Nvidia’s long-awaited GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards are finally here, and these Ampere GPU-powered beasts are staggeringly potent. Unfortunately, some buyers lucky enough to score one of these hotly desired graphics cards have encountered stability issues that result in some games crashing to the desktop, and deeper […]
Month: September 2020
Why we can’t laugh at laptop integrated graphics anymore
Integrated graphics, long the butt of jokes among PC gamers—that technology so worthless that it comes free with your laptop—is finally due some respect. Integrated graphics that didn’t stink started with Ryzen 3000, and continued with Intel’s 10th-gen Ice Lake and again with Ryzen 4000. Intel, however, took it up […]
The HP Pavilion 15 offers Ryzen 4000 performance for as little as $600
The HP Pavilion 15 may be just in time to scratch the public’s itch for budget Ryzen 4000 laptops, which are so far selling out as fast as vendors can make them. Announced Tuesday and set to go on sale in October, Pavilion 15 prices will start at $600 on […]
Microsoft buys Bethesda, creator of Doom, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Quake
PlayStation fanboys like to say the Xbox doesn’t have enough exclusive games. Well, now the Xbox will have games. Early Monday, Microsoft announced that it is acquiring the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, the publisher behind iconic gaming franchises like Doom, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Quake, Dishonored, Prey, and more. That’s […]
Apple’s new 2020 iPad upgrades the processor and nothing else
If you’re familiar with Apple’s popular and economical 7th-generation iPad (introduced about a year ago), you already know what to expect from the 8th-generation model. As the new base-model iPad—available for preorder now and shipping Friday, September 18—the 8th-gen iPad is essentially just the 7th-gen model with an upgraded processor. […]
iPad Air (2020): Everything you need to know
The iPad Air (2019) has long been the sweet spot between price, performance, and features in Apple’s tablet line. Today, the company unveiled a new iPad Air that further cements its position as the best iPad for most people. Here are the most important things to know about the new […]
AMD reveals Radeon RX 6000 design with three fans
Seeking to derail the roaring hype train for Nvidia’s imminent GeForce RTX 3080 launch, AMD teased the reference design for its own upcoming Radeon RX 6000-series “Big Navi” graphics cards on Monday, and it looks like nothing AMD has ever released before. AMD has caught a lot of flack for […]
Intel coyly revealed an 8-core Tiger Lake CPU to fight AMD’s Ryzen 4000
Intel has quietly confirmed that it will do an 8-core version of its 11th-gen Tiger Lake chip. In a September 3 blog post on Medium noticed by Tom’s Hardware, Intel’s Boyd Phelps confirmed that in addition to the quad-core 11th-gen CPUs due in October, the company will also push out […]
Nvidia’s $500 GeForce RTX 3070 gets an October 15 release date
Surprise! Late Friday night, Nvidia quietly announced the availability date for its hotly anticipated $499 GeForce RTX 3070. The next-gen graphics cards will hit the streets on October 15. At the GeForce RTX 30-series reveal, Nvidia only said that the cards will be available sometime in October. The $699 GeForce […]
Cable-box competition rules completely dismantled
Last Friday, the Federal Communications Commission finally gave up on trying to mandate more alternatives to clunky and expensive cable boxes. In a unanimous decision, the agency eliminated rules requiring cable providers to support CableCARD devices, which are used today in third-party DVRs such as TiVo. It also officially terminated […]