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The USB Promoter Group has been collaborating with Intel in order to release the USB 4.0 standard based on the USB-C interface with Thunderbolt 3 support. The new USB ports will enable data transfer speeds of up to 40 Gbps and will provide support for multiple data and display protocols, as well as advanced power delivery features for fast charging devices.

The new version of Microsoft Edge, a browser whose development is now driven by that of Chromium's, has been leaked in a set of images by Neowin. They show a browser that will indeed ring a number of bells for those who follow the open-source project. However, there is a Microsoft extensions store and Bing integration.

A blog has claimed that a GTX 1060 6GB card had gone down to €179.90 (about US$204) in a French computing store. However, this price is no longer available. In any case, it turns out that the card in question was of the single-fanned variety, and those with any more are still often above the €300 ($340) mark.

A new leak associated with the upcoming Ryzen 3000 series has surfaced. It is a pricelist that has been distributed by the IT seller Bizgram, which has an address in Singapore. This document baldly lists all the new Threadripper variants, as well as the prices at which they may be sold.

John Peddie Research has released its review of the GPU market for Q4 2018. Overall GPU shipments were down by 2.65% from the previous quarter, with Nvidia shipments decreasing by 7.62%, AMD’s by 6.81%, and Intel’s GPU shipments falling by 0.67%. However, GPU shipments for notebooks increased as the cryptocurrency crash continued to affect desktop GPU demand.

Google engineers are developing a 'back/forward cache' to reduce the latency with which Chrome returns to a previous page, or goes forward from one. This involves saving an entire webpage in memory, JavaScript included. While this may enhance the browser's UX, it also implies privacy issues.

A little bit more information about Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card has been made available thanks to a Twitter post by Andreas Schilling. The tweet includes some marketing material for the upcoming GPU and there is also a small revelation about how much and what kind of memory the GTX 1650 will have.

The 16 Gb DDR5-6400 memory chips from SK Hynix could be first to hit the market in late 2019, but the launch prices will be quite high, more appropriate for enterprise environments. On the other hand, the 8 Gb chips should be more cost-effective, thus more appropriate for consumer modules, which are expected in 2020.

The USB Implementers Forum has announced that the next generation of USB will be called USB 3.2. The new standard is capable of transferring data at 20Gbps, which puts it on a similar level to Intel’s Thunderbolt 2 technology first introduced in 2014 – the key difference is that USB is a much more generic technology and is much cheaper as a result.

Walmart has discounted a number of different variants of Nvidia’s expensive GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. GPUs with special offers include the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Duke 8G OC card and the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra Gaming card, both of which come with an attractive game bundle. Nvidia is also offering a good deal on the Founders Edition of the RTX 2080.

Testers from the Windows Insider program report that the latest Windows 10 builds feature a new app called Microsoft Gaming Services that adds direct access to Xbox APIs and allows users to download and install games directly from the Xbox distribution servers. Moreover, the 2020 update planned for Windows 10 could integrate seamless compatibility between the two platforms.

The trade war between the U.S. and China may soon end, as president Trump believes that the negotiations are going well and is now determined to delay the increased tariffs for China as a gesture of good will. As a direct consequence, the Chinese Shanghai Composite index spiked by 5% and we could be looking at a price reset for the overpriced computer hardware in the next few months.

A report quoting “industry sources” has offered the prices and launch dates for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards. The GTX 1660 will apparently be released on March 15 with a minimum price tag of US$229. The even cheaper GTX 1650 will purportedly be launched on April 30 at a price starting at US$179.

Jim Harris, an author and speaker on disruptive innovations, has released a new report on consumer tech ahead of MWC 2019. In it, he claims that 59% of all the money spent in the same market in 2018 was expended on smartphones. Harris also asserts that Android is now the most popular software platform.

Nvidia has announced that its GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card is now on sale. The new graphics solution can be purchased at prices starting at US$279.99. The latest addition to the GTX line-up offers 6 GB GDDR6 memory utilizing a 192-bit interface width and has 1536 CUDA cores. Its base clock is listed as 1500 MHz with a boost clock rate of 1770 MHz.

