On Tuesday, Apple announced that iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura hit public release on October 24, just in time for the new iPad models announced on Tuesday. The updates will introduce many of the features iOS 16 brought to the iPhone last month but will leave behind several older Mac and iPad models. One of the primary new features for iPads and Macs is iCloud Shared Photo Library. The addition lets users share collections of pictures with friends and family members over iCloud....

At a tiny capacity of just 1.42L, the Cubi 2 Plus was the smallest computer to support LGA1151 processors, giving it impressive performance that blew all other mini PCs out of the water. There were a few shortcomings, too, so can Asrock do better with their new mini-STX form factor PC, the DeskMini? It’s looking good for them right off the bat - the DeskMini can take almost any Skylake desktop processor, thanks to support for the standard Intel box fan....

Asrock has entered the gaming monitor market with two Phantom Gaming models. The most interesting of these is the 34-inch PG34WQ15R2B, which follows in a long line of inspirational monitor names. The PG34WQ15R2B boasts a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution on its curved (1500R) VA LCD panel, a 165Hz variable refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium, and a typical luminance of 550-nits, earning it VESA’s DisplayHDR 400 badge—though we know that isn’t exactly a guarantee of quality....

The P55 is far less complex as it doesn’t carry a memory controller, which takes up a vast amount of space within the chip’s package. Much of what the north bridge traditionally does has been removed and as a result Intel has integrated the functions of the north and south bridge chipsets into a single chip, which they call a Platform Controller Hub (PCH). The heatsink on top of the P55 chip measures 7 x 7cm and is just 1cm tall....

Compared to the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, we saw a 31% reduction in performance when measuring read speeds with the OCZ Enyo in CrystalDiskMark. We were also disappointed to see write performance decreased by a 38% margin. Similar performance margins were seen when comparing CrystalDiskMark 512K results. Here the Asrock P55 Extreme4 was 36% slower when comparing read data and 29% slower when looking at the write performance. Finally the small 4K write test sees the OCZ Enyo become the bottleneck and as a result the Asrock P55 Extreme4 is able to match the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 in both read and write performance....

Although the Vision HT 420D has largely picked up where the Ivy Bridge-based Vision HT 300 left off, the newest range isn’t quite as diverse . The HT 300 series included models with Core i3 and i5 processors, while some were complete builds and others were barebones options that let you customize your memory and storage. For now, Asrock’s latest Vision offerings are limited to two models: the 400D and the 420D....

Along with the basics – an I/O shield, driver CD, manual and software manual – there are also two SATA data cables and a handy little USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 adapter. To sweeten the deal further, Asrock has included a 2T2R Dual Band 802.11ac WiFi + BT v4.0 module with not just an antenna but also the internal antenna extension cables that run from the module to the I/O panel....

Although Virtu worked as intended, it didn’t exactly “wow” us like SRT did. We don’t believe Virtu will be limited to the Z68, let alone Intel chipsets for that matter. In other words, while we see potential for the software, we don’t think it’s a key selling point for the Z68. Conversely, SRT is the best example of hybrid storage technology we’ve seen to date and it should help broaden SSD adoption....

The AMD E-350 performed exceptionally well in this test, coming second only to the much more power hungry Phenom II X2 desktop system. When compared to the Asrock Ion 330HD-BD which features a combination of the Atom 330 and Nvidia Ion, the AMD E-350 platform was 3.6x faster in SolidWorks and 4.5x faster in the Maya test. POV-Ray is a very intensive program to benchmark CPUs with and we use two images called Biscuit and Woodbox for testing....

The MeMO Pad 7 features an Intel ‘Bay Trail’ Atom Z3745 SoC, with a quad-core Silvermont CPU clocked up to 1.86 GHz, and a 7th Generation Intel HD Graphics GPU clocked up to 778 MHz. This chip is very similar to the Z3740 seen in several of the budget 8-inch Windows tablets I reviewed at the start of the year, except it’s six months newer, comes with a 111 MHz faster GPU and costs $2 less per part....

