Techreport

Microsoft has been busy at work with its Surface lineup and accessories. Today, the company is releasing a new version of its Wireless Display Adapter, a Miracast-enabled HDMI dongle meant to make it easy to pair a mobile device with an external screen....Read more...

Apple often touts the security and privacy benefits of its iOS platform. The company takes a variety of measures to ensure that users' data is protected, like device encryption that's on by default and a trusted chain of execution to ensure the integrity of Apple software running on a phone or tablet. Problem is, suspected criminals use iOS devices, too, and law enforcement agencies in the United States have long desired an easy way around those privacy protections.Apple has steadfastly resisted building that sort of skeleton key or backdoor into iOS, because it's generally understood that building backdoors into cryptosystems ...Read more...

After a lengthy hiatus, we'll be recording a new episode of The Tech Report Podcast tomorrow evening. Special guest David Kanter, of Real World Technologies and the Microprocessor Report, will be returning to the show to speak with me about Soft Machines' VISC architecture and the performance targets the company released recently. We'll also be answering reader questions about VISC or any other relevant topics that come our way. ...Read more...

Breadbox-sized PCs are all the rage these days, but sometimes you need a case that can hold a big honkin' graphics card and more than a couple hard drives. Lian Li, purveyor of all things aluminum, has updated its ATX mid-tower lineup with the PC-7N model. ...Read more...

Samsung has announced its latest mobile SoC, the Exynos 7 Octa 7870. This chip is meant to serve in the mid-range mobile device market. The SoC is the latest design built on the company's 14-nm FinFET process. Samsung claims that's a first for SoCs aimed at this market segment. ...Read more...

Samsung has announced its latest mobile SoC, the Exynos 7 Octa 7780. This chip is meant to serve in the mid-range mobile device market. The SoC is the latest design built on the company's 14-nm FinFET process. Samsung claims that's a first for SoCs aimed at this market segment. ...Read more...

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Psst. Hey, kid, wanna get into starships? The first hit is really cheap. Frontier Developments has released Elite Dangerous: Arena, a standalone version of Elite: Dangerous' Close Quarters Combat (CQC) system. Check out the launch trailer below....Read more...

Eight is Enough

Bethesda has good news for gamers who've already worked their way through all that Fallout 4 has to offer. In the next three months, Bethesda will release three different add-ons for its popular role-playing game. The company has more planned for later in the year, too. ...Read more...

Seagate has announced tiny new mobile hard disk drives that boast high density in a seven-millimeter-thick form factor. The company expects the new drives will make high-capacity drives a good option for more classes of mobile PCs like thin laptops. ...Read more...

Eizo's a well-known name in the professional monitor arena, and its latest pair of monitors continue that tradition. Meet the ColorEdge CS2420 and CG2420.These monitors have 1920x1200 IPS panels, which might seem like a rather bland specification at first glance. However, color and contrast are these panels' forte. The ...Read more...

The Khronos Group released version 1.0 of its Vulkan graphics API this morning. This release is a hard launch, meaning that the Vulkan specification, conformance tests, SDKs, and other resources are available immediately for developers who want to play with the new API. AMD has a beta Windows driver with Vulkan support available for its graphics cards, and Nvidia has also posted a compatible beta driver on its Vulkan portal.Vulkan is the Khronos Group's take on the low-overhead graphics API movement that AMD more or less kicked off with its Mantle API back in 2013. (Vulkan is based ...Read more...

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Street Fighter V is coming out tomorrow, and Nvidia is making sure that gamers can hadouken each other with maximum graphical fidelity. The company has just released its WHQL-certified 361.91 drivers, which offer some tweaks for Capcom's fighting game and a bevy of SLI profile updates for other titles.Assassin's Creed Syndicate , XCOM 2 , the trial version of Need for Speed , Rainbow Six: Siege , The Division , the Bless MMORPG, and Elite: Dangerous 64-bit all get SLI profiles with this update. ...Read more...

Microsoft has announced the Lumia 650, a budget Windows 10 phone targeted at business users. The Lumia 650 is another block in the tech giant's efforts to build a Windows 10 ecosystem across multiple device classes. Like other Windows 10 devices, the Lumia 650 can open businesses' Office documents and answer voice queries with Cortana. It can also sync content between Windows 10 devices via OneDrive. ...Read more...

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It's Friday, and that means it's deals time. Here are the best bargains we sifted out of this week's PC hardware discounts.Those are the best deals we found this week. If we missed something ...Read more...