The discrete GPU market is about to get busy in 2020, as Intel is planning a triumphant return. To ensure its success, the company is now launching "The Odyssey" initiative which aims at involving gamers in the GPU development process. Intel is willing to listen to what end users have to say in order to create the best possible gaming GPUs.

STT-MRAM is one of the alternatives for current SRAM and NAND flash memory / storage solutions. Intel's current implementation is manufactured on the 22 nm node and promises faster read/write speeds, better endurance, and long-term data storage at higher temperatures. Its hybrid nature should allow Intel to include it in future Optane products.

UPDATE: Newegg has the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and 1660 Ti AMP listed for US $279.99 and $289.99, respectively. The listings have detailed information on the cards' specifications. ZOTAC announced its take on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti today in the form of two new graphics cards. The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a relatively compact card (145 mm or 5.71 inches) that ZOTAC claims can fit into 99% of systems available today. The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti AMP is a fair bit larger (209.6 mm or 8.3 inches) but has larger fans and will be factory overclocked. ZOTAC has yet to announce pricing and availability.

A YouTuber has asserted that Microsoft will port some games and features to the Nintendo Switch later this year. The indie title Ori has been specifically named in relation to this new purported deal to link the two platforms. This development will also apparently bring Xbox Game Passes to the Switch.

Adobe is offering a discount on the prices of all-app Creative Cloud (CC) plans. This offer applies to monthly-paid prices for CC and CC plus Adobe Stock plans only, and drops them to US$39.99 and $69.98 respectively. It is valid from now until March 1, 2019.

Microsoft's next probable major software release is 19H2, the April 2019 update. However, a build associated with a release in 2020 is the one that has most recently popped up for users in the Skip Ahead program. Despite this, the company insists 19H2 will be ready on time.

According to what appears to be a Staples employee training document that has recently surfaced on Reddit, the upcoming HP Omen Obelisk 875-0xxx series desktop will feature the yet-to-be-announced NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1180 as its top video card option. While this could be a typo, it could also be the name of a non-RTX flagship product.

It took TSMC a little over two weeks to fully assess the consequences of the Fab 14B incident. Apparently, the chemical contamination was triggered by an abnormal reaction in the photoresistant material that led to a polymer residue compromising up to 30,000 of 12 nm and 16 nm wafers. Total losses are estimated around US$550 million, but TSMC intends to ramp up production in Q2 to mitigate part of the losses.

Lioncast is a comparatively new manufacturer, but that has not stopped it from expanding its range of mice. The company has now released the LM60, a wired mouse with RGB lighting and a high-resolution optical sensor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lioncast has designed the LM60 with gamers in mind.

As a GTX 1050 successor, the GTX 1650 GPU is rumored to integrate a TU-117 core clocked at 1.48 GHz, faster Turing shaders, and 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The number of CUDA cores and the TDP are not yet known. Launch date should be close the end of March and MSRP is believed to be around US$179.

Reuters has reported that the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is planning on investing 120 trillion won (~US$106.6 billion) on chip manufacturing plants. The company will also spend an additional 55 trillion won (US$49 billion) on two existing factories over the next 10 years. SK Hynix is the world’s third-largest semiconductor vendor by revenue.

Ever since the Chinese government started to investigate memory chip suppliers over suspicious price fixing schemes, DRAM module prices started to slowly decline, and it looks like prices could get reduced by 30% in Q2 2019. By the end of 2019 DDR4 DRAM modules may end up costing up to 50% less, and prices may flatten as the DDR5 standard becomes more popular.

Some images of the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti have been leaked on Reddit. The pictures show the graphics card’s box, the GPU fitted inside a computer, and a screenshot of the device’s description. Apparently, the owner of the GTX 1660 Ti paid AU$475 for the graphics card, which is roughly US$340/€300/£260.

3DMark's latest DLSS test show outstanding performance gains with the right implementation. Meanwhile, real world games like Battlefield V and METRO Exodus suffer from DLSS artifacts, especially in resolutions under 4K. Nvidia is aware of these problems and already working on fixes that should be released with an upcoming driver update.

