Slovenian liquid-cooling equipment supplier EK is spiffing up its EK-RAM Monarch Modules adapters. The Monarch Modules are essentially RAM heatspreaders that let builders cool nearly any memory module in tandem with an EK-RAM waterblock like the Monarch X2. These heatsinks were previously available in a sensible matte black, and now we have the option of a gleaming nickel-plated finish, too. ...Read more...

AMD isn't leaving Radeon owners with Oculus Rifts high and dry today. The company has released Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3.2, a hotfix that adds support for Oculus SDK version 1.3 and the Radeon Pro Duo. The 16.3.2 release also adds support for a new feature called the Quick Response Queue. This scheduling feature lets developers submit time-sensitive work to the graphics card with more assurance it'll get done in the required time window.

EIght is Enough

Version 1.3 of Oculus' PC software development kit is available today. This new release adds support for asynchronous timewarp, a useful rendering method for delivering a smoother VR experience.Oculus describes timewarp as a technique that reduces perceived latency in VR . Timewarped frames are re-projected (or "warped") to correct for changes in the position of the wearer's head before they're sent to the VR headset itself. In the case of a frame that takes longer to render than the Rift's vsync interval, the application can timewarp the previous frame to ...Read more...

This is the launch week for the Oculus Rift, and Nvidia is helping folks get ready for the VR headset with its 364.72 Game Ready drivers. Team Green says its latest driver minimizes latency and increases performance with the Rift's launch titles. The driver also improves support for a couple of unspecified VRWorks features. That could be important for those planning to strap a Rift onto their faces soon. ...Read more...

Gigabyte announced a new entry to the crowded GeForce GTX 960 field today. The GTX 960 Xtreme Gaming offers a host of overclocking features and some extra flash over lesser GTX 960s. The card ships with a moderate overclock to 1279MHz base and 1367MHz boost clocks. This card also comes with 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7010MT/s. ...Read more...

Innovative as it may be, the Steam Controller is not flawless. Everyone has their own complaints about it, but if your complaints are related to the shape and size of the thing, now's your chance to take matters into your own hands. In this Steam Community announcement, Valve released CAD data for the controller in various file formats so that folks can use their tool of choice to fiddle with the files. ...Read more...

MSI launched its two-way SLI Bridge L in June of last year so fans of the company's Twin Frozr coolers could have similarly styled SLI bridges for their graphics cards. Now, the company is letting builders with more powerful rigs in on the action with a pair of three-way and four-way bridge kits with the same aesthetic. These fancy-looking bridges feature configurable blinkenlights that can be customized through the MSI Gaming app. ...Read more...

If you're a Skype user like me and most of the TR staff, you may have noticed that its desktop application has been a little stuck in time. Microsoft is now looking to kill two birds with one API by developing a version of Skype that relies on the company's Universal Windows Platform. This shiny new app will be available to Windows Insiders in the "coming weeks." ...Read more...

Razer added a new member to its Blackwidow Chroma family of keyboards today. The Blackwidow X Chroma is an RGB LED-backlit mechanical keyboard that uses Razer Green clicky mechanical switches. To make the Blackwidow X, Razer removed the top plate of the regular Blackwidow, leaving the key switches exposed for all to see. The company also removed the regular Blackwidow's macro keys. ...Read more...

Wireless mice aren't typically known for their high performance with games. They travel in laptop bags or occupy the desks of people who can't abide seeing cords. Gamers have traditionally stuck with wired mice to limit latency. With its G900 Chaos Spectrum, Logitech is trying to change the narrative about wireless gaming mice. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Canadian PC vendor Eurocom is no stranger to hilariously powerful laptops that stretch the definition of "laptop". The company recently announced a big update for its Sky X9 series gaming laptops that's called the X9E Unlocked Edition. As you might recall late last year, Eurocom launched the Sky X9 "desktop laptop" series. These machines boast desktop Skylake processors in a laptop form factor with a host of other desktop-class amenities, like an optional RAID 10 storage setup and dual Gigabit Ethernet NICs. Now, these madmen have updated the machine with a new display that should satisfy almost any enthusiast: a 4K IPS panel with a 400-nit maximum brightness and G-Sync support. ...Read more...

At GDC 2016, Microsoft spilled the beans (Google translation) on the still-in-development Shader Model 6.0. For those not in the know, shaders are the bit of graphics engine technology responsible for effects like rugged terrain, neatly curved models, or fancy post-processing. The new version is a long-awaited update. Shader Model 5 was released back in 2009, and graphics programmers will argue that it's getting a bit long in the tooth.SM6 (the Shader Model, not a Shure microphone) aims to be as much a technological advance as a practical one. Microsoft is looking to support future GPU features like procedural textures, separation of per-pixel ...Read more...

Samsung unveiled a pair of high-performance M.2 SSDs for OEMs at its SSD Forum Japan event, according to AnandTech. The drives, called the SM961 and PM961, are both available in capacities from 128GB to 1TB. Both drives use Samsung's new Polaris controller, a five-core, eight-channel chip. This updated controller replaces the UBX controller used in the popular PM951. Both drives use the NVMe protocol.

For all of the fanfare surrounding Apple’s release announcements, the company remains tight-lipped on some of the specs of its new devices. When the iPhone SE and the shrunken iPad Pro were announced Monday, the company didn't say how much RAM was in either device. TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino has the new devices in hand, and he's verified that both devices have 2GB of RAM inside. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Those familiar with the CPU industry should be familiar with Intel's long-running "tick-tock" product development strategy. The chip maker alternated between releasing products based on a smaller transistor process (a tick), followed by chips with a new architecture based on that process node (a tock). That strategy served the company well for many a year, but Intel is now turning off that proverbial metronome. In its latest 10-K filing, the chip giant said the clockwork-like cycle is coming to a close. In the company's own words:We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14nm and our next generation 10nm ...Read more...