Techreport

Super-fast gaming graphics cards are all well and good. Sometimes, though, what one really needs is an absurd amount of display area to keep an eye on stock prices, monitor an entire power station, or perhaps even get a good look at one of TR's frametime Excel sheets. Enter the Matrox C900. ...Read more...

Soft Machines continues to develop CPUs built using its VISC architecture. If you're not already familiar with VISC, be sure to read our in-depth look at VISC from October of last year. As a quick refresher, VISC works by inserting a middleware layer between the native instruction set architecture of the operating system above and the hardware beneath. This middleware then translates the native ISA into VISC's native instruction set before distributing the workload across the processor's virtual cores.VISC's trick is that even in single-threaded workloads, it can break that work into chunks that Soft Machines calls "threadlets." In turn, a VISC CPU can distribute the work of a demanding single thread on a virtual core across multiple hardware cores. It can also ...Read more...

Biostar's microATX H110MD Pro is the company's latest foray into the Skylake motherboard space. This board carries a budget-friendly $54.99 suggested price. Unlike most Skylake boards, the H110MD Pro only supports 16GB of DDR3L 1600 MT/s memory, but it can still accept a wide range of Skylake CPUs with TDPs up to 91W. ...Read more...

7 Up

Back when we reviewed OCZ's Trion 100 solid-state drive, we concluded its attractive price didn't quite make up for its performance. OCZ is now looking to give its entry-level drive lineup a little more oomph with the release of the Trion 150, a drive that purports to offer "increased real-world performance" over its predecessor. ...Read more...

Last year, Microsoft said it had future plans to push users to upgrade to Windows 10, and it's keeping its promise. The operating system is now being offered to users on Windows 7 and 8.1 as a "recommended" update, which means that for the majority of people, it will be downloaded and installed automatically.This doesn't mean that it's being rammed down users' throats, though—they'll still be asked if they actually want to go ahead with the upgrade. If ...Read more...

7 Up

Remember the IBM Deskstar fiasco many moons ago? We may be seeing a rehash of that story, this time with Seagate as a defendant. The company is under legal fire from a class-action lawsuit regarding its Barracuda 3TB internal hard drives and Backup Plus 3TB external drives.Law firm Hagens Berman has filed a lawsuit in the Northern California District Court on behalf of Seagate consumers who had their 3TB drives fail, sometimes after only a few days of ...Read more...

Both AMD and Nvidia have freshly released hotfixes for their graphics drivers. Nvidia's 361.82 update addresses a problem that made internal graphics cards appear to users as removable devices in the Windows system tray. It's plausible that the problem cropped up when Nvidia recently added support for external graphics solutions. If you've been overly tempted to press that button and see what happens, you can grab the 320 MB update here.AMD's Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1.1 update provides a laundry list of fixes. Most notably, this beta driver includes a Crossfire profile and some improvements for Rise of the Tomb Raider , along with ...Read more...

AMD had some announcements to make at CES regarding Socket AM4 and a new, quieter boxed cooler called the Wraith. While new CPUs and APUs for Socket AM4 remain under wraps, AMD is introducing three new processors for Socket FM2+ today, along with two new boxed heatsinks that are meant to bring Wraith-like performance to more processors. ...Read more...

In our Fallout 4 review, we concluded that while it's a good game, it could still use a little more work on the technical side. Bethesda made a promise of sorts a while ago to keep Fallout 4 updates flowing steadily, and so far it hasn't let us gamers down. The Fallout 4 1.3 patch for PC is out now with lots of important fixes.The PC version of the game was already the best-looking one to me by far, and it's gotten prettier with this patch. The new version adds support for Nvidia's HBAO+ ambient occlusion , which improves the game's shadow ...Read more...

AMD first revealed its plans for hardware-based GPU virtualization, called Multiuser GPU or MxGPU, in September of last year. Today, the company is taking the wraps off the first two FirePro server cards that incorporate those hardware features: the FirePro S7150 and the FirePro S7150 X2. AMD says these cards are ideal for delivering workstation-class graphics in virtual desktop infrastructure (or VDI) environments.AMD believes the S7100-series cards will help organizations solve a couple of growing problems with workstation computing. For one, the company says organizations are dealing with increasingly large data sets, and those data sets need to remain secure, as well. In turn, ...Read more...

7 Up

During CES, a few of Dell's monitors received the show's Innovation Awards. Among them, there was a pretty model for graphics professionals called the U2717D with the company's "InfinityEdge" super-thin bezels on board. ...Read more...

Gigabyte has quietly released BIOS updates for its range of X99-chipset-based motherboards. Along with support for 16GB DIMMs, the new firmware versions bring support for what Gigabyte mysteriously calls "2016 Q2 coming new CPU." We're guessing that means the company is readying its X99 motherboards for Intel's rumored Broadwell-E CPUs. A quick check of a dozen Gigabyte X99 mobos reveals that indeed, if you have a Gigabyte X99-based motherboard, you can already enjoy both these new features.If our guess is right, that move crystallizes earlier rumors that Broadwell-E would use the same LGA 2011-v3 socket as Haswell-E parts, and it also suggests that the X99 chipset will soldier on through another generation of ...Read more...

