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Although the ProBook is mostly clear of third-party applications, HP bundles a ton of its own software. I counted no less than 24 HP-specific programs of which HP ProtectTools is the most important. The security suite is meant to be used by enterprises when deploying notebooks to employees, among other things it centralizes security management and aids in the event of password loss or if the machine is stolen. Another software feature, HP QuickWeb allows you access to the Internet, email, contacts and calendar at the touch of a button without having to wait for Windows to load up....

In GPU-limited tests, the Spectre x360 is in-line with the performance of the Asus ZenBook 3, and slightly slower than the Razer Blade Stealth. The HD 620 provides enough performance for basic applications and creative tools, but you’re not going to be using this laptop for high-performance gaming, particularly if you want to run games at the display’s native 1080p resolution. In case you’re wondering, along with the games tested above, I also attempted to play Civilization VI on the Spectre x360....

When the HTC One Mini launched, it was stuck between fitting into the mid- and high-end segments. The choice to use a Snapdragon 400 in a nearly-$500 smartphone left it feeling a little underpowered and underwhelming for the price point. However with the Desire 816 costing over $150 less than the One Mini at launch, it’s much more suited to Qualcomm’s mid-range SoC. The actual Snapdragon 400 model, the MSM8228, isn’t one I’ve used in a smartphone before....

As a quick refresher, the Snapdragon 821 is a quad-core SoC with two dual-core Kryo CPU clusters, one clocked at 2.15 GHz, and the other at 1.59 GHz. There’s an Adreno 530 GPU typically clocked up to 624 MHz, plus a quad-channel LPDDR4 memory controller at 1866 MHz, good for 29.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The HTC U Ultra also features hardware such as Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, A-GPS and microSD storage expansion....

With a few easy tweaks, the taskbar can save you time and display more information while taking up less screen real estate… and become less disturbing. Here are a few recommendations to get the most out of the Windows taskbar. Move the taskbar to the top By default, the taskbar is placed at the bottom of the screen, but that may not be the most logical place to put it....

Running this card without tinkering further is such a waste, so moving forward we are mostly paying attention to our own overclocking settings. In this test it provided far more impressive results, booting the average frame rate to 38fps, a 19% increase. This allowed the GTX 480 iChill Black Series to match the Radeon HD 5870 in this game. The GTX 480 iChill Black Series fared well when testing Metro 2033....

Despite a 9% increase in clock speed when compared to the Core i7-3960X, the i7-4960X actually consumed 18% less power. This meant that when under full load the i7-4960X and FX-4350 consumed roughly the same amount of power, an impressive achievement by Intel. More impressive still was the idle power consumption, which at 66 watts might have been considerably more than the i7-4770K but it was also 10 watts less than the i7-3960X....

The 3DMark cloud gate score was 14% higher with the Core i7-5960X than the 4960X and 4790K. The older 3Dmark 06 benchmark didn’t show any performance advantages to using the Core i7-5960X over the 4960X, while it was slower than the higher clocked 4790K. Clearly PCMark 7 doesn’t take advantage of the extra core and here the Core i7-5960X was even slower than the 4960X.

Intel has been steadily updating the relevant enterprise software in preparation for Sapphire Rapids for over a year. Some of that software is open source and the source of small leaks. Last week, a trawler found a reference to an unknown processor in the boot log of a Linux kernel, the Intel W9-3495. First, the name: Intel uses “W” for its workstation CPUs, for example, the W-3375. It hasn’t put numbers after the “W” yet, so that could mean a few things, but it looks a lot like the nomenclature used by the Core series – i5, i7, i9....

The standard LGA1155 box cooler measures 45mm tall, which is far too big for use in a thin chassis, though it can be installed on the DH61AG without any problems. There are aftermarket coolers such as the Gelid Slim Silence i-Plus which are much more compact, this particular example is just 28cm tall. It is important to make sure an aftermarket heatsink will suit the DH61AG before making the purchase, as the CPU socket area is extremely busy....

The Pentium G3258 matched the A10-7850K with 120fps, while overclocking it allowed for slightly more performance than what was delivered by the Core i3-4130. With 161fps, the overclocked G3258 was just 17% slower than the FX-8350, though it was almost 40% slower than the Core i5-4670K. The G3258 performed surprisingly well in x264 HD Benchmark, at least as far as the first pass data is concerned, delivering 35fps at 3....

The new Intel Core i7 2600K and Core i5 2500K appear slightly more efficient in this test when compared to the older 45nm Core i7 and Core i5 processors. The Core i7 2600K was 14% faster than the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor, while it only had a 2% clock speed advantage. The Core i5 2500K was 22% faster than the Core i5 750, though it’s also clocked 24% faster....

Despite the weaker than expected memory bandwidth performance, we were happy to find that the L2 cache performance of the Core i7-3960X was greater than that or the original Sandy Bridge processors.

Silent Hill is one of the top horror franchises in gaming, but you would not know it based on its recent resume – or lack of. The first installment arrived way back in 1999 for the original PlayStation. Some consider it one of the best games ever made, and it was instrumental in helping define the modern survival horror genre. Half a dozen mainline sequels were produced in the 2000s but only a single entry dropped in the 2010s, Silent Hill: Downpour (2012)....

Back in April, the rumor mill claimed Lego was prepping an Atari 2600-themed set to launch this summer in celebration of Atari’s 50th anniversary. Turns out, the intelligence was mostly accurate as Lego today formally announced the Atari 2600 set (#10306). The set doesn’t include a “functional” television like the Nintendo Entertainment System set from a couple years back. The original rumor suggested the set would come with a playable version of Pitfall!...

The hybrid was received with mixed reviews and unlike the Yoga, it didn’t receive any updates until now due to a simple reason: the lack of new Intel silicon. The previous models packed in 3rd-gen Core processors, so when a year went by and it was time to launch a new model, it made sense to wait until Intel’s low-power Broadwell Core M CPUs were ready. And so the new Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2014/Core M was born....

ThinkPads have traditionally been light on pre-installed software and the X1 follows the same trend. Aside from an installation of the Bing Bar, there wasn’t any other questionable software to bog the system down. Trial versions of Microsoft Office 2010, Skype and Norton Internet Security are provided, but Lenovo leaves it up to the end user to decide whether or not to install these. Lenovo installs plenty of their own software such as the ThinkVantage Toolbox, which is a suite of programs that cover things like system health, security, networking and diagnostics....

The performance from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC is unrivaled, even beating the HTC One M9 (which uses the same SoC) by a decent margin thanks to different throttling regimes. And as this SoC is driving a 1080p display, 3D graphics performance is several orders of magnitude better than the LG G3. The G Flex 2’s camera, while largely unchanged from the LG G3, is also a highlight of the smartphone....

Video recording capabilities include 1080p/60 video at 30 Mbps, 1080p/30 at 20 Mbps, and some interesting software implementations such as tracking zoom and audio zoom. There’s also a 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera capable of 1080p/30 video. In strong lighting, the G2 is capable of some spectacular images. The processing software and firmware aboard the device manage to get color reproduction and white balance very accurate, with the selected exposure and ISO often being perfect....

Also on the Snapdragon 801’s die is an Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 578 MHz, a 32-bit dual-channel LPDDR3 memory controller providing 14.9 GB/s of bandwidth, a Hexagon QDSP6V5A DSP, LTE/HSPA+/2G cellular radios, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and IZAT Gen8B GPS+GLONASS. I’ve covered the SoC in greater detail in my HTC One M8 review, so head over there if you’re after more details. The LG G3 is one of the first smartphones I’ve come across to have two SKUs with different internal NAND capacities as well as different amounts of RAM....