Again we find that the affordable Phenom II X4 555 is able to match the Phenom II X6 1090T when unlocked. This time when testing with Povray 3.6 all three budget AM3 motherboards defeated the six-core Phenom II X6 1090T configuration. The OpenGL test from CINEBENCH R11.5 appears to favor the AMD configurations as all are found to be faster than the Core i5 750. While the Phenom II X6 1090T came out on top it was only a fraction faster than the unlocked Phenom II X2 555 configurations....

Google opened two lawsuits against wireless speaker company Sonos this week, alleging infringement on some of its speaker and voice control technology. The two companies have gone back and forth over speaker patents for years. The search engine giant has accused Sonos of infringing on technologies including “hotword” detection, wireless charging, and how groups of speakers determine which one responds to voice input. Google is filing both lawsuits on Monday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California....

So far, the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has fined Apple €5 million ($5.7 million) per week for the last 10 weeks for not compiling with its mandate. The ACM is only authorized to fine Apple up to €50 million ($55.4 million), so the penalties had to stop this week regardless of the situation. Apple had already agreed to let Dutch developers use alternative payment methods in February. However, the ACM was unsatisfied with Cupertino’s proposal because it was too restrictive as it required developers to create entirely new app binaries....

Those that purchase the barebones Beebox will be presented with a motherboard equipped only with the Mini-PCIe 802.11ac WiFi card. You can install up to two SO-DIMM modules along with a mSATA SSD and/or 2.5" storage device. The mSATA SSD simply slots in over the WiFi card and installing takes a matter of seconds. The DDR3 memory modules also clip right into their SO-DIMM slots. As you would expect there is limited space to work with, but we had no trouble getting either the mSATA or memory modules installed....

If you read our recent article “The Ridiculously Powerful MicroATX PC” you will also know that Asrock has done something few others have by creating a MicroATX board based on the X99 chipset. The Fatal1ty X99M Killer is a great little mATX board and so is the X99M Extreme4. The MicroATX versions still boast many of the features found on the full-size Extended ATX motherboards such as quad-channel DIMMs, dual Gigabit LAN, 10 SATA storage connectors and so on....

Being so tight on space, Asrock opted to use the narrow ILM LGA2011-3 socket, making it slightly longer but much thinner at 100mm x 75mm which takes up roughly 26% of the board’s space. Because the socket isn’t standard, the mounting spots are off so almost no after-market LGA2011-3 coolers will work with the X99E-ITX/ac. The solution was obvious: employ a server-grade narrow ILM CPU cooler. Not wanting to limit their customers to air cooling, Asrock went one step further and included a custom water cooling mounting plate that is compatible with Cooler Master’s Seldom 120V Plus/120V closed loop CPU liquid coolers....

In this short time span we’ve seen at least a couple netbook generations pass by, with the concept itself getting a spin on each new revision. Today, we’ll be taking a look at one of Asus’ newer products in this segment, the Eee PC 1101HA ‘Seashell’. You might recall, the last time we checked a Eee PC product was in late 2008 in our top netbook round-up. What we have today is a much stylized, equally lightweight and more usable offering than anything we reviewed back then....

On February 22, AT&T plans to close the book on 3G to make room for the upgrade to 5G. It says it has given companies and consumers that rely on their networks three years’ notice about this, but the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) wants an extension. In a filing to the FCC earlier this month, communication organization Public Knowledge claimed that factors like the global pandemic and the semiconductor shortage introduced difficulties in upgrading from 3G....

A complete list of games is not yet available, although Atari said some of them have not been available “for ages.” The bundle is much more than your ordinary assortment of games. In addition to the originals, it’ll include five interactive timelines filled with archival photos, behind-the-scenes content and over 60 minutes of exclusive interviews to explore. Digital Eclipse, the developer behind the project, has also created six new games that “revisit, mash-up and reimagine Atari Classics....

AUO’s latest 24-inch 480Hz panel is aimed at monitors, while the 16-inch panel is intended for notebook displays. Both are advertised to have response times around 1ms, full HD resolution, and use TN technology. It’s interesting to see TN still in use for high-end displays, considering that we’ve been getting more and more high refresh rate IPS and VA panels. AUO didn’t mention when we’re going to see the first products using these displays on the market, although TFTCentral claims they are planned to go into production sometime this year....