G.Skill is dishing out a veritable onslaught of fast, high-capacity DDR4 RAM. The company has pulled back the curtain on its latest bombshell, the "Ripjaws V DDR4-3200MHz 128GB (16GBx8)" kit. ...Read more...

When OnePlus released its first phone back in 2014, it pulled off an interesting publicity stunt. Buyers could only order its One phone if they obtained an invitation first. OnePlus is finished with this invite system for the moment, and it's come up with a clever new idea to replace it: send the company money, and it'll send you a phone back. ...Read more...

Happy Friday, gerbils. We're up bright and early to bring you the best tech deals we could find from this week's offerings. Here's what we found.Those are the best deals we could find this week. If we missed something ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Aluminum crafting experts Lian Li seem to have a small case for every taste. The company's PC-M25 enclosure looks geared towards mini-server or NAS builds. ...Read more...

Microsoft has released its earnings numbers for the second quarter of its fiscal 2016. The company took in $23.8 billion in revenue, $6 billion in operating income, and $5 billion in net income for the quarter. Revenue fell 10% compared to this time a year ago, while operating income fell 23% and net income fell 15%.Those numbers may look bad at first, but it appears Apple isn't the only company frustrated by the weakness of foreign currencies against the US dollar right now . In ...Read more...

It's becoming quite common for game developers to offer early access to upcoming titles in order to drum up anticipation, stress-test servers, or get feedback from the community. However, there's always the chance that the game will turn out to be a buggy mess—even after release. To encourage gamers to take a chance on these games, GOG.com is offering an early access program that allows gamers to try out upcoming titles risk-free.The program is launching with five titles: Starbound , Ashes of the Singularity , Project Zomboid , Terratech , and The Curious Expedition . Purchases of these titles come with a 14-day, no-questions-asked refund policy, ...Read more...

Microsoft has released new firmware updates updates for the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. The updates should enhance battery charging and thermal tuning, improve connections on 5Ghz networks, and help the system more accurately detect when the Surface keyboard is attached. While these updates may not address all of the complaints with that hardware, users will likely appreciate Microsoft's attention to these concerns.These updates follow a tough season for Microsoft's Surface lineup. Some users have been grumbling about a range of issues with the latest Surface hardware since its launch last year. More embarrassing was the public breakdown of the New England Patriots' sideline Surface units during the AFC Championship Game. To be fair ...Read more...

Big changes are in the works for the world's second most popular programming language. Following Mozilla's announcement that its Firefox browser will not support most NPAPI plugins by the end of 2016, Oracle revealed yesterday that it plans to deprecate its popular Java browser plugin in the next development kit. The plugin will disappear entirely from the Oracle JDK and JRE in the near future.Oracle indicates that this change has been motivated largely by the popularity of mobile devices. Web browsers for mobile devices typically lack support for plugins , and Oracle thinks browser makers like Mozilla would rather unify the features available ...Read more...

PC Hardware and Computing

A pay-what-you-want game pack isn't the kind of news one tends to see these days, but sometimes there are exceptions. Humble Bundle and Firaxis have joined forces to bring us a pack of XCOM and Civilization titles, and it's a doozy. ...Read more...

Version 48 of the Chrome browser was released today. While this release doesn't deserve much fanfare for its desktop operating system incarnations, it's a whole 'nother story in iOS. The new version uses the same rendering engine as recent versions of Safari on iOS, and that's kind of a big deal.With the updated engine, Chrome on iOS gets a massive speed boost (sometimes an order of magnitude faster , as demonstrated by the ...Read more...

Nvidia has just released version 361.75 of its graphics drivers. Along with a handful of SLI profile updates, there's a new feature out of left field. The company has added beta support for external graphics cards over Thunderbolt 3 connections.This new feature is supported on all GeForce cards in the 900 series, as well as the GeForce Titan X, GTX 750, and 750 Ti models. Besides the Thunderbolt 3 goodness, Nvidia ...Read more...

Apple has announced what it's calling its strongest results ever for the first quarter of its financial 2016. The company posted $75.9 billion in revenue and $18.4 billion in net income. Those numbers are up about 1.7% and 2.2% from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin grew to 40.1% from 39.9% a year ago.While that growth isn't as meteoric as past quarters, Apple says it performed well despite a difficult macroeconomic climate. The company points out that turbulence in exchange rates negatively affected its results ...Read more...

Das Keyboard, the company best known by their er, Das Keyboard, has launched a new brand targeted at the gaming crowd. The name of the game is Division Zero, and Das has a couple peripherals on offer under the new moniker. ...Read more...

What distinguishes "gaming" peripherals from regular models? For MSI, it's a combination of higher-end hardware, customizability, and style. Its new Interceptor DS300 gaming mouse seeks to deliver on all three for demanding gamers. ...Read more...

