Happy birthday: Intel's Pentium processor turns 20 years old today

Intel’s infamous Pentium processor got its start 20 years ago today with the release of the Pentium 60 CPU. That chip utilized Intel’s 5-volt Socket 4, was build on an 800-nanometer process and carried 3.1 million transistors. For comparison, today’s third generation Ivy Bridge processors use a 22-nanometer process and contain 1.4 billion transistors.As ExtremeTech notes, early Pentium processors weren’t anything special. In fact, the...

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AMD Radeon HD 7790 Review

AMD spent the better part of 2012 releasing an entire line of 28nm GPUs, starting with the Radeon HD 7970 in January and followed by over half a dozen more cards throughout the next 8 months.Late in the year we wrapped things up with our feature “The Best Graphics Cards: Nvidia vs. AMD Current-Gen Comparison”which saw Nvidia take out the $100 - $150 price bracket with the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, while AMD claimed the $150 - $200 range with the...

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What is false disk failure, and why is it a problem?

I’ve spent a lot of time with mega datacenters (MDCs) around the world trying to understand their problems – and I really don’t care what area those problems are as long as they’re important to the datacenter. What is the #1 Real Problem for many large scale mega datacenters? It’s something you’ve probably never heard about, and probably have not even thought about. It’s called false disk failure. Some mega datacenters have crafted their own solutions...

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Origin vulnerability lets attackers hijack gaming machines

Upwards of 40 million users of EA's Origin game platform could be open to a vulnerability that allows an attacker to remotely execute malicious code. Demonstrated by ReVuln on Friday at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, the process requires Origin's client to be installed on the victim's machine and it can be exploited when the user clicks a specially crafted link.The issue stems from Origin's use of specific...

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SimCity Performance, Benchmarked

Going down the memory lane, I can remember two computer games being responsible for getting me so interested in PCs. The original Command & Conquer was the first around 1995. Running on the venerable MS-DOS, I spent quite a bit of time playing that game at the ripe old age of 9 on our pokey HP powered i486.Shortly after that I discovered SimCity 2000. The first SimCity title, which was released back in 1989, was before my time so I never played...

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Intel's Core i7-4770K 'Haswell' CPU gets benchmarked

If you’re considering upgrading to a Haswell CPU or building an entirely new system built around the chip but have been holding out to see what performance is like compared to existing processors, today is your lucky day. That’s because the first round of benchmarks from Haswell have hit the web courtesy of Tom’s Hardware.The publication was able to get their hands on a Core i7-4770K which will replace the i7-3770K at the top of the chip maker’s...

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Tomb Raider Performance Test: Graphics & CPU

Although this year's Tomb Raider reboot made our latest list of most anticipated PC games, I must admit that it was one of the games I was least looking forward to from a performance perspective. Previous titles in the franchise have received mixed to positive reviews, but gameplay aside, their visuals weren't exactly mind-blowing so we've never bothered doing a performance review on one -- until now, anyway.As with the last few entries, Crystal...

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Android set to overtake iOS on tablets this year

The dominance of iOS will be challenged later this year as Android hurdles toward becoming the most-used mobile operating system on tablets, according to IDC. The researcher has updated its forecast to reflect the surging interest in slates such as the Nexus 7 that are smaller and cheaper than Apple's iPads, with the latest data projecting shipments of 190.9 million units in 2013, up from the previously expected 172.4 million.The group notes...

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The business of gaming: nickels, dimes, and quarters

The video game industry is just that. An industry.Which means that it exists in a capitalistic world. You know, a free market. A place where you’re welcome to spend your money on whatever you please… or to refrain from spending that money.Those companies that put these products out? They’re for profit businesses. They exist to produce, market, and ship great games ultimately for one purpose. First, for money, then, for acclaim.And when those companies...

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Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan Review

Nvidia's Kepler architecture debuted a year ago with the GeForce GTX 680, which has sat somewhat comfortably as the market's top single-GPU graphics card, forcing AMD to reduce prices and launch a special HD 7970 GHz Edition card to help close the value gap. Despite besting its rival, many believe Nvidia had planned to make its 600 series flagship even faster by using the GK110 chip, but purposefully held back with the GK104 to save...

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Windows 8 adoption at 2.79%, not growing as fast as Windows 7

Windows 8 continued its slow but steady growth in February grabbing 2.26 percent of the operating system market share, up from 1.72 percent in December and 1.09 percent in November according to Net Applications. During the month Windows 7 also gained 0.07 percentage points after losing 0.63 percentage points in January, and it’s still the most used platform by a comfortable margin with 44.55 percent of the market. The venerable Windows XP is...

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