How does the idea of a big, affordable workhorse IPS monitor sound? AOC is offering exactly that with its Q2963PQ display. ...Read more...

After a brief delay, the latest Need for Speed game is coming to PC on March 15. The racing game was released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in early November, but developer Ghost Games decided to put some extra work into the PC version before launch. ...Read more...

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Every time there's an impending CPU or GPU release, a lot of rumors start floating around. AMD's upcoming Zen architecture is no exception to that rule, but now there are a few tasty morsels of actual information.A couple weeks ago, folks from CERN 's IT Technical Forum delivered a talk titled "Technology and Market Trends for the Data Center." In that talk, a CERN engineer revealed that the upcoming AMD CPUs will pack as ...Read more...

Qualcomm has announced three new additions to its Snapdragon line of mobile SoCs: the Snapdragon 625, 435, and 425. The numbers suggest that these are intended for entry-level mobile devices rather than flagship smartphones, for which Qualcomm offers its more potent 800-series processors.Still, the Snapdragon 625 is interesting for what it could bring to the crowded middle segment of the smartphone market. Like its big brother, the Snapdragon 820 , the 625 is manufactured on a 14-nm FinFET process. As a result, Qualcomm claims to have improved power consumption over last-gen Snapdragons ...Read more...

AMD has announced that HP will be offering consumers FreeSync-enabled HP Envy 15z laptops sometime during the first half of this year. Those machines will be powered by AMD's latest Carrizo A-Series processors. By the end of the year, HP plans to go a step further and enable FreeSync on all of its AMD-powered consumer laptops. ...Read more...

EVGA has added to its extensive collection of GeForce GTX 980 Ti offerings with its GTX 980 Ti VR Edition. What sets this beast apart is the inclusion of a 5.25" breakout box that's meant to reduce cable clutter between the PC and a virtual reality headset. That box lets owners connect their Oculus Rift with one HDMI 2.0 port and two USB 3.0 ports. The box connects to the graphics card using a special mini-HDMI port on the card's front edge, and its USB ports connect to motherboard headers. ...Read more...

Most users are aware that Microsoft regularly publishes updates to Windows 10 called "cumulative updates." Although that name has a nice ring to it, it doesn't describe exactly what those updates contain. The vast majority of software developers out there publish change logs when they update their wares, but for some reason, Microsoft has historically declined to do that for its latest OS.That's now changing, though. The company has put up a dedicated page succintly named " Windows 10 update history ." There, users can find a simple bulleted list detailing the main ...Read more...

It's still amazing how much horsepower one can cram into a small computer these days. Asus is serving that increasingly popular market with three B150-based itty-bitty mobos. ...Read more...

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Progress towards a Flash-free web continues. Google has announced that as of June 30 of this year, no new Flash-based ads will be accepted for its AdWords and DoubleClick services. As of January 2, 2017, any existing Flash ads will be mercifully laid to rest, and only HTML5 display ads will be delivered. Unfortunately, Flash ads will continue to get a pass for now.Google has been encouraging its advertisers to move to HTML5 for some time now by making available a number of tools to make the transition as painless as possible. HTML5 includes a number of new elements ...Read more...

Oculus' Rift is almost here, but in case you haven't heard, it's probably not going to run on the old family laptop. For those uninterested in building a new gaming PC from scratch this spring, Oculus has announced several new Oculus Ready PCs from Asus, Alienware, and Dell. Starting on February 16th, these machines can be preordered as part of a bundle including the Oculus Rift headset.Each bundle includes a PC that meets or exceeds the minimum requirements for the Oculus Rift, along with the headset itself and everything else Oculus will ship with its Rift preorder packages. That includes ...Read more...

Micron Technology posted an early report on its production of GDDR5X chips today, and the results sound good. The company says it's gotten working silicon back from its fabs earlier than expected, and those parts are already hitting 13Gb/s speeds. That's already toward the top end of the expected speeds for GDDR5X, whose specified transfer rates range from 10 to 14 Gb/s. Micron says those results are "incredibly promising." ...Read more...

1080p is still the most common resolution used by today's gamers, but compelling 4k monitor options are stacking up in the marketplace. AOC has a new 28" monitor in the works that combines a 4K resolution and AMD's FreeSync tech in a 28" package. ...Read more...

Amazon, never shy to enter a new line of business, has announced a free, cross-platform game engine today called Lumberyard. The online giant also announced GameLift, a managed service backend for multi-player games using Amazon Web Services. GameLift will only be available to games using Lumberyard.Lumberyard's graphics technology is a fork of Crytek's CryEngine. That engine has powered many ...Read more...

