Workstation

The Kingpin series is a super-high-end, super-powered line of premium GPUs designed by EVGA. Given this reputation, IT correspondents speculate that the next generation of these cards will be based on the RTX 2080 Ti. The existence of this new card has been leaked on Instagram.

Videocardz has claimed that ZOTAC had accidentally posted a link for a new version of its GTX 1070-based Amp Extreme card - one with GDDR5X rather than the more usual GDDR5. However, this card has 8GB of this memory, as before, with the same number of CUDA cores. Then again, its TDP had increased.

The latest ray trace-supporting and Turing-powered card, the Titan RTX, was launched at today's (December 3, 2018) Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. With its 24GB in GDDR6 memory, 576 multi-precision Tensor Cores and 72 RT Cores, it is clearly aimed at deep-learning professionals.

Scott Johnson, the Google manager in charge of the app Hangouts, has taken to Twitter in order to refute a report that the same app is to shut down shortly. Instead, Johnson asserts, its functions are to be split across two new services: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meets. Those who still use "Hangouts Classic" will be "upgraded" to these new apps as they roll out.

Several influencers and YouTube personalities were seen teasing the NVIDIA RTX Titan GPUs. We're not sure what the new Titan card will be officially called as but from the pictures posted, we see a blue TITAN logo, two 8-pin power connectors, and an NVLink connector. The card seems to be sporting a golden shroud similar to the earlier Titan V card and is expected to feature a full Turing TU102 GPU with 4,608 CUDA Cores.

Apple is facing a lawsuit pressed by 3 plaintiffs in the United States. It concerns a claim that the company has breached Californian advertising and representation laws in selling Macbook and iMacs. These plaintiffs assert that Apple's allusions to longevity and robustness when marketing its devices are contrary to their experiences of reduced or impaired functionality in their devices.

Intel has announced that it will introduce a new medium called Universal Windows Drivers (UWD) to update the integrated graphics the company supplies to current Microsoft OS-running hardware. The institution of UWD will mean that all other methods to install updates for these graphics drivers may become invalid.

Launching for users in North America only for now, the Eurocom service promises to update your laptop software, BIOS, anti-virus, operating system, and more for a small fee. A "deep cleaning" of the fans, hinges, and motherboard is also an option even for difficult-to-service laptops.

Fluent design updates for the start menu, clock synchronization added, microphone notification area refinements and more are rolling out to the Insider Preview Fast ring in the latest 19H1 build. Build 18290 is available to download now from Windows Update.

Among the Windows 10 October update's many bugs, Apple's iCloud stopped working and could not be installed on the build. Microsoft and Apple had announced that they would collaborate to resolve this bug. With iCloud's newest update, it appears that this has been achieved.

A recent entry in SiSoftware's SANDRA database lists AMD's upcoming "Rome" EPYC CPU with double the L3 cache as prior Zen CPUs. Detailed as "16 x 16 MB L3," this would put total L3 cache for Rome at 256 MB across its 64 cores, utterly trouncing Intel's forthcoming Cascade Lake CPUs. However, this is still a rumor and should be treated as such.

According to a Taiwanese forum thread that claims to have information from an inside partner meeting, Intel may be developing a 10-core consumer-grade CPU in the Comet Lake-S family. The CPU would be built on the 14 nm process and may use a dual-ring bus design, implying that the CPU will split cores between two dies.

ASRock has released its Phantom Gaming 6 motherboard. It supports X399 Threadripper CPUs, up to 128GB of 3400MHz OC DDR4 RAM, Phantom Gaming 2.5G and Intel Gigabit LAN. It also has 7.1 channel audio, 3 PCI-e 3.0 x16 slots, 3 M.2 slots and, of course, RGB.

Dell has lined up a wide array of devices as part of its Black Friday deals. Many of the selected laptops are being offered in limited quantities with savings ranging from an enticing 10% off right up to a whopping 50% off a Vostro 15 500 with 1 TB HDD (US$509.00). Dell is also offering discounts on desktops, monitors, servers, peripherals, and hardware upgrades.

Microsoft has announced that only Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2) code-signing will be used to update legacy versions of Windows (namely Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1). Machines that only support SHA-1 will be considered too vulnerable, and will be prevented from updating by next April.

Configure the laptop exactly the way you want it, request a quote, and then name your discount. The promotion will be for this weekend only and it will apply to all Eurocom laptops including gaming, workstations, Enterprise-class laptops, and mobile servers.

The recent 'crypto crash' may have resulted in a large-scale dumping of slightly older cards onto sites like eBay. Consequently, this may drive down the prices others with the same GPUs (e.g. gamers) can ask for their listings. In addition, this is the season to grab cash for upgrades.

Many Microsoft users will soon be able to make Skype calls over their Alexa-powered smart speakers. This feature is only available in select countries, however. Those living in them may be able to find the new function in the speakers' Settings menu.

Users have reportedly discovered that iCloud stops working on laptops updated to the latest version of Windows (1809). This prevents syncing or uploading to the service. New installs of iCloud may also fail due to a lack of compatibility. Microsoft has announced a collaboration with Apple to fix the problem.

The cycling deals will run throughout the week with savings between 10 percent and 35 percent across Lenovo's popular product lines. Newer models like the Legion Y530, however, have much smaller discounts compared to older models.

