Sommaire pour December 2022 de APC

Let’s just take a moment, breathe in, try to relax, and look around at what’s happening in the world of the PC right now… AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs. AMD’s AM5 motherboard platform. Intel 13th Gen (Alder Lake) CPUs. Nvidia 4000 series graphics cards. AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards. Intel Arc graphics cards. And, PCIe 5 storage, OLED screens, ATX 3.0 PSUs. And DDR 5. And a few other things. ALL AT ONCE. It’s completely mental. Well, the big stuff isn't all dropping at exactly the same time, but over a period of no more than two months. Which still qualifies as ridiculous. It’s sent tech journos around the world into an almost unfathomable amount of benchtesting. Editors into defcon 1 states of extreme planning to be able to cover everything…

"Intel claims the 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors deliver up to 15 percent higher single-threaded performance and 41 percent more multithreaded performance than their Alder Lake predecessors. " Intel has announced specs, pricing, benchmarks, and architectural details for its 13th-Gen Raptor Lake lineup, touting its flagship Core i9-13900K as the ‘world’s fastest desktop processor.’ The lineup includes three new processors with frequencies that jump up to 5.8GHz, a new record for the mainstream desktop, and more e-cores, giving Intel the core count lead on the mainstream desktop for the first time since AMD’s Ryzen arrived back in 2017. Intel also announced that the 6GHz version of the Raptor Lake is a limited edition model that will come to market later this year. This will be the first 6GHz desktop PC chip.…

I’m getting increasingly annoyed with spam email. I don’t mean the old-school nonsense telling me that some noble person has decided to leave me $10,000,000, and they need my help to get the money out of the country. No, I’m talking about the stuff you get once you have had some legitimate contact with a business. Buy something online and the new normal is you getting an email in the following days asking you to rate how much you were exquisitely thrilled by the whole process. If you dare to not reply, you can expect a whole raft of subsequent emails chiding you that “since we haven’t heard from you, we thought we’d harass you once again” in the hope that you will provide feedback. I can understand why a…

1 XBOX ELITE WIRELESS CONTROLLER SERIES 2 The only downside to using Microsoft’s reassuringly expensive game controller is that it makes all standard controllers feel cheap and nasty in comparison. It’s luxurious to hold, has a host of customisation options, and multiple controllers can connect to one USB wireless dongle (not included). The controller also comes with a charging case and can be used wired or wirelessly. $249, www.xbox.com 2 SCUF INSTINCT PRO This premium controller is the main competitor to Microsoft’s official pad but offers a huge variety of cosmetic options. There are new faceplates and thumbsticks to choose from, the latter of which vary in terms of length and topper. You can also remove the rumble motors if you’re an eSports player who doesn’t need such distractions. $345,…

Major tech specs • Apple M2 chip 8-core CPU (four performance, four efficiency) • 8-core or 10-core GPU • 8GB RAM (configurable to 24GB) • 13.6-inch IPS display with 2560x1664 native resolution • 52.6-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery • Ports: 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4, MagSafe 3 charging, 3.5mm jack • 256GB SSD (configurable to 2TB) • 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 • 1080p Webcam • Dimensions: 0.44 x 11.97 x 8.46in (1.13 x 30.41 x 21.5cm) • Weight: 1.24kg Key findings • The latest Macbook Air with M2 chip is thinner and lighter than its M1 predecessor, and also has a bigger display. There’s an extra port in the form of the popular MagSafe connector. Speaker grilles replace the old perforated case design, with sound pumping out between the case and the…

It’s refreshing to have a new player in a tech space, since they will often bring new ideas that push different areas forward. LG’s Gram devices have been doing this in the Ultrabook space, but this year it’s also branching out into the convertible arena with the LG Gram 2-in-1 16”. Most vendors other than Microsoft and Lenovo have been pulling back from the saturated 2-in-1 space over the last few years, but considering the laptops LG has made thus far, it’s not totally out of the ballpark for it to have a crack. The LG Gram 2-in-1 16” is a convertible that builds on a decade of competitors’ designs using a large 16-inch screen in a high resolution 16:10 aspect ratio with a pair of fixed 180-degree folding hinges.…

Despite the hype around upcoming PCIe 5.0 SSDs, good quality PCIe 4.0 drives aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Much like a quality PCIe 3.0 drive is relevant today, so too will a PCIe 4.0 drive remain. Although it feels a little bit late to market, even before testing it, the Western Digital SN850X is sure to remain a top performing drive for years to come, particularly with regards to its PS5 compatibility. We have the 2TB SN850X with its optional heatsink in for review. It even comes with a splash of RGB lighting. It’s available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, and unlike the non-X SN850, there’s a 4TB option. This version costs a steep $509 at the time of writing, which is at least $50 to $100 more than top…

