The GTX 1060 completely neutralizes the field in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. All CPUs were limited to a 45fps minimum, which is what the GTX 1060 dips down to in this title at 1080p using ultra quality settings and no amount of CPU power can change that. Even with a GTX 1070 rendering The Witcher 3, the CPU results are mostly the same, with the exception of the G4560, which starts to drop off the pace....

The software application can be used to measure the current performance of the Samsung 470 drive looking at sequential read/write and random read/write performance. This makes it very easy for users to keep an eye on how their Samsung 470 Series drive is performing and if any kind of drive degradation is occurring. Should the drive need to be tuned up the performance optimization option can be executed to restore original performance....

Things are different than they were last year, however, as HTC has awoken from its slumber and released some really competitive and compelling smartphones. Samsung isn’t sitting idly by as others ramp up their smartphone offerings, and its efforts to stay at the top are wrapped up in the Galaxy S III, a 4.8-inch powerhouse of a smartphone. Is the Galaxy S III a worthy successor to the venerable Galaxy S II and does it help keep Samsung ahead of its rivals?...

To enter Maintenance Mode, simply visit the battery and device care menu under settings to activate it then reboot your phone. The mode essentially creates a separate account that gives the user (in this case, the repair tech working on your phone) access to core operating functions while restricting access to personal information. When the owner reclaims the device and exits Maintenance Mode, all apps and data generated while in that mode will be automatically deleted....

The 950 Pro blitzed Atto’s read test and again that massive sequential read performance can be seen. It was great to see that the 950 Pro wasn’t just fast when working with large data but also 1K and 2K data as well. Like the sequential read performance we see that the sequential write performance of the 950 Pro is impressive across the board. The 950 Pro starts at 138MB/s when working with 1K data and after that continues to increase its lead over the competition as the data size increases....

Considering this, we run the HD Tach full benchmark several times to fill the drive before testing. This simulates heavy usage and clearly indicates how performance will be affected after normal long-term use. Most drives support the TRIM function, which is meant to counteract these negative effects. Test System Specs Intel Core i7-4770K (LGA1150) x2 4GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill (CAS 8-8-8-20) Asrock Z97 Extreme6 (Intel Z97) Silverstone Strider Series (700w) Crucial BX100 500GB Crucial MX200 512GB G....

Samsung has been chosen as manufacturing partner by four of the biggest technology corporations in the world, according to unnamed industry sources. Nvidia, Qualcomm, IBM and Baidu will employ the South Korean company’s newest manufacturing process to put their future products on the market, while Samsung hopes to gain ground on TSMC in the chip foundry race. Samsung will use the recently unveiled 3-nanometer node to provide the fabless companies chip supplies in large quantities starting as early as 2024....

On Saturday, satirist High Yield Harry posted a meme to Twitter that read, “Elon Musk: ‘I’m terminating my deal to buy Twitter,’” followed by a screenshot showing Musk account had been suspended. He also added a link to the @elonmusk account in question that does indeed show that it is suspended. Of course, anyone who follows Musk knows he was never suspended and that the account in the meme cleverly uses the Twitter font to its advantage by swapping out the lowercase L in Elon with an uppercase i....

The Register highlights a report by Omdia analysts Alan Howard and Vladimir Galabov that notes how data center operators have been early adopters of renewable energy—Google and Microsoft recently announced plans to buy more energy to make their data centers greener—but it is still unavailable in many markets. That’s where nuclear energy via small modular reactors (SMRs) could come in. Unlike standard nuclear facilities that produce gigawatts of power, SMRs typically generate 300–500 megawatts (MW) of electric power, though some produce less than 100MW....

A spokesperson for LG Electronics told The Wall Street Journal that fewer than half of the smart appliances it has sold stay connected to the Internet long-term. A Whirlpool rep said more than half of their connected appliances are online but declined to be more specific. Smart appliances with fancy bells and whistles can help hook buyers at the time of purchase, but it goes deeper than that. Internet-connected devices can (and usually do) relay data and other insights about usage directly to the manufacturer, helping them better understand how owners are using their products....

Researchers from MIT and the US Military Academy recently published a study on the use of crowdsourced data from smartphone accelerometers to track the structural integrity of bridges. The method could significantly increase the lifespan of a bridge by letting owners know when something is wrong before a bridge is damaged or collapses. Massive man-made structures like bridges and skyscrapers each have a unique modular frequency – like a signature for how its vibrations affect things on and around it....

This week, Sony and Nintendo agreed to take steps to ensure their subscription services don’t hit customers with surprise charges. The move comes in response to a case from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and follows similar steps Microsoft announced in January. Sony will start sending reminders to PlayStation Plus subscribers still making payments after a year of inactivity, telling them how to cancel the subscription if they want....

The situation began last week when Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Young wrote an open letter promising to remove his music from Spotify if it didn’t drop the Joe Rogan Experience, which he accused of spreading vaccine misinformation. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” he said. With his weekly audience of 11 million and having signed a $100 million exclusivity deal with the podcaster last year, Spotify chose Rogan and began removing Young’s music....

Moving up to 1440p we find that most mid-range graphics cards will deliver somewhat laggy performance with all the bells and whistles turned on. Graphics cards such as the Radeon R9 270X or GeForce GTX 960, for example, and even the R9 280X and GTX 780 Ti will struggle to deliver smooth gameplay at this resolution using the ultra quality settings. Ideally gamers will want something no slower than a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290....

Release details for Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Survivor briefly appeared on Steam this week before the company removed them. The game will launch early next year, and the system requirements suggest demanding graphics. After scrubbing the Steam page and changing the release date from March 15 to “Coming Soon,” EA confirmed that it would present a new trailer for Survivor during the Game Awards on December 8. Users still managed to take screenshots of the leaked details before EA removed them....

Boiling Steam has been tracking the number of games that can run on the Steam Deck. Since the handheld PC launched on February 25, the numbers show that Steam has been verifying playable games and making tweaks to the OS to ensure more titles will work flawlessly on the machine. On release, the Steam Deck only touted about 350 games guaranteed to run from day one. About another 300 were deemed playable but with issues — many just because they were designed for keyboard and mouse input....

The Steam Deck’s thermal and wattage limits hold it back compared to consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, but its graphics processor is based on the same RDNA 2 architecture as those ray tracing-capable machines. This week, Digital Foundry decided to see how the Steam Deck handled some of the most intense ray tracing benchmarks in games like Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition, Control: Ultimate Edition, and Quake 2 RTX....

Valve writes that more text, award logos, and even review scores are being included in games’ graphical asset images. The company says this can cause several issues for users, from the logos ending up so small that they can’t tell what a game’s name is to the pictures themselves becoming cluttered and hard to read. There are other problems, too. Valve warns of review scores that are no longer accurate or come from a less-than-reputable publication....

Some of the questions we plan to answer today include: what sort of storage device do you need to play today’s games? Specifically, what sort of drive provides the best loading times, so you’re not sitting around and waiting ages to get into gaming. Part of this answer is obvious, SSDs are faster than hard drives, so we want to dial down a bit and see what sort of SSD is required....

For someone piecing together their next build, the choices can be overwhelming. Do you go with the latest and greatest SSDs, a mid-tier value offering, or a dirt cheap SATA drive? There are also many different market segments between these areas making it hard to tell if spending a few extra dollars will get you much extra performance. Finally, how has the performance of mechanical hard drives stood up in the world of SSDs?...