AMD is expected to launch the first Radeon RX 7000 series graphics card sometime in October or November, but there have been conflicting rumors about the exact specs of the new card. Official information about the RDNA 3 architecture is also limited. AMD says its upcoming GPUs will have a 50 percent performance per watt uplift when compared to the current generation, mostly afforded by a transition to a 5nm process technology from TSMC....

When we tested Trinity earlier this month, we found the 3.8GHz A10-5800K to consume 4% less power than the A8-3850 while being clocked 31% higher. The new Piledriver FX processors are not quite that impressive, as the FX-8350 drew roughly the same amount of power as the FX-8150, though it is clocked 11% higher, so AMD has obviously made some improvements. The FX-6300 system also consumed roughly the same amount of power as the FX-6100 rig, despite being clocked 6% higher....

In a typical tablet or notebook the manufacturer codes in an SoC temperature limit that, when reached as determined by the on-die sensor, can be sustained without the body (or skin) of the device becoming uncomfortable to hold. This limit is often around 60°C, which would keep the unit’s body around 40°C. Based on the limit, the SoC is configured to run at a maximum power level that won’t exceed it....

The high-end “Cayman” architecture used by the Radeon HD 6900 series is a little different from Barts, which debuted with the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards. Barts used the same VLIW5 configuration as the Radeon HD 5000 series, which features SIMD units with 4 simple and 1 complex stream processing unit. The Radeon HD 6900 series, however, adopts a VLIW4 configuration, which features stream processing units arranged in groups of four along with general purpose registers....

Today marks the release of the ‘Pitcairn’ GPUs (code-name) which make up the the Radeon HD 7800 series. As you would expect the series consists of two GPUs: the Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850, designed to occupy the ample $200 to $400 range. Like its higher and lower-end siblings, the new HD 7800 series is built using the 28nm design process and is also based on AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture....

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition averaged 55fps at 2560x1600 when testing with The Witcher 2, making it 8% faster than the standard 7970 which rendered 51fps. However this also meant that the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was 12% faster than the GeForce GTX 680 and 20% faster than the GTX 670. At 2560x1600 we saw a very mild performance increase when comparing the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to the standard 7970....

The Division is a demanding game so the ultra-quality settings won’t be an option with the RX 460, even at 1080p. Gamers will need to be prepared to lower certain settings to high or even medium for 60fps performance. Finally, we have the super popular Overwatch, one of the latest games to make it onto the eSports scene. Using the ultra-quality preset at 1080p with 100% render scale the RX 460 was good for a smooth 70fps on average with minimums staying above 60fps....

Of course, the RX 480 reference card has been fitted with a pokey little heatsink. Just to make sure we weren’t being thermally limited I cranked the fan to maximum speed. The amount of air this thing moves is incredible, though it sounds like a Hoover doing it. Anyway, with the fan maxed we still couldn’t get a stable overclock beyond 1350MHz. It’s a shame we couldn’t get much out of our sample....

Redditor Ingebor posted the report from the European retail giant a few hours ago. It contains data covering the last 12 months, with much of it focused on the holiday season. An interesting section of the report breaks down December’s market share based on CPU architecture. AMD’s chip sales were ahead of Intel’s with a 63% total share. That’ll obviously please Lisa Su and co., but a less welcome sight is the comparatively weak performance of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs (Raphael)....

Viewers can expect executives to share details on the next-gen architecture, which AMD described as high performing and energy efficient. AMD back in June said RDNA 3 will offer a 50 percent performance per watt uplift over RDNA 2 and will be built on a 5nm manufacturing process courtesy of TSMC. RDNA 3 will also support AV1 encoding and unlike Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series, it will come with DisplayPort 2....

Reality Labs, the division focused on Meta’s hardware and metaverse aspirations, has lost around $16 billion since the start of last year and is making cutbacks as a result, including the dual-camera smartwatch. But Zuckerberg still believes the metaverse will make hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars over time. That’s despite the skepticism shared by half of all teens and some Meta staff. Even John Carmack has been expressing caution over these ambitions....

It’s safe to say that one of the best inventions for PC components was the creation of NAND flash and the subsequent M.2 SSDs. The ability to store upwards of multiple terabytes of data on a storage device nearly the same size as a stick of gum is fantastic.Unfortunately, M.2 drives with those high amounts of data have been unfathomable for most consumers for a while. Recently, SSDs have seen significant price cuts and capacity increases....

But it’s a different world today. Tablet sales have flatlined in developed markets, smaller tablets are less desirable in light of phablets, PC sales have stabilized and people want to do work on large screens. And now Apple and Google want to cross that bridge, too, into Microsoft territory. Apple with the iPad Pro, and Google with the new Nexus. Tablet Sales Tablet sales are cooling off – tablets of yesterday are “good enough” for many users and there seems to be little incentive for consumers who already own one to purchase another, short of the tablet breaking....

Apple is expanding its self-repair program to Europe. The service, launched in the US earlier this year, will now be available to eight additional countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Like the US version of the repair program, there are no restrictions on who can order the parts, tools, and repair manuals. Regular Joes are more than welcome to try to fix a broken screen if they feel up to the task....

The iPhone 4S also supports standard SMS and MMS messages within the Messages app, but it does not have support for any instant messaging clients out of the box. The Facetime video calling feature that debuted on the iPhone 4 is present and accounted for, and I still think it is one of the best and easiest-to-use implementations of video calling to date, if actually making video calls is your thing....

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes that Apple has begun widespread internal testing of several new Macs with the upcoming M2 chips, which are said to be produced on TSMC’s 4nm process node. The nine models, fitted with four different M2-based SoCs, include a new MacBook Air that will feature eight CPU cores and ten graphics cores. There will also be an entry-level MacBook Pro with the same specs as the Air, along with 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with 64GB of memory and M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, the latter of which will feature 12 CPU cores and 38 graphics cores, up from 10 and 32 found in the current M1 Max....

Back in April 2021, Apple launched AirTags — its first foray into the tracking fob market that takes advantage of its expansive Find My network. It can be a useful gadget for people who need to keep track of valuable possessions or keychains, but it comes with a set of safety concerns that could affect both people who use AirTags and people who don’t. Last month, we learned that carjackers have begun to use AirTags to track high-end vehicles, which is not an unexpected development given how easy it is to hide one into an out-of-sight area....

Street Insider reports that the boy’s family is suing both Apple and its manufacturing partner Luxhshare in the lawsuit filed in San Jose, California, this week. Carlos Gordoa and Ariani Reyes say their son, identified only as B.G, must now wear a hearing aid for the rest of his life as a result of the Amber Alert. The family says the incident occurred when B.G. was watching Netflix on his iPhone with one of the wireless buds in his right ear....

Eventually it became clear that VIA was struggling to get third-party manufacturer support for their chipsets and embedded CPUs. A reworked strategy dictated to employ an in-house motherboard division to get those products direct to market. VIA’s key focus became to standardize low-cost compact computing using their own technology. The company’s first attempt known as the VT6010 Mini-ITX, and later the EPIA 800 and EPIA 5000 motherboards, failed to make any serious inroads into the market....

A few weeks ago we showed you the new LGA1156 processors for the first time: the Core i7 870, 860, and Core i5 750. We only had time to overclock the Core i5 750 at the time and managed to get a stable 4.13GHz frequency using the P7P55D Deluxe with an early BIOS version. Now using an updated BIOS revision we’ve been able to improve upon this impressive number with a stable overclock of 4....