That being the case, we expected the A8-3850 to overclock very poorly. To our surprise, we were able to increase the clock frequency by 25%, and this was achieved without any voltage adjustments. We’ve included a screenshot of CPU-Z, but please note that the utility isn’t reporting all information correctly yet for the Llano processors, including voltage and socket pin count. Overclocking the AMD A8-3850 to 3.62GHz improved the IGP’s frame rate in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 by 19% at 1280x800....

Despite the clock speed disadvantage that the Core 2 Duo E7400 and Pentium E6300 processors face, they were still able to come out on top in the 3dsmax test. The Phenom II X2 550 was just a fraction slower than the C2D while it did manage to beat the E5400 by a tiny margin. The Athlon II X2 250 on the other hand was quite a bit slower than the E5400, and yet managed to beat the Phenom II X4 910, which sure looks strange....

Phenom Test System Specs - AMD Phenom II X4 955 (AM3) - AMD Phenom II X4 940 (AM2+) - AMD Phenom X4 9950 (AM2+) The Phenom II X4 series has never performed particularly well in the Super PI benchmark. Though the Phenom II X4 965 reduced the calculation time by 5.5% when compared to the 955, this still placed the Phenom II X4 965 well behind the Core 2 Quad Q9650 in this test....

The Radeon HD 7790 released last month it’s a product most gamers have the potential to enjoy considering its $150 price tag. The HD 7790 took the chip count for the series to 10 distinct 28nm GPUs. Today AMD has a wide range of prices covered starting at $100 with the Radeon HD 7750 up to $450 with the 7970 GHz Edition. Those able and wanting to spend in excess of $450 on a single graphics card need to look in Nvidia’s direction at either the GeForce GTX 690 or the mighty GTX Titan, both extravagant $1000 options....

The only Vulkan title to be included is of course Doom and here we see at 1080p, Vega 56 is able to hit the 200 fps frame cap. Even at 4K frame rates still remain above 60 fps at at all times and AMD takes the win. Looking at the 1440p results we see Vega is able to deliver 10% more performance which isn’t bad, though given the RX 580 is almost 20% faster than the GTX 1060, we was expecting more to be honest....

AMD’s desktop CPU roadmap confirms a few facts about Zen 4. Firstly, the company’s 3D V-cache technology used in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D will be part of the new processor series, though it never revealed how many chips will utilize it and whether they will launch alongside the new processors. As a reminder, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D stacks a 41mm2 die containing only L3 cache over the Zen 3 core complex die, increasing the amount of L3 cache from 32MB to 96MB....

The Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX is a 64-core/128-thread workstation CPU that’s actually been out in the wild for about 5 months now. AMD announced and released this monstrous CPU back in March, but it was available for OEMs only. Starting today, the Threadripper Pro 5000 series is going retail, meaning you can now build your own insane workstation if you have enough money, because damn are these things expensive....

Graphics cards are among the PC components to which we dedicate the most time on TechSpot, so clearly they need a proper dissection. Let’s assemble the team and head for the operating table. It’s time to delve into the innards that make up a graphics card, splitting up its various parts and seeing what each bit does. Enter the dragon Ah, the humble graphics card, or to give it a more fulsome title: the video acceleration add-in expansion card....

I’ve also thrown PCMark’s battery benchmark into the mix, because it is the one test here that could benefit from Android 5.0’s under the hood changes. As this is a high performance battery benchmark that tests the efficiency of the CPU (mostly), having more efficient code without as much overhead thanks to ART could theoretically improve battery life. This is because the CPU won’t have to waste as many clock cycles on inefficient processes, such as converting instructions from bytecode to native code on the fly....

At $90 the Thunder M7 is up against the Logitech G600, Corsair Vengeance M95 and Razer Naga – some serious competition. Like the Thunder K7 keyboard, the M7 is another no expenses spared product and this is evident right from the get go. Out of the box gamers will find a soft-texture carry case, ideal for transporting the Thunder M7 to LAN events. Included in the case is a pair of replacement Teflon pads in case you wear out the shoes....

