Desktop

Moore's Law is Dead recently shared a spec sheet summarizing leaked details about what appears to be an entry-level variant of the Intel Arc Alchemist GPU. The card could be priced as low as US$179, with performance on par with the GTX 1650 SUPER.

AMD has announced some new in-house Wi-Fi chips, developed in partnership with MediaTek. The RZ600 series of modules is based on the latter's latest technology for the connectivity standard, touted to support up-to-date wireless specs for PCs while saving power and optimizing speed.

The bleeding edge of DRAM technology is now officially known as DDR5, rated for twice the data-transfer rates of its predecessor DDR4. However, its own next generation, DDR6, is now slated to launch with double these new speeds - or less than half those of DDR7 again. Both upcoming upgrades are said to be in the works at Samsung already.

Rockstar issued an official apology following the launch of GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition, and announced that it would be making the original games available for purchase again.

@BenchLeaks recently spotted OpenCL benchmarks, running on what appear to be an Intel Arc Alchemist GPU with 512 Execution Units. Due to unusually low clockspeeds in the test runs, though, the Intel card struggled to best even the GeForce RTX 2060.

Tipster @KOMACHI_ENSAKA recently claimed to have spotted product listings for the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400. The cards are reportedly built on the Navi 24 GPU, with 4GB of GDDR6 across a 64-bit memory bus.

Tipster @momomo_us recently shared what appear to be Canadian store listings for the Pentium Gold G7400 and the Celeron G6900. It is possible that these chips are lower-end Alder Lake parts, but a lack of further information means that they may well be refreshes of previous-gen 14nm silicon.

Apparent revisions of some of AMD’s Zen 3 Vermeer chips have appeared on the controversial UserBenchmark site, with the potential for a serious upset in the works. The B2 stepping SKU of the Ryzen 9 5900X raced through the core tests to produce an average bench that would break into the Intel-dominated top 10 rankings if more samples had been benched.

According to a report, Apple is set to launch the next-generation 27-inch iMac Pro with the M1 Max Duo, an SoC that features 20 CPU and 64 GPU cores with up to 128 GB of RAM. Apparently, Apple will achieve this by combining two M1 Max dies onto a single chip.

NVIDIA is expected to announce an RTX 2060 with 12 GB of VRAM soon, with a view to easing pressure on the desktop graphics card market. Now, Gigabyte has registered several RTX 2060 12 GB SKUs with the EEC, signalling that it intends to release the refreshed Turing architecture card.

With the release of NVIDIA's latest driver update, spatial upscaling is added into both GeForce Experience and the NVIDIA Control Panel. The six-tap upscaling algorithm looks to be a more direct competitor to FSR than DLSS, and driver-level support makes it possible to enable in any game

Following an Igor's Lab report about changes to the LGA 1700 socket design, WCCFTech tested out multiple previous-gen AIO coolers that are theoretically compatible, discovering that many made inadequate contact with the Alder Lake IHS, meaning higher temps and lower boost clocks.

The Intel Core i7-12700 has become the latest Alder Lake processor to break from cover, and it has been spotted on Geekbench performing quite admirably considering it’s likely going to be priced at a mid-range level. The 12-core, 20-thread i7-12700’s single-core and multi-core results placed it in the same ballpark as the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X.

GeForce Now Priority tier users report that NVIDIA is capping their framerates in certain games below 60 FPS, going as low as 45 FPS in titles like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Cyberpunk 2077. This is despite the fact that Priority Tier uses an RTX-capable GPU which should be able to hit 1080p/60 FPS, even in intensive titles, raising questions about artificial limitations.

Although the two vulnerabilities described in today's security advisories are not labeled "critical," Intel describes both as posing a high-security risk. The two issues target Intel processors from generations 7, 10, and 11. Thankfully, BIOS updates will iron out these security flaws.

The White House has ardently denied Intel's plan to boost semiconductor manufacturing in China as it may be detrimental to national security. Intel wishes to help resolve the chip supply problems that are affecting the US. However, the Biden administration aims to revitalise local manufacturing.