Fing Desktop provides a simple way to monitor your home network and ensure that you’re getting a fast and reliable connection from your internet provider. Last time we looked at the program, we were rather underwhelmed, so we’re pleased to report that version 3 is a major improvement that addresses most of our concerns. Fing’s interface has been redesigned to place a wealth of useful info on your Home dashboard. This includes summary cards showing the status of your connected devices, your internet performance and the level of your Wi-Fi protection. Each card includes a button you can click for further details – for example, click ‘Verify speed’ to test your current download and upload speeds. You can also view a full report of all the devices on your network…

When Asrock’s Taichi brand made its debut, it was welcomed as a solid mid-range alternative in an era of excessive RGB and ‘gamerification’. But these days, the Taichi has evolved into a flagship product, packed with premium tier features. The X670E Taichi’s cyberpunk theme looks as good as ever. Its splashes of gold colouring and mechanical cogs on top of an overall black design really looks good. To me personally anyway. Looks are always subjective. As it’s an X670E board it comes with PCIe 5.0 slots, with one 1x16x or 2x8x plus another four lanes for a PCIe 5.0 M.2 drive. Asrock calls this slot ‘Blazing M.2’. The Taichi comes with a very large heatsink with an embedded fan. That’s as good an indicator as any that PCIe 5.0 drives…

“It’s the best M.2 installation I’ve seen on any motherboard” If you thought the Asus Hero was on the pricey side, brace yourself. The MSI MEG X670E Ace is an eyebrow raising $1,399. Though you get a lot of motherboard, it’s tough to accept that as normal, even if it’s a monster of a board. The MSI MEG X670E Ace is second only to the Godlike in MSI’s motherboard range. Taking it out of its box, you’re amazed at just how heavy it is! MSI retains the gold highlights of the previous Ace boards. Key highlights include up to six M.2 slots, with four slots on the board and another two PCIe 5.0 slots on an add-in card. It’s a small thing, but MSI deserves credit for its masterful primary…

Each of the apps in our round-up has something to commend it and you won’t go far wrong if you choose any of them. The fact that Google Calendar is free and hooks into the rest of its services is a big plus, and BusyCal’s natural-language support and customisation options make it worth a look. Readdle Calendars’ focus on positive habits could be helpful for some, too. Moleskine’s Timepage is lovely and a pleasure to use. Its Today card is particularly good. And Week Calendar’s Mini Month view is a good way to get an overview of a month’s worth of appointments. However, all of these apps had negatives, whether that was a lack of support for naturallanguage input, a cramped interface, or missing features. Only Fantastical came through our…

YOU’LL NEED WhoCrashed Home Edition (www.resplendence. com/whocrashed) Tweaking.comWindows Repair Tool (www.tweaking.com) Got a problem with your PC? The answers to your woes lie somewhere buried deep inside Windows itself, you just need to know where to find them. Windows 11 may not introduce any new troubleshooting tools to the mix, but it continues to support tried and tested tools, including Device Manager, Event Viewer, and a host of troubleshooters. We’ll take an in-depth look at these as well as some other useful tools. Reliability Monitor is built into Windows, while the third-party tools we showcase – WhoCrashed and Tweaking.com’s Windows Repair tool – are included because they provide convenient access to system logs and tools such as System File Checker and Windows’ powerful disk-checking tools. If the tools featured can’t…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to remotely control your Mac YOU’LL NEED You’ll need an iPad/iPhone and your Mac Picture the scene – you’re miles away from your Mac, and you need to access something on it that isn’t stored in iCloud or another cloud storage service. What to do? If you have remote-access software, you can connect via your iPad, iPhone or another Mac to access and edit files remotely. There’s no shortage of remote-access options for Macs, and they range from built-in (but a little techy) SSH access in macOS’s System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login to dedicated remote-access solutions, such as MSP360, Splashtop and others. However, one of the simplest options is completely free: Google Chrome Remote Desktop. Install the Remote Desktop…

