The A75M-ITX also choked in our game file copy test, as its write throughput was around 19% slower than the Z68M-ITX/HT, while its reads were 31% slower. When testing sequential reads and writes with CrystalDiskMark, the Z68M-ITX/HT stood out as one of the fastest motherboards we’ve tested with a read throughput of 504MB/s. The A75M-ITX was limited to just 357MB/s, or 29% slower than its Z68 counterpart.

Throughout 2021, a machine NASA sent to Mars with its 2020 Perseverance rover — called the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Experiment (MOXIE) — created around 50 grams of oxygen from the planet’s mostly Carbon Dioxide atmosphere. A recent MIT research paper explains how a lunchbox-sized machine successfully produced oxygen on Mars and how researchers could enlarge its operations. The experiment is an initial step toward sustainable human Mars exploration....

Considering the Snapdragon 410 was used in the previous generation model, ideally I would have liked to see an upgrade to something more powerful after a year. However, the Moto G4 Play is cheaper than its predecessor, and the Snapdragon 410 is a capable, competitive chip in the sub-$150 market. Unfortunately Motorola has not upgraded the Moto G with 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi support, so the G4 Play is stuck with just Wi-Fi 802....

It’s worth mentioning that the Moto G5 Plus is the only phone of the two to come with Motorola’s TurboPower fast charger in the box, hence why the Moto G5 Plus significantly outperforms the Moto G5 in charge time. However, Motorola confirmed to me that both phones support TurboPower charging, so if you purchase a Moto G5 then buy a TurboPower charger separately, you’ll get the same benefit.

In a recent Weibo post, Motorola teased it is working on the world’s first phone with a 200-megapixel camera while also revealing that it will come out in July. This phone will use Samsung’s Isocell HP1, which launched last year. Despite its megapixel count, it’s not the largest sensor used in mobile devices, measuring 1/1.22-inch thanks to a native pixel size of just 0.64μm. Motorola’s new phone is reportedly codenamed Frontier, and it has leaked several times in the past, giving us a good idea of what to expect....

MSI announced its flagship MEG Z690 Godlike in December 2021 but is just now getting around to launching it. The EATX board is based on the Intel Z690 chipset, and features four DIMM slots that can accommodate up to 128GB of DDR5 memory. You also get three PCIe x16 slots, six M.2 slots and six SATA III ports, an integrated Wi-Fi 6E module, two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 connectors and a host of other USB ports....

On that same note, if you are looking for the cheapest Core i7 board possible we had to look at the standard X58 Pro. As far as we can tell the only differences between these boards are the updated audio codec, a change in the PCB color and slightly altered cooling. For about $170 the standard X58 Pro is a serious bargain, as it is not only one of the cheapest Intel X58 motherboards on the market, it is also one of the best equipped at under $200....

You’re really happy with your purchase and games never looked nor played better. But you might just be wondering what exactly is powering your brand new Radeon RX 5700 and how different is it to the chip in a GeForce RTX. Welcome to our architectural and feature comparison of the newest GPUs from AMD and Nvidia: Navi vs Turing. Anatomy of a Modern GPU Before we begin our breakdown of the overall chip structures and systems, let’s take a look at the basic format that all modern GPUs follow....

Noctua just unveiled its new thermal paste guard for AMD AM5 processors. The NA-TPG1 is a precisely-cut piece of polycarbonate that hugs the IHS of Team Red’s latest series of desktop CPUs and thus prevents excess thermal paste from accumulating in the cutouts after a cooler is mounted. AM5 chips have an unusual eight-legged heatspreader due to AMD putting all SMDs (surface-mount devices) on the top side of the interposer....

In nearly every way, the Lumia 525 is the same as the Lumia 520: same Snapdragon S4 SoC, same five megapixel rear camera, same 4.0-inch WVGA display, same storage options and the same design. Nokia has bumped up the RAM from 512 MB to 1 GB, allowing you to run more apps in the background, as well as the latest games. The software included is also the latest and greatest, for what it’s worth....

