If you’re in that group of people, we’ve been recommending to avoid paying excessively high scalper prices for a shiny new Ampere or RDNA2 GPU, and instead look at the second hand market where you’re still getting rolled, but you’ll end up losing a lot less money. Take the GeForce RTX 3070 for example, it’s meant to cost $500 but due to limited supply and high demand just getting your hands on one for any price is extremely hard....

There are no additional stream processors, no fancy GDDR6 memory, or even GDDR5X memory for that matter. So in essence we’re getting the same RX 580 with a 15% overclock, at least when comparing the reference clock speeds. However since most entry-level RX 580 models are clocked at 1380 to 1410 MHz, this gives the RX 590 a 10-12% clock frequency advantage out of the box. Then there’s the higher-end models like the Gigabyte Aorus RX 580 XTR, which we use for testing, and that particular model comes clocked at 1425 MHz, reducing the RX 590’s clock speed advantage to 8%....

You also get a Mali G610MC4 GPU and support for up to 16GB of RAM. Other noteworthy hardware features include a microSD card slot, two micro HDMI ports (one supporting up to 8Kp60 and one supporting up to 4Kp60), a Gigabit Ethernet port, an M.2 PCIe 2.1 (one lane) SATA connector, a camera port, a display port, a USB Type-C port for power and a 40-pin header supporting multiple interface options....

Russian publication Kommersant (via PCGamer) reports that the Russian government has instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office and its ministries to introduce restrictions on video games within the country. A commission under the council of legislators made the strange claims of unnamed popular titles influencing the conscious and subconscious minds of players. They also contain “malicious and prohibited content,” apparently. The commission wants to create a list of approved and banned games, as well as a catalog of approved online titles that will work like Russia’s RuStore, a Google Play/App Store alternative....

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has never been kind to AMD hardware, so it’s not surprising that we find the Core i7 processor enjoying a 17% performance advantage at 720p. That margin is slightly reduced to 15% at 1080p and then entirely eliminated at 1440p once we run into a heavy GPU bottleneck. Project Cars 2 provides competitive results at 1080p and 1440p while the Core i7-8700K was up to 11% faster at 720p....

Codenamed Raven Ridge, the new chips are based on the same 14nm process as the original Ryzen, although AMD is marketing these as “14nm+” process, akin to the strategy Intel has used recently. What this essentially means is that the manufacturing process has matured to the point where they can dial up the clock speeds a little more and this is exactly what AMD has done here. Along with a frequency boost, Raven Ridge chips have a single CCX module, which is to say that they are limited to four cores (see our original Ryzen review if you’re lost)....

For years, Samsung has stuck with Qualcomm and its own Exynos chipsets when it comes to its flagship phones. However, the Korean tech giant has been using MediaTek’s Dimensity chipsets in a number of lower-end handsets. This has invited speculation that it won’t be long before we’ll see mid-range or flagship Samsung phones powered by Dimensity silicon. According to a BusinessKorea report, Samsung is exploring the idea of using MediaTek chipsets for the Galaxy S22 FE and some Galaxy S23 units....

Samsung’s contribution to the enthusiast flash drive market perhaps deserves special recognition, as its 840 Pro series arrived ahead of the holidays with 21nm Toggle NAND chips and crushed most of the competition. Although it’s been a while and OCZ’s flagships can certainly put up a fight, we still tend to favor Samsung’s product – at least partly because the 512GB 840 Pro as survived a year of duty in my office PC....

Over the weekend, the BlackByte ransomware group’s dark web blog touted that it had hacked servers belonging to the San Francisco 49ers and encrypted them. It wants $530 million for the key. The post contains a file called “2020 Invoices” to prove it has company data. Ars Technica notes that the cache holds hundreds of billing statements to entities including AT&T, Pepsi, and the city of Santa Clara. A representative for the team confirmed on Sunday that BlackByte attacked it the day before, but it appears that only the corporate offices were involved....