During the GTC 2022 keynote, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed the specifications for the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, along with details of the Ada Lovelace architecture. Most of the most recent leaks appear to have been reasonably accurate. The RTX 4090 will have 128 SMs with a 2,520 MHz boost clock, coupled with 24GB of GDDR6X memory running at 21 Gbps with a 384-bit interface. The memory configuration basically looks unchanged from the RTX 3090 Ti, which on the surface is basically correct. However, much like AMD did with RDNA 2’s Infinity Cache, Nvidia will apparently be packing 96MB of L2 cache in AD102, compared to just 6MB of L2 cache in GA102 – that’s not yet officially confirmed, but we see little reason to doubt it at this…

Though you mightn’t have noticed in Australia, Intel has released its first Arc graphics cards. International reviews of the Arc A770 and A750 went live on the 6th of October, but at the time of writing (in mid-October) there was no sign of the cards in the Australian market. That’s a real shame. I, for one, am particularly interested in Arc. I really hope it succeeds, and hope the next generation Battlemage, Celestial and Druid generations (B, C and D) really can compete with Nvidia and AMD. The general consensus seems that Arc A770 is actually a competent mid-range graphics card. It’s got a good feature set, including 16GB of VRAM, an excellent video engine, good price/performance and its DLSS/ FSR competing XeSS is an open standard that seems to…

You may not have realised it as you were doom-scrolling through news about pandemics and politics, but 2020 was the year of the quantum internet – all thanks to a pair of experiments that suggests this futuristic networking technology could indeed be possible. It’s not a new idea, with the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) setting up the first quantum key distribution network in 2003 and experiments in quantum teleportation going back to 1997 at the University of Vienna. So what was so special about 2020? In February, scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China published a paper detailing a 1,200km quantum link with the Micius satellite, the longest yet. A few months later, in September, researchers at the University of Bristol revealed a…

One media server to rule over them all. That’s the dream of anyone hosting a huge collection of media they would like easy access to. For years, that media server has been provided by Plex, a beautifully designed, slick, and powerful tool. While its core functionality is free, there is also a paid-for subscription in which you can unlock extra goodness and features. However, over the past few years, a young pretender has emerged. Forked from Plex-rival Emby’s last open-source implementation, Jellyfin’s key commitment is to remain free and open-source for ‘now and always’. As we reach its fourth anniversary, now is the perfect time to see how Jellyfin measures up to Plex and which one offers the better overall experience. When it comes to core functionality, there’s little to…

We’ve been fond of MSI’s range of Prestige Ultrabooks for a couple of years now, and the team hasn’t tweaked the recipe too much again this year. The Prestige Evo A12M comes in the same 31.9 by 21.9 cm sandblasted aluminium case, weighing in at 1.29kg with a thickness of 1.6cm. All this means the Prestige 14 Evo A12M is still competitive in terms of portability. The major novelty this year is the updated Intel 12th Gen processors. You can get the Prestige14 Evo A12M with either an Intel Core i5-1240P or an i7-1280P CPU. The former comes with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe SSD that can be found online for $1,499, but the i7 model comes in various configurations from different vendors locally. These range up to…

It’s difficult to stand out in the extremely competitive premium Ultrabook space these days, which is perhaps what’s driven Asus to design the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition. This new release has a somewhat inspired design with a few cosmetic nods to various nerdy space concepts and a mini 3.5-inch OLED ZenVision display that sits on the outside of the case. This mini-screen can give you info like time and battery life, but it’s mainly there to cycle through animations that make the laptop look like a HAL 9000 interface. This novelty screen is definitely outshined by the main 14-inch OLED display, which offers some serious colour specs, a 2880 by 1800 pixel resolution, and a 550nit peak brightness. Vesa has certified it with HDR 500 True Black, which is…

Working from home over the past couple of years has made most of us realise how important ergonomics are. Laptop users have found the need to elevate their machines, and Twelve South has capitalised on that to improve on its laptop stand for MacBooks. The Curve Flex has two adjustable tension hinges, which means you can not only adjust the height of your MacBook (or really any laptop that matches its base size) but also the angle at which it’s placed. And this is why we really like Twelve South – those hinges are well made and set to the right tension already, but you can adjust them to your liking with the Allen key provided in the carry case that ships with the stand (an accessory for an accessory,…

