Desktop

Latest reports claim that the upcoming Windows Core OS will offer a modular low-level platform running on desktops, laptops, VR machines, consoles and foldable devices. On top of it, Microsoft plans to add different variants of Windows to enable all the necessary features without any compromise.

Minix presented its new small NEO G41V-4 at IFA 2019 in Berlin, a fanless mini PC that fits in one hand. The G41V-4 incorporates an Intel Celeron N4100 processor, UHD Graphics 600 and 4 GB of DDR4 RAM among other components. The G41V-4 succeeds the Neo N42C-4 and will sell for US$270.

AMD is on track to deliver its next APUs next year, according to fresh Linux driver revisions. The two series, codenamed Dali and Renoir, are not based on the Navi architecture, but they should still offer improvements over existing Picasso APUs.

Sony is ready to release its Crystal LED technology to home theater systems. These next-gen panels are capable of both 8K HDR and 16K resolutions. With specs such as 140% of sRGB coverage and 120 frames per second, they are also rated for extremely high color accuracy and image quality.

GX is a version of the Opera browser specificially designed with gaming in mind. It has been available as an early-access build since June 2019, and has proved so popular that it has accrued over 1 million downloads to date. Opera GX offers Twitch support, a section for new releases and a network limiter.

The Rock Pi X is like a cross between an Atomic Pi and a Raspberry Pi, but even more affordable. Radxa equips the 85 x 52 mm developer board with an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor, up to 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, along with a host of ports and connections including an HDMI 1.4 that can output in up to 4K. The Rock Pi X has a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header too and supports several OSs including Android, Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04 and other Linux distributions. The Rock Pi X will start at US$39 and rise to US$75 for the most expensive model.

LG has revealed that certain 2019 OLED TVs will gain G-SYNC compatibility via a firmware update. This will apply to 55- to 75-inch C9 and 55 or 65 inch E9 variants. The OEM asserts that this development will enhance immersion in gameplay using these devices.

The NanoPi M4V2, as its name suggests, is a new revision of the NanoPi M4, which FriendlyElec launched last year. The Rockchip RK3399 powered single-board computer (SBC) includes 4 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one USB 2.0 Type-C ports and a 40-pin GPIO header. The board also supports Gigabit Ethernet and up to 802.11 ac Wi-Fi. The M4V2 includes power and recovery buttons too. The NanoPi M4V2 is available to order now for US$70.00 from FriendlyARM, which ships worldwide.

The latest major update to War Thunder comes with Chinese ground and air tech trees for a total of no less than 38 new pieces of military hardware, as well as 8 helicopters, 12 aircraft, 11 ships, and 7 ground vehicles for other nations. The list of changes also includes a few new locations and missions, thermal sights and night vision devices, a map rotation filter, and more.

Although well-known for its curvy LED-heavy gaming monitors, MSI wants to prove that it can still design sleek no-frills monitors for professionals, too. The 34-inch Prestige PS341WU is expected to ship on September 16 with a $200 promotional rebate lasting from now until September 29.

No larger than a smartphone, the NUC 8 Rugged is powered by refreshed Apollo Lake CPUs with ultra-low-power TDPs of only 6 W. Gaming on these systems is clearly out of the question, as the HD Graphics 500 iGPU is only aimed at IoT applications. It comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB eMMC storage. which are both soldered, but users can add an NVMe or SATA SSD through a spare M.2 slot.

Thought that AMD and NVIDIA had ended their tit for tat game for the time being? Think again, as the green team has a response to Navi 14, which will probably be called the RX 5600 series. NVIDIA may even take a leaf out of AMD's puerile 'jebaiting' strategies, not only flooding the market with more midrange GPUs, but also undercutting existing prices too.

The online security company Kaspersky has reported the presence of dangerous programs in the digital versions of educational content for university students. These essays and texts were found to contain malware of varying severity and virulence. Some were described as capable of infecting whole networks from a single student's PC.

Qualcomm has introduced its latest "add-on" for its 2nd-generation 5G modem, the Snapdragon X55. The QTM527 is an antenna that confers mmWave reception on the chipset. It is intended to enable the X55 to handle fiber-level connections for homes and businesses, regardless of their location.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (or VESA) is the body that can confer official certifications for state-of-the art quality standards such as DisplayHDR on new screens. Its latest update to the criteria by which they are granted is called version 1.1. It calls for ultra-modern specs such as active dimming, as well as tougher yardsticks for color gamut and luminance.

