We are off to a rather rocky start, in our game installation test where the MP500 was only able to match the higher-end SATA drives, making it almost 30 seconds slower to complete the task compared to the 960 Pro. The 45GB backup performance was better, this time the MP500 matched the Kingston Predator and G.Skill Phoenix Blade, neither of which are NVMe drives though. Again the MP500 is only able to match the G....
Although its build quality helped justify its price and while I really enjoyed the look and feel of the Strafe, this keyboard ultimately came up short in my opinion. The board’s feature set wasn’t as rich as some of the more affordable contenders and I really missed having a wrist rest. Of course, given how fast things move in the mechanical keyboard world, it wouldn’t be long before we had a successor or some new iteration of the Strafe....
While Crucial’s latest drive demonstrated subpar read performance, we find the complete opposite when measuring write performance with Atto Disk Benchmark. The m4 had a stellar showing, ousting the RealSSD C300, SSD 510 Series, and even the Vertex 3 when looking at 1K and 2K performance, while the 8K, 32K and 128K performance was also very strong.
When it comes to dangerous cryptographic bugs on Windows, CryptoAPI is the gift that keeps on giving. The interface can be used by Win32 programs to manage security and cryptographic practices, like validating certificates or verifying identities. But CryptoAPI can also bring potentially critical security flaws to the aforementioned Windows platform, making identity and certificate spoofing easier. According to Akamai Security analysts, that’s exactly what happened with the vulnerability known as CVE-2022-34689....
Crypto.com is kicking itself for a highly foolish clerical error. The cryptocurrency exchange recently issued a refund for a customer in Australia. The transaction was supposed to be for $100 AU ($68.55 US). However, the employee processing the refund entered an account number in the payment field resulting in a $10.5 million AU ($7.2 million US) payout. To make matters worse, Crypto.com didn’t even notice the error for over seven months....
The main showpieces among Dell’s new gaming laptops this week were Alienware’s new RTX 3080-powered models with bleeding-edge 480Hz screens. However, the company has also started shipping a mid-level option sitting between the 15-inch G series notebooks and Alienware’s 17-inch beast. Previous Dell G15 systems all featured 16:9 1080p screens at 120Hz or 165Hz, but the new G16 raises that to a 16:10 2560 x 1600 at 165Hz. Elsewhere, the new model retains the same combination of a 12th-gen Intel processor and Nvidia RTX Ampere graphics....
….or is it? Sitting in front of me is the new Dell XPS 13, and as far as I can tell, it ticks most of the aforementioned boxes. It has a 13-inch display with a very slim bezel, making it extremely portable. The aluminium shell with a carbon fibre-style interior looks pretty darn good. Internally we’re getting a new Intel Broadwell Core i5 CPU, which is just as powerful as before but more energy efficient....
I was immediately skeptical of Dell’s 15 hour battery claims because that’s well over what I’ve experienced on similar devices in the past. The MacBook Air 13-inch (for example) is a great performer in terms of battery life, but it doesn’t really achieve its claimed 12 hours of life in practice. Anything above ten hours is pretty optimistic in general, and considering many devices on the market barely scrape past eight hours in practice, claiming the XPS 13 achieves nearly double this sounds very far fetched....
One of AMD’s presentations at the 2022 Game Developers Conference will cover various technologies powering Square Enix’s upcoming open-world game Forspoken. One of those technologies is DirectStorage, making Forspoken the first PC game confirmed to take advantage of the feature. Developer Luminous Productions and AMD will detail how the game uses FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), ray tracing, and other graphics features. The presentation will show DirectStorage in action and offer advice on how to use it in future games....
The only processors to show some signs of weakness were the Core 2 Duo and Athlon II. It also doesn’t appear that quad-core processors are essential as the Phenom II X2 560 performed very well in our test.