Dragonflies are glittering and gorgeous relics from another age. With a sheer size that distinguishes them from other less-dazzling insects, they zip, helicopter-like, in straight lines – defending their territory, and searching for food. Dragonfly is also a distro, and unlike the majority of distros found in the hot, savage jungles, it isn’t a Linux one. It is, instead, part of a tiny and oft-overlooked subset straight from the Jurassic era of OS development, a BSD-based distro. Forked from the primordial soup of FreeBSD in 2003, DragonflyBSD shares code with other BSD OSes, and boasts natively written AHCI and NVMe drivers, HAMMER, which is a “modern high-performance filesystem with built-in mirroring and historic access functionality”, and according to the devs, suffers, “virtually no bottlenecks or lock contention in-kernel”. Which is…

Say hello to the flagship CPU of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 range, the Ryzen 9 7950X. It’s got the most cores, and the highest clocks and its aim is to deliver the both the best single threaded and multithreaded performance of any x86 CPU released to date. The 7950X is a 16 core, 32 thread CPU with 64MB of L3 cache and a 170W TDP. That’s some 65W higher than the 5950X. AMD has extended the total package power to 230W. So while the 7950X is a very fast CPU, there is an efficiency cost involved. As a result, AMD recommends a 240mm or 280mm cooler to keep the 7950X performing at its highest boost clocks. "If time means money, there’s nothing better outside of the Threadripper Pro" Speaking of boost…

LABS So, there we have it! AMD kicks off a huge upgrade season with the very competitive Ryzen 7000 CPU series. Whether you’re a gamer, a content creator or multi-tasker, there’s a Zen 4 CPU to suit you. The competition never stands still though, and Intel is set to imminently respond with its 13th Generation range. Unless you urgently need a new system, it’s worth waiting to see what Intel brings to the table. AMD has also confirmed that it will release 3D V-cache models. If the 5800X3D is anything to go by, they should be gaming monsters. Perhaps AMD has missed a trick by not releasing a 7800X and marketed it as THE gaming SKU. Accompanying the new CPUs is the new AM5 socket. Though we’ve covered several high-end…

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Install optional driver updates that Windows Update ignores • Download the latest drivers from device manufacturers • Update all your drivers with the best available versions • Manually add a driver to the Windows driver store • Avoid driver updaters that install junk and malware • Remove old drivers for devices you no longer use • Undo driver updates that cause problems on your PC Drivers are an essential element of your PC. Without them none of your internal or external devices would work. But as with most ‘under the bonnet’ technology – from cars to computers – you don’t usually need to worry about them until a vital feature stops working or your system becomes slower or crashes. This happens more frequently than you…

YOU’LL NEED GIMP 2.1 OS: Windows 7 or newer When using a photo manipulation application such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, there are many more possibilities than you may initially realise. Plenty of these programs can be used in various ways to create unique pieces of artwork. In this tutorial, we will create isometric 3D art using GIMP. This technique can be transferred onto all sorts of different media and can be used to emphasise a particular place or subject. Learning as many skills as possible can enable you to broaden your creativity by applying them to new forms. We will be using an image from Unsplash, which is of a skewed piece of land, taken from an angle and not a birdseye view. This will help later on in…

"Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage." APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms.…

TWhile the Dell XPS 15 misses out on the developments you’ll see on the XPS Plus 13 (APC 510), by using the existing XPS chassis Dell is able to pack in even more premium components while keeping the price down. This is by no means a compromise either since the cool carbon fibre clad chassis is sleek and functional, offering both a sturdy structure and an insulated keyboard surround. One of the biggest perks is a 14-core i7-12700H CPU which outpaces Apple’s M1 Max processors in some benchmarks. This CPU is backed by a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 1080p screen on the entry level configuration. The RRP for this unit is $3,499, but interestingly we’ve seen solid discounts on equivalent…

Samsung has had great success with its ever growing range of ultrawide curved gaming monitors, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the company has decided to take a risk on a TV sized curved gaming monitor in a 16 by 9 format. This screen is basically a 55-inch curved TV that comes with a solid screen mount to allow you to raise, lower, tilt and even rotate a full 90-degrees for a vertically oriented cockpit mode. This isn’t abnormal for a monitor, but it’s pretty unusual for a 41.5kg, 55-inch, desktop display. So other than being enormous, the Odyssey Ark 4K has some pretty impressive technology in it. Starting with a 3840 by 2160 pixel resolution, the 55” Odyssey Ark also has an extremely low latency sub 1ms response time…

