Latest News - Page 2693

Apple has unveiled its new 15-inch MacBook Pro with refreshed internals and Force Touch technology, as well as a new 5K-capable iMac. The addition of Force Touch technology on the new 15-inch MacBook Pro allows it to join the league of the 13-inch MacBook Pro that Apple unveiled not too long ago with its impressive new trackpad.

The refreshed 15-inch MacBook Pro includes an interesting mobile GPU that people have nearly skimmed over, with Apple using an AMD Radeon R9 M370X - from AMD's upcoming Radeon 300 series of GPUs. Apple's refreshed MBP features a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor at 2.5GHz, 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, a 512GB PCIe-based SSD, Intel Iris Pro graphics along with the Radeon R9 M370X, and the Force Touch trackpad. All of this will set you back $2499.

The new iMac features a 5K Retina panel, and starting at $1999 you'll get a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor at 3.3GHz. The refreshed iMac features a beautiful 5120x2880 resolution, which packs 67% more pixels than 4K at 3840x2160. Inside, there'll be 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, joined by four USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports that provide up to an insane 20Gbps, each.

Autonomous vehicles will seemingly take over the open road one day, but no one is really sure when that will begin. However, passengers will no longer have to worry about fighting gridlock traffic, it's possible commute distances to and from work will increase.

The free time will allow passengers to get work done, play on social media, or just relax while they commute - and it's possible travel distances could reach around 180 miles each way, according to recent predictions. For example, someone with an autonomous vehicle could leave their home in Vermont at 7:30 AM and arrive at a midtown Manhattan office at 9:00 AM, depending on the road infrastructure for autonomous vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles could change all of that in the coming years: Current standards indicate most people live about 30 minutes away from where they work, regardless of how they travel to and from the office.

According to the latest rumors, we should expect the Radeon R9 390X to launch with 4GB of HBM, while a dual-GPU version of the Fiji XT-based card will arrive with 8GB of HBM. For those who have been keeping up, this is a very, very interesting move, if the rumors are true. If you want to catch up on how revolutionary HBM will be, we wrote a detailed piece on High Bandwidth Memory yesterday.

Fudzilla is reporting from "insider sources" that AMD will launch the Radeon R9 390X with 4GB of HBM for an MSRP of around $849, while the dual-GPU version of the card, which should arrive as the Radeon R9 395X2, will include 8GB of HBM. The Radeon R9 395X2 (that's what we're calling it for now, this could change at any moment) should arrive sometime later in the year, or 2016 - depending on HBM yields, I'd say.

The sources stated that AMD had plans to launch the Radeon R9 390X with a price of $799, but this is no longer the case. The sources also added that the R9 390X will be competing directly against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X, which launched at $999 and is still around the $999 mark on Amazon still. According to Fudzilla's sources, the HBM-powered Radeon R9 390X will win in some benchmarks, and lose in others against the GDDR5-based Titan X.

Whatever TV you own right now, it's not as thin as LG's latest 55-inch wallpaper OLED panel, something the company just presented at its media event.

The new TV is just 0.97mm thick, weighs only 1.9kg and can be placed onto, and pulled down from a wall with a magnetic mat. LG's latest wallpaper TV is much thinner than its existing 55-inch OLED panel, which is 4.3mm, considerably thicker than LG's latest model.

LG also took some time during its media event to showcase a new convex OLED panel that can be used for digital signage for large-scaling outdoor advertising. The South Korean electronics giant has also pushed for production of the OLED as its next big thing, with the advanced display shrinking TVs down, while making them lighter, as it "emits light itself based on the electric current without a backlight unit, unlike the liquid crystal display (LCD)", reports The Korea Times.

Researchers are working on a new drone that is able to automatically unfold itself and quickly go airborne, with the compact and foldable drone ideally suited for emergency first response. The custom quadcopter drone is able to launch in less than one second, and is easily transportable since it's the size of the palm of your hand.

The current prototype has to be folded up by hand - taking less than 10 seconds with a skilled operator - but an auto-fold feature is in development. The drone weighs just 1.3 ounces, so first responders at a natural disaster site could launch a number of these small aircraft to help survey a site.

"You can take it out of the box, switch on the motor, and it's ready to fly," said Dr. Stefano Mintchev, professor of robotics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, in a statement to LiveScience.

It's no secret that PC and console gamers tend to love energy drinks, guzzling the highly caffeinated drinks to extend gaming sessions. Traditional energy drinks are under increased scrutiny due to deaths and medical issues suffered by binge-drinking the sugary and caffeinated drinks - with some companies releasing what they say are healthier alternatives.

Products such as GungHo and G Fuel, designed as "gamer drinks," promote being sugar-free with increased levels of vitamins - a rare alternative over traditional energy drinks.

"Sales of caffeinated energy drinks have grown dramatically without adequate consideration of the cumulative intake of caffeine by teens and adolescents and, due to the law governing food additives, without any premarket review by FDA," said Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA.