The Zen 2-based AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series keeps setting benchmark records, with an engineering sample showing the world what it is capable of on UserBenchmark. The 32 core processor outscores the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX by 37% in Extreme workloads, with it besting the Core i9-9980XE by 98% too.

Acer's new series of XV3 gaming monitors offer modern refresh rates of up to 240Hz and response times of as low as 1 millisecond. They are also G-SYNC ready with the variable refresh rate (VRR) necessary to handle either the RTX or GTX 10-series of graphic cards. These new IPS panels come in either 24.5- or 27-inch variants, and will start at €249 (about US$275).

The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has finalized the specification for USB4. A few things are different this time around including the way the it named, as well as its support for another standard in the form of Thunderbolt 3.

AMD has posted a declaration on its Ryzen Twitter account in regard to reports of 3rd Gen Ryzen processors not offering the levels of performance that were expected by users. The post states that the company is working on a BIOS update that should deal with the boost performance issues that had been affecting SKUs such as the Ryzen 9 3900X.

A new 32 core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Zen 2 processor has appeared on Geekbench, following the one spotted by @momomo_us earlier this month. The chip seems like a downclocked version of the one that almost hit 100,000 in Geekbench, but it can still reach nearly 4.2 GHz and leave existing CPUs in its wake in multi-core work.

The entry-level AMD Athlon 300GE APU has been spotted enduring a run-through on the 3DMark benchmark Fire Strike Ultra 1.1. Unsurprisingly, the chip did not record a stellar performance that will amaze anyone, although the particular test in question may not be the most suitable for an expected low-performance APU.

In order to make the IdeaCentre A540 display thinner, Lenovo moved some of the components in a base stand that also wirelessly charges QI-certified handhelds. The new all-in-one systems come in 24-inch or 27-inch sizes, and users can opt to get the 10-point touchscreen versions. Besides the gen 9 Intel i7 CPUs and AMD Radeon RX 560 GPUs, the 24-inch model may also be equipped with AMD Ryzen CPUs.

AMD has finally agreed on a settlement for the false advertising of its Bulldozer and Piledriver processors, after eight years of litigation. Claimants will be eligible to draw from a pot of up to US$12.1 million, but there are certain caveats including from where you bought the processor and which SKU you bought.

TSMC claims that the GlobalFoundries allegations are baseless and it will do everything in its power to protect its IPs and technologies. The Taiwanese foundries currently hold a portfolio of 37,000 patents and expressed disappointment towards the monopolistic insinuations.

Some consumers may have found that having a 4K display does not always result in pin-sharp content. This is because 1080p image data is not always scaled effectively to match the more up-to-date resolution. NVIDIA has addressed this by introducing integer scaling in its latest Game Ready Drivers update.

Microsoft is set to unveil the latest version of its Surface device line up on October 2 in NYC. Among the devices likely to make an appearance are a Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7, Surface Book 3 and potential updates to the Surface Studio and Surface Go. There might even be a surprise on the cards this time around too!

With a gaming performance comparable to the more affordable RX 5700 XT, the Radeon VII GPU is already put on EOL status after a short-lived 6 months. Still, the high-end GPU is a solid option for heavy compute tasks and demanding renderings, so the remaining stocks may eventually end up in select workstations.

AMD has released Radeon Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.8.2, an update that adds compatibility with HDCP 2.3 on the RX 5700 series of graphics cards. It also boosts performance while playing Control using DirectX 11 compared to the previous version of this driver. 19.8.2 may also address a range of glitches associated with this version.

The most notable infringements are related to the use of FinFET structures in 28 nm, 16 nm, 12 nm, 10 nm and 7 nm chips. Many products powered by TSMC's chips including, iPhones, GeForce GPUs, Lenovo and Asus laptops, handhelds from Google and Motorola, plus networking equipment from Broadcom and Cisco could end up being banned from the U.S. and Germany.

Password Leak Detection is an experimental feature in Chrome 78. It checks a given password against public databases of data breaches, in case of its use in a known security incident. Should this test prove positive, Chrome then offers a pop-up advising the user to change the password for the site or service in question.

