Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i PCWorld

Maybe you can’t buy the hottest new PC hardware yourself, but scalpers are ready to sell it to you for a tidy profit. These numbers come to us courtesy of Dev blogger Michael Driscoll. Driscoll, an Oracle Data Engineer at USG Corp. by day, applies his data skill sets in his off-hours to the scalping market for PC hardware and consoles. By Driscoll’s analysis, scalpers have sold at least $82 million in Ryzen 5000 CPUs, RTX 30-series cards, RX 6000 GPUs, and Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles. Most of it is still selling at stupid levels above the list price, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, some 322 Ryzen 9 5950X CPUs have sold at a median price of $1,275. Those impossible-to-get GeForce RTX…

Take it from this parent—there are times when you just want your kids to pause their gaming, put down their controllers, and do something else. A new Pause Screen Time feature in the Xbox Family Settings app for Windows and Xbox allows you to do just that. Pause Screen Time allows a parent to say, “That’s enough!” and revoke access instantaneously. The new feature is part of the Xbox Family Settings app for Android and iOS—essentially an app-based version of the Family Settings management tool that’s already baked into Windows. The new feature adds a Pause Now button to the app, which tracks the amount of time your child has been accessing Windows and Xbox games and apps. Family Settings was originally set up with the assumption that your child would…

We’ve come a long way from Intel’s original Next Unit of Computing modular computer that brought tiny computing to the mainstream. We’ve come so far, in fact, we’re not sure what’s actually “NUC”-y about Intel’s new NUC M15 laptop, which is intended as a “Whitebook” design that other notebook makers can utilize for their own products. Intel unveiled its in-house-designed laptop in November with a list of specs that is simultaneously welcome and somewhat confusing. The NUC M15 comes with either an 11th-gen Core i5-1135G7 or Core i7-1165G7 processor, paired with either 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM. For ports, you get two USB-A and two Thunderbolt 4, plus a full-size HDMI port, lock port, and headset jack. We welcome the inclusion of two old school USB-A ports, but their presence…

PC gamers know that high refresh rate monitors make games look smoother. But do higher refresh rate displays make games feel smoother, too? After getting our grubby paws on gear that measures system latency, we can definitely say that yes, fast monitors provide more responsive gameplay experiences for esports enthusiasts—though its effectiveness depends on the visual settings you’re using to play those games, and the tangible benefits taper off the faster you go. We recently received a 1080p Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR display in our labs. This silky-smooth 360Hz G-Sync monitor runs a whopping six times faster than a typical 60Hz screen. Better yet, it comes with Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer tool. Built into select 360Hz G-Sync Esports monitors, Nvidia Reflex Analyzer can measure how long it takes for your mouse clicks…

If you still think of wireless mice as laggy, battery-sucking substitutes for a real mouse, we’ve got good news for you. Mouse manufacturers have largely solved the latency, connectivity, and power-efficiency problems that once blighted these devices. The best of today’s wireless mice rival their wired counterparts in performance, battery life, features, and design. There are two rather obvious benefits of a wireless mouse. It eliminates the tether to your computer, giving you greater range—essential if you are constrained by your work area or playing PC games on your TV—and removes a source of friction that often interferes with speed and accuracy. It also makes an essential device more travel friendly—no one objects to one less cord in their gear bag. You’ll probably pay a bit more for a wireless…

At the moment, stock for Nvidia’s RTX 30-series and AMD’s Radeon 6000 graphics cards disappears in seconds—when they’re even available for purchase. Same goes for AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors. Most people who’ve tried to score one of these recently launched components have struck out, forcing them to wait out the next several months with a placeholder part, or making do with an older alternative. Another option exists if you’re in the market for a whole new PC, however. Prebuilt desktop computers provide a compromise solution: They ship much sooner than supply will improve (likely spring 2021), and while you’ll pay a markup over MSRP, reasonable vendors impose minimal surcharges on the parts themselves. Expect to pay $150+ more for a prebuilt PC over DIY, as these systems have the cost…

