Desktop

Do your best to show off how Lucky the dragon can look when fused with the Venom Symbiote and you could win a new MSI Trident 3 mini PC or 27-inch curved gaming monitor. The contest celebrates the release of the movie Venom starring Tom Hardy in the titular role.

AMD has a very favorable position on the CPU market, especially now that Intel is going through rougher times caused by shortages. The red team should be able to increase the market share with the release of its 7 nm Ryzen 3000, Threadripper 3000 and EPYC "Rome" CPUs, plus the Instinct GPUs in early 2019.

PCs that run on processors that are of the Skylake or later series are reportedly displaying obstructive messages in the course of their update to the October version of Windows 10. This is due to an older Intel Display Audio driver that may cause instability if still present when the machine has finished upgrading itself.

Microsoft has begun seeding the Windows 10 October 2018 Update in a staggered manner and one of the important aspects of this update is that it comes with the latest version of DirectX 12 that supports DirectX Raytracing (DXR) thereby, enabling the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards to perform their best in raytracing-enabled games. What this also means is that cards from other companies such as AMD will also be able to take advantage of this new API.

First announced before the RTX 2000-series gaming GPUs, the new Quadro professional cards based on the Turing architecture will start shipping in a few weeks. The Quadro RTX 6000 flagship card is now up for pre-order with a "decent" US$6,300 price. It features a slightly more powerful TU102 core plus 24 GB GDDR6 VRAM.

Microsoft has updated the Surface Studio desktop computer for the first time since it launched in December 2016. Originally shipping with 6th gen Intel Skylake-based silicon, the new Surface Studio 2 has been refreshed with Intel’s 7th gen Kaby Lake chips.

Fancy one of the new Surface devices from Microsoft, but can’t afford to drop the cash up front? Microsoft’s new All Access subscription plan will let you pay off your new Surface and bundled Office 365 subscription over 24 months.

Sources claim that a few Ryzen 3000-series CPU samples have arrived at Radeon Technologies Group in order to tune the GPU drivers for the new interconnects. Tests have revealed that the upcoming CPUs are faster than the i7-8700K from Intel, but are very unstable and crash very often at the moment.

In desktops and laptops alike, RAM is usually the easiest component to upgrade. However, tablets and smartphones all come with the memory chips soldered to the motherboards. In both cases you have to weigh all the options before making your purchase decision. How much memory do you need in a laptop? Is memory capacity more important than storage capacity? We will answer your questions in our in-depth article.

Manufacturer of SSDs and RAM kits ZADAK has unveiled its new 32 GB DDR4 RAM module with a height far greater than that of typical RAM sticks. Mainstream PCs with 4 DIMM slots could support 128 GBs of RAM using these modules.

While the 14nm CPU shortage did not initially affect US retailers, it has become clear that it finally has. Intel's flagship 8700k CPU has gone from $350 to $399 in under a month, which is nearly a 15% increase in price.

NVIDIA's share price could reach as much as US$400 thanks to new estimations by Evercore ICI. This company is pinning a lot of earning potential on the graphics giant due to its position in the emerging AI market. However, other analysts are not quite that optimistic.

A start-up called Habana claims that its new chip, the Goya, can out-perform NVIDIA V100 and Intel Xeon platforms in terms of image processing. Goya works on ONNX and MXNet AI frameworks at present, although Habana is working on TensorFlow too. On the other hand, there may be some caveats to the new company's claims.

The CFO and interim CEO of Intel, Bob Swan, has released an open letter to all interested parties concerning the company's ongoing processor-supply woes. Swan asserted that increased investment and a renewed focus on high-end chipsets are the best ways to solve Intel's problems.

The new Razer Nari is a line of gaming-focused headsets that will incorporate Razer HyperSense. This is an advanced form of haptic feedback intended to intensify an immersive experience. The Nari headsets will also feature THX Spatial Audio and improved engineering for those who wear glasses or similar equipment.

The next update to Windows 10 may be rolled out in the next month. In fact, some leaks claim that this will commence on the same day on which the new Surface products are to be launched. However, for that to pan out, it leaves Microsoft with a lot of work to do in a very short space of time.