EA will remove BioWare Points from its Origin game store on October 11, according to an email the company recently sent out to users. Before 2017, the currency was the only way to buy DLCs for older Bioware titles including Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3. As a result, all single-player add-ons for these games are now available free of charge. You’ll have to go to your game library, select one of the mentioned titles, navigate to the “Extra Content” pane, and get each DLC separately (Mass Effect 2 alone has over a dozen of them)....
Yesterday, Musk posted a version of the still-popular Distracted Boyfriend meme that included the CEO, Tesla, and Twitter. “To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” Musk wrote. “Yesterday was Giga Texas, today is Starbase. Tesla is on my mind 24/7. So may seem like below, but not true.” It’s hard to believe Musk really is spending so little time on the Twitter acquisition....
According to a new SEC filing, billionaire Elon Musk will go through with his Twitter acquisition, after all, provided the company drops its lawsuit against him. Twitter shares rose 22 percent when the news broke, while Tesla shares fell about 5 percent but have recovered somewhat since then. So how did this whole ordeal start? In April, Musk disclosed that he purchased a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter. The company quickly offered him a seat on its board of directors, which Musk eventually rejected as it wouldn’t bar him from ever acquiring a stake larger than 14....
Speaking at Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said the robotaxi would reach volume production in two years and “be a massive driver of Tesla’s growth.” That timeframe is pretty optimistic, given the number of regulatory hurdles the vehicles will doubtlessly face. Musk added that the robotaxis would offer the lowest cost-per-mile that customers have ever experienced, less than a bus ticket—a subsidized bus ticket—or a subsidized subway ticket. The world’s richest person also said they are highly optimized for autonomy and will have no steering wheels or pedals....
The Core i7-7600U used in top-spec Surface Pros does have a decent spec advantage. It also has two cores and four threads, but a base clock of 2.5 GHz with a maximum turbo clock of 4.0 GHz. The GPU gets bumped up to Iris Plus 640 graphics clocked at 1100 MHz, with twice the execution units and a much larger TDP to play with relative to the 7Y75. You can see purely on specifications that Intel’s U-series parts do have a speed advantage, which does lead to some concerns over the Eve V’s performance compared to the Surface Pro....
The monitor I’ve been using to test FreeSync 2 is the Samsung C49HG90, a stupidly wide 49-inch double 1080p display with a total resolution of 3840 x 1080. It’s got a 1800R curve, uses VA technology, and it’s certified for DisplayHDR 600. This means it sports up to 600 nits of peak brightness, covers at least 90% of the DCI-P3 gamut, and has basic local dimming. Now while this panel doesn’t support the full DisplayHDR 1000 with 1000 nits of peak brightness for optimal HDR, the Samsung CHG90 does provide more than just an entry-level HDR experience....
Roomster is an app available through Apple’s App Store and Google Play that supposedly helps people find roommates or rooms to rent. The FTC claims it’s very popular with college students and other low-income individuals that can’t reasonably afford a place on their own. Think of it like Zillow, except for people looking to cohabitate with others. However, the FTC says that Roomster employed AppWinn’s Jonathan Martinez to post thousands of fake reviews on listings....
The GTX 670 fared well in Battlefield 3, averaging an impressive 42fps at 2560x1600, on par with the HD 7970, 17% faster than the HD 7950, 24% faster than the GTX 580 and only 7% slower than the GTX 680. Modern Warfare 3 didn’t provide much of a challenge for the GTX 670, rendering 78fps at 2560x1600 to outpace the HD 7970 by 1% and the HD 7950 by 18%, while being only 4% slower than the GTX 680....
The GTX 760 averaged 66.1fps at 1920x1200 in Battlefield 3, 6% slower than the overclocked Gainward GTX 760 Phantom. Although the GTX 760 Phantom was faster than the HD 7950, the standard GTX 760 was 3% slower, though it was still 9% faster than the GTX 660 Ti and 12% faster than the HD 7870. The GTX 760’s frame time performance results were fairly similar to what we saw in its frames per second testing as the card was 5% slower than the Phantom edition but 8% faster than the GTX 660 Ti, 17% faster than the HD 7870 and 2% faster than the HD 7950....