If you think Intel is worried about AMD and Apple, the company isn’t flinching. In early December, Intel’s Gregory Bryant said the chip giant welcomed the competition because that basically means there’s money to be made and that the PC business is thriving. “We’ve always said, only the paranoid survive,” said Bryant, who runs Intel’s client computing group, largely responsible for laptops, desktops and workstations. “I think that’s alive and well inside of this company. And I take all competition, whether that’s from Apple or the other ARM guys, Qualcomm, MediaTek or AMD—I take that all very seriously.” “Anytime you’re a growth business and a healthy business, there’s going to be competition,” Bryant said in a talk with investment bank UBS as well as with Yahoo! Finance. “We absolutely intend…

Microsoft finally committed to bringing its Xbox cloud gaming technologies to Windows PCs in spring 2021, right on time to catch up with the incredible shortage of graphics cards that is preventing Windows gamers from playing on their own PCs. Microsoft also committed to bringing cloud gaming to iPhones via its mobile Web browser, the company said. It will all be part of Microsoft’s Game Pass Ultimate subscription, available for $15 per month. (Or less, if you know how to work the system.) Finally, Microsoft will have delivered on its promise to make cloud gaming a part of its entire ecosystem, by delivering cloud gaming via the Xbox Windows 10 app or a browser. “In Spring 2021, we will take the next step in our journey to reach more players…

I have seen the light. Or more specifically, I have seen the brightness, contrast, and pixel density. After weeks of testing, I’m ready to declare the iPhone 12’s Full HD (1920x1080, or 1080p) screen just as good as the Note 20 Ultra’s WQHD (2560x1440) one, if not better. Android phone makers have convinced us that we need 2K or higher screens to get the best viewing experience, but that’s just not the case. I don’t want to make this about Apple vs. Android, but the fact of the matter is, we never needed displays with WQHD+ resolution. We simply wanted them—or rather, phone makers convinced us that we wanted them. Full HD displays have become relegated to budget Android phones as more emphasis is placed on immersive, edge-to-edge, pixel-packed experiences.…

The Radeon RX 6900 XT is finally here, and it’s Team Red’s first enthusiast-class graphics card to hit the streets in a long, long time. AMD’s $1,000 GPU manages to meet or beat Nvidia’s monstrous GeForce RTX 3090 in many games for a whopping $500 less and stay quiet while doing it, but that doesn’t make this beast an automatic must-buy. Our RDNA 2 architecture explainer and comprehensive Radeon RX 6900 XT review wade deep into the details and benchmarks, but if you don’t have time to read thousands of words and parse dozens of performance graphs, here are five key things you need to know about AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT. 1. IT’S OUTRAGEOUSLY FAST This is AMD’s first card to challenge Nvidia’s flagship GeForce offering in many, many moons, and it’s…

Cyberpunk 2077 is breathtaking. The densely packed, stunningly vertical streets and teeming crowds make Night City feel more alive than any other virtual metropolis to date. Real-time ray tracing transforms Cyberpunk from feeling like a very pretty video game to feeling like an actual place. All that eye candy doesn’t come free, though. This game can bring even the most powerful graphics cards to their knees when you max out every visual option. Rather than bang out a bunch of benchmarks that show how crippling the game is at Ultra settings, our Cyberpunk 2077 performance optimization tips can help you find the best PC settings to tone down so everything else can remain cranked up. Well, as cranked up as possible. Cyberpunk 2077 even makes the $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090…

Currently gamers can pay just $1 for access to hundreds of titles across PC and Xbox via Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service—but don’t activate that insanely cheap one-month trial just yet. You can lock in up to three years of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with that same dollar if you play your cards right. When you activate Microsoft’s promotion, it not only begins the trial, but also converts existing Xbox Live Gold and standard Xbox Game Pass subscriptions on your account to Game Pass Ultimate (normally $15 per month) at a 1:1 rate. Any prepaid time up to the maximum of three years gets the upgrade. If you have only three months of Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass (or a combination of the two) on your account, you’ll end…

AMD will reverse course and continue to manufacture its own “Big Navi” Radeon cards indefinitely. The company had apparently decided to end production of its own Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT cards, according to a report from Videocardz.com. But “due to popular demand,” the company will continue making its reference cards “indefinitely,” AMD’s VP of graphics Scott Herkelman confirmed over Twitter. “We’ve just officially extended the reference design builds indefinitely due to popular demand,” Herkelman said in response to a question on Twitter. While some might view AMD’s attempt to stop producing its own reference cards as “bad news” and a reflection of the card’s prowess, it typically isn’t. In this case, AMD’s Radeon 6000 cards have received high marks from the press.…

