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Because they’re meant to provide the best bang for your buck, sweet spot GPUs have typically been an affordable way to achieve high-end performance via SLI or Crossfire. One of the best examples I can recall was the Radeon HD 4770, which cost just $200 for a two-way Crossfire setup and could outpace GPUs that cost two or three times as much. We also have fond memories of GTX 460 SLI setups and although a pair ran $400, neither AMD nor Nvidia flagships of the time stood a chance....

Of course if you plan on playing at 4K then the 2080 Ti does prove more useful as it was the only GPU capable of keeping frame rates above 100 fps at all times. That said it was also less than 30% faster than the GTX 1080 Ti, so still a pretty touch sell then. Then of course the 2080 only matched the 1070 Ti. Prey has always been a well optimized title so pushing over 100 fps with the game maxed out at 1440p was never an issue for the GTX 1080 Ti....

So why am I even bothering to review the P34W v5, you may ask. Aren’t there more interesting and exciting laptops to review? Well there definitely are laptops that are more powerful, that are thinner, and that include crazy mechanical keyboards, but there are also a ton of run-of-the-mill laptops out there that rely entirely on great hardware at a reasonable price to sell. The Gigabyte P34 is one of them, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be considered when looking for a decent portable gaming machine....

In a rather scathing blog post, Google criticized the dominance of Microsoft’s productivity software currently in use across US federal and state governments for the security risks and vulnerability associated with the ’legacy’ tools. While there is truth to Google’s claims, the Public Opinion Strategies survey it has used to make them is also questionable in itself. For starters, the survey is commissioned by Google Cloud, instead of being independent....

Last month, a rise in Ethereum mining difficulty coupled with tumbling cryptocurrency values saw GPU prices trend downward for the first time in months. The decline has continued for the last few weeks, but it’s still too early to celebrate a return to sane pricing for consumer graphics cards. According to the latest report from German publication 3DCenter, we’re clearly in a better spot than January. At least in Central Europe, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 series are priced, on average, at 57 percent over MSRP, a significant improvement over the 77 percent premium observed last month....

The Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force was able to push the GTX 780 to its limits in the first, second and third PCIe slots. The fourth slot saw a 6% reduction in performance compared to the first. Meanwhile, the Asrock Z97X Killer, which has three PCIe slots, provided strong performance in all of them. The Asrock Z97 Extreme6 works best with two-way setups as only the first and second slots allowed for maximum performance....

Netflix writes that even though the third season of The Witcher has yet to debut, it’s already been renewed for a fourth season, but with one significant change: Henry Cavill is stepping down as Geralt to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth in season 4. “My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures, and alas, I will be laying down my medallion and my swords for Season 4,” said Cavill in a statement....

In numbers, an HBM3 stack can reach 819 GB/s of bandwidth and have 64 GB of capacity. In comparison, the HBM2e stacks used by the AMD MI250 have half the bandwidth, 410 GB/s, and a quarter of the capacity, a mere 16 GB. At eight stacks, the MI250 has a total of 128 GB and 3277 GB/s of bandwidth. Eight stacks of HBM3 would have 512 GB with 6552 GB/s of bandwidth....

As handy as the new Libraries functionality is, there’s one glaring omission: we can’t find an easy built-in way to change the Library icons. Granted, this isn’t a major deal for some people because the four default Libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos) are sufficient for the average person’s data and they have nice looking icons. However, if you add a new Library, you’re stuck with a generic Windows 7-style documents icon, and that just won’t fly with us perfectionists, will it?...

The Spectre’s design is superb. The metal body is sleek and minimalist, with a classy use of gold highlights complementing the black-brown design very nicely. The non-traditional hinge design adds a point of interest to the premium chassis, while the new HP logo is something that was widely praised by everyone I showed the laptop to. And let’s not forget just how thin this laptop is, making it extraordinarily portable and visually stunning....

I really like the HTC 10’s metal unibody design, which the company has been perfecting ever since the original One M7. The matte aluminium with a beveled edge gives this device the premium industrial design it deserves. It’s comfortable, the Gorilla Glass front is smooth, and it’s a lot less slippery than the glass backs of devices like the Galaxy S7 and Sony Xperia Z5. Plus, it still includes great features like USB-C, a microSD card slot, and a fingerprint sensor....