After years of research and development, VIA is ready to launch multi-core CPUs that may threaten Intel's and AMD's position on the entry-level and mid-range desktop / laptop CPU markets. The upcoming Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-6000 octa-core CPUs are scheduled for a 2019 release, and their performance should be comparable to Intel's gen 7 models.

The 15th major release of Apple's desktop operating system and the successor of macOS High Sierra 10.13, macOS Mojave 10.14 is now available. In addition to the new dark mode, this release brings a few iOS apps to the desktop, including Apple News, Home, Voice Memos, and is also the last macOS version to support 32-bit apps.

The RTX 2070 Founders Edition will run for $600 or about $100 less than the current price of a new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Variants from other OEMs like Asus are expected to come in the same week that will hopefully alleviate stock concerns. Pre-orders for the RTX 2070 are not yet open as of this writing.

The tech blog WCCFTech has published exclusive leaks from sources they claim are associated with AIB NVIDIA partners. It includes more detailed information on how the US tariffs on Chinese exports will affect prices for products that integrate the GeForce RTX 20-series of graphics cards.

The Turbo RTX 2070, Dual RTX 2070, and Strix RTX 2070 will all boast IP5X dust resistance while the higher-end model will support the new VirtualLink standard for simplifying VR setups and have a host of auxiliary features. Asus is promising a completely silent GPU should the core temperature be below 55 C. No prices have been announced.

While DRAM prices have been dropping since January of this year, the price of DDR4 memory is still significantly higher than it was in 2016. Now, during a time of reduced demand, Samsung may be planning to cut down on supply in order to keep today's prices.

NVIDIA's target stock price has been downgraded to US$273, and has had its market value suffer, after Morgan Stanley took the relatively restrained improvements of the new GeForce RTX 2080 over older cards. However, a WCCFTech analyst has hit back, asserting that the financial giant does not grasp what the new Turing architecture brings to gaming.

The default clocks on the RTX 2080 Ti might not deliver the performance we deserved, but at least the overclocking potential is there. Professional overclocker KINGPIN managed to push the GPU clock to 2.41 GHz and GDDR6 VRAM frequencies to 8.63 GHz, breaking all the records in 3DMark and effectively ending the Titan V supremacy.

Whether you are looking to purchase your very first laptop or just upgrading from a five-year-old model, the following list of points should help you navigate the mine-field that is the modern technology world. We point out some of the tricks manufacturers employ to get you to buy their products and share quite a few tips in a simple, easy to understand manner.

The PJ-3280 NVMe SSD is designed to boost the performance of desktops or laptops without breaking the bank. It comes in 128, 256 and 512 GB capacities and, thanks to the PCIe Gen 3 X2 interface, it can reach sequential reading speeds of up to 1,600 MB/s plus writing speeds of up to 950 MB/s, making it 3 times faster than SATA III SSDs.

The first benchmarks of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and the RTX 2080 Ti are here and seem to reflect what we've been expecting so far. While the RTX 2080 Ti posts some impressive performance numbers and is easily the most powerful GPU in this generation, the RTX 2080 is on par with the GTX 1080 Ti in performance while still costing US$200 dearer. While these numbers reflect non-RTX performance, it will still be sometime before the worth of these cards can be estimated on actual RTX-enabled games.

Google has released the latest version of Chrome OS, and it includes support for Linux applications for the first time. Also baked in is Google’s Material Design 2.0 theme, which brings Chrome OS a little more in line with the look and feel of Android.

The official Gigabyte AORUS Twitter published a 10 second long teaser video advertising a new motherboard. The implication seems to be that the Z390 chipset (and perhaps 9th generation Intel CPUs) are coming in early October.

ASRock recently announced two new small form factor (SFF) desktop PCs. The Jupiter H310 and Jupiter Q370 both measure just over a litre in volume but can support up to a 65 Watt CPU on the LGA1151 socket. Upgrade options are also quite robust.

