Now you might think, a slightly faster 6600 XT isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s only ~5% faster. However, the 6600 XT is nearly a year old and it was a late release in the cycle. The first RDNA2 GPUs arrived in November 2020 and we’re expecting RDNA3-based products to land before the end of this year. That means an effective 6600 XT replacement is about 12 months away....

This wouldn’t be a proper showdown without at least two dozen games so we’ve included 30 for good measure, all of which were played on the GTX 1080 Ti at 1080p. Being that there’s no point in using GPU-limited scenarios to gaming performance of CPUs, we didn’t feel the need to gather results for 1440p or 4K. Both the i7-7800X and R5 1600 systems were configured with DDR4-3200 CL14 memory, however, the Intel system was equipped with 32GB whereas the Ryzen system only had 16GB....

Memory Bandwidth Memory bandwidth performance has improved for the Ryzen CPUs using the most up to date BIOS on the Asus B350 motherboard. AMD’s chips are now good for 35GB/s whereas we were previously seeing around 32GB/s with DDR4-2933 memory. Even with lower rated memory, Ryzen CPUs are delivering at least 10% more bandwidth than the Kaby Lake CPUs. This will hand the 1500X a massive advantage over the Core i5-7500 in memory-intensive workloads as it has over 40% more bandwidth at its disposal....

The display is reasonably bright, pushing out around 340 nits, which is typical for a laptop of this class. Viewing angles were great, although the glossy finish can reflect background light at times. However, this glossy finish does enhance the appearance of colors and makes the display ‘pop’ more than it would otherwise. The color quality of the ZenBook 3’s display is difficult to measure as Asus has implemented dynamic contrast adjustment that seemingly cannot be disabled....

The law passed the Belarus House of Representatives on December 20, 2022, and the Council of the Republic the following day. “President” Alexander Lukashenko signed the legislation into law last week, and it goes into effect this week. The legislation is a response to sanctions imposed upon Belarus for support of the invasion of Ukraine. Belarusian rulers have declared piracy an acceptable crutch to prop up its economy against crippling embargoes as the country heavily relies on foreign-made media for entertainment and software infrastructure....

With the left side door removed we get our first good look inside the Carbide 400Q and what we find are the internals of what looks like a fairly typical mid-tower. That said, there are no obvious storage bays and with the 5.25" drive bays removed there doesn’t appear to be much in the Carbide 400Q at all. In the bottom of the case are two plastic shrouds designed to hide the power supply and all its messy cabling along with the boring old 3....

$949.99: Core i5-7Y54, 4GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD, 1080p display $1249.99: Core i5-7Y54, 8GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1080p display $1349.99: Core i7-7Y75, 8GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1080p display $1449.99: Core i7-7Y75, 16GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1080p display $1749.99: Core i7-7Y75, 8GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD, QHD+ display $1849.99: Core i7-7Y75, 16GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD, QHD+ display - Reviewed It’s easy to spot that upgrading from a Core i5 to Core i7 Y-series processor will set you back $100....

Name: Jeff Bezos Come at me, bro “All bow down before Lord Bezos” Likes: Print media, automation, money, “a strong work ethic,” shouting, drones, space, hitting the bench press and pushing out 10 reps@300Ibs - with good form. Dislikes: Donald Trump, corporate taxes, unions, constant workplace accidents, hair transplants, ungrateful strikers, South Park. Name: Elon Musk If Bezos is a James Bond villain, then Musk is 007 himself. Suave and engaging, the Tesla boss is doing everything to save mankind from itself....

Graphically, it also looks a lot like other recently released titles in the franchise, think New Dawn and Far Cry 5, but with some visual upgrades. Ubisoft is still using the Dunia 2 game engine introduced way back in 2012 with Far Cry 3, though the engine is meant to be in constant development and the game has certainly evolved visually over the past 9 years. Now, because Far Cry 6 is an AMD sponsored title, it arrives with support for FSR with four presets to choose from, but for today’s benchmark we’re going to ignore FSR for a few reasons, chief among them time....

If you need to do some serious number crunching in Excel, Kaby Lake-R could be exactly what you are after. The i7-8550U absolutely dominates this test, more than doubling the time the i7-7500U puts up. This is down the short duration of the Excel Monte Carlo workload; it allows the i7-8550U to ramp all four cores up to the maximum turbo frequency of 3.7 GHz, which exceeds the 7500U’s dual-core turbo speed of 3....