The Intel Core i9-12900KF has proved itself to be the cream of the crop as Alder Lake processors have occupied the top five places in the current PassMark CPU Mark single-thread performance chart and the top six positions for average bench percentage over at UserBenchmark. Both benchmarks have been criticized in the past for showing perceived bias toward Intel SKUs though.

Chrome OS devices can be the path of least resistance to productivity on a budget or within space constraints. However, those potential advantages are not a lot of good to those who still need Windows apps such as those of MS Office for work. CTL may have solved this problem with a new SKU of its Chromebox CBx2 with Parallels Desktop.

Written in Google's own open source Golang programming language, Botenago could potentially affect millions of routers connected to the internet as well as IoT devices.

Video cards might not be the only PC components that will see shortages in 2022. A new CPU-mineable coin named Raptoreum (RTM) is apparently more profitable than Ethereum right now, but it has an affinity for AMD processors with large L3 caches. If the RTM price continues to appreciate, we could see shortages for the upcoming 3D V-Cache Ryzen variants.

Modder Digital Dreams recently posted a YouTube video showcasing Forza Horizon 5 running with ray-tracing enabled in gameplay sections, via a Cheat Engine tweak. While system specs weren't given, it appears that Digital Dreams is running the gain at a fairly locked 60 FPS.

EVGA's Precision X1 overclocking tool recently received a major update that overhauls the VF (voltage-frequency curve) editor, as well as a way to synchronize the in-app frame limiter with the frame limiting option in the NVIDIA control panel.

The mini PC starts at $499 USD with the integrated Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU, 4 GB of HBM2 VRAM, 8 GB of DDR4 RAM, and 256 GB M.2 2280 SSD. The three-year old processor is apparently still finding some life in more obscure products like the HaxMini.

The HiRes certified FC5 USB DAC/headphone amp by HiBy supports MQA and features a 4.4 mm balanced output with 125 mW output power. The hardware inside the sleek metal body of the FC5 includes the ES9281 Pro DAC, dual ES9603Q headphone amps, hardware volume controls, as well as RGB lights.

Introduced in Canada and Australia this summer, Twitter Blue is now available in the US and New Zealand as well. The US$2.99 per month subscription plan comes with a clutter-free format for reading threads (obviously free of ads), bookmark management, quickly typo fix before tweeting, and more.

An Apple tipster has offered up information about multiple products due to come out of Cupertino in the ensuing months. This includes rumors about the expected M2 MacBook Air, future iMac computers, the iPhone 14 range, and even a new Apple monitor. The leaker believes the MacBook Air with M2 Apple Silicon will be sold alongside the M1 variant.

An industry insider (RalphsValve) has heard that Rockstar is planning to remaster Grand Theft Auto 4. The game will be launched for all major platforms sometime in 2023. It will be single-player only and include content from the 'Episodes from Liberty City' DLC pack.

The upcoming mini PCs will support up to a Ryzen 9 5900X desktop-grade CPU coupled to a discrete GPU. MinisForum mentions that the power consumption can range between 120 W and 1000 W, so it also offers support for ATX SFX power supplies. For increased efficiency, the processors are cooled with liquid metal and the included power adapter features gallium nitride technology.

PNY had revealed that the next generation of its XLR8 Gaming RAM would be DDR5. Now, it has announced that these MAKO and MAKO RGB sticks will be on the market shortly. They will be joined by Performance DDR5, which will support the 4,800MHz speed mentioned earlier.

A new report has offered information that conflicts with previous reports of Apple’s silicon plans for the Mac Pro. However, it also offers some rumored new details about Apple’s silicon roadmap for future devices including the next MacBook Air.

