Workstation

Google has admitted that its social media app, Google+, has been hacked. This data theft has affected approximately half a million profiles. The users in question may have had many points of important user data extracted from their Google accounts.

The memory found in typical RAM and storage components - DRAM and NAND respectively - may drop in price, particularly as we move into 2019. This is based on new research by DRAMeXchange. This group claims that prices for this technology has not grown in 2018 Q3 as it normally does.

New rumors emanating from Microsoft suggest that the Office software team want to take over Cortana's functions and place in the Windows OS. This would mean that Office could strongly inform its development in the future, converting the flagging virtual assistant into more of a productivity helpmeet - much like a certain animated paperclip.

Both IDC and Gartner revealed that Lenovo dominated the global PC market in the third quarter of the year, shipping around 16 million desktops, notebooks, and workstations out of a total of 67.4 million (according to IDC), and 67.2 million (Gartner) units sold worldwide during the given period.

The new mainstream Core and Core-X HEDT processors represent Intel's retaliation against AMD's Ryzen 2000-series and Threadripper 2000 HEDT lineups. Looking at the MSRPs, it seems like Intel does not want to outprice AMD, while the core configuration suggests lower overall performance, at least for the HEDT models.

AMD has announced that its 12- and 24-core Ryzen 2 Threadripper chips will be available on October 29. The new chips are counterparts to the more expensive 16- and 32-core chips in the Threadripper lineup and will appeal to enthusiasts looking for a balance between performance and price.

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.

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.

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.

The mixed battery life results and glossy 4K UHD touchscreen on the high-end ThinkPad X1 Extreme have us curious about how the less expensive FHD configuration can perform. Will the FHD SKU be any dimmer or grainier than its pricier option? Will it exhibit less ghosting with faster response times? We'll be reviewing the FHD ThinkPad X1 Extreme - as well as its ThinkPad P1 workstation counterpart - throughout the month of October.

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 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.

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 barely released NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 has already found its way to the innards of the Alienware Aurora desktop PC for gamers. Those interested — and with a generous budget — can get the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 OC-powered Aurora for US$2,155.99. This machine also comes with 16 GB of memory, Intel Core i7-8700K processor, and 256 GB SSD + 2 TB HDD storage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Using the 10 nm manufacturing process, Samsung managed to pack 256 GB or RAM on a single stick, proving that DDR can offer a viable alternative to Intel's Optane and 3DXPoint technology. The 256 GB RAM modules are only available for servers at present, while desktop and laptop PCs get 32 GB per module, but it will not be long before these capacities hit the mainstream markets.

With its single-sided M.2 2280 package, the XPG SX6000 Pro NVMe SSD can fit PCs, as well as compact laptops and mini PCs. The new Realtek PCIe Gen3x4 controller coupled with second gen 64-layer 3D TLC NAND memory chips can deliver sequential read speeds of up to 2,100 MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,500 MB/s. Capacities range from 256 GB up to 1 TB.

The new 15-inch model will be significantly more powerful than its smaller 14-inch sibling, but it will also be dropping specific features including WQHD HDR and the proprietary Side-Dock. A NumPad will be omitted despite the size increase. Expect the ThinkPad X1 Extreme and its ThinkPad P1 workstation equivalent to retail for close to $2000.

Acer is announcing updates to its Swift lineup at IFA 2018. The new Swift 3 and Swift 5 are powered by the new Intel 'Whiskey Lake-U' processors and retain most characteristics of their predecessors but feature the near bezel-less displays in the Swift 3 and the Swift 5 15-inch. The Swift 3 also comes with optional integrated 4G LTE.

After almost twoo weeks from the official launch of the Threadripper 2000-series, AMD finally decided to slash the prices for the first generation Threadrippers. The best deal of all three processors seems to be the 1920X, which got a 50% reduction, while the 1920X gets a ~40% lower MSRP, with the high-end 1950X getting only a 25% price drop.

At the ongoing VMworld 2018 conference in Las Vegas, AMD announced the Radeon Pro V340 dual-GPU for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) applications. The Radeon Pro V340 can power demanding datacenter workloads such as CAD, rendering, and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) applications. The V340 can support up to 32 VMs, each with its own independent memory access for extra security along with support for independently compressing H.264 and H.265 video streams.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are not just for individuals trying to get around geo-restrictions. Companies may also use them to streamline their online connections. However, a managing director for a UK IT and networking company thinks an emerging alternative is about to make these VPNs obsolete.

Will the GTX name live on for gaming laptops after Pascal? Eurocom will soon be updating its high-end Sky series of laptops to support both Coffee Lake Intel CPUs and mobile Turing.

Announced roughly one week ago, the new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 is already orderable on Lenovo's US website. The new 15.6 inch mobile workstation is supposed to compete with the Dell XPS 15 and its workstation cousin, the Dell Precision 5530.