As always, we started by picking the hardware: the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T processor, Cooler Master V6GT cooler, dual AMD Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, 8GB OCZ memory, MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard, two 1TB Samsung hard drives, a single OCZ Vertex 2 240GB SSD, and Thermaltake Grand XT 750w PSU. The Raven 2 Evolution supports ATX motherboards up to 12" x 11", so taller 13" Extended ATX boards won’t fit....

However, Silverstone really landed on our radar with the Raven 2 Evolution (RV02-E) which at the time was probably the most interesting and unique gaming case we had ever seen. The 90-degree stacked design worked well providing excellent cooling while generating little noise and at $180 it wasn’t ridiculously expensive for a high-end gaming case. We received the Raven 3 only a few months after reviewing its predecessor and Silverstone impressed us by costing 11% less while perhaps being a better case than the RV02-E in certain respects....

According to a recent earnings report, Sony earmarked $1.2 billion of the Bungie acquisition cost for an employee retention program. “Approximately one-third of the US$3.6 billion acquisition consideration consists primarily of deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives,” reads one slide of yesterday’s presentation. “These amounts will be paid over the course of several years after the closing date and will be recorded as expenses for accounting purposes....

Sony unveiled this week an attachment that adds a surprising array of features to its new Xperia 1 IV smartphone. The accessory’s product page confirms that it goes on sale on October 14 for 23,100 yen (around $160). Although a product page for the device has appeared on Sony’s online stores for Asian territories like Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, it hasn’t yet appeared on the company’s US website. The Xperia Stream XQZ-GG01’s headline feature is a fan to keep the phone cool while playing high-end games....

Former SpaceX exec Lee Rosen co-founded ThinkOrbital last year to develop commercial space station applications. Rosen previously served as vice president of mission and launch operations at SpaceX. He has worked as ThinkOrbital’s chief strategy officer since its founding and was appointed company president last week. He recently revealed details about the startup and its plans. ThinkObital’s flagship is the ThinkPlatform — a large facility in low-earth orbit that Rosen claims companies can use to manufacture goods, including high-speed computer chips, fiber optics, and pharmaceutical products....

Plunkett has amassed a sizable collection of titles over the years - 810, to be precise - and decided to check his collection’s compatibility as a bit of a real-world indicator to see how Valve has prepared for the handheld’s pending release. Many of the games were sent to him for evaluation for a review, meaning they span a variety of genres and eras. Of the 810 games in his library, only 59 were fully certified and 100 percent ready for the Steam Deck....

The Left finger of gloVa is truly overpowered as Dying Light 2 weapons are concerned. You do not have to get close to the zombies, and it is a one-shot-done kill. However, Techland did incorporate a few things to balance out the OP nature of this blueprint. First of all, it is critically hard to find. The blueprint is well hidden and finding it is on par with locating every zombie statue in the first Dying Light game without help....

Just like in previous years we’ve thoughtfully compiled a list of technology toys, utilities and gadgets from least to most expensive. Whether you’re looking to keep your spending in check or going all out and buying that big bad LCD you’ve been gazing at, we hope you’ll find this guide handy. So without further ado here are our suggestions: Why not allow your inner geek to express itself loud and proud without the suspenders and get them a shirt from SplitReason....

The PT6 SE squeezes in three PCI-E x16 2.0 slots, one PCI-E x1 slot, two PCI slots, one PATA host adapter, six SATA II host adapters, Realtek audio and LAN chips, six USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA and Firewire port, and S/PDIF optical/coaxial out. In a matter of weeks the new Intel P55 platform is expected to launch as a mainstream alternative to the X58, which is more oriented towards building the ultimate high-end desktop....

Motherboard, Processor, Cooler, Memory At that price the i7-6700K makes little sense as the more equipped i7-5820K costs just $375. The Haswell-E processor boats an additional two cores and four threads and is also fully unlocked making the 3.3GHz operating frequency somewhat irrelevant. The i7-5820K also features almost twice as much L3 cache and still supports DDR4 memory. There are tons of high-end X99 boards available and unless you’re hunting for a particular feature, you’ll probably be equally satisfied with anything you pick....