However, as we press past 3.0GHz the frame rates start to climb all of a sudden, which is a little odd. From 2.96GHz to 3.70GHz we see a massive 44% rise in the average frame rate. This rise is consistent as we tested at 3.33GHz, 3.51GHz and then finally 3.70GHz. At 1920x1200 the performance boost seen at frequencies above 3.0GHz is not as significant, though still see a 30% rise....

Battlefield Hardline has superb graphics and seems to play smoothly, but the beta version doesn’t quite have Battlefield 4’s wow-factor. For instance, when I enter a city center in BF4 I want to look around and take it all in. I didn’t find that as much with Hardline. Its textures, lighting and overall detail aren’t as nice looking. Of course, it is quite likely that the developer will add high-resolutions textures once the game is optimized and released, though we don’t know that for certain....

BlackBerry 10 is a new approach to smartphones that places an emphasis on gestures and hidden menus. There’s no “Home” button like what’s seen on every other major platform, because the concept is you shouldn’t go Home, you should move on to the next task or app. Swiping from the bottom of the glass button of the Z10 will reveal the screen showing Active apps, which are the eight most recent that have been opened....

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II made over $800 million in its first three days on the market, more than any other title in the franchise’s 19-year history. According to Activision, that performance beats the opening weekend box office numbers of marquee Hollywood films like Top Gun: Maverick and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The previous sales record-holder in the franchise was 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (the sequel to the original 2009 Modern Warfare 2)....

Despite its horrid launch, Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most played games of 2021. The past year, CD Projekt Red focused on fixing bugs and launching patches to improve performance, eventually considering the game stable. However, one of the most desired features promised at launch, the next-gen upgrade, is still nowhere to be seen. Developers initially expected to release the next-gen patch in 2021, but it had to be delayed to 2022, alongside the Witcher 3 next-gen patch....

Meant to render desktop-replacements obsolete, Razer announced its new Blade gaming laptop back in August. Besides its trim profile and powerful innards, the system offers a unique interface reminiscent of Art Lebedev’s Optimus keyboard. In place of a standard number pad, the Blade features 10 customizable keys and a glass LCD touchpad, the latter of which is also available on the Star Wars Old Republic edition keyboard. Along with displaying in-game stats, you can surf the net or watch YouTube on the touchpad while a game occupies your main screen....

The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard managed to look right at home in the stripped down Spec-Alpha, and with it installed we went ahead and hooked up all the front panel connectivity. With just the motherboard installed, we find that there is loads of room around the back to access the CPU socket for installing an aftermarket cooler such as the Water 3.0. Next, we threw in the Corsair AX760i which is a simple task due to its fully modular design, which we feel is almost a must in a mid-tower case or smaller....

Surrounding the motherboard tray are a series of cable management holes complete with rubber grommets. There are eight holes with a larger ninth hole at the bottom that doesn’t have a rubber piece. At the base of the enclosure are two removable hot-swap 3.5" tool-less drive cages that also support 2.5" devices. The fact that these bays are hot-swappable makes installing and removing drives into the Air 540 extremely quick and easy....

Surprisingly, the Crucial m4 mSATA 256GB was 34% faster than the standard m4 512GB SSD in our 6GB ISO file copy test. In fact, with a throughput of 227.3MB/s, the m4 mSATA was the fastest SSD we have tested here, beating the Samsung 830 Series 512GB by 17MB/s. Things were quite different in the program copy test as the m4 mSATA was about 20% slower than the m4 2.5" with a throughput of just 115....

Despite their average file copy performance, the BX100 and MX200 drives perform well when measuring sequential read performance. The sequential write performance is also great, though the MX200 is really only able to match the MX100 at best. The MX200 starts to fall behind the MX100 when measuring random 512K performance and the BX100 really drops off the pace. This time when measuring random 512K write performance the MX200 it able to match the MX100 while the BX100 isn’t far behind....