When it comes to gaming we can see that the motherboard has little impact on performance – at least when using a single graphics card. The Asus P7P55D Deluxe delivered the exact same result as the other P55 motherboards at 1920x1200, while it was just a single frame slower than the MSI P55-GD65 at 1024x768. Supreme Commander results were just as dull, though this time it was the Asus P7P55D Deluxe that one upped the MSI P55-GD65 at 1920x1200, delivering just one extra frame per second....

GPU prices have been trending down for the past several months, with some regions seeing the lowest prices since the start of 2021, and some lower-end models selling below MSRP. The situation on eBay has also improved, with the average selling price of GPUs dropping by 10 percent between February and March. That said, these developments are hardly cause for celebration for most gamers, who need to pay, at best, $300 more for a new RTX 3000 series graphics card compared to what they paid for their old card....

Looking at the graph above, the Radeon HD 5770 is just 4fps slower than the Radeon HD 4870 and 9fps slower than the GeForce GTX 260 when we hit 2560x1600. With an average of 40fps at this extreme resolution, the Radeon HD 5770 was 49% faster than the old Radeon HD 4770. At 2560x1600 in Unreal Tournament 3 the Radeon HD 5770 averaged 43fps, making it just 7% slower than the GeForce GTX 260, while it was 5% faster than the Radeon HD 4870....

The very latest game to be included in our review, Left 4 Dead 2, uses the same Source engine as the original title. Here the time demo that we recorded was a little less demanding, and as a result we saw the average frame rate for the Radeon HD 5970 jump by 20fps at 2560x1600. The card remained 52% faster than the Radeon HD 5870.

Finishing up our gaming benchmarks we have Fallout 3, which was tested using maximum in-game quality settings with 8xAA/16xAF enabled. Despite the high quality visual settings, the Radeon HD 5970 averaged 81fps at 2560x1600, making it 11% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and 37% faster than the Radeon HD 5870.

Another example using the GeForce GTX 260 saw a 47fps average when testing with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at 1680x1050, while playing Crysis allowed for just 33fps with AA/AF disabled. Add to this the fact that two years have passed since Crysis was released, and the average gaming PC has got a lot faster in the process. We must agree with DICE’s assessment of recommending a Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 260 graphics card as a minimum if you want to enjoy all the eye candy this game has to offer....

The Radeon HD 6990 spat out a more respectable 61fps, while a pair of Radeon HD 6970 Crossfire cards were slightly faster with 64fps. The GeForce GTX 590 averaged 67fps, following the pair of GeForce GTX 580 SLI cards that managed an impressive 74fps. Increasing the resolution to 1920x1200 hit performance further as the Radeon HD 6950 delivered less than 30fps. The GeForce GTX 580 remained the fastest single GPU card with an average of just 36fps....

As was the case with Battlefield 3, as long as your processor has four cores/threads, it shouldn’t have a problem in EA’s latest shooter. The only processors to struggle were the dual-core AMD Phenom and Athlon CPUs, while the game can utilize up to eight threads if your chip has them on tap. For example, the AMD FX-8350 had all eight of its threads allocated to BF4 with a total CPU utilization of around 60% in our benchmark....

Over the weekend, Hellena Taylor, the star of Bayonetta and Bayonetta II, said she would not be appearing in the third game when it arrives on October 28. She claimed the reason was that Nintendo and developer Platinum Games had offered her a total of $4,000 to reprise the role. Taylor rejected the lowball offer and has called for people to boycott the game in a video that has gained more than 9....

Anyway, the results show the OnePlus 5 performing strongly, with underperformers like the HTC U11 and Huawei P10 falling towards the bottom of the pack as they did in other tests. It’s hard to get a read on whether LCDs or AMOLEDs are more efficient from this test, or any other test, so we won’t be speculating on that here. Streaming 4K HEVC video is a tough task for phones, both because of the significant bandwidth requirements that see the Wi-Fi modem utilized nearly all the time, and the complexity of HEVC-encoded files....