While we eagerly awaited for next-gen GeForce 700 cards, Nvidia dropped the GeForce GTX Titan, wielding 7.08 billion transistors for an unwieldy price of $1,000. The Titan instantly claimed king of the hill, and even though the Radeon R9 290X brought similar performance for half the price six months later, Nvidia refused to budge on the Titan’s MSRP. This was every gamer’s dream GPU for half a year, but its fate was sealed when the GTX 780 Ti shipped many months later (Nov/13), offering more CUDA cores at a more affordable $700....

The Titan X rendered an impressive 58fps at 2560x1600 for a 21% lead over the GTX 980 and 35% over the R9 290X. Compared to the R9 295X2, Nvidia’s newcomer was 18% slower. Increasing the resolution reduced the average frame rate of the GTX Titan X to just 28fps, 17% faster than the GTX 980 and 27% when compared to the R9 290X. The Titan X averaged 57fps at 2560x1600, 19% slower than the R9 295X2 but 46% faster than the GTX 980 and 39% faster than the R9 290X....

The first batch of reviews of the RTX 3060 went live about ten days ago, and while we had to delay ours, on the plus side this allowed us to take a more accurate look at pricing and post-launch availability. Of course, we have the usual array of benchmarks to go over and we’ll jump into that in a moment. The RTX 3060 is based on the new GA106 die which measures 300mm2 and packs 3584 cores, 112 TMUs and 48 ROPs....

When testing with HD Tune Pro the Agility EX delivered our best 512 byte, 4KB and 64KB read results. Furthermore, when using 1MB file samples it was able to nearly match the performance of the Vertex Turbo. Random read speeds were also very good, with the Agility EX managing a throughput of 166MB/s. Interestingly, when measuring write performance with HD Tune Pro we noticed the Agility EX was considerably slower than all other SSDs in the 64KB, 1MB and random tests....

The controller chip is supported by a 64MB cache designed to improve small write performance and eliminate any ‘stuttering’ issues. As mentioned before, OCZ specifications for the Agility EX 60GB drive include sustained read and write speeds of up to 255MB/s and 195MB/s, respectively. The claimed write performance is much higher than that of its Vertex counterpart, something we will certainly be looking into once we begin benchmarking. Whereas OCZ used Samsung K9HCG08U1M-PCB0 (MLC) memory for the Vertex, and Intel 29F64G08FAMCI (MLC) memory for the original Agility series, the Agility EX is loaded with Intel 29F32G08FANC1 (SLC) flash memory chips....

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed....

Again, the RevoDrive Hybrid performed well with 22.5MB/s on its first run, allowing it to match the performance of great SSDs such as the Samsung 830 Series and Kingston HyperX. Although the RevoDrive fell behind other SF-2200-based SSDs in the Starting Applications test, it kept pace with the Samsung 830 Series and Crucial m4. The RevoDrive Hybrid finished the PCmark 7 testing on a high note, outperforming many high-end SSDs such as the Intel SSD 510 Series, Samsung 830 Series and Crucial m4....

Again we find that the Vertex 2 is slightly slower than the Vertex LE and Vertex 2 Pro drives when measuring write performance. This meant that although the Vertex 2 was slower than the original Vertex and the Intel X25-M when working with 1KB and 2KB files, it was considerably faster than both once the file sizes exceeded 2KB.

The Vertex 2 pulled away from the original Vertex in the 1MB and random file size tests. Overall the Vertex 2 performance is very strong, just not as strong as the Vertex LE. Now for the HD Tune Pro random write performance. The margins are fairly similar to those seen when measuring the read performance, particularly between the Vertex, Vertex 2 and Vertex LE drives. In this comparison the Vertex 2 seems to sit between the original Vertex and the Vertex LE in most of the tests....

The Atto Disk Benchmark shows sequential performance when working with different size data. The Vertex 450 256GB starts off at 21MB/s when working with 1K data, which is roughly the same result we saw from the Vector 256GB at 24MB/s. From there in each step up the Vertex 450 256GB was between 5MB/s and 25MB/s slower than the Vector 256GB. The OCZ Vertex 450 256GB closely matches the Vector’s performance and ends up with a throughput of 501MB/s....

