Month: November 2019

A seeming uh-oh from MSI coincides with the rumours floating around of yet another third gen Threadripper, this time a 64 core 128 thread behemoth based on the 7nm Zen 2 architecture which will likely put further pressure on team blue.

This week, a video from MSI introducing their TRX40 Creator motherboard went live, which fortunately enough for us showed a distant shot of CPU usage on task manager. The video has since been removed and replaced with an edited version, but wccftech was able to snag a screenshot beforehand, where we can spot 8 vertical and 16 horizontal tiles, indicating 128 total threads.

With the TRX40 Creator being a single socket motherboard, this rules out the possibility of a 2nd Gen EPYC CPU being used. With that in mind, this could be our first confirmation of a 64-core, 128-thread TR 3990X, which should get an announcement sometime after the 25th of November, when the TR 3960X and TR 3970X officially hit retail.

Laptops beyond 15-inches tend to offer superior cooling than their smaller counterparts in part because of their larger footprints. So, we expected the HP Envy 17-ce1002ng to demonstrate the best that Comet Lake-U, and specifically the Intel Core i7-10510U, had to offer. However, the device not only falls short of the multicore performance of what we have come to expect from the Core i7-10510U but also even its Whiskey Lake-U predecessors.

Oddly, our review unit exceeding our expectations of its GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce MX250. The device consistently achieved above-average results in gaming and synthetic benchmarks, although it cannot get close to the performance that the GeForce GTX 1650 offers, as the Acer Aspire 7 A715 demonstrates.

Moreover, we are fans of the keyboard and trackpad that HP has also included in this year’s Envy 17, as we are with Wi-Fi 6 being onboard. The device offers a good selection of ports too, which HP has housed in a sturdy and stylish chassis. The device could be easier to open too, a recurring issue among modern HP laptops.

In short, the HP Envy 17-ce1002ng is a mixed bag. While the device has the makings of a compelling desktop replacement, it suffers from too many shortcomings for us to recommend it in good conscience. Please see our HP Envy 17-ce1002ng review for our full thoughts and test results.

Some weeks back, Google added a dedicated set of release notes that are easily seen on any Chromebook after the latest software update. I’ve been asking for this feature for over two years, back when I worked with the Chrome team at Google, so I was thrilled to see this. You just click the “See what’s new” option in the About Chrome OS settings menu. Or you can view the dedicated webpage, which shows the same info.

Now that Chrome OS 78 landed last week, I went to see the release notes just to verify that I didn’t miss any big, new features.

Here’s what I saw on both a Pixelbook Go and Acer Chromebook Spin 13 after the Chrome OS 78 update:

The problem I see may not be obvious to you since I track Chrome OS functionality on a daily basis, so I’ll explain: These are the same features that arrived with Chrome OS 77, a full six-weeks ago.

I double-checked the dedicated, on-board release notes with the linked notes and sure enough, they too still show the features added in last release, not the most current version.

Where is the news about Virtual Desks being generally available, making it easier to group tabs and apps for improved multitasking productivity? What about the ability to tap a hyperlinked phone-number on your Chromebook and have the call placed on your connected Android phone? These are just two examples, but you get the point.

Frankly, for Google to want the public to see Chrome OS as a “first-class citizen” platform as compared to macOS and Windows, it has to see Chrome OS that way too. And something as simple but useful as the new release notes should be part of that perspective.

Sure, Google outlined a few key features in the blog post about Chrome OS 78, but outside of full-time Chromebook users like myself and some of the About Chromebook readers, what mainstream Chromebook user is following Google’s blog posts?

I’d wager those people are few and far between, which means there’s a failed messaging strategy here. And even worse, it fell apart right after trying to improve that messaging strategy.

There’s simply no excuse for this.

It’s not as if Google doesn’t know what’s changing in the platform since it’s the entity actually building, testing and implementing the changes. My hope is that this is a one-off occurrence because publishing outdated Chrome OS release notes is about as useful as not publishing release notes at all.

Razer has taken its Basilisk gaming mouse from last year, cut the cord, and spun the resulting rodent into two separate models at two very different price points. The Basilisk Ultimate (shown above) is the pricier of the two at $149.99 (€169.99), while the Basilisk X Hyperspeed is comparatively affordable at $59.99 (€69.99). So, what’s the difference?

