With the underwhelming, entry-level Arc 3 A380 the only one of Intel’s new dedicated graphics cards available, we’ve been waiting to see what the more powerful Arc A7 series can offer. There have been concerns that Intel was once again about to miss a deadline with these products: it said they would arrive in summer, a season that’s just a couple of weeks away from ending. But in an interview with PC Games Hardware and Digital Foundry, Intel’s Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout confirmed that the A770 and A750 are set to launch “very soon....

EthereumMax, which has no connection to Ethereum, saw its price skyrocket early in 2021 when its initial trading price of $0.00000006 (on May 16) jumped over 1,000% by May 29. The increase in value came after it was used to buy tickets for the Mayweather/Logan Paul exhibition boxing match—Mayweather also wore an EthereumMax URL ad on his shorts during the fight—and Pierce tweeted about the crypto. Another significant contributor to its promotion was Kardashian, who posted about EthereumMax to her 278 million Instagram followers via Stories....

Most PC users will be satisfied with the variety of storage options currently available, choosing to go after speed, capacity, portability or a good mix of the three depending on their budget and use case. However, those working with highly sensitive data or are simply looking for the best in terms of security tend to focus on drives like Kingston’s newly announced IronKey Vault Privacy 80. Due to the built-in security measures, such drives don’t bring the cutting edge in terms of sheer performance but deliver enough to make the data transfer rates bearable....

However, as we reached the 8K test, the SSDNow V+ 180 64GB was 25% slower than the SSDNow V Series 64GB. The SSDNow V Series 64GB also remained faster for the 32K and 128K tests. Kingston claims a read throughput of 230MB/s with the SSDNow V+ 180 64GB and we actually reached 226MB/s when running the 128K test. Despite its average read performance, the Kingston SSDNow V+ 180 64GB has solid writes....

At the launch of a new mid-range line of FPGAs from Lattice Semiconductor, the company used this approach, highlighting a straightforward visual demo of its new chip identifying and tracking vehicles from the camera of a connected car, a critical capability for assisted and autonomous driving features. As the name suggests, FPGAs can be customized and programmed to perform certain functions directly in hardware. This gives them performance advantages for a number of specific applications....

The X700’s 9-button mouse, the L251G, is both comfortable and extremely customizable. Our review unit didn’t actually ship with the full driver suite installed, so I grabbed it from Lenovo’s website. With the full software, every aspect of the mouse can be tweaked. Mouse highlights include braided cabling, big low-friction pads, upgradeable firmware, LED color and pulse customization, adjustable DPI, button remapping and weight adjustment. Yep, the L251G includes a weight kit....

With the large glass panel removed users are presented with a very unusual looking case. High up on the list of unusual items is the vertically mounted PCIe x16 riser card to the far left which is connected to a very long ribbon cable. There isn’t any obvious location to install the power supply and there certainly isn’t an external bracket. The riser card means that GPUs are mounted flat in the PC-O5S which will look very cool....

LimeWire - the P2P service - shut down more than a decade ago but last year, Austrian brothers Paul and Julian Zehetmayr purchased the company’s intellectual property and assets with the goal of relaunching the platform. The new LimeWire will land as a digital collectibles marketplace for art and entertainment in May 2022. The marketplace will initially focus on music, allowing users to create, buy and trade NFT collectibles. The revival will partially be funded by the launch of a LimeWire token that’ll first be offered to strategic partners ahead of a private token sale next month and a public token sale in the fourth quarter....

Project Ghost is a lot like Project Starline, which Google announced in mid-2021. It’s essentially a video chat booth that uses existing Logitech video conferencing technology and a special type of glass to project an image of the person you are talking to. The Verge sat in on a briefing ahead of Logitech’s public demo at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) conference in Barcelona, Spain, and said the visuals work much like a teleprompter using the Pepper’s ghost illusion technique....

YouTuber Brad Lynch claims to have leaked the spec files for what may be the Meta Quest 3. The files indicate a device called “Project Stinson” with fewer bells and whistles than the headset the company plans to launch in October, likely offering customers a cheaper option. An important detail is that headset shown in the Project Stenson files does not include eye or face tracking. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg already confirmed that the model coming in October — likely called the Meta Quest Pro — supports the feature....