A year ago, Parallels delivered the first virtualisation app to make full use of Apple silicon Macs, including Monterey virtual machines (VMs). Five new Mac models later, including the first M2 Macs, Parallels Desktop 18 remains the only commercial app to run macOS as a guest on those Macs. Unlike open-source rival UTM, Parallels can’t emulate different architectures: it runs ARM guests on Apple silicon Macs, and Intel x86 guests on Intel Macs. On Apple silicon Macs, this new version continues to virtualise Windows 10 and 11 for ARM, four Linux distros for 64-bit ARM processors, and macOS from Monterey onwards, but not Big Sur. On Intel Macs it will virtualise Windows from XP and earlier to 11, almost any Linux distro using Intel kernel 2.6.29 or later, macOS from…

FEATURE "The absolute lowest refresh rate you’ll find on a PC screen made in 2022 is 60Hz, which means that 60 individual images are drawn onto the screen every second, or once every 16.67 milliseconds." Whether you’re a gamer looking for the smoothest gameplay experience, or simply need your daily display to be easy on the eyes, one of the most important specifications is refresh rate. Referring to the speed at which a display’s screen is updated, this area of technology is a minefield of misunderstanding. With the widespread adoption of HDMI 2.1a, along with TVs that now double as desktop monitors, it’s become even more confusing. APC is here to bring you up to speed on what it all means. What exactly is refresh rate? When you’re looking at…

ON TEST… BusyCal 3.8.3 (Mac version 2022.3.1) Calendars 5.2.22 Fantastical 3.3.6 Google CalendarMoleskine Timepage 3.7.4 (Mac version 1.0.6) Week Calendar 15.3.1 (Mac version 2.1) Apple’s Calendar app for Mac, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS has plenty going for it. For one thing, it’s deeply integrated with Apple’s other apps and the operating systems themselves. And for some people, it may be all they need from a calendar app. However, for those of us who want more – good natural-language entry, for example – it doesn’t offer enough. But, there are plenty of excellent alternatives, from Google’s free, but powerful app, to Moleskine’s stunning Timepage. In testing these apps, our main focus was that they offered enough over and above the features in Apple’s app to make them worth the cost. We…

"When asked if the decision to pull the plug was difficult, EVGA’s CEO responded, “this is easy, working with Nvidia was hard”." EVGA ends 20-year Nvidia relationship Nvidia’s largest Add In Board (AIB) partner in the US, EVGA, made waves in the industry when it was announced that it would be ceasing its partnership with Nvidia and won’t be producing new graphics cards for them going forward. Citing disrespectful treatment as the primary reason, not financial, although the financial side of things was a contributing factor, EVGA decided to take a stand against Nvidia as a matter of principle. Giving examples like Nvidia withholding basic information such as card MSRP and GPU costs until they’re announced to the general public by Nvidia, EVGA had no idea what its own products…

Driver Updater query I have a question about driver updaters. AVG charged me for such a program recently. I wondered why I was being charged for this since I had a two-year subscription to its Ultimate package. Turns out AVG has a new software app that updates not only its software drivers but everyone else’s drivers too. Oddly, a company like Microsoft charges third-party companies that use its operating system lots of money to ‘authenticate’ drivers, but suddenly, AVG has 20,000 other manufacturer drivers to update. It’s strange that AVG has moved into this area. Could you possibly shed light on what is going on with driver updaters and why software manufacturers aren’t updating their own drivers? Maybe they are? What is AVG’s game here? And why do we need…

YOU’LL NEED • An old or cheap monitor • A monitor wall mount HDMI and Power Cables • Raspberry Pi 4B or old PC • DAKboard (www.dakboard.com/site) "First launched in beta back in 2015, DAKboard is a customisable web interface used to display photos, calendars, news, weather, and more." Having all the information you need available on one screen can be a great convenience, especially during the work day. Instead of having to pull up separate apps to check the weather, view your calendar, and read the news, you can have everything in one place. Sure, there are lots of gadgets out there that purport to do this, most notably the Amazon Echo Show 15, but at around $399, it’s a lot more expensive than a standard PC monitor, not…

CHIP CHATJOEL BURGESS REPORTS ON THE UNUSUAL SIDE OF TECH NEWS A Japanese newspaper reported that a 65 year old woman from a province just outside of Kyoto was defrauded by 4.4 million yen (close to AUD$50K) by a man claiming to be a Russian Cosmonaut needing to pay for his return trip to Earth. Local Police didn’t release the exact Instagram correspondence, but we assume that it must’ve claimed that Russia’s war on the Ukraine means the country is so poor it can’t afford to land its astronauts back on Earth. Considering a seat on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space flight costs US$450,000, $50K doesn’t even seem like it’s enough for an UberPool fare from the ISS, but we guess the bond of this internet love was strong enough to…