At a glance, they look very similar, though there are some key differences (as you might expect, given the wide price disparity). Starting with the higher-end Basilisk Ultimate, Razer dipped into its bag of bells and whistles and outfitted the mouse with a 20,000 dpi optical sensor (same as found on the Viper Ultimate), a generous assortment of 11 programmable buttons, a scroll wheel with tension adjustment (just like the wired version), slick PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) feet, RGB lighting, and support for 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.

A replaceable multi-function paddle is part of the package as well, and so is the ability to fine tune the lift-off and landing distance. You can store up to five customized profiles on the rodent itself.

Those are high-end specs, with a price tag representative of the premium features the Basilisk Ultimate offers. Some of them carry offer to the cheaper to Basilisk X Hyperspeed, though not all of them.

The Basilisk X Hyperspeed downgrades the optical sensor to 16,000 dpi, though really, that’s still way higher than is needed for competitive gameplay. It has less buttons—six instead of 11, each one programmable—and lacks LED lighting.

This one also connects via 2.4GHz wireless or Bluetooth, but lacks amenities like tension adjustment on the scroll wheel, lift-off/landing distance tuning, and PTFE feet.

As for battery life, Razer says the Basilisk Ultimate can last up to 100 hours per charge (without lighting), versus up to 285 hours for the Basilisk X Hyperspeed (or 450 hours if using Bluetooth).

We have not tested either of these rodents so we can’t say how they compare to one another in actual usage, or to the competition, some of which will undoubtedly be marked down soon as Black Friday deals arrive. If you simply can’t wait, though, both the Basilisk Ultimate and Basilisk X Hyperspeed are available now.

Intel confirmed that they had powered on their Xe GPU in their labs for the first time and we now have independent confirmation of the fact as well. The Intel Xe GPU DG1 prototype was run through GFXBench using a driver that basically did nothing except validate power on. While this doesn’t have any further information it does show us that the clock down to a discrete Intel Xe GPU has finally started. We thought it would be a good idea to do a round-up of all the information we have so far regarding Intel’s upcoming Xe GPU.

Intel Xe GPU launch date

The GFXBench detection was, well, detected first by the venerable twitter account Komachi_Ensaka. The actual listing had the “Graphics gfx-driver-user-feature_dg1_poweron-27723 DCH ReleaseInternal” designation which makes it clear that this is essentially only a power-on test.

While there is no official word on the Intel Xe GPU launch date so far, rumors by DigiTimes indicate that the card (or at least one variant) is going to be intro-ed sometime in summer 2020. Whether this variant is going to be the data center variant or the gaming variant is up in the air at this point although it’s likely going to be the former. Many people are also quoting Raja Koduri’s license plate tweet here but from what I managed to glean out of a source close to this info (amidst some derisive laughter) they hinted that this has probably very little to do with the actual launch date and simply his registration.

Intel Xe GPU specifications

We have heard of at least three different Intel XE GPU variants pop in benchmarks. A 128 EU one, a 256 EU one and even a 512 EU one. The first one is likely going to be just a testing prototype for Intel to get its training wheels on and get the ball rolling – a trial and error platform so to speak, but the latter two are probably going to appear as discrete GPUs sooner or later. The 512 EU Intel Xe GPU is the only one we can say for sure should be landing eventually and based on current forecasts the 512 EU part is going to have performance that is just under an RTX 2080.

This means that you are looking at a solid performer that can churn out some decent performance capable of driving 1440p to 4k resolution. The only thing we don’t know for sure is the launch window for the 512 EU variant. Considering Intel has hinted multiple times that it’s going to be following a bottom-up approach, we are likely going to see a less powerful variant land first before the ramp up all the way to 512 EUs.

Intel Xe GPU pricing

The final factor is going to be the pricing and considering the Intel Xe department is being run in spirit by a team that was formerly at AMD, I am fairly confident that we are going to see some incredibly generous pricing. I am sure the company will be able to take advantage of the huge margins that Intel has thanks to owning their own foundry and utilize that to take a very AMD-esque approach to pricing their graphics cards.

Increasing the TAM (Total Available Market) by raising the performance per dollar of their GPU offerings is a good way to break into the market. In fact, considering this is a brand new GPU vendor, I expect Intel to undertake some decent promotional launches with pricing that is going to account for the risk that a buyer is going to take – considering this is Intel’s first time with a discrete GPU launch for the market.

The one thing we can say for sure, however, is that it is absolutely great to see the PC GPU duopoly become a triopoly and more vendors on the market is a win for consumers with the average cost for graphics going down substantially as more suppliers enter the market. 2020 is going to be a great year to be a PC gamer considering all of the PC-related hardware that will be debuting.