The October update for Windows 10 is currently being rolled out to the general public. For those in the Fast ring of the Insider Preview program, however, the build of the future is available to try out. This update, known as 19H1, includes an improved Light Theme and some other things Microsoft had promised.

Apple has released new models of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro Vega GPUs. The new MacBook Pros can be configured with either a Radeon Pro Vega 16 or Radeon Pro Vega 20. The new GPU option is only available for the most expensive 15-inch Macbook Pro and will start at US $3,049.

The existing high-performance ThinkStation P series is not expected to have any major redesigns as the announcement relates only to the inclusion of Nvidia RTX. Applications ranging from university research to major game developers like Epic are just a few example clients who rely on ThinkStation products.

LaCie, a subsidiary of Seagate, has released its latest portable SSD with USB type C. The company claims that it can transfer data at up to 540 MB/s and support up to USB 3.0 standards. The LaCie type C portable SSD is also supposedly shock-proof, despite its carefully styled 9mm-thick chassis.

Panasonic has revealed a cluster of upgrades for its Toughbook 31 device. The newly enhanced version of the fully ruggedized notebook will now come with an Intel Core i5-7300U and 16 GB RAM as standard, and it will also feature improved communication equipment and a second battery option. The device will be available in the US in December, at a price starting from around US$3,699.

Intel may look like it is doing well right now, but the production problems will hit it hard in 2019. AMD ill not cut it any slack and will hit hard with the new 7 nm CPUs, but Intel has some retaliation plans, at least on the server side of things. The upcoming Xeon Scalable CPUs slated for late 2019 will integrate Multi-Chip Packaging technology that allows to fit 48 cores on a single chip, plus 12-channel DDR4 support.

A new CVE may enable yet another side-channel exploit in Intel processors. This vulnerability, known as CVE-2018-5407 (or "PortSmash"), targets Hyper-Threading (or simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)). It is confirmed as effective in Skylake and Kaby Lake chips, and could affect others.

The Threadripper 2970X and 2990WX flagship processors for this year have already been released. Now, their more 'mid-range' counterparts are available. They have been shown to compete well with some Intel HEDT and workstation CPUs in inital reviews.

The Santa Clara giant reported the best quarter in its entire 50-year history, even though the company was not able to meet the outstanding market demand. The 14 nm shortages will continue throughout the rest of the year and Intel expects this situation to worsen, as it is slowly shifting focus to the 10 nm node.

The Core XE variants of this year's Intel chipset lineup have been announced, but are not available yet. The top flight of this series, the i9-9980XE, is the subject of an apparent leak. It consists of a 3DMark Time Spy score for the processor.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 is still competitive at the sub-US$400 price bracket. It was originally released with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. A change to its product page on its maker's website now suggests that there are GDDR5X versions of the card.

The second installment of Red Dead Redemption has been announced as launching soon. However, this news is not great for PC gamers, as the game is thought to be only available for consoles. A recent listing by an e-tailer appears to have given some hopes that this may be wrong, then snatched it away again.

The new device-as-a-service program from HP is limited to select customers for the time being and it targets creative professionals like photographers, video editors, graphic designers, and CG artists. Each professional group gets a specific hardware bundle with included accessories and a monthly "rent," plus access to the 24/7 Concierge program for streamlined setup.

As previously announced, the Ubuntu 18.10 release comes with the GNOME 3.30 desktop and Yaru — the new default theme that has been developed by the community. The new kernel and updated graphics libraries now support the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B/B+, the AMD Vega M-powered Kaby Lake G series, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845.

Windows 10 19H1, an update already being tested out by some users, is now expected to contain new adaptations to the Spectre-patch problem. These fixes for the more severe Spectre variant 2 vulnerability can reduce performance by up to 30%. The solution is known as the Retpoline kernel.

The first desktop and laptop DDR5 RAM modules are now expected to be released at some point in 2020, as JEDEC has not yet finalized the hardware specs for the DDR5 standard. What we know for sure about the DDR5 RAM is that it will feature at least double the bandwidth, 4800 MT/s and later on 6400 MT/s speeds, plus independent 40-bit channels per module.

Intel is splitting its manufacturing segment into 3 new categories, each of which will be managed by a different staff member. These new divisions will handle various aspects of the chip-making side of the Intel business. They will also be directed by an executive who came to the company from Qualcomm.

The new Intel 9th generation Core processors will support up to 128 GB DDR4 RAM as revealed by a footnote in one of HP's announcements, which was later confirmed by Anandtech. This is made possible due to the availability of double height double capacity modules from Zadak and G.Skill and Samsung's 16 GB DDR4 chips.

Gigabyte had released a promotional Halloween-season banner including the words "AORUS RTX 2070 Ti/2070 Graphics card". This was enough for some to run with the rumor that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 was getting its own Ti variant. However, Gigabyte has taken to Reddit to squash this speculation once and for all.

The Force Series™ MP510 is Corsair's latest NVMe M.2 SSD with 3rd-generation x4 PCIe. Even its lowest storage configuration achieves over 3,000 MB in sequential read. Its 960GB model also has this level of write speed. The MP150 line may also start at about US$66.

The GPU market is often rife with counterfeit cards. These products are often sold as having more memory than they actually do, or as having newer NVIDIA chips that are in fact reflashed older ones - or both. TechPowerUp has upgraded its diagnostics app GPU-Z in order to detect these techniques and report affected cards as fakes.