Cinebench R15 is a synthetic benchmark so it isn’t going to tell us too much about usability. Comparing the multi-threaded performance of the Core 2 Quad Q9650 to the Core i7-4790K we see that the much newer Haswell processor is 3x faster. That said, it’s interesting to note that the 4790K is just 2x faster when comparing single thread performance (note that the Core 2 range doesn’t support Hyper-Threading). It’s interesting to note that the Core 2 Quad Q600 was slightly slower than the Celeron G1820 when comparing multi-threaded performance and considerably slower when comparing single-thread performance....

So, before you consider buying any of the items below, think long and hard about whether such a device is actually a redundant waste of your money. Keep in mind that, despite our griping, there will still be reasons to purchase some of these items. But for the average tech Joe, avoiding them might be easier than you think — resulting in some extra cash in your bank to spend elsewhere....

You will want to answer as many questions correctly as you can within a single minute to achieve the highest score possible. Answers are registered on a D-pad as highlighted in the official trailer. Bonus points will be doled out for streaks of correct answers. The person with the highest score at the end is declared the winner. As you sharpen your knowledge base, you will have the opportunity to unlock achievement-based badges such as preschool graduate, lucky guesser, mere mortal, bird brain, super nerd, certified genius and Triviaverse God....

By that I mean Ultra settings often only provide a very small visual upgrade over High settings at a large cost to performance, which makes them not worth using in a lot of cases. Don’t get me wrong, I love a stunning visual experience, but the truth is that ultra settings tend to only make small changes over lower presets, and if you give High settings a chance you may actually find the experience preferable and a better balance in the visual quality-to-performance stakes....

One of my top talking points when campaigning for a new game console was graphics quality. “It looks so real,” I’d profess to my parents regarding the next-gen console I wanted for my birthday or Christmas. In actuality, those 16-bit games looked nothing like real life. Neither did their 32-bit and 64-bit successors, or anything that has come since. They were all simply the best we had seen up to that point and with a bit of imagination and good storytelling, one could effectively suspend belief and have fun....

What we’ve yet to learn, however, is whether that scenario changes with overclocking and if folks with older high-end chips such as the Core i5-2500K and FX-8370 have anything to see here. Codenamed Sandy Bridge, the second-generation Core architecture was released way back in early 2011 and may represent Intel’s most impressive enthusiast processor series of the last decade. Positioned as a replacement for 2009’s Core i5-750, the 2500K was priced at $216 yet it outpaced the $1,000+ Core i7 975 Extreme Edition and consumed considerably less power....

The maximum performance we extracted from the HIS R9 290X iPower IceQ X² Turbo 4GB when using the ultra-quality settings was 82fps and this was achieved with Core i7 and Core i5 processors. The AMD FX series also performed well, as the FX-8350 averaged 79fps and the FX-6350 hit 76fps to match the low-end Core i3-4130. The quad-core FX-4320 struggled with just 67fps, but it was fast compared to the A8-7600 quad-core APU which allowed for just 52fps....

The pre-configured model powered on as soon as the DC input was connected and with the EX2 Ultra hooked up on the network, DHCP assigned the necessary IP details. From there the device popped up in the Windows Network and upon double clicking it the default web browser was launched. First up we are greeted by a small image of the My Cloud EX2 Ultra along with the option to select the language....

Burkatovskiy revealed his stance in a now-deleted Facebook post, announcing that he supports “the operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and the LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic].” But it seems Wargaming, the company behind the popular MMO, certainly doesn’t feel the same way. A day after his post, Burkatovskiy posted another message confirming he had “broke up with the VG,” with VG translating to WG, or Wargaming....

The Chinese TV market has been getting interesting lately, with Hisense bringing a 65-inch 4K HDR model to the table for $865, and now Xiaomi announcing the bigger, more expensive Redmi Max 100 that’s soon launching locally for 19,999 RMB (~$3,150). Xiaomi says the TV’s thin metallic frame results in a high 95 percent screen-to-body ratio, while the 10-bit panel sports HDR10+, 120Hz MEMC refresh rate, 700 nits of peak brightness, 94 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and is IMAX enhanced....

