Graphics Cards, PC Monitors And Computer Audio Reviews And News
The sights and sounds of the modern computing experience are driven by key user interface technologies like graphics cards, display monitors and various audio solutions. Here you'll find reviews and news on the latest in cutting-technologies for GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), LED and LCD computer display monitors, sound cards, PC and wireless speaker systems and more.
NVIDIA has been dabbling in real-time ray tracing for over a decade, and as made acquisitions in the space to leverage the technology. Now, the company is introducing NVIDIA RTX, which is its latest effort to deliver real-time ray tracing to game developers and content creators for implementation in actual game engines. The above image was rendered by NVIDIA IRay, a technology the company developed for designers and photographers who work with digital assets. That level of realism, especially with respect to lighting, is what real-time ray tracing can bring to game engines. Roughly a decade...
Read more...
It is very likely that NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070 Ti will be the final Pascal-based desktop GPU to arrive for gamers, before next-generation architectures hit the scene in the not too distant future. As most of you probably know, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti targets enthusiasts and hardcore gamers and is positioned in the narrow gap between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. We took an extended look at NVIDIA’s Founders Edition card in our launch coverage. But here we’re turning our gaze toward a couple custom variants from Zotac and ASUS. In this piece we're pitting the Zotac GeForce...
Read more...
Update, 2/5/2018: We have a new article posted detailing CyptoNote (Monero) mining performance with AMD's Threadripper processor with a CPU-optimized algorithm, alongside a handful of other X86 processors and a powerful GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU. Update, 9/15/2017: We've updated our Ethereum mining benchmark numbers in this article to include AMD's recently released Radeon RX Vega graphics cards. Head here for that updated data or journey on for the full guide. Cryptocurrency mining is a big buzz topic in technology these days. And why not? Utilizing your computer to digitally mine what...
Read more...
AMD is getting out in front of the impending influx of CES-related announcements and unveiling a number of upcoming chip products for the new year. After ramping 10 new product lines in 2017 -- if you consider its entire breadth of CPUs, GPUs, and semi-custom APUs -- AMD is readying more new and/or updated products for 2018, including next-generation Ryzen and Threadripper desktop processors covering every market segment from mobile to HEDT, and an array of Vega-based graphics products that target new markets and form factors. Ryzen Mobile Goes Pro Let’s start with the mobile news. We...
Read more...
Although NVIDIA officially unveiled its Volta-based GV100 GPU over seven months ago, and an unwitting intern may have leaked pictures of the card we’re going to show you here today shortly thereafter, the NVIDIA TITAN V featuring the GV100 GPU began shipping just this past week. The NVIDIA TITAN V targets a very specific audience and is designed for professional and academic deep learning applications, which partly explains its lofty $3,000 price tag. Unlike NVIDIA's previous-gen consumer flagship, the TITAN Xp, the TITAN V is clearly not designed for gamers. But since it features NVIDIA’s...
Read more...
In July of 2016, NVIDIA launched the Pascal-based TITAN X, promising 11 teraflops (TFLOPs) of compute performance. In April of this year, NVIDIA ratcheted up the performance a tad with a fully unlocked Pascal GP102 core in the form of TITAN Xp, boasting a full 12 TFLOPs of compute power. Now, NVIDIA is ready to unleash a completely new GPU aimed at researchers and scientists, the TITAN V. The card was fittingly announced at the Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Long Beach, California. The new TITAN V is based on the NVIDIA Volta architecture, and with that...
Read more...
Dell has a long history of producing high-quality displays, and the recently released Dell UltraSharp 27 Premier Color UltraHD 4K monitor (model UP2718Q) we will be showing you here -- the company’s first to support HDR10 -- is no exception. Though this display demands a premium price, it is also chock full of sought after features that target graphic designers and content creation professionals. The 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) IPS panel used in the UP2718Q features UHD Alliance Premium certification and support for 100% of the Adobe color gamut. It can display approximately 1.07...
Read more...
We are almost to the end of yet another wonderfully innovative year in technology. The non-stop innovation of the tech sector has presented us with products and services that deliver more horsepower, lower power consumption, and smaller form factors that deliver more value and features. The tradition of Black Friday began with retail merchants feverishly working over the year to pull their bottom lines out of the "red", and utilizing the US Thanksgiving long holiday weekend to bolster sales and revenue back into the "black." For 65 years value-seeking consumers in the U.S. have been looking...
Read more...
NVIDIA caused a great disturbance in the Force recently, as if millions of gamers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. We fear something terrible has happened, and they might not be able to get their hands on the glorious Star Wars TITAN Xp Collector’s Edition cards that were announced a few days ago, but arrive today, alongside EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II.Fear not young Padawan. If you can’t gaze upon a Star Wars TITAN Xp Collector’s Edition with your own eyes, we will do our best to convey what it’s like to game on one of these limited edition beasts and witness its customized,...
Read more...
News broke yesterday that AMD’s Raja Koduri would be leaving the company after a brief sabbatical. It turns out that the former head of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) won’t be out of work for long – Intel just announced that Koduri would be joining the team to head up a newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group, and as a general manager of a new initiative to drive edge and client visual computing solutions. The rumor we posted this morning turned out to be true.With Koduri’s help, Intel plans to unify and expand its IP across multiple segments including core computing, graphics, media,...
Read more...
PC hardware aficionados are no doubt aware of the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti we will be showing you here today. Prior to last week’s official announcement by NVIDIA, information about the card had been leaking for weeks – see for yourself. If you haven’t been keeping up on the scene, the GTX 1070 Ti is NVIDIA’s latest Pascal-powered graphics card for enthusiast gamers, that’s meant to slot in between the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, and take down the recently released AMD Radeon RX Vega 56.For the purposes of this article, we got our hands on a pair of GeForce GTX 1070 Ti cards, a Founder’s...
Read more...
Creative Labs was instrumental in evolving PC audio with notable products, like the Sound Blaster 16, AWE 32, AWE64, Live!, Audigy, X-Fi, and Extigy, and algorithms like EAX technology. Most of its competitors through the last three decades, like Yamaha, ESS, Turtle Beach, Auzentech and M-Audio, evolved their product line-ups or faded into obscurity. There were acquisitions of Aureal and Sensaura technologies that further boosted Creative's technology portfolio, too. Sound cards seem passé nowadays, as motherboard manufacturers hop up high-definition audio codecs with higher quality op-amps, capacitors,...
Read more...
Today is the day AMD's Radeon Technologies Group has been working towards for a long time. The official launch of the Radeon RX Vega is here, and it's now time for AMD RTG's moment in the spotlight. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) has been on a tear as of late; the desktop and server processor group executed successful launches of its Ryzen desktop processor, EPYC server platform, and finally the big bang last week with its Ryzen Threadripper enthusiast 12- and 16-core processors, which were met with high praise. Ryzen, EPYC and Threadripper are tough acts to follow, just ask Intel. So too...
Read more...
AMD has officially lifted the veil on its new Radeon RX consumer graphics line-up, featuring the company's next-generation Vega GPU architecture. After months of architecture disclosures and rumors, we finally have real specifications and details on the actual Radeon RX Vega graphics card line-up, including pricing, and what AMD is doing to make the cards as attractive as possible for gamers.Initially, there will be four cards in the Radeon RX Vega line-up, the standard air-cooled Radeon RX Vega 64, a Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition with stylized metal fan shroud, the liquid-cooled...
Read more...