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Just a month ago, we took a peek at MSI's updated gaming laptop lineup. Among them, the GT72S Tobii looked the most intriguing. It promised competent eye tracking technology that would integrate with games for a more immersive experience. MSI officially launched the GT72S Tobii today, and we now have a better idea of its full specs and price. ...Read more...

Imagination Technologies CEO Hossein Yassaie announced his departure this morning as the company warned it would record a loss for its fiscal year ending April 30, 2016. Yassaie joined the company in 1992 and became its CEO in 1998. His corporate profile credits him with creating the intellectual property licensing model that brought the company to prominence.Imagination says royalties from some of its key customers fell short of its expectations last quarter, and it now expects less revenue in the first quarter than it had previously forecast, as well. In response, the company expects to cut $26.2 ...Read more...

Phanteks has officially launched its latest case series today with its Eclipse P400 and P400S Silent Edition mid-towers. These cases borrow some features from its siblings in the Enthoo lineup, like the Enthoo Evolv ATX, but at a step down in price point. ...Read more...

Asus has added another mechanical gaming keyboard to its Republic of Gamers lineup, the Horus GK2000. Named after the Egyptian god of the sky and hunting, the Horus GK2000 is styled with machined aluminum "wings." ...Read more...

Just in time for this weekend, Square Enix has released a patch for the latest Lara Croft adventure, Rise of the Tomb Raider. After the game was released for the PC last week, some Steam users reported problems starting the game. A number of potential culprits for that issue—a C++ runtime error, a failed Visual C++ installation, and conflicts with other applications—have all been addressed. ...Read more...

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It's Friday, gerbils, and you know what that means: it's for another round of high-quality deals on PC components. Here's what we found this week.That's it for this week's deals. If you find a bargain we missed, ...Read more...

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Farewell, Skylake BCLK overclocking, we hardly knew ye. ASRock has pulled the plug on its SkyOC feature, not even a couple months after it appeared in motherboards' firmware. The latest BIOS updates for some of the company's Z170 motherboards explicitly confirm that ASRock is removing the feature from its firmware. The beta BIOSes that included SkyOC in the first place have been scrubbed from the company's site, along with the announcement page for the feature.A while ago, WCCFtech noticed some rumors that Intel was about to roll out new firmware updates to disable base clock overclocking support on non-K CPUs from the Skylake family. The company apparently ...Read more...

NEC has released its PA322UHD-BK-2, a 31.5" 4K monitor with features targeting the graphics or video professional. The monitor uses an IGZO panel that delivers 99.2% of the Adobe RGB color space, 10-bit color support, maximum brightness of 350cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Those professional chops are backed up by support for Open Pluggable Specification expansion cards, which can be used to add broadcast-oriented inputs like HD-SDI. ...Read more...

Google is making good on its promise to protect users from social engineering attempts. The company is now putting the kibosh on fake download buttons, malware masquerading as system updates, and other similar types of attacks.Browsers using Google's Safe Browsing API (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, among others) will show users a big red warning when they visit a site that's been flagged ...Read more...

Google is making good on its promise to protect users from social engineering attempts. The company is now putting the kibosh on fake download buttons, malware masquerading as system updates, and other similar types of attacks.Browsers using Google's Safe Browsing API (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, among others) will show users a big red warning when they visit a site that's been flagged ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

I was looking for a game to relieve the stress of a long day recently. After looking through my Steam library for a while, I ran across Audiosurf, brushed the dust off, and fired it up. After sinking a few hours into Audiosurf, I was surprised to learn that Audiosurf 2 had been released a few months ago. Without skipping a beat, I purchased Audiosurf 2, and I was ready to rock and roll again. This game's unique combination of mesmerizing lights paired with the music of my choice keeps bringing me back. I'd say Audiosurf 2 is definitely worth a look if you enjoy music and want to make your listening experience more interactive. Check out the video below for all the details....Read more...

AMD's affordable CPUs can be a great fit for an HTPC or a NAS server. ASRock is likely thinking along the same lines, as it's just released the A88M-ITX/ac Mini-ITX motherboard. ...Read more...

Logitech has announced the full-sized G810 Orion Spectrum, its latest mechanical keyboard. This board is styled more conservatively than the company's other gaming keyboards like the G910 Orion Spark, but it keeps those boards' Romer-G switches and per-key RGB LED backlighting. ...Read more...