Chinese GPU maker Jingia Micro is developing a new GPU that comes close to rivaling the NVIDIA GTX 1080, at least on paper. The JM9271 offers fast clocks, PCIe 4.0, HBM memory, and a 200W TDP. Jingjia's focus seems to be on the specialized military applications market at the moment, but support for DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs could make it potentially suitable for gaming.

The Core i9-9900T remains unavailable in most regions, but several Geekbench listings give an insight into the performance of the 35 W CPU. Essentially a hamstrung Core i9-9900, the Core i9-9900T bests processors with up to 3x the TDP in multicore workloads and is a big upgrade over the last 35 W CPU to enter our offices.

AMD chief Dr. Lisa Su delivered a keynote at the Hot Chips conference earlier this week and spoke about the company's plans for HPC and exascale computing. Dr. Su also reiterated that CrossFire multi-GPU support is no longer a focus and that more information about Threadripper 3000 will be available later this year.

An 18 core Cascade Lake-X recently impressed on Geekbench, and now its 10 core sibling is doing the same. The processor, confirmed as part of the Intel Core 10000 X-series by prolific leaker @momomo_us, achieved a multi-core score that surpasses that of the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X and the Core i9-9900K.

The Wafer Scale Engine chip is 56 times larger than Nvidia's Tesla V100 server-grade GPU and integrates 400,000 AI-optimized cores coupled with 18 Gigabytes of on-chip SRAM. This impressive computational power can help reduce processing times for AI and machine learning applications from months to mere minutes.

Dell had taken the covers off its Alienware 55-inch 4K OLED display. Designed for serious gamers who want to set up a gaming loungeroom it boasts a 120 Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync helping to set it apart from OLED TVs on the market.

Headlining Dell’s announcements at Gamescom is an all-new G series gaming desktop. The new Dell G5 Desktop is designed to be an attractive but affordable and upgradeable gaming machine with up to Intel Core i9 CPUs and either Nvidia (GTX/RTX) or AMD Radeon RX GPUs.

AMD may be storming away with multicore performance crowns, but Intel is not going down without a fight. Now, an 18 core Cascade Lake-X processor has appeared on Geekbench, and it has the AMD Threadripper series in its sights.

Mojang, the makers of Minecraft, has announced that its hit game will become able to use real-time ray tracing in early 2020. Furthermore, NVIDIA has broken the news that a number of other titles will get these features. They include upcoming Metro Exodus DLC, Control and Dying Light 2.

Logitech has added two new premium gaming keyboards to its line-up. The new G915 Lightspeed Wireless and the G815 Lightsync RGB feature Logitech’s low-profile GL mechanical keyboard switches and customization through 16.8 million different colors.

Based on the information leaked in the latest updated of AIDA64, the upcoming GPU appears to be based on the TU102, so it is certainly an enthusiast-grade model. It may end up as either the RTX 2080 Ti Super, the Titan RTX Black or a new Quadro RTX professional GPU.

A new entry of what appears to be an AMD Navi 14 GPU variant has surfaced on CompuBench. The new Navi 14 listing shows the device ID as AMD 7341:00 sporting 24 CUs, 8 GB VRAM, and a max clock of 1,900 MHz. From the CompuBench listing, we see that Navi 14 offers good OpenCL performance and could eventually replace the Polaris-based Radeon RX 570.

Purported details of the AMD Ryzen 9 3900 processor have been posted on Twitter. The Ryzen 3000 series chip has not been officially announced yet, but it seems this particular SKU could be a 65-W TDP variant as opposed to the Ryzen 9 3900X with its 105 W TDP. The latest chip is expected to have 12 cores and 24 threads.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that has been part of Yahoo (or Oath, as it is now) since 2013. However, the parent company in this case - Verizon - has reportedly been trying to palm it off for some time. It has now successfully found a buyer: Automattic Inc, the same company behind WordPress.

President Trump is throwing the U.S. tech companies a lifeline with the latest tariff delays. Apple, Qualcomm and Intel showed their concern when their Q2 revenues were affected by the first wave of tariffs, but it looks like the shopping season will be kind to the U.S. tech giants this year.

Shuttle is back with a new mini PC series, the DS10U. The device supports up to a quadcore Whiskey Lake CPU and a maximum of 32 GB of DDR4 2400 SODIMM RAM, while staying true to the compact ethos of its predecessors. The DS10U is fanless too and only 39 mm thick.