With E3 2015 just a month away now, Oculus VR has just announced a new "Step into the Rift" event for June 11 in San Francisco, where we should be introduced to the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift, CV1.

Last week we found out the recommended requirements to run the Oculus Rift, where you'll need a mid-range or better video card, and a semi-decent but not over-the-top PC to run CV1. Road to VR reports that they've "received confirmation" that the Oculus Rift CV1 runs 2160x1200 at 90Hz split over two displays, pushing a huge 233 million pixels per second.

Some might remember the tag that Palmer Luckey used during the Kickstarter for the Oculus Rift, which was "Step into the Game". This new "Step into the Rift" tease is a nice throwback to the Kickstarter campaign, as we are about to learn about CV1. The unveiling of Rift CV1 is big enough that it needs its own event, so that it won't get lost in the sea of announcements during E3 2015, which runs between June 16-18.

After the RazerStore grand opening in the Syntrend Mall in Taipei was shut down due to overcrowding and safety concerns, Razer announced a change in their give away policy for upcoming days, stating that members of the public should come dressed in Razer promotional gear or products in order to win further free things.

A person with information on the matter and who was present on the initial release day spoke to us about their account of what happened, claiming that the reason Razer changed up this policy was not only to entice users to proudly display their Razer logo to the rest of the audience, but because many of the over-crowding issues derived from non-gamers and people not interested in the company, but random members of the public of whom wished to score a free treat.

Due to this being no where near part of their target audience, after the shut down Razer re-focused their plan and announced that "the Razer community team on location plans to issue swag on a discretionary basis, honoring fans who come equipped with Razer gear, such as Razer Kraken headphones, shirts, bags and the likes" as seen in the latest issued press release.

Thanks to Razer's massive fan-base, hundreds of fans flocked to the opening of the RazerStore in the Syntrend Mall in Taipei, Taiwan. Due to so many people turning up, the mall management ordered Razer to suspend its launch activities including give-aways of promotional materials and some peripherals.

In order to appease fans, Razer has offered free Nabu X wearables to the first 250 attendees of each day on the 16th and 17th of May, announcing that the store will be open at normal business hours from 11am until 10pm on these days.

In the future fans can also enter in the running to win special promotional bags if they attend this event wearing Razer merchandising or products on their person while special events are taking place.

Alongside showcasing its new flagship ZenFone 2 smartphone and the ultra-portable world's thinnest ZenBook UX305 in Manhattan recently, ASUS CEO Jonney Shih also talked about the powerful ZenBook Pro UX501.

Packing an NVIDIA GTX 960M video card and backed by an Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor, this laptop contains a massive 16GB of RAM and supports 4K/UHD video playback. Marketed with 3D rendering and gaming in mind, the 15.6-inch touch display allows you to play away at a 3860 x 2160 resolution coupled with an 178-degree viewing angle.

Offering a PCI-E SSD up to 512GB in capacity, ASUS claim this to be the world's fastest, boasting read and write speeds of up to 1400MB/s - listed as twice as fast as competing PCI-E x2 models.

If you're interested in something light, small and portable to take along on business trips of for pleasure, ASUS showcased its new ZenBook UX305 alongside the ZenFone 2 extravaganza recently in Manhattan.

Featuring a 13.3-inch QHD+ screen, an Intel Core M processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD to round it all off, ASUS claims this model weighs in at only 2.64lbs and measures just 0.48 inches thick.

The IPS multi-touch display will run at 3200 x 1800 pixels and supports wide viewing angles which compliments the three SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports, a bundled USB-to-Ethernet adapter and a mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter all located in the overall package.

Google knows that its Chrome browser is a serious consumer of RAM, but the development team is reportedly very aware of this, and are working on lowering Chrome's RAM consumption.

Thanks to a Reddit AMA session, a Chrome for Android engineer said: "We are actively working on reducing battery usage and we are looking into when Chrome is in the foreground and in the background. Since its inception Chrome has been focusing on security and performance of the web across all supported platforms. Performance sometimes has come at the cost of resource usage, but given the importance of the mobile platform this is one of the top things we are looking into".

Google has a serious focus on mobile, but it is not forgetting desktop users at all. As for the desktop side of things, Google added: "We are profiling Chrome to improve our start-up speed and proactively fighting memory bloat and memory leaks. For example, this year the first gesture latency and mean input latency has decreased steadily".

With the marketing tagline boasting superior thermodynamics and construction, Silverstone has set the bar high for its new Fortress series FTZ01 slim form factor chassis.

Featuring a slim slot-loading optical drive slot, space for two 2.5" SSDs, one 2.5" HDD slot, an aluminum unibody frame and support for video cards up to 13 inches in length, this case can be cooled by two 120mm bottom and one 120mm rear fan.

Measuring in at 376mm (W) x 107mm (H) x 351mm (D) coupled with a 14 liter capacity, this case also contains two USB 3.0 front ports and two front audio jacks. Supporting Mini-ITX and Mini-DTX motherboards, the FTZ01 is suitable for a HTPC or home mini-server project.