The front camera, which Oppo is heavily touting, is an 8-megapixel 1/4" CMOS sensor with 1.12µm pixels, paired with a 27mm-equivalent f/2.0 lens. Due to the wider aperture, slightly more light can reach this sensor than the rear sensor, although the light gathering abilities of both cameras are very similar. I believe Oppo is using an OmniVision sensor here, although again it could be Samsung in some models. For video, both cameras are capable of 1080p30 recording....

The write performance trends were very similar as one Pyro was faster than the HyperX and Vertex 3 while the RAID0 enjoyed the number one spot. The Pyro maintained its solid showing in the 1MB read benchmark, scoring highest among the single drives with a throughput of 490MB/s. Two Pyros improved that figure by 22%, reaching a transfer speed of 596MB/s – again, putting it above the others. Although the Pyro dipped below the HyperX and Vertex 3 in the 1MB write performance, it wasn’t far behind and RAID0 was enough to give it the lead....

In a farewell message posted March 19, 2019, Bennett said he had been doing the same job for over two decades and the opportunity to do something new was very appealing. “My new position with Intel is going to allow me to be another voice for the enthusiast inside the company, which I think is something it needs going forward,” Bennett said. “Similarly, I will get to be an Intel voice that directly reaches out to the enthusiast community, which I think is equally needed....

You’re dropped into a serene poolside setting adjacent to a big body of water where you simply watch a duck float around in said pool. You can adjust the camera but that’s about it. There’s a duck meter at the top right that slowly fills up and when it does, another duck will drop from the sky. Rinse and repeat. “It feels like I’ve opened a desktop wallpaper,” said YouTuber RTGame in a recent video review....

Surprisingly, the Plextor M6e only managed a throughput of 280MB/s in our single large file copy test. That’s a long way off the claimed performance and it means this PCI Express SSD was slower than many of the 2.5" SATA SSDs that we have tested in the past. The Plextor M6S and M6M also displayed average performance, delivering roughly 210MB/s, or about as fast as the old OCZ Octane and Vertex 4 SSDs, yet slower than the Crucial m4....

Taipei-based tech company Quality Network Appliance Provider (QNAP) announced this week that it would be changing how it handles security for its aging products for most of the remainder of 2022. While the company doesn’t state it outright, this is probably a response to ransomware attacks that targeted its products last month. It explained that it usually keeps issuing security updates for devices for four years after their end-of-life (EOL) dates....

According to the chipmaker, the new Kryo chip delivers 35 percent faster performance and 40 percent better power efficiency than its predecessor. The Adreno GPU, meanwhile, is the first mobile platform to support Vulkan 1.3 APIs alongside a host of other APIs including OpenGL ES 3.2 and OpenCL 2.0 FP. It also supports real-time hardware accelerated ray tracing, Unreal Engine 5 and Epic’s MetaHuman framework. Qualcomm claims it pushes 25 percent faster graphics rendering and is up to 45 percent more power efficient than before....

Back in April, Raspberry Pi chief Ebon Upton said they have been able to consistently build around half a million single-board computer and Compute Module products each month and anticipated building at this rate over the coming months. Upton at the time also said they were prioritizing shipments to commercial and industrial customers that need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses, acknowledging that some people’s livelihoods are at stake. This meant that individual customers considering a Pi for a home project or prototyping could be facing some delays....

If it’s an all-in-one gaming and productivity machine you’re after, Razer would encourage you to check out the larger Blade Pro. The 2015 revision features a generous 17.3-inch display which affords the real estate necessary for the highlight of the notebook, Razer’s Switchblade UI. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with the basics. The Blade Pro is powered by Intel’s Core i7-4720HQ, a quad-core chip clocked at 2....

AMD launched the Radeon RX 6650 XT, RX 6750 XT, and RX 6950 XT this month, all refreshes of the standard (non-xx50 series) versions. They might not be setting the world on fire, but the good news is that these three new cards are available and selling at the correct prices. Prolific hardware leaker Greymon55 tweeted that they have observed this trend, which the market has been heading towards for some time....