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In terms of sheer performance, our benchmarks show that the high overclock and dual GTX 460 graphics cards gave Maingear an edge over its competition when it came to gaming. Puget wasn’t too far behind, but while it uses a more powerful single card, it’s impossible to upgrade with a second card down the road as its microATX board only features one full-size PCIe slot. Meanwhile, Acer didn’t exactly disappoint though it did come triumphant in just a single benchmark....

Hardware: Intel Core i7 875K (2.93GHz, 8MB L3 cache) x2 2GB Kingston DDR3-1333 (4GB total) Asus P7P55-M motherboard Asus Radeon HD 5870 1GB V2 1TB SATA 6Gb/s hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM) Corsair TX 650W power supply Pioneer 22X DVD-RW Software: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) Hardware: Intel Core i5 655K (4.5GHz overclock, 4MB L3 cache) x2 2GB Crucial DDR3-1333 (4GB total) Asus P7P55D-E Pro motherboard 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 in SLI (1536MB GDDR5 Total) 1TB SATA 6Gb/s hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM) SilverStone Strider Plus 750W modular power supply 24x dual layer DVD RW drive...

Today we’ll be taking a look at one of two new high-end Gateway FX Gaming Desktops, or “gaming supercomputers” as Gateway likes to label them. The FX6831-01 and -03 are built upon the original FX6800-05 released at the end of 2008 and that’s still available for purchase on the company’s website. The hardware on this original model is showing its age, though, and the asking price has not dropped accordingly so these new models bring the line back up to date....

The average frame rate data saw the Fury X cards come out 4% ahead of the GTX 980 Tis based on the 10 games that we tested at 4K. However, of the games we tested, the Fury X combo was faster in only four of them and that includes a 1% advantage in Battlefield 4. Where the Fury X Crossfire setup won big was in Thief where it was 50% faster and Total War: Attila where it was 36% faster....

Perhaps the best aspect of the Aero 15 is its slim-bezel design. Gigabyte has managed to cram a 15.6-inch display into a portable chassis, with Dell XPS-like minimal bezels providing an awesome viewing experience. Its footprint is still larger than the Razer Blade, and at 2.1kg its slightly heavier than the slimmest 15.6-inch gaming laptops, but these are sacrifices I’m willing to make for the enormous 94Wh battery Gigabyte has included....

Ashes of the Singularity saw up to a 5% performance improvement with the Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming, and 8% once our custom overclock was applied. The G1 Gaming was just 4% faster than the Founders Edition in Rise of the Tomb Raider and 10% once manually overclocked.

When testing with Just Cause 2, the GTX 580 SOC was 9% faster than a standard model and our custom overclock squeezed out another 11% performance.

The 80s collection includes Metal Gear for $4.19 as well as 65 percent off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and 75 percent off Personal Nightmare. Fans of 90s games have plenty to choose from as well. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Total Annihilation: Commander Pack are down to $2.49 each while Myst Masterpiece Edition is going for $2.39 and Thief Gold is down to $0.97. Highlights from the 2000s include Silent Hill 4: The Room for $6....

Android 13 left its lengthy beta and preview phase and started landing on Pixel phones back in August. It’s welcome news for consumers who always like to be on the latest version, but many phone users in developing counties will likely be affected by the operating system’s updated requirements. Google writes that users of Android Go, the low-power version of Android built for entry-level smartphones, will require at least 2GB of RAM if they want to jump to Android 13....

When Google announced Google Workspace, many customers migrated their plans to the new service. However, this change hasn’t affected G Suite legacy users until now. The software company published a support page at its help center advising G Suite free users to upgrade to a paid edition by May 2022. If customers don’t upgrade to a new tier themselves, Google will do it automatically starting May 1st, 2022, based on the services used, setting them in the Flexible plan....

A few years ago, the EU implemented some laws that required websites to ask for user consent before setting non-essential cookies. While these regulations were well-meant, they didn’t do much to improve privacy as people routinely accepted these cookie dialogues without reading them. The European Center for Digital Rights claims that over 90% of users click to accept all cookies, but only 3% actually want them. Earlier this year, Google got fined for deliberately designing a confusing user interface....

Android Central wound up with some exclusive pictures of what might be Google’s Pixel Watch. The images are not the same as renders leaked by Jon Prosser two weeks ago. These are photos of what looks to be an actual prototype. The watch does look similar to the renders Prosser leaked — it’s round and has a watch crown. However, it’s also markedly thicker. Additionally, there are two buttons on either side of the crown, which are not present in the the renders....

The rear camera sits next to a laser autofocus assembly that’s used in conjunction with PDAF autofocus, and there’s also a dual-LED flash. You won’t find optical image stabilization though, as Google believes the hardware in this camera, combined with new software tricks, is good enough in low light. You will find support for up to 4K30, 1080p120, and 720p240 video recording. The front camera is an 8-megapixel Sony IMX179 (3264 x 2448 native 4:3) 1/3....

The benchmark includes a fly-by of the first level and goes for 45 seconds. Typically when benchmarking with Fraps we test a busy 60-second portion of the game and that is more than enough to get an accurate measurement of performance. It’s worth noting that only the demo includes the benchmark tool. This is disappointing, though it’s possible that in the future the developer will add it to the final version of the game via a patch if people want it, I for one WANT IT!...

House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are the two great powerhouses of modern TV fantasy drama. Both shows have amassed a remarkable amount of viewers on legit streaming platforms, but the pirate underground seems to have a particular liking for HBO’s dragons-filled production. According to the numbers provided by I Know, House of the Dragon wins pirate users’ favor by a very wide margin: in the given timeframe, the GoT prequel saw more than 1....

Unlike previous speculative execution flaws that partially affected AMD and Arm-based processors, the MDS flaws are exclusive to Intel chips. In the short term the only way to mitigate or minimize these vulnerabilities is to disable simultaneous multithreading (SMT), or as Intel brands it “Hyper-Threading.” As it stands Microsoft is pushing out OS-level updates to address the four MDS vulnerabilities and you’ll get those with this month’s Windows 10 1903 update....

Using a wealth of complex math, powerful supercomputers can be used to analyze billions of images and text, creating a numerical map of probabilities between the two. One such map is called Stable Diffusion and since it made an appearance, it’s been the subject of wonder, derision, and fervent use. And best of all, you can use it, too, thanks to our detailed guide on how to use Stable Diffusion to generate AI images and more besides!...

Although the ProBook is mostly clear of third-party applications, HP made sure to bundle a ton of their own software. I counted no less than 24 HP-specific programs of which HP ProtectTools is the most important. The security suite is meant to be used by enterprises when deploying notebooks to employees, among other things it centralizes security management and aids in the event of password loss or if the machine gets stolen....

Alongside the Spectre, at the top of HP’s laptop line-up is the Spectre x360, a convertible 2-in-1 notebook that has recently been upgraded to Kaby Lake. But it’s not just the internals of this laptop that have improved; HP has also unleashed a design overhaul that makes the Spectre x360 thinner, lighter and more portable than before. One key aspect about the Spectre x360 - and the biggest point of difference compared to the regular Spectre - is the 360-degree hinge attached to the display....

Crysis Warhead allowed a performance boost of 13% at 2560x1600 when overclocking the GTX 480 iChill Black Series. This had the GeForce card matching the almighty Radeon HD 5970.