The new monster processor from AMD might find its way to the list of hardware options available for the Alienware Area-51 desktop gaming PC, but this depends entirely on its level of gaming performance this chip can reach. For now, Alienware and AMD fans should keep their fingers crossed and just wait.

Phoronix has done a performance comparison of the AMD Threadripper 2990WX in Windows 10 Pro and Linux and the results show Threadripper numbers significantly lower under Windows 10 Pro than in Linux. In some tests such as 7-Zip Compression, the Threadripper 2990WX posted almost 58% higher scores in Linux compared to Windows 10 Pro implying that Linux is a better OS of choice when testing high core count CPUs.

On August 13 at Siggraph Nvidia announced its new Turing based RTX Quadro GPUs, designed to process real time ray tracing. The full Turing GPU is the second biggest in the world (the first being Volta) and it is the world's first GPU with ray tracing functionality built in. The new RTX Quadro lineup will be arriving in Q4 or sooner.

AMD's Threadripper 2990WX has finally launched, and it is officially the fastest CPU in the world. With 32 cores, 64 threads, and an all core frequency of 3.4 GHz, it's a monstrous CPU. However, the path to 32 cores on the desktop is paved with compromises and some disappointments.

The NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs implement Samsung's latest 16 Gigabit GDDR6 memory. The enhanced bandwidth of GDDR6 helps in improved performance and memory efficiency while consuming 35% less power. The Quadro RTX is the first product to implement Samsung's GDDR6 VRAM.

Macs are more or less impervious to hacking, right? Not any more, according to two cybersecurity researchers during a briefing at the Black Hat USA Conference 2018. However, the attacks involved are difficult to achieve and need to be launched at very specific times during the computer's set-up.

MSI has announced a new mobile workstation for creatives. The WS65 is a professional makeover for the GS65 Stealth Thin and comes with processor options up to the Intel Core i9-8950HK and GPU options up to the NVIDIA Quadro P4200. The MSI WS65 will be on display during SIGGRAPH 2018 and is expected to be available from September.

Apart from introducing their thinnest mobile workstation ThinkPad yet, Lenovo updated their most powerful ThinkPad laptop today as well. The new ThinkPad P72 ditches the DVD drive and opts for a thinner chassis, while also offering far more powerful GPU options than any other ThinkPad, up to the Nvidia Quadro P5200.

The Xeon processors employed by data centers in various artificial intelligence applications provided Intel with over US$1 billion in revenue in 2017, and the future looks even better. According to the company's officials, the data-centric businesses can provide a market worth US$200 billion in 2022.

AMD has announced that its latest HEDT CPUs, the Ryzen Threadripper 2, are available for pre-order starting today for a retail launch on August 13. The second generation Ryzen Threadrippers come in multiple SKUs targeting different segments of the enthusiast gaming and content creation market with prices starting from US$649 for the Threadripper 2920X and going all the way up to US$1,799 for the Threadripper 2990WX.

AMD will be supplying new Wraith Ripper coolers designed by Coolermaster that will allow the Threadripper 2990X to hit 4 GHz on all 32 cores on air. This was demonstrated during an AMD event recently held in Maranello, Italy. Getting all 32-cores to boost to 4 GHz on air is a commendable feat, which implies much higher boosts on single and fewer cores.

Its still not clear when Lenovo will announce the upcoming ThinkPad P1 – but an official release might be in sight, as two new official renders of the ThinkPad P1, a thinner 15-inch workstation laptop, have appeared on the internet.

Leaked slides have revealed that Intel's 9th generation 'Coffee Lake-S Refresh' CPUs such as the Core i9-9900K will be available from Q1 2019. This comes as a surprise as we've been expecting a September 2018 launch so far. The slides also indicate that new 'Cascade Lake X' CPUs will debut by Q4 2018 as anticipated.

The 32-core 64-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990X gets a listing on CanadaComputers for CA$2,399 or around US$1,835. This is in line with the Cyberport listing last month that showed the price at €1,509. The listing also shows that the new Threadrippers will sport the same retail packaging as the previous generation.

Owners of the iMac Pro and the new 2018 MacBook Pro have turned to Apple forums to report several instances of kernel panics, which trace back to BridgeOS found in the Apple T2 chip. The T2 chip provides support for secure boot, encrypted storage, and the always-on 'Hey Siri' command. Apple is apparently aware but has not publicly acknowledged the issue so an estimated date for a fix is not yet known.

According to a leak roadmap presented by Intel at the Chinese University of Changsha City, The Ice Lake scalable processors were pushed to 2020 due to some 10 nm fabrication process issues. Meanwhile, Intel will launch the Copper Lake scalable Xeon CPUs a few months before the Ice Lake family. The roadmap also shows the 28-core Cascade Lake HPC CPU scheduled for an early 2019 release.