Although Intel only grabbed the leading place in one category, this category is probably the most important. TechSpot's best CPU for gaming is the Intel Core i7-8700K, while various AMD Ryzen chips own the crown in the following categories: best extreme desktop CPU, best value CPU for productivity, best all-round value CPU, and best budget CPU.

Even if the RTX 2000-series cards turn out to be worth the advertised MSRP, the market prices might end up higher due to Trumps tariffs imposed on Chinese exports and inventory problems caused by crypto miners. This would also apply to individual PC components, but pre-built systems, laptops and components already in stock are not to be affected.

The RTX 2080 Ti was supposed to be launched on September 20 together with the RTX 2080, but, it seems that Nvidia had some inventory problems and had postpone the RTX 2080 Ti availability by a whole week. For those who managed to pre-order this model before it went out of stock, shipping will still occur between September 20 and 27.

In the days leading up to the RTX series's review day, yet another leak has emerged on performance. The RTX 2080 and 2080Ti have been tested on Final Fantasy XV's built in benchmark.

The 2300X and 2500X are AMD's newest Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 CPUs, respectively. They boost to 4.0GHz support all-core overclocking. Therefore, they may be seen as promising for starter or modest builds. However, both processors have been announced as exclusive to OEMs and SIs.

Intel will not have enough chips to satisfy demand during the upcoming holiday season. This is part of a recent prediction by a JP Morgan analyst. The analysis may take factors such as the long-awaited switch to 10nm chipsets by the premier processing manufacturer into account.

The new Tesla T4 is part of the latest enterprise offering based on the Turing architecture. While it features a TDP of only 75 W, it comes with a modified version of the TU104 chip almost as fast as the RTX 2080 gaming GPU. As such, the T4 can decode up to 38 concurrent 1080p video streams, offering maximum efficiency for smart video services based on deep learning frameworks.

The two companies are envisioning a future where gaming consoles integrate the bear minimum computing power for CPU-based tasks, but rely on cloud-based GPUs to process complex graphics. Games would have an instance running on the local machine and another running in the cloud, and the cloud framework stitches the two concurrent instances into a seamless experience.

The latest installment in the Tomb Raider series is now globally available The game is the last in a line of Lara Croft origin-story portrayals. Eidos-Montréal is confident that it will showcase the studio's capabilities.

ASRock is set to update their Fatal1ty motherboard line with new ones, including the Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 offering exposed in a recent leak. This new product will sport triple M.2 and PCIe slots. It also has 3 Ethernet ports, one of which is 10-gigabit.

A Cinebench R15 multi-core score of the 8-core 16-thread Intel Core i9-9900K has leaked on the internet and the CPU has managed to score an impressive 2166 points at 5 GHz overclock on all cores. The video does not show single-core results but it can be expected that Intel's offering will put pressure on AMD once again to up their multi-core performance.

Based in Hong Kong, Zotac also has offices in Korea, Germany, and the United States for its international products. Japan will now be added to the list in an attempt to expand to even more territories.

Besides the Deep Learning Super Sampling and ray tracing tech that might not be implemented in games right away, the RTX 2000-series GPUs also integrate a series of features that could theoretically bring 50% performance gains over the Pascal chips. Videocardz made a brief summary of all these features, which should be explained in detail after the review embargo lift from tomorrow.

The Ryzen 5 2500X and Ryzen 3 2300X were spoiled a few months ago and were known to have the frequency multiplier unlocked for overclocking. On the other hand, the Ryzen 7 2700E and Ryzen 5 2600E are totally new additions designed for silent desktops and mini PCs, thus having lower TDPs and no overclocking support.

Two popular VPNs have been reported as subject to newly-discovered security issues discovered by Cisco Talos. These flaws apply to those using the services on Windows PCs, and could allow a hacker access through a 'Connect' command. Both companies say they have issued updates to prevent this.

NVIDIA brought its GeForce NOW to the AT&T Spark Conference to showcase the service's potential when combined with 5G. The company is confident that its new cloud-based graphics solution can negate the need for expensive hardware in areas such as 60fps gaming. It is now moving to build partnerships to bring this to a wider audience.