Smartphones built upon Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 888 processor will be able to take advantage of concurrent recording and HDR using three different cameras, a creative feature that will allow consumers and content creators additional options for crafting the perfect photo and video. It’s one of many new features inside the new Snapdragon 888 mobile chip, including integrated 5G. The Snapdragon series represents the chief opposition to the Apple iPhone and its A-series processors, powering rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S20 and the OnePlus 8 series. The new Snapdragon 888 will ship inside flagship smartphones beginning in the first quarter of 2021. Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 888 and its basic capabilities at its virtual Snapdragon Technology Summit opening keynote on December 1. The company spent the next day diving deeper into the…

Now that Apple’s M1 chip has raised the bar for lightweight laptop performance, there’s a question every ultraportable PC maker must address: Why would someone buy this instead of a MacBook Air? Well, here’s an answer for the new Acer Swift 5: It’s fast enough to play Fortnite and a bunch of other games that are absent from Apple’s platform, but it still weighs only 2.3 pounds and gets stellar battery life for work or web browsing. It also has a touchscreen and a bunch of useful ports, including HDMI out and USB-A, none of which you’ll find on Apple’s thin-and-light Air. That’s not to say it’s any cheaper. With a starting price of $1,000 (and $1,300 on Amazon for our review unit), the Acer Swift 5 is very much a…

The WD Black SN850 gives you a second great choice when it comes to pick-of-the-litter NVMe SSDs—Samsung’s 980 Pro being the other. This assumes, of course, that your motherboard sports a cutting-edge PCIe 4.0 interface. Currently that means late-generation AMD Ryzen with Intel’s next-gen piling on soon. If that’s not you, a PCIe 4 SSD is still a good way to future-proof your performance. The 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) form factor SN850 uses 96-layer TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND and a custom controller. It ships in three flavors: 500GB ($149.99 from WD), 1TB ($249.29 at Amazon), and 2TB (the capacity we tested, $449.99 at Amazon). That’s pricier than the average entry-level drives, but in the same ballpark with the Samsung 980 Pro. DDR4 cache is used to the tune of about 500MB…

Samsung is by far the most successful Android device maker in the world, but it has struggled to move its flagship Galaxy S phones for the last few years. Sales were down modestly last year for the Galaxy S10, and by all accounts, the numbers for the Galaxy S20 cratered in 2020. Meanwhile, Apple has reported pre-orders for the iPhone 12 more than doubled compared to last year’s phone. Clearly, Samsung could learn a thing or two from Apple—here are five ideas Samsung should steal from the iPhone 12. 1. REALISTIC FLAGSHIP PRICING You could spend $1,400 on a new iPhone 12, but that’s the top-of-the-line Pro Max with half a terabyte of storage. If you don’t want to spend that much, the cheaper versions are just as good—you lose…

Running a gaming PC is a lot like being a car enthusiast. You want to get the best parts available, tune them to your liking, and then get out onto the open road, so to speak. The funny thing is, even with the best graphics card and CPU, a gaming PC can’t demonstrate its full glory without a solid gaming monitor to bear witness. But what to look for? Display shelves are packed with myriad choices, and a variety of specs: 1080p, 2160p, 4K, HDR, refresh rate, response time, color gamut, IPS, ultrawide, curved, and so on. With so many options, where do you begin and how do know what matters most? Choosing the ideal gaming monitor gets easier once you decide on the resolution you want, and understand how…

Microsoft’s DirectX 12 Ultimate, a new version of the graphics technology underpinning both Windows and the Xbox Series X, seeks to bind the two platforms even closer together with an array of cutting-edge features. Better yet, you can now actually buy DX12 Ultimate hardware in the form of Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards, AMD Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards, and of course the Xbox Series X. Nvidia shared details of what to expect before Microsoft’s official presentation at GDC 2020 in March, and it’s easy to see why: Even though Microsoft’s next-gen console is powered by AMD, DirectX 12 Ultimate enshrines several innovative technologies first introduced by GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards as a new industry standard—one that now spans both PCs and consoles, earning it the “Ultimate” name. “By unifying…