Quiet and Beautiful

AVADirect wasn’t really a systems builder on our radar until late last year when we reviewed their Avant Mini Cube Gaming PC. After extensive testing, we found that the system was well configured, well built, and well priced, quickly propelling AVADirect to the top as one of our favorite custom PC builders.

Recently, AVADirect sent us another one of the systems in their lineup, the AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC, which as its name implies is AVADirect’s quiet gaming PC offering based on AMD’s X370 Ryzen platform.

AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC Specs Desktop AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC Case Phanteks Eclipse [...]

Earlier this week, AMD addressed some key questions regarding its upcoming Ryzen APUs.

To set most at ease, the APUS will be fully compatible with AM4 motherboards, with only a BIOS updated needed for newer CPU support. This lowers the cost of entry into the Ryzen platform, with tremendous upgrade options available later on.

Zen APUs are coming in Febuary which feature the Global Foundries 14nm process found in the current generation Ryzen CPUs. Both models will feature quad cores, but the Ryzen 5 2400G features SMT, a base clock of 3.6GHz/boost clock of 3.9GHz and 11 Vega CUs for $169. The Ryzen 3 2200G will lack SMT, be clocked at 3.5GHz/ boosts [...]

Several weeks ago, Intel and rival AMD made headlines when the two companies announced that Intel would begin using AMD Vega graphics in some of its mobile CPUs. It appears that the first SKU is finally rolling off the production line with the model name Core i7-8809G.

The Core i7-8809G carries a 4 core, 8 thread CPU. When Intel teased this chip in November 2017, it did so under the moniker “Kaby Lake G”, which suggests that it’ll likely feature Kaby Lake architecture with some tweaks rather than the new Coffee Lake architecture that’s rolling out on some of the newer 8th Generation Core Processors.

The graphics die is the center of [...]

As the end of the year approaches, AMD packed a special surprise for its graphics card users – the Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition (Yes, that’s Adrenaline without an “e”) which is now available for download at AMD’s website here. The new update brings a healthy boost to features as well as many refinements to existing features.

 

Performance Latency

Performance has always been the paramount focus when it comes to any driver. According to AMD, the new Andrenalin driver ups the performance in some popular titles like Overwatch, Prey, and Project Cars 2. Input latency has been optimised slightly for DX11 titles. [...]

For all the readers living in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you get all the food, drink and of course plenty of Black Friday shopping after!

Today and for the next 48 hours, we’ll be scouring the internet for the best Black Friday deals on technology, computer hardware, and other generally awesome deals you may want to check out. We’ll keep this post updated with all the latest deals, so check back often!

 

CPCR Black Friday Picks Laptops MSI GL62M 7RDX-NE1050i5 15.6″ (Core i5 7300HQ, GTX 1050, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD) – $599 After $50 Rebate MSI GS73VR STEALTH PRO-060 17.3″ (Core i7-7700HQ GTX 1070 8G MAX Q [...]

AMD’s former Radeon Technology Group Chief, Raja Koduri, has had an eventful week. After Hexus recently reported on an internal memo Koduri sent to his staff announcing his departure from AMD, Intel recently sent out a press release announcing that Koduri has joined Intel’s newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group.

Back in September, Koduri announced that he’d be going on a sabbatical for personal reasons. In an email, he explained to his staff that he was taking a temporary break to spend some time with his family. Given that Koduri had just overseen AMD’s launch their latest Vega GPU, it didn’t seem like a huge deal at the [...]

When Razer acquired Nextbit in January this year, we had a feeling that they would put that acquisition to good use combining Nextbit’s smartphone engineering know-how with Razer’s own gamer twist. After just less than a year in the making, Razer unveiled their latest smartphone which may be the first decent smartphone ever produced specifically for gaming and content consumption.

The new smartphone, which Razer calls the Razer Phone, looks very similar to the Nextbit Robin, which was Nextbit’s flagship smartphone before the company was acquired by Razer. From there, Razer has made some serious enhancements to the product to make it one of the [...]

Videocardz has recently discovered a few benchmarks of the hotly rumored upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti.

The benches are from 3DMark 11, Fire Strike, and Time Spy. When compared against Videocardz own database, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti was shown to be faster than AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56 in Time Spy, but was about even in Firestrike.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is expected to use the same GP104 GPU as the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 but with just one SM disabled. This gives it a grand total of 2,432 CUDA cores. The GPU will also be paired with standard GDDR5 and not the faster GDDR5X.  It’s also [...]

For those waiting patiently for the latest installment in the highly popular Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Ubisoft recently released system requirements for the PC version of the game so you can make preparations to play when it launches on October 27.

Assassin’s Creed Origins which will be set in ancient Egypt is expected to feature the largest worlds in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

MINIMUM CONFIGURATION OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5-2400s @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX-6350 @ 3.9 GHz or equivalent VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX660 or AMD R9 270 (2048 MB [...]