Part of the draw of desktop PCs is the assurance that everything can be upgraded. A four-year-old graphics card that isn't keeping up with modern games can simply be replaced, for example. For its new Core X5 series cases, Thermaltake is betting that builders want that same modularity and flexibility for their cases. ...Read more...

NZXT teased a mystery case a couple weeks ago at CES, and we now know what the company was keeping under wraps. The Manta is a Mini-ITX case that's built using curved steel exterior panels. NZXT says this new manufacturing process lets it include twice as much room for cable mangement in the Manta as one might find in a traditional flat-sided Mini-ITX case. ...Read more...

Looking for a simple, affordable graphics card offering better performance than integrated graphics? Look no further than Nvidia's GeForce GT 710 models. This tiny card became available at retail today, and its small size and tame thermal requirements could make it a good choice for a number of systems. ...Read more...

The Far Cry series of games has been evolving and improving over the years, unlike some others I can think of. Ubisoft's latest title in the series, called Far Cry Primal, is shaping up to be quite interesting. The firm recently releasted a story trailer for the game. Take a look:...Read more...

Antec has added a couple members to its family of Kühler H2O, er, coolers. Say hello to the H600 Pro and H1200 Pro closed-loop liquid coolers. ...Read more...

Back when we reviewed the R9 Fury X, we commented on how much power it fits into a compact package. Now AMD and Falcon Northwest, purveyors of powerful (and expensive) prebuilt systems, have taken AMD's Fiji GPU to a new level. Falcon showed off a machine with an AMD "Gemini" dual-Fiji card at Virtual Reality Los Angeles, powering a demo of HTC's Vive headset.Prototype Tiki from @FalconNW powering #htcvive with dual ...Read more...

Happy Friday, gerbils. We've done our usual scouring for the best deals to be had online, and we're back with the results. Behold:That's it for this week. If we missed a good deal in the vast reaches ...Read more...

Users looking forward to Windows 10 Mobile are going to have to wait a little longer. According to VentureBeat, Microsoft is delaying the release of the new operating system, and has now settled on a February launch. ...Read more...

Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book have certainly made an impression with techies everywhere. Some really heavy-duty users may feel a little constrained by the top-end option for 512GB of flash storage, though, and Microsoft is addressing that issue with a 1TB storage option. ...Read more...

Bandwidth ahoy! Hot on the heels of the news that Samsung is producing HBM2 chips, the JEDEC standards body has now published the specification for GDDR5X graphics memory, affectionately known as JESD232.As the name implies, the new standard is based on the existing GDDR5 spec, but doubles the range of available bandwidth to 10-14 ...Read more...

We recently wrote about AMD's Radeon R9 Nano price drop. Now there's a rumor floating around that the R9 Fury's price sticker will be slashed, too.

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The rumor mill is abuzz about Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S7 flagship phone, which is expected to show up at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The latest tidbits of information about the phone's innards just popped up in the AnTuTu benchmark database.The model that just showed up in the benches is the Exynos-powered SM-G930F. This information seems to substantiate previous rumors saying the Galaxy S7 will come with two ...Read more...

Case manufacturer Spire has anounced the Tricer 1408, its latest microATX chassis. It's a budget case that aims to provide sturdiness and ease of assembly to those building microATX or Mini-ITX systems. ...Read more...

The more prime numbers we find, the harder it gets to find a new one. The latest prime number, discovered using the free Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) software, is 22,338,618 digits long, over five million digits longer than the last one discovered. The new prime, 2-1, is also only the 49th known Mersenne prime. The number is so large that a text file containing it occupies 22 MB.As hardware geeks, we were immediately curious about the machines responsible for the discovery. For the initial proof, Dr. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri ran GIMPS on a PC running an Intel Core i7-4790 for 31 days straight. His proof was ...Read more...

The security team at Perception Point has uncovered a serious bug in the Linux kernel that could allow a regular user to get elevated permissions on an affected system. The vulnerability affects the Linux kernel versions 3.8 and higher.The bug lies in the code that implements Linux's keyrings facility , which is "primarily a way for drivers to retain or cache security data, authentication keys, encryption keys, and other data." To exploit the bug, ...Read more...

If Intel and IT departments have their way, perhaps you won't have a choice but to log into a company PC using approved authentication methods. Alongside its lineup of Skylake vPro processors, Intel revealed a new tool for IT departments yesterday called Authenticate that uses hardware features of the platform to enforce and verify up to three multi-factor authentication methods. ...Read more...

Google will soon enable support in Chrome for a new compression algorithm called Brotli. The algorithm has been in the works for a while, and now the Chromium team has deemed it fit for general consumption.Brotli is a general-use lossless compression algorithm. Although it can be used for any kind of data, Google expects Brotli will be used for compressing web ...Read more...

Chromebooks have reportedly been quite successful in the classroom, and HP is looking at that market with lustful eyes. The company has just unveiled its Chromebook 11 G4 Education Edition, which it describes as a "durable, lightweight" Chromebook. ...Read more...