MIUI is a very heavy Android skin, though this isn’t surprising as many skins from Chinese OEMs tend to significantly modify Android. The good thing about MIUI is that it’s a visually pleasing skin, which combines sleek animations with a reasonably modern style. Throughout first-party applications, MIUI opts for a design that’s more reminiscent of iOS than Android, which means the overall style of MIUI doesn’t cohere as well with other Android apps....
The AMOLED technology that Xiaomi has opted for does have some benefits, most notably perfect black levels that lead to essentially infinite contrast. Viewing angles from AMOLEDs are typically excellent, however the Redmi Pro uses a number of filters between the display and glass that lead to significant brightness degradation at harsh angles. I was disappointed by the maximum brightness of the 5.5-inch panel. At just 330 nits, the display falls well behind most other panels I’ve reviewed, and this can make it difficult to view the screen in direct sunlight....
While all Intel H55 motherboards support Gigabit LAN and HD Audio, their implementation will vary. Asus has gone with the Realtek RTL8112L controller in order to provide Gigabit LAN support – a controller they generally feature on their cheaper low-end motherboards. Providing 8-Channel HD Audio support is another Realtek chip, this time the ALC889, which can handle 16/20/24-bit SPDIF input and output with up to 192kHz sample rate. This is one of the more impressive Realtek HD Codecs and certainly an excellent addition to the P7H55-M Pro....
Sometimes settings can be applied by typing a few characters instead of clicking through a series of menus, while other times there simply isn’t any other way to perform an operation except with command lines. We’ve compiled a list of things that you can do in the Windows Command Prompt, including some commands everyone should know for general usage, more advanced ones for tweaking or troubleshooting your PC, as well as lesser known and less practical Command Prompt features....
The GTX 780 struggles with Gears of War 4 and is well behind the GTX 970 and R9 390, sitting nearest to the GTX 1050 Ti at 1080p with an average of just 56fps. Jumping up to 1440p slaughters the GTX 780 and here it delivers GTX 1050 Ti-like results, positioning it miles behind the pack. The GTX 780 was also weak in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, averaging just 38fps at 1080p to the R9 390s 56fps....
A pair of engineering samples have been found in the public database of the MilkyWay@home project, which is using distributed computing to create a model of our galaxy. They both ran the application for a few days in late December. The pair identified themselves as being in “Family 25,” which is how we know they’re based on the Zen 4 architecture. One of their OPNs ended in “665” while the other ended in “666,” indicating they’re adjacent to each other in the line-up....
For those of you living in the figurative sports cave, the LA Clippers were for sale because its previous owner, Donald Sterling, said some pretty bad racist stuff. That resulted in Sterling getting banned from the NBA for life and a forced sale of the team. It’s a big story. That’s how Ballmer came to acquire the team. Anyway, I’m not writing about the LA Clippers or about racism. I’m writing to share a Steve Ballmer story....
The i7-7700HQ is Intel’s standard quad-core 45W Kaby Lake CPU that’s used in most gaming laptops. It has four cores, eight threads clocked at 2.8 GHz with a maximum boost frequency of 3.8 GHz. The GTX 1060 for laptops is basically the same as the GPU used in desktops, with 1280 CUDA cores and a rated boost frequency of 1670 MHz. To go with the GPU is 6GB of GDDR5 at 8000 MHz....
Other manufacturers have since released a full spectrum of displays, some curved, some 34 inches, some compatible with FreeSync. Curiously though, G-Sync was nowhere to be found. Eyeing an opportunity, Acer’s now the company with something no one else has: a curved 34 inch ultrawide rocking G-Sync. Acer’s Predator X34 has a curved UQHD (3440 x 1440) AH-IPS panel and garners reasonable gaming cred with a 100Hz vertical refresh rate, G-Sync and an interesting design....
The Wi-Fi connected, Snapdragon-powered bot features stereo speakers, dual cameras, a 10-inch touchscreen and even a USB-C port. Astro can only be purchased by invite and will set you back $999.99 during the ongoing introductory period. After that, expect to pay $1,449.99 for an opportunity that not everyone believes is ready for mainstream audiences. iRobot was founded way back in 1990 by Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner, who previous worked in MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab....
When running Company of Heroes 2 at 1680x1050, the A10-7850K produced an average of 21.5fps on its own – not enough to be playable in our opinion, but still the best results you’ll see from an integrated solution today. Company of Heroes 2 doesn’t properly support Crossfire but we included it to show what kind of gains (if any) can be expected from titles without multi-GPU capabilities. Pairing the A10-7850K with the R7 240 actually slowed performance down since the 240 is actually slower than the integrated R7....
Although the Asrock A75 Extreme6 used slightly more power when at idle, its load consumption was considerably better, using 8.4% less power. However, the Asus F1A75-V blew them both out of the water with an idle consumption of just 44 watts with a load consumption of 137 watts.
AM3 Test System Specs - AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.30GHz) - AMD Phenom II X4 980 (3.70GHz) - AMD Phenom II X4 970 (3.50GHz) - AMD Athlon II X4 640 (3.00GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20) - Asrock 890GX Extreme4 R2.0 (AMD 890GX) - GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB) - OCZ ZX Series 850w - Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - Nvidia Forceware 275....
In the first of the graphics-specific benchmarks I ran, we get to see the dominance of AMD’s Mullins APU in the GPU department. Mullins absolutely crushes Bay Trail-T by 60% in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, while also beating ARM SoCs by a similar margin. In the significantly more intense Cloud Gate benchmark, Mullins again crushes Bay Trail-T by 77%. AMD’s 25W desktop Kabini APU benefits from the higher power requirements by beating Mullins by 19%, but let’s not forget that Kabini requires 5....
When we first tested Thief we were shocked by how poorly AMD’s processors performed so we were expecting Mantle to have a big impact when using the company’s CPUs in this game. That was the case. With the R9 290X installed, Mantle didn’t do much for the Intel processors with the Core i7-4770 and Core i3-4130 setups hitting 42fps using both Mantle and DX11. There were gains to be had at 1920x1200 and 1680x1050, but these lower resolutions aren’t really desirable with this graphics card....
In true AMD fashion, the company has priced its latest entry at a very reasonable $265. That’s the same rate as the older Phenom II X6 1090T, which has been lowered to $230 to make room for the new 1100T model. While today’s review is focusing on the launch of the new Phenom II X6 1100T, which brings a mere 100MHz speed bump, we suspect most of you will be more excited about the prospect of a six-core Black Edition processor for a little over $200....
In Tomb Raider, we saw an 11% performance increase from our overclock, which was enough to boost the R9 290X within striking range of the GTX Titan. Our overclock provided just 4% more frames in Metro: Last Light at 2560x1600, though you will notice considerably more performance at 1920x1200. When testing our overclock in BioShock Infinite we saw a 12% performance boost, allowing the R9 290X to overtake the GTX Titan....
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an Nvidia-sponsored GameWorks title but even so the R9 Fury X does quite well being just 6% slower than the GTX 980 Ti at 1600p and 3% slower at 4K. Moreover, it was 20% faster than the GTX 980 at 1600p and 32% faster at 4K.
Testing games is where things tend to get tricky. In Battlefield 1, the 1800X and 1600X fall short of the 7600K’s 153fps average, but if we look at the minimum frame rates they’re both faster than the 7600K. In fact, when comparing minimum results, the 1800X matched the 6900K while the 1500X was just 4% slower. The 1500X on the other hand loses out to the Core i5-7500 in both the minimum and average frame rates, though it’s still possible to overclock the 1500X for greater performance and we will explore this later in the review....