After picking up popularity in 2022, the “lifetime value” buzzword is set to become one of the main topics in quarterly reviews for a good chunk of the Silicon Valley tech business. Previously abused buzzwords like “total addressable market” or “flywheel effect” aren’t that popular anymore, as the market has changed so much and customers have to face harsher economic conditions for their hi-tech spending. Lifetime value (LTV), or customer lifetime value, is a buzzword that dates back to the eighties, while early adopters started using the new model in the 1990s....

There is nothing unusual or remarkable about the P67 Extreme6’s design, but we think the board is well laid out. Asrock has simply stuffed a huge array of features into a neat little package. The DIMM slots are located in the top right corner of the board and are well-spaced apart with 0.2" (3mm) of clearance between them. They are also spaced 1.5" (30mm) from the edge of the CPU socket which should help provide more clearance when using oversized heatsinks....

The Asrock P67 Extreme6 feature list includes 64Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support, six USB 3.0 ports, six SATA3 connectors, 8-channel audio, eSATA3, FireWire and dual-Gigabit LAN with Teaming. Asrock boasts of the board’s premium gold caps (2.5 x longer lifetime) along with 100% Japan-made high-quality conductive polymer capacitors. It also features the Digi Power Advanced V16 + 2 power phase design which is intended to improve the board’s overclocking performance....

Multi-GPU support includes 3-way SLI and CrossfireX courtesy of three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, all of which can be populated with dual-slot cards and operate at the full x16 bandwidth. The DX79SI has eight DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of RAM running at 1066MHz to 1866MHz with 2133 and 2400MHz possible via overclocking. As previously mentioned, Intel has used the X79’s standard SATA storage configuration of two SATA 6Gb/s ports and four SATA 3Gb/s ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10....

According to a young security researcher, MSI last year released a firmware update which made many of its motherboards less secure than they should have been. First discovered by Dawid Potocki, a “student interested in FOSS and technology,” the issue concerns the Secure Boot feature on a significant number of MSI motherboards. Secure Boot is designed to make sure that a device boots using only software that is trusted by the OEM manufacturer, Microsoft explains....

Sure, you’re tech savvy—you know what a hard drive is and have seen an HDMI cable or two in your day. Still, there are some unassailable, totally exploitable truths about gamers: They are very online. They log in to a lot of stuff. They have some money. They want to be better than other gamers. And they like to use the password “Dragon.” Earlier this year, hackers broke into thousands of Fortnite players’ accounts and siphoned hundreds of dollars at a time....

As expected the Predator X35 packs the same specs as the PG35VQ because it uses the same panel. It’s a 35-inch 3440 x 1440 VA panel with up to a 200 Hz refresh rate, 1800R curvature and G-Sync Ultimate support. It’s a true HDR monitor as well, with DisplayHDR 1000 certification and a 512-zone full array local dimming backlight. Pricing is also similar: both are expected to cost around $2,500 when they go on sale since neither is widely available yet....

For now we know it will be built using Unreal Engine 5 and feature familiar elements like mind-bending puzzles, an array of enemies and creative pathfinding that have made Tomb Raider one of the top franchises in gaming. The project is still in the early phase of development but promises to be the biggest and most expansive Tomb Raider title to date. The original Tomb Raider debuted in 1996 from developer Core Design and publisher Eidos Interactive....

But what if you spent $40 to $50 extra on the R7 260X and paired it with an Intel chip instead of relying on Crossfire? As we saw before, using the A10-7850K with the R7 250 in Company of Heroes actually reduces performance over the R7 250 itself. Using the R7 250 with the Core i5-4430 allowed for 27.6fps at 1680x1050, though that isn’t really enough for playable performance in our opinion....

As we saw when running PCMark’s office applications test, the A8-7600 doesn’t perform well in this productivity software. When running our own Excel 2013 MonteCarlo test we find the same thing, as the A8-7600 was only able to match the old A10-5800K. Our custom PowerPoint 2013 workload gave similar performance trends to those in Excel with the A8-7600 matching the A10-5800K while being 12% slower than the A10-6800K. The A8-7600 produced 11282 MIPS in our 7-zip benchmark, which was a fraction faster than the A10-5800K and 11% slower than the A10-6800K....