The problem with selfies is that the front facing cameras on most smartphones suck. A two megapixel sensor with awful low light performance and weak optics is a hardware combination I would verbally annihilate if it were the main camera on a smartphone. Some manufacturers have noticed this, promising to deliver significantly better sensors to facilitate higher quality selfies that we all love to take. And so the Nokia Lumia 735 was born....

One of the big additions to Windows Phone is the Action Center, which is a pull down menu accessible by swiping down from the top of the display. Many people have been calling for a notification center since the launch of Windows Phone 7 in 2010, and Microsoft has finally delivered, meaning you don’t have to solely rely on Live Tile notifications to get alerts from apps. Windows Phone 8....

Credential stuffing is a type of attack where a malicious actor collects huge troves of stolen credentials, usually comprising usernames, emails and/or passwords from previous data breaches from other services. The hackers use these stolen credentials to try and gain unauthorized access to user accounts on other platforms – assuming the user has reused the same passwords – by executing large-scale automated login attempts against a web or remote application....

Last month, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 launched to great reviews, making a much better first impression when compared to AMD’s RX 6500 XT. Unfortunately for many would-be buyers, it sold out in a matter of hours and pricing also shot up to less palatable levels. Part of the problem is that Nvidia chose to use a cut-down version of the GA106 die from the RTX 3060, which is relatively large and expensive....

Star Wars Battlefront runs extremely well for a game that looks as amazing as it does. At 1080p the RX 480 and GTX 1060 both smash the 60fps barrier. The GTX 1060 might have been 9% faster but both GPUs provide an amazing experience here. Upping the resolution to 2560x1440 sees the GTX 1060 outperform the RX 480 by a similar margin, this time it was 10% faster. Here that extra performance doesn’t go unnoticed and with the GTX 1060 working closer to 60fps it is the more desirable option here....

First up we have Battlefield 4 and at 4K the GTX 1080 delivers a playable 50fps on average with a 37fps minimum. This makes it 14% faster than the Titan X and an impressive 28% faster than the GTX 980 Ti. Compared to the standard GTX 980 it’s a whopping 72% faster, while it also leads the Fury X by a fairly significant 47% margin. Maxing out The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt still proves a bit much at 4K even for the new GTX 1080....

Cutting your way through hordes of stupidly easy baddies in For Honor is at least slightly satisfying with the GTX 1080 Ti. Here we see over 80 fps and this will help you keep up in the online mode as you change your guard stance multiple times per second. Now at 4K using the extreme quality preset we are still seeing a respectable 55 fps on average. This was a 22% performance boost over the 45 fps churned out by the origional GTX 1080....

Adding a second Radeon HD 5870 saw the Crossfire setup consume 39% more power than a single GeForce GTX 480 taking the entire system power consumption level to a staggering 591 watts. Despite the hefty load results the Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire setup only used 17% more power at idle when compared to the single GPU configuration. The GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup on the other hand sucked down 348 watts at idle which is more power than the same system consumed with a single Radeon HD 5870 under full load....

The GTX 660 rendered a comfortable 35fps in Crysis 2, allowing it to match the HD 7870 and beat the 7850 by a 13% margin. Moreover, it was just 5% slower than the GTX 660 Ti and 67% faster than the GTX 560 Ti. Nvidia’s Kepler cards seem to perform much better in Dragon Age II compared their AMD equals, and this was certainly the case when comparing the GTX 660, which was 21% and 32% quicker than the HD 7870 and 7850, respectively....

The bigger picture is that Maxwell cards with similar specifications to those based on Kepler should be significantly faster while consuming about the same amount of power. It’s also worth noting that Nvidia’s efficiency gains allow for compact cards with plenty of overclocking headroom. We got an extra 26% out of the GM107 core as we hit 1290MHz from 1020MHz versus a 17% boost on the Radeon R7 265....