Zotac has unveiled a new modified graphics card to its line-up: The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Ti ArcticStorm. The Nvidia GeForce 2080 Ti-based GPU comes with a preinstalled ArcticStorm waterblock as part of a liquid cooling solution. The new card also comes with configurable lighting zones and can be fine-tuned with Zotac’s FireStorm utility software.

July 7 will see the launch of AMD's 7 nm parts including the Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi GPUs alongside the new X570 chipset. A detailed announcement is expected during Computex 2019 in June followed by wide availability in July. AMD is also expected to announce 12 and 16-core Ryzen CPUs in the July to September timeframe. While Zen 2 is mostly on track, the simultaneous launch of Navi depends on whether TSMC is able to cater to the demand.

Acer has released a report in which it puts its January 2019 revenues at about US$540 million. These figures have decreased by 23.7% compared to December 2018 and by 1.3% compared to January 2018. The company has cited the ongoing effects of the SoC shortage in explaining these changes.

Nvidia's investors can now breathe easy, as the latest fiscal year report shows decent gains throughout 2018. Things are not looking good for gaming GPUs, though, since the report shows sales in this sector were almost halved compared to 2017. Nevertheless, Nvidia keeps an optimistic outlook for 2019, with RTX 2000-series GPUs expected to see increased adoption.

NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, referenced both Unreal and Unity Engines in relation to ray-tracing during a company conference call about its fourth-quarter earnings conducted this week. That is odd, however, as only Unreal has ray-tracing support at present. Therefore, Huang may just have leaked Unity's imminent roll-out of similar capabilities.

Vox Media, the parent company of tech news outlet The Verge, has issued multiple copyright claims on videos criticizing its widely maligned PC building tutorial video. Using YouTube's copyright claim system, Vox lodged copyright strikes against several different channels that made criticism or parody videos of the tutorial. YouTube issued a copyright strike against some of the channels in question before reversing the decision, citing fair use under the DMCA.

Hardkernel has announced its latest single-board computer, the ODROID-N2. The device is equipped with a hexa-core SoC and up to 4 GB DDR4 RAM, which should deliver considerably more performance than the Raspberry Pi while remaining affordable. There is 384 KHz/32-bit stereo DAC onboard too.

Gamers that were rather reticent regarding the adoption of Nvidia's real-time ray tracing technology implemented in the latest RTX 2000-series GPUs may be interested to know that Epic Games is planning to make it easier for game developers to add ray tracing effects to existing and upcoming games with the release of Unreal Engine 4.22.

Shuttle has expanded its range of compact Mini PCs. The DH370 is a barebones PC based on the H370 chipset that can be equipped with up to a hexa-core processor.

The Surface Pen is Microsoft's answer to the Apple Pencil. It has been described as an effective stylus, albeit one that could produce more accurate digital writing. A new patent may help improve on this with changes to both the Pen and the screen used.

SilentiumPC has announced its latest Midi Tower, the Armis AR7X TG RGB. The case costs around £125 (~ US$161) and includes tempered glass panels along with four Sigma HP Corona RGB 120 mm fans and enough space for up to 420 mm long GPUs.

Get the XPS 13 9370 with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and a Core i7-8550U CPU for $1175 USD. Deals will last until early next week in an attempt to clear out older stock and make room for newer models.

A listing for an hitherto unknown Intel Core i3-9100F CPU has surfaced on the SiSoftware database. The Core i3-9100F shares similar specs with the Core i3-8100 but does not come with integrated UHD Graphics. While Core i3s are known for lack of Turbo Boost, a Dell listing tells us otherwise.

A new piece in Bloomberg has cited sources allegedly close enough to Activision Blizzard to allege that the gaming company will let "hundreds" of staff go. The firm is apparently taking this action to maximise profits and to "centralize functions". An announcement to this effect is expected on February 12, 2019.

AMD has released its final financial report for 2018. It shows that the company had made nearly US$6.5 billion for this year, which is a 23% increase compared to 2017. The company also claims to have posted a net income of $337 million, whereas it had made a net loss the previous year. Analysis has also shown that AMD has increased its share of server and PC markets.