The Intel Core i9-12900K and Intel Core i5-12600K have become the new leaders of the PassMark CPU Mark desktop single-thread performance chart. The Alder Lake processors managed to overcome the wall of Apple M1 chips that previously headed the table, and both the power-hungry i9-12900K and i5-12600K reached scores of over 4,000 points.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X processor has hit a sub-US$300 price tag at one retailer, hot on the heels of Alder Lake’s release. Micro Center has listed the 8-core Zen 3 chip for US$299.99, which is a huge reduction from the MSRP of US$449.99. Other popular Vermeer SKUs like the Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 9 5950X have also been discounted.

DDR5 is the next-gen standard that is now emerging with the promise of ultra-fast DRAM to match equally cutting-edge platforms such as Alder Lake. Those 12th-gen Intel processors are currently rated to handle speeds of up to 6,666MHz (or DDR5-6666). Now, G.SKILL claims to have developed the next step in this evolution: DDR5-7000.

For now, the i5-12600K is the value king, but, if you can wait for the i5-12400F releasing in two months, you could get roughly the same performance for sub-US$200.

AMD has increased its overall PC processor usage share in the October Steam hardware and software survey. Team Red has enjoyed constant gains against Intel throughout most of 2020. However, Alder Lake, and especially the Intel Core i5-12600K, could help Team Blue finally reverse that trend.

Support for the upcoming Zen 3 3D V-Cache processors (tentatively called Ryzen 6000) is available in 1usmus's new overclocking utility called Project Hydra, which is expected to be available in late November. It offers advanced features like automatic detection of Curve Optimizer values, dynamic profile creation and undervolting.

Priced at roughly US$80, the Sharkoon SKILLER SGK50 S4 comes with three switch choices, namely Kailh red, brown, and blue. All these switches have an average life cycle of at least 70 million keystrokes. The list of available layouts includes DE, US, IT, ES, JP (only the red switches), CN, RU, and a few others.

In addition to the 521 and 128 EUs confirmed so far, Intel may also look to offer the Xe-HPG DG2 Arc Alchemist GPU in a 448-EU variant. Though the 448-EU variant was spotted long ago in a leak, a recent commit to the opensource Mesa 3D library further confirms that Intel may indeed look to offer a scaled-down version of the 512-EU chip that can possibly take on the Radeon RX 6600 or the RTX 3060 Ti.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series has been enjoying rising popularity with Steam users again according to the hardware and software survey for October. In fact, no less than 10 GeForce 30 series SKUs have featured in the top 20 cards in terms of percentage change for the month. The biggest riser overall was the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660.

Alder Lake chips now occupy the top three positions in the UserBenchmark charts, with the Intel Core i9-12900K, i5-12600K, and i7-12700K being the current 12th Gen entries. Intel’s grip over this particular benchmark is so tight that the highest-ranked AMD chip, the Ryzen 9 5900X, is stuck in lowly 17th place.

Razer has rolled out its latest productivity focused peripherals although they are still gaming-capable as one would expect from the brand. The new Pro Type Ultra and Pro Click Mini keyboard and mouse also incorporate noise deadening features designed to keep them more suited to office use.

Almost a year after the release of the first public preview of Microsoft Edge for Linux, the Redmond giant has finally released the first stable version of this piece of code. This flavor comes in .deb and .rpm packages and is supposed to fully support Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE.

The Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max processors have made an initial appearance in the PassMark CPU Mark single-thread performance benchmarks for both laptop and desktop processors. Apple Silicon now occupies the top four positions in both charts, which should see a big change when Intel’s Alder Lake chips start showing up.

It seems that Intel was not telling the full story when it compared the Core i9-12900K against the Ryzen 9 5950X, currently AMD's most comparable processor. As it turns out, Intel allowed the Core i9-12900K to consume 2.4x the power of its AMD competitor and benchmarked the Ryzen 9 5950X using an older version of Windows 11 with AMD performance issues.

The Intel Core i9-12900K has been spotted on CPU-Z Validator once again. This time around, the Alder Lake hybrid processor amassed an amazing single-thread score that even surpassed recent efforts by the same SKU. The P-cores in the i9-12900K were measured reaching up to 6,300 MHz. The multithread score paid the price for such single-thread magnificence.