GPU performance from the Mali-T880 MP4 is disappointing. As I suspected, the version of this GPU with three times more cores in the Galaxy S7 Edge is almost exactly three times faster in heavily GPU-limited off-screen workloads. This is a huge performance difference for a flagship device, and it seems strange that HiSilicon would include such a weak GPU considering this SoC’s strong CPU performance. On average, the Exynos Galaxy S7 Edge was 124% faster in GPU workloads than the Huawei P9 across all our tests....

Intel first announced the flagship Arc hardware as the ACM-G10 GPU and then paper-launched it as the A770M for mobile. Laptops with the A770M should appear on shelves in the coming months. Its unannounced desktop equivalent has now been found in the Geekbench OpenCL database. It’s not a ground-breaking leak because the hardware itself has been leaked so many times, including once previously in the Geekbench database. It is, however, the first time that it’s officially been called the Intel Arc A770 Graphics to give it its full name....

Can any Intel GPUs run Elden Ring? No, according to the game’s system requirements, which mandate a GTX 1060 or RX 580 at a minimum, and none of Intel’s integrated GPUs come close to that level of performance. Even after Bandai Namco warned players of performance issues and urged them to update their GPU drivers, Intel’s first discrete solutions aren’t due until next month. Missing drivers is a pretty lousy misstep considering that Intel partnered with Bandai Namco to develop day-one graphics drivers and advertised it all over Twitter....

Intel’s Vision 2022 event is in full swing, and the company used the occasion to reveal its enthusiast-grade 12th-gen CPUs for laptops. Make no mistake — these are desktop Alder Lake processors crammed into mobile packages, and they’re as power-hungry as you’d expect. Intel’s senior director of mobile product marketing for the Client Computing Division, Daniel Rogers, confirmed these are essentially Alder Lake-S CPUs without a heat spreader and integrated into laptop-friendly BGA packages....

When looking at the previous generation Westmere chips, it was easy to pinpoint that the graphics engine didn’t really belong and it was more of a transitional product. These chips used an on-package graphics engine that was separate from the CPU. Furthermore, it was built using the 45nm process and not the same 32nm process used by the actual CPU. The redesigned Sandy Bridge architecture on the other hand includes the GPU on-die, meaning that it’s also built using the same 32nm process as the CPU....

The Intel SSD 750 1.2TB delivered 177% more performance than the Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB when importing pictures in the PCMark 7 test. Interestingly, the video editing test saw the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB trail the SSD 850 Pro 512GB by a 9% margin. The starting applications test heavily favored the SSD 750 as it was 57% faster than the 850 Pro. In PCMark 7’s gaming test the SSD 750 1....

These boards featured elaborate heatsinks with red dragons etched into them and well… they must have sold well because today the formula remains much the same. In fact buying a non-gaming brand MSI motherboard is the new challenge, as they have the Enthusiast Gaming, Performance Gaming and Arsenal Gaming series. For those not all geared up for gaming there is the Pro series, but that sounds pretty boring. At the top of MSI’s Z170 range is the Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition – quite the mouthful....

Despite producing around 11% less bandwidth than the Asus Z97 motherboard, we find that the Asrock Z97 Extreme6 and Extreme9 were faster when testing with WinRAR. The Asrock Z97 Extreme9 was almost 5% faster than the Asus Z97-Deluxe here while the Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK produced the best result with 10573KB/s and the EVGA Z97 FTW delivered the worst with just 9906KB/s. The Excel 2013 results were extremely close amongst the seven Z97 motherboards tested....

Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter has been fraught with the sort of controversy that constantly surrounds the Tesla boss. From his initial 9.2% acquisition earlier this month and the lawsuit, to turning down a board seat and making a multi-billion-dollar bid. It is now all over though. The transaction has now been unanimously approved by Twitter’s board and is expected to close in 2022, subject to customary regulatory approvals. Elon Musk’s offer of $54....