Micron said the project represents the largest private investment in the history of New York state. The American memory maker will start prepping the site in 2023 and begin construction the following year. Ultimately, the project will create nearly 50,000 jobs for New Yorkers including around 9,000 high-paying positions at Micron. Micron expects the megafab to help it reach its goal of increasing American-made leading-edge DRAM production to 40 percent of its global output over the next 10 years....

If there’s ever a place where you’re likely to hear the direction that computing and applications are headed, Microsoft’s developer-focused Build conference is probably it. True to form, this year’s Build featured several interesting new concepts that managed to provide a sense of where Microsoft’s vision for software is headed, while simultaneously hinting strongly at some key technologies (most notably Arm-based processors) that they believe will be necessary to power that future....

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been looking into cases of inactive but still renewing subscription services offered by all of the big three console gaming platforms: Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation. The authority came away with several concerns regarding Xbox’s services, in particular. The CMA feels that Microsoft has not been clear enough that its subscriptions (Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold, in particular) auto-renew and that the company does not make it easy enough to turn off auto-renewal....

Practically since the announcement of Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to pick up Activision, Sony has protested to regulators against the acquisition. It has consistently framed its argument using the company’s biggest-selling franchise, Call of Duty, to paint a picture where nobody but Microsoft will ever see another CoD game if the deal goes through. Microsoft has continually denied that it would sequester the successful game series within the Xbox walled garden....

Microsoft senior software engineer Cooper Partin, a developer on the DirectStorage for Windows team, explained in a video how the technology was designed to utilize PC hardware fully, and that’s especially true when using Windows 11 alongside an NVMe drive; a setup that could offer a 20% to 40% CPU saving. “This is attributed to the advancements made in the file IO stack on Windows 11 and the improvements on that platform in general,” said Partin....

Microsoft is now offering certified refurbished Xbox Series X consoles through its US Microsoft Store. Console pricing is set at $469.99, but you are also required to purchase at least one digital game from a collection of nearly a dozen titles. The cheapest of the lot, Monopoly Plus + Monopoly Madness, is $27.49. Shoppers must also buy a controller. The robot white Xbox Wireless Controller is the cheapest of the bunch at $54....

Java is, by and large, the more powerful and feature-rich version of Minecraft, but it lacks the compatibility and cross-play support of its Bedrock cousin. Furthermore, Bedrock Edition comes packaged with microtransactions, RTX support, and a handful of other exclusive functions (not to mention a broader set of supported devices). Historically, you’ve had to choose between the two versions, but that will no longer be the case soon. Later today, these two separate Editions will only be sold as a bundle, dubbed “Minecraft: Java & Bedrock Edition....

There are significant gains in GPU performance, beyond what is needed moving from a 720p display to 1080p. The Adreno 405 GPU in the S617 is around three times faster than the Adreno 306 in the S410, and that translates into a 77% gain in on-screen performance moving from the Moto G 2015’s lower resolution display. There is no real concern with the Moto G4 Plus throttling after extended periods of gaming....

The Moto Z2 Play is a little different. It’s still a mid-range offering, slotting between the flagship Moto Z2 Force at the top, and the quality budget Moto G phones below. But instead of targeting battery enthusiasts like its predecessor, the Moto Z2 Play is a more traditional mid-range handset that offers access to modular functionality at a lower price point. The battery has been reduced to 3,000 mAh, which is average for a mid-tier handset, as Motorola has opted for a slimmer handset over better battery life....

The SMOG is a solid black mouse featuring accented red buttons and a braided USB cable with a gold connector. The top of the mouse is glossy, black while the left thumb area is covered in a grippy rippled rubber and the right finger area is constructed of a smoother rubber. Buttons include standard left and right click, a wide scroll wheel that clicks and tilts, two other buttons behind the wheel labeled Lift and Mode, two thumb buttons in a front and back orientation, and a DPI selection rocker button under the normal thumb placement....