Hasta La Gadget!

Mainstream gaming is all about 1080p. Monitors may be getting cheaper, making higher resolutions and multi-display setups ever more feasible, but Full HD is still sufficient for the average buyer. AMD knows it, and that’s why this morning’s announcement of the Radeon HD 7790 came with a straightforward promise: the ability to play the latest games at 1080p with high detail settings for a maximum outlay of $149. Such claims can’t be waved around without being tested, and indeed The Tech Report, HotHardware, Bit.tech and other sites have just returned their verdicts. Read on for our review roundup.

Filed under: Desktops, Displays, Gaming, AMD

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is from Richard-Keith, who leapt before he looked and now needs our help. If you’re looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

“Sheepishly, I have to admit that I didn’t do my homework, but when the chance to get a Mac Pro came around, I didn’t stop to think about the consequences. Now I’ve got a lovely new desktop, but now I’m lamenting the lack of an SD-card reader, built-in speaker and a webcam. I’m sure there are other displays that do the latter three jobs, including the Apple Cinema Display, but is there something a little cheaper than its rather staggering $999 price-tag? Thank you from the bottom my heart.”

Let’s be fair and help out our friend, after all, we’ve all made that odd impulse purchase without doing our homework. There aren’t that many monitors that can do all of the jobs you need, but you can pick up a Cinemaview with extra USB ports, or perhaps ASUS’ VK248H (and related), which even have Displayport outputs and a Webcam, although it may be a bit weak in the speaker department. Still, it’s high time we passed this question over to the throng of Engadgeteers, to find out if they know of anything better.

Filed under: Desktops, Displays, Apple

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Yesterday’s self-congratulatory pat on the back to anyone reciting Pi to ten digits might feel a bit inadequate compared to Santa Clara University’s Ed Karrels. The researcher has broken the record for calculating Darren Aronofsky’s favorite number, taking the ratio to eight quadrillion places right of the decimal. Given the location of the University, you’ll be unsurprised to learn which hardware maker’s gear was used to break the record. Karrels will be showing off the new digits at the GPU technology conference in San Jose, demonstrating the CUDA-voodoo necessary to harness all of that Kepler-based computing power.

[Image Credit: Ed Karrels]

Filed under: Desktops, Alt, NVIDIA

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Via: NVIDIA

Source: Ed Karrels

Dell is pulling back the curtain on the XPS 18, its new portable all-in-one. This machine is a natural competitor to the Sony VAIO Tap 20, with a built-in battery rated for five hours of runtime, although it weighs a much lighter 4.85 pounds (versus a whopping 11.4). Still, though the XPS 18 can function as a tablet, it’s portable in the sense that it can move from office to living room; it’s not going to accompany you on daily subway rides.

With an 18.4-inch, 1080p display, the XPS 18 makes for a pretty enormous slate, and we were only comfortable holding it in our hands for a few minutes, though resting it on our lap worked well. The AIO sports flip-out plastic feet on its backing, and these can prop up the device vertically or at an angle. Of course, you can also use the XPS 18 as a tablet by simply laying it flat on a table or desktop, and this is the ideal mode for playing games and the like on the 10-point touchscreen.

Filed under: Desktops, Dell

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Yearly product cycles? AMD doesn’t need that long, thank you. It’s planning to release a fresh batch of low-power APUs just 11 months after Trinity. Known as Richland, this generation won’t be vastly different at the silicon level, as it’s built on the same 32nm process as Trinity, has the same number of transistors and offers very similar compute performance in terms of raw GFLOPs. However, there are some noteworthy upgrades in attendance, including a move to Radeon HD 8000M graphic processors, which are claimed to deliver a 20-40 percent increase in “visual performance” in higher-end models, plus power-saving tweaks that should provide over an hour of additional battery life while watching 720p video — perhaps even enough for two extra episodes of House of Cards. Some Windows 8 enhancements will also tag along for the ride, and these will promptly be revealed if you read on past the break.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops

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