Granted most would consider $1000+ an unreasonable amount of money to pay for a desktop processor – but for some, the price to pay for these isn’t as important as the performance they deliver. Thanks to its 8-core design aided by Hyper-Threading, the 5960X is a multi-threading monster, and a popular choice for those doing a lot of video editing, particularly with 4K content. But here’s the thing. Before Intel graced us with the 8-core i7-5960X, there were server-grade 8-core Xeon processors on the market way back in 2010 in the form of the Xeon X6550, X7550 and X7560....

But we could be in luck as Black Ops II is the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to feature future warfare technology and the first to present branching storylines driven by player choice. So far Call of Duty Black Ops II has received mostly positive reviews, with Kotaku saying “Black Ops II feels great to play, especially when futuristic weapons are involved, yes — but it also makes you think....

Again, it appears you’ll require at least a mid-range graphics card from the present generation to enjoy Civilization V maxed at 1680x1050, and the GeForce GTX 460 is clearly the best choice at the moment.

Starting with $3,000, Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto founded a little company called Compaq. The name was a portmanteau of the words “compatibility” and “quality.” It represented the company’s vision, which was to take on the business behemoth known as International Business Machines (IBM). The idea was to make an IBM-compatible PC that was as powerful as its competitor’s top-of-the-line desktop unit in a smaller, more portable form factor....

The Athlon II family differs from the more expensive Phenom IIs primarily on its lack of a L3 cache. While the L2 cache is still just 512KB per core, the 6MB shared L3 cache of all Phenom II processors has been disabled. This should have a considerable impact on performance, though at $100 the Athlon II X4 630 still represents an exceptional value. AMD Phenom II X2 555 = $100 At the same price point the Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition is AMD’s most expensive dual-core part....

Kotaku reports that the Dark Souls remote code execution (RCE) exploit was exposed during a Dark Souls 3 livestream a few days ago. You can see from this NSFW (sweary) clip how shocked The__Grim__Sleeper is when he gets invaded, the game crashes, and some text-to-speech starts playing. Twitter user @SkeleMann and several subreddits confirmed the Dark Souls RCE vulnerability, including this Elden Ring community that claims it will also work in the upcoming title, one of the year’s most anticipated games....

If you haven’t heard of it yet, IPS Black is mostly the same as normal IPS tech, but with one key difference: monitors built with IPS Black panels feature a contrast ratio of 2,000:1 instead of the 1,000:1 average that we usually see in IPS displays. In theory, this should pave the way for deeper, truer blacks that we usually only see in VAs or OLEDs. Color reproduction should also get a bit of a bump as a result, but IPS panels are usually good at that sort of thing, anyway....

Although the frame rates are much higher using the ’extreme’ quality preset, we find that the R9 390 is now considerably faster than the GTX 970. The 980/390X mixed GPU configuration works much better with the 390X as the primary graphics card as we saw 26% greater performance in the normal test and 24% more performance in the heavy test. The Fury X is still 15% faster than the GTX 980 Ti and we saw 50% more performance when combining the two with the Fury X as the primary graphics card....

Forget about 4K gaming unless you have a few (more than two) high-end GPUs as the GTX 980 averaged just 37fps at 2560x1600 while the R9 290X offered 35fps. Out of interest, I ran some 4K tests using the GTX 980 and we received less than 20fps on average. A pair of GTX 980 SLI cards is only going to net you a little over 30fps on average at 4K....

Packing an Intel Bay Trail-M SoC, 2GB of DDR3L RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage, the system supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth along with USB 3.0. Display connectivity, HDMI and VGA (which can be used simultaneously for dual monitors). Since its debut, ECS has updated the Liva with a 64GB option and now offers a white case (in addition to black). Although ECS has doubled the storage, we have only seen a mild price increase with the 64GB version currently selling for just $185....

At the start of the week, Musk had been the only person on Bloomberg’s billionaire index whose wealth exceeded $200 billion. But the global decline in stock markets prompted by the Russia/Ukraine crisis has seen Tesla shares fall for four days in a row, pushing his fortune down to $199 billion. The Bloomberg billionaires index illustrating why it pays to get into tech It means Musk has seen his fortune drop by $71....

Musk’s lawyers made the claim in a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, yesterday, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting” his information rights by refusing to provide information on the number of fake, spam, and bot accounts that have long been a problem on Twitter. The letter, published on the SEC website, states that Musk made the information request on May 9 but the formal response Twitter sent on June 1 was insufficient....

Musk’s relationship with Dogecoin hasn’t been the smoothest. He tweeted a dog meme with the caption “Dogecoin rulz” in April 2019 and sent its value skyrocketing in December 2020 with a “One Word: Doge” tweet. The billionaire pushed the crypto even higher in April last year by referring to himself as “The Dogefather.” But Musk crashed the price of Doge after calling the crypto a “hustle” on Saturday Night Live....

On Friday, Embracer Group, the holding company for numerous game studios, published its earnings for its fiscal year ending in March 2022. The numbers look solid, with the company reporting SEK 5.23 billion (US $524 million) for Q4 and SEK 17.04 billion (US $1.71 billion) for the year. Compared to last year, that’s 117- and 89-percent growth, respectively. Unsurprisingly, 84 percent of its overall earnings were from its games division which saw 114-percent growth over 2021 to SEK 4....

As expected, the game uses a modified version of the Creation Engine (first used for Skyrim in 2011), which now includes enhanced dynamic lighting thanks to a physically-based deferred renderer, allowing the developers to create natural reflections based on an object’s material. The updated Creation Engine includes a range of other new graphics features, such as an updated materials system and new cloth simulations, as well as dynamic post-process techniques and upgrades to the virtual camera including depth of field....

Now at 2560x1600, the GTX 980 is just 1fps faster than the R9 290X, while the R9 290 was 2fps faster than the GTX 970. Nvidia’s other high-end GPUs looked foolish, with the GTX 780 once again being outpaced by the R9 280X and 7970. Previous flagship GPUs such as the GTX 680 averaged just 30fps, which was the same frame rate delivered by the low-end R9 270X.

“TikTok is not just another video app. That’s the sheep’s clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing,” Carr tweeted. The already-popular TikTok saw an uptick in users during the pandemic and now boasts over 1 billion MAUs (monthly active users). This is despite long-held privacy and national-security concerns over China-based ByteDance accessing sensitive information about those who use the short-form video platform....

FIFA’s new digital platform will allow fans of the sport to watch matches worldwide. The soccer organization plans to stream 40,000 live games a year, including women’s and youth football matches. In the first month, users will have the chance to watch 1,400 matches from leagues such as the Iraqi Premier League, Ethiopian Premier League, and Nigeria Professional Football League. New leagues will be added over time, rapidly increasing the number of games broadcasted through the platform....