Samsung is currently sitting at 14nm technology inside of its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge smartphones, but we won't stay there for long if ARM has any say in the matter.

ARM is reporting set for the Ares core to hit just 10nm, something that will "reach smartphone and tablet makers by the end of next year". Ares will be here first with 10nm, but ARM is already teasing its successor: Prometheus. Prometheus will consume just 600-750mW of power, but Linley Gwenapp from analyst firm The Linley Group, believes that Ares will still have a place in the world.

Gwenapp said: "Ares core could reach smartphone and tablet makers by the end of next year. ARM is already well advanced on a next-generation high-end CPU that will follow the A72. In fact, this project is so far along that the A72 team could 'steal' some portions of the next-generation design. For example, a new floating-point unit reduces latency by 33%. The prefetcher, also from the next-gen design, improves the data-cache hit rate to boost performance. The next-gen branch predictor reduces mispredictions by 20%".

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi has seen great success in China, Brazil, India, and other emerging markets - but wants to try its hand at taking over the United States and Europe.

The company has launched an online trial to its Mi Store, with a small number of accessories, wearables and headphones available to Western shoppers. Analysts believe this is the first step for Xiaomi to prepare its smartphones and tablets to launch in new markets.

Previously, Xiaomi officials said it was focused on releasing its low-priced electronics to emerging markets. However, that didn't mean key mobile markets would be ignored, as the Chinese company wants to take its time before trying to launch into established - and lucrative - markets outside its core locations.

With the current generation consoles getting close to their two year anniversaries, we're still not seeing 1080p 60FPS gameplay in most AAA titles, let alone "CG quality visuals". But, according to ex-Naughty Dog developer and Filmic Worlds' founder John Hable, we're around two generations away from CG quality visuals in games.

Hable talked with GamingBolt, where he said: "Honestly, it is hard to say. I think it will be a very long time. The current crop of consoles is much better than the previous generation, but the trailers are getting better too. If you really want to hit that level of quality then you need staggering triangle counts with really long shaders. Photoreal global illumination is very easy offline but very difficult in realtime".

He continued, saying that it will be another two console cycles before we see 4K hitting CG quality, where he said: "I don't have a good answer for you, but my guess would be longer than you think. One more console generation seems too quick. Maybe in two more generations? That would be PS6 and the 5th gen Xbox? And if we need to render in 4k then add another generation which puts us at PS7 and 6th gen Xbox. It'll be a while. Of course, they will never fully line up because of the content costs. Trailers and feature-length movies simply have a much higher budget per second than what the full game can afford. This difference is more than an order of magnitude in some cases".

Often plagued by slow operating procedures, Ultrabooks have shown that a quick start-up process and a thin design isn't the be all and end all of computing technology.

Setting out to help change this trend is Eurocom, recently announcing its Armadillo 2 Ultrabook sporting up to 32GB of memory through two 16GB RAM modules. Coupled with an Intel i5-5200U Broadwell CPU and 2TB of storage space, bundled with Intel HD graphics 5500 and in a complete package completed by a brushed aluminum exterior weighing in at only 1.8kg and measuring 2.1cm thick, this Ultrabook really looks like a winner.

The 2TB of storage comes through a mSATA drive bay and one 2.5-inch 7mm HDD/SSD slot which is kept churning by the 7-hour battery life provided by a 44WH battery.

In a world of leaked information and hacking sprees, Australian cloud services provider Macquarie Telecom has been the first ever of its kind to be approved on the government's list of providers thanks to its performance in the security standards testing.

With this accreditation approved by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), Macquarie Telecom's Managing Director Aiden Tudehope stated "the ASD was detailed and thorough and Macquarie is proud that out hard work has been recognized in this way." Tudehope added that the motive for this accreditation is quite reasonable as "our analysis shows governments are increasingly looking for a range of cloud computing services for different data classification use cases."

Further privatization of Government services can be good or bad depending on which way the situation is assessed and it's up to you to decide if you're happy with this movement or not. Either way, congratulations Macquarie Telecom for being the first of a kind.

Thermaltake has been promoting its global modding competition like crazy recently, with seven modders chosen from countries around the world to represent their homeland in a 'mod-off'.

Bringing his best to the table is the Australian modder Stuart Tonks, showcasing his build which features a dual-CPU laden ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard coupled with three ASUS NVIDIA STRIX GeForce GTX 980's and no less than three SSDs.

If that's not impressive enough, the full Thermaltake watercooling setup within is finished off with a built-in 24" 1080p touchscreen.

Somewhat debated female-only leagues and competitions are still going along strong with ESWC announcing a $15,000 prize pool for its CS:GO female contingent of the upcoming event.

Held on July 9-12 and boasting a $75,000 male CS:GO tournament, the old 3DMAX squad is the fan favorite to take out the female event while on the search for a new home as their organization packed up last month.

Four of the competing teams will be decided through an open qualifier for European and North American teams (two each), alongside an application to decide the last three placings - one of which will be French.