Last year, a group of Republican senators proposed a new bill that would end what they called “warrant-proof” encryption, adding to a never-ending headache that affects both tech companies and consumers. In the case of Apple, even the FBI has asked it to break the encryption on iPhones on several occasions over the last few years. As of late, it’s been toning down its requests and expressing them in a more diplomatic manner....

The disclaimer from our iPad 2 review still applies: your mileage will vary depending on how heavily you use the tablet. If you are doing some heavy-duty photo editing in iPhoto, listening to Pandora in the background and have your Twitter and IM apps all open, you can expect this number to decrease significantly. The reworked 5MP camera on the back of the iPad is a significant upgrade. Granted, you still aren’t likely to carry a tablet as your primary photo snapper but it’s nice to have the option if you’re in a pinch....

You wouldn’t know it’s an incremental update based on early sales figures, however. Apple managed to move more than nine million iPhones during launch weekend a few weeks ago and early reports suggest the 5s was the top-selling phone at all four major US carriers in September – surprisingly, it’s the cheaper 5c that is not doing as well. That said, there is some new technology inside the 5s that is partly responsible for its early success, namely the all-new 64-bit A7 processor and the Touch ID fingerprint reader built into the phone’s Home button....

The program is somewhat limited for now. Currently, Apple only sells batteries, bottom speakers, cameras, displays, and SIM trays to US customers. Additionally, parts are limited to just five models of iPhone — iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, and iPhone 13. However, Apple says it plans to expand the service to other countries and will have parts available for M1 Macs later this year. Repairs often require specific tools to get the job done....

Ming-Chi Kuo on Twitter said he doesn’t believe we will see the headset and rumored operating system, realityOS, next week simply because the device hasn’t entered mass production yet. If Apple were to showcase the headset this far out from launch, competitors would likely copy the company’s ideas and get them to market sooner than Cupertino can. Kuo also mentions 2023 as Apple’s target launch window. If AR / VR hardware is off the table for next week, what might we see instead?...

Update: Apple has given a statement to TechCrunch, confirming that all employees and customers are safe “after this terrifying experience.” The original story follows below: Reuters reports that there were about 70 people inside the Apple Store in Leidseplein when the situation began, but they managed to escape before it ended. Pictures captured from the store show the 27-year-old suspect sitting opposite a hostage whose hands are cuffed behind his back....

iFixit’s teardown of the Apple Watch Ultra is a bit of a mixed bag. The device is praised for being the first Apple Watch to come with screws that are accessible on the back. Unfortunately, removing the ceramic backplate destroys a waterproofing gasket that acts as a glue, and replacing it to restore the 100m water resistance won’t be easy. Moreover, removing the back doesn’t even grant access to the battery....

Both chips were clocked lower than their Bay Trail-D predecessors which helped reduce power consumption but also made the Braswell parts slower, and sacrificing performance isn’t something these low-end SoCs can really afford to do. While Intel’s latest desktop SoCs didn’t wow us, we were impressed with the quality of the boards and now Asrock is back to show us a more complete package by implementing Braswell in its new ‘Beebox’ mini PC....

Even with dual-channel DDR3-1600 memory at its disposal the Beebox’s Celeron N3000 only ekes out 8.4GB/s, a comparable bandwidth to the AMD A4-4000. That said, it was quite a bit faster than the Celeron N3050 of the Asrock N3050-ITX motherboard which is surprising. The Asrock Beebox and its Celeron N3000 SoC provided slightly stronger L1 and L2 cache performance than the Celeron N2808 of the ECS Liva X.

Company of Heroes saw both the Asrock P55 Extreme4 and Asus P7P55D Deluxe deliver 124fps at 1920x1200, making them slower only to the Core i7 920 configuration but faster than the Phenom II X6 1090T system. In Far Cry 2 our benchmark results once again were identical with both P55 boards averaging 91fps at 1920x1200. Finally, we tested with Resident Evil 5 and as you can see the Asrock P55 Extreme4 matched the Asus P7P55D Deluxe at 1920x1200 and delivered a few more frames per second at 1024x768....