Earlier this year, MSI launched the Optix MAG27CQ and MPG27CQ; two monitors that check a lot of boxes on the feature list. They are both 27" curved monitors with 1440p resolutions, FreeSync support, 144Hz refresh rates, and 1ms response times. They also come equipped with gaming focused display features, and the MPG27CQ even has RGB lighting. These monitors appear to be similar on paper although the MAG is considerably less expensive, so let’s see how they perform and whether one of them may be a good choice for your next gaming display upgrade....

I followed Nest and the success they were having with their connected thermostat over the course of the past two years and after making the decision to replace all incandescent light bulbs in my apartment with energy efficient LED units, I also decided it would be as good a time as any to see exactly what the Nest was all about. The Nest Thermostat is currently in its second revision and has been for a little over a year now....

News of the motherboard comes from prolific leaker momomo_us (via Tom’s Hardware). The H610M+ board is made by Onda, and it supports DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800 memory modules up to a maximum capacity of 32GB. Before Alder Lake owners start scouring the internet for this board, there’s an important factor to consider: it’s limited to a single DIMM for each memory type. Using single-channel memory introduces a noticeable performance hit, so you’ll have to weigh up whether the impact is worth having support for both memory types....

As reported by Bleeping Computer, the analysts at cybersecurity firms Flashpoint and Sekoia spotted the malware, named RisePro, being distributed through fake cracks sites operated by the PrivateLoader pay-per-install (PPI) malware distribution service, which up until now had almost exclusively distributed the RedLine Stealer or Raccoon infostealers. Once it infects a system, RisePro hunts down and steals sensitive data from an extensive list of applications, including web browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox, as well as browser extensions and cryptocurrency wallets including Authenticator, MetaMask, and Jaxx Liberty Extension....

The strange story began a few days ago when Reddit user u/NuclearInnardsBeep posted a photo of what he claimed was inside the RTX 4090 box they ordered from Newegg: nothing but a couple of large metal blocks. The poster also claimed that rather than responding, Newegg locked their account when they complained to the retailer, which sounds like the company assumed it was dealing with a scam. But it has now been confirmed that the account was only suspended for a few days while the investigation took place, as is Newegg’s standard practice when dealing with fraud cases....

Bloomberg writes that Niantic Chief Executive Officer John Hanke told staff in an email that the company was “facing a time of economic turmoil” and had already been “reducing costs in a variety of areas.” San Francisco-based Niantic has reportedly canceled four projects: a Transformers spin-off announced last year called Heavy Metal; Hamlet, which would have been a collaboration with Punchdrunk, the theatrical company behind the interactive play Sleep No More; and two other projects called Blue Sky and Snowball, though they may have been codenames....

The majority of Nokia/Microsoft’s smartphone business focuses on mid-range and entry-level products, with devices like the Lumia 520 proving especially popular. However, every year the company releases a few flagships to compete with the likes of the iPhones, Galaxys and Ones, usually in several form factors to attract a range of buyers. Last year, for example, we saw the release of the Lumia 925, the large-screened Lumia 1520, and the 41-megapixel Lumia 1020....

The GTX 560 Ti averaged 54fps at 1680x1050 in Hard Reset, 10% faster than the HD 6870 and 50% faster than the 7770. That said, it was still 10% slower than the GTX 560 Ti and 28% slower than the GTX 660. Just Cause 2 saw the GTX 650 Ti render just 45fps at 1680x1050, 15% slower than the GTX 560 Ti and 25% slower than the GTX 660, though it still outpaced the HD 6870 and 7770 by 5% and 36%....

The GTX 660 Ti’s power consumption was a little surprising as Gigabyte’s card chugged roughly the same amount of juice as the GTX 670. That said, given that the only major change is in the memory sub-system, it makes sense. The GTX 660 Ti also consumed 11% more power than the HD 7870, but that’s definitely justifiable when you measure the additional performance offered by Nvidia’s solution. Armed with Gigabyte’s WindForce 2X technology, the GTX 660 Ti reached a maximum of 77 degrees under load, which is a little hotter than the HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7870, but still very manageable....

Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz) x4 2GB G.Skill DDR3-1600(CAS 8-8-8-20) Asrock X79 Extreme11 (Intel X79) OCZ ZX Series (1250w) Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 (2048MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 (2048MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti (2048MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 (3072MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB) AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition (3072MB) HIS Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB) HIS Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB) HIS Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 6990 (4096MB) HIS Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB) HIS Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB) Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit Nvidia Forceware 301....

To get a fuller picture, it’s increasingly apparent that you need to factor in a card’s frame latency, which looks at how quickly each frame is delivered. Regardless of how many frames a graphics card produces on average in 60 seconds, if it can’t deliver them all at roughly the same speed, you might see more brief jittery points with one GPU over another – something we’ve witnessed but didn’t fully understand....

Amazingly the GeForce GTX 780 system configuration consumed just 333watts under load which was just 5% more than the GTX 680 but 6% less than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. It also consumed 7% less power than the GTX Titan. The GeForce GTX 780 ran at 79 degrees under load which is a similar temperature to that of the Radeon HD 7970, GTX 690 and GTX Titan. The most impressive thing about this though is that the card managed to remain almost silent through the testing period....

To get a fuller picture, it’s increasingly apparent that you need to factor in a card’s frame latency, which looks at how quickly each frame is delivered. Regardless of how many frames a graphics card produces on average in 60 seconds, if it can’t deliver them all at roughly the same speed, you might see more brief jittery points with one GPU over another – something we’ve witnessed but didn’t fully understand....

For the 2080 Ti, the Scanner provided a 7% performance improvement over the FE clocks, whereas our manual overclock produced a 12% improvement. However the Scanner does not overclock the memory, and for those looking for a quick overclock procedure, one easy trick might be to use a fairly conservative memory overclock for simplicity’s sake, something like +600 MHz. Going with that changes the results and makes the Scanner + Memory overclock 11% faster than the FE clocks, but again the full manual overclock provides a slightly better result, a further 1....

The RTX 3050 Ti was announced alongside the RTX 3050 for laptops a couple of months ago, but with ongoing supply constraints, it’s taken us a bit longer to get samples in hand. At the moment, pricing seems to be all over the place for laptops. Nvidia originally listed the RTX 3060 as destined for $1,000 laptops, with the RTX 3050 at $800 and presumably the RTX 3050 Ti sitting somewhere in between....

Veteran leaker kopite7kimi, who nailed the specifications of Ampere weeks before anyone else, has updated his forecasts of Ada Lovelace’s power limits. It’s important to note that power limits are not the same as TDPs or TBPs; they’re an upper bound that only comes into play when overclocking is involved. However, they’re still a good guideline for power consumption, just an overestimate. Coming to torture our power supplies is the flagship AD102 with a limit of 800W....

Nvidia announced that starting in February, PCs with RTX 40 series or 30 series GPUs will upscale 1080p videos to 4K in the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. It’s unclear why it won’t work on RTX 20 series GPUs, which have DLSS functionality similar to the 30 series. The company also didn’t explain why these limitations are in place, but the system is presumably in its early stages and could improve over time....

They have had a great deal of success with multi-level cell (MLC) drives such as the Vertex we reviewed a few months ago. Priced at $230 for a 60GB unit and $380 for the 120GB version, these drives deliver an excellent balance between performance and capacity at their respective price points. At the other side of the spectrum, single-level cell (SLC) solid state drives tend to sell for more outrageous prices....

The Vector 150 was one of the fastest SSDs tested in Atto Disk Benchmark’s read test, displaying strong performance at each data point with its 8K, 32K and 128K results being particularly solid. OCZ’s new drive also showed strong write performance – this time at all five data points. The Vector 150 nearly hit full stride in the 32K test, while it maxed out at 518MB/s in the 128K test....

In a Reddit AMA this week, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller confirmed that Blizzard’s upcoming free-to-play multiplayer sequel will replace its predecessor upon its October 4 Early Access launch. The original plan was to share content between the two. When Blizzard announced Overwatch 2 in 2019, it said Overwatch 1 players would have access to all the follow-up’s new heroes and maps, that they would keep everything they earned upon upgrading to the new game, and that owners of both games could play together to maintain one big community....