For those of you who missed it, our day one review of the GTX 1660 featured a dozen games, many of which were recently released titles and there the new GPU came out looking like a champ. Today we’re expanding the benchmark test to a grand total of 33 games to see how it stacks up to the likes of AMD’s Radeon RX 580 and 590. While we don’t expect this expanded benchmark test to change much, it should serve as a decent buying guide for those tossing up between the GTX 1660 and perhaps the Radeon RX 580....

As you can see on average across the 35 games tested the 2080 Ti is on average 23% faster than the 1080 Ti at 1440p. In yesterday’s review we showcased the big wins in Rainbow Six Siege and Wolfenstein II, but here we see the 2080 Ti was also a weapon in Kingdom Come Deliverance and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Then we see pretty poor gains in titles such as GTA V, War Thunder, ARMA 3, Wreckfest, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Hitman and Quake Champions, for example....

I’ve now tested Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 GPU in six gaming laptops, so the performance here isn’t anything I haven’t seen before. But for those unfamiliar with the GTX 1060, it’s around 30 percent slower than the GTX 1070, but 45 percent faster than the last-generation GTX 970M, in GPU-limited workloads. In a range of games, the Gigabyte Aero 15 performed as expected. It was around 2 percent slower on average than the fastest GTX 1060 laptop I’ve tested, which is pretty close to the margin of error....

The following presets were tested: H.264 Custom: Settings listed on Page 3, QF 23 H.264 Handbrake Deafult: x264 Very Fast, Main Profile, Level 4.0, QF 23 HEVC Medium: x265 Medium Preset, QF 23, default otherwise HEVC Faster: x265 Faster Preset, QF 23, default otherwise HEVC Medium: x265 Medium Preset, QF 23, default otherwise HEVC Medium QF 15: x265 Medium Preset, QF 15, default otherwise HEVC Slow: x265 Slow Preset, QF 23, default otherwise Nvidia HEVC: CQP mode at default settings...

HP likes to talk about the Spectre’s 360-degree hinge and the four possible modes ’engineered to amaze’, which include the standard laptop mode, the tablet mode, and what are essentially two different stand modes. It’s nice to have these modes (not unlike a competing Yoga) but 95% of the time I use convertible systems in the laptop mode. It might be different for some buyers, but I almost exclusively use the Spectre x360 as a laptop....

The two cameras appear to be identical. Both are 11.8-megapixel (3968 x 2976) Sony IMX286 1/2.8" CMOS sensors with 1.25 µm pixels, paired with f/2.2 27mm (equivalent) lenses. As the monochrome sensor has fewer filters, it can capture twice the light data as the RGB sensor. When the two sensors are paired together, this camera can achieve three times the light gathering capabilities of a single sensor unit, which greatly offsets the less light-friendly hardware like the f/2....

Tiger Lake H45 brings to the table 8 Willow Cove CPU cores, a massive overhaul from the previous Skylake derivatives Intel has been using for years now in laptops. While Willow Cove and Tiger Lake has been around for a little while now in ultraportable systems, these 8-core designs are new and specially designed for higher performance systems, bringing Intel’s 10nm SuperFin technology to a higher power class. Along with new CPU cores and twice the amount of cores that are available in ultraportables, 11th-gen H-series CPUs also bring new Xe integrated graphics, 20 lanes of PCIe 4....

The Lenovo ThinkPhone features a 6.6-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,400 (402 ppi) and an impressive 144Hz refresh rate. The screen supports HDR10+ content and is protected by a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. Under the hood, there’s a slightly-outdated Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC joined by either 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1. Connectivity-wise, the phone is compatible with sub-6GHz 5G networks and Wi-Fi 6E, while its USB-C port supports DisplayPort 1....

720p isn’t a bad resolution for a budget smartphone, and in general you’ll be getting a good viewing experience from this LCD. 1080p does provide a noticeable bump in sharpness and clarity, however you can’t expect the best in an entry-level product. Come next year, 1080p displays might have come down in price enough to justify their inclusion in a phone like the Moto G4 Play. Motorola has opted for an improved display compared to the third-gen Moto G....

The 128GB SSD provided in my review unit doesn’t give you a whole lot of space after a collection of everyday applications are installed (as well as Windows 10), so I’d recommend getting something a little larger for everyday use. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to install a single game on the SSD when you factor in storage space for personal data, so I installed most games on the included 5,400 RPM (slow) hard drive....