Nvidia's Pascal based GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards are now available in the market and so it AMD's Radeon RX 480 graphics card which is currently the most affordable graphics card in the sub-200 price bracket. But today Nvdia is announcing it's third Pascal based graphics card, the Nvidia GTX 1060 which is up to 3x faster than the outgoing GTX 960

Nvidia GTX 1060 Key Specifications

— 1,280 CUDA cores
— 1708MHz Boost clock
— 36 CUs
— 6GB GDDR5 memory @ 1.7GHz
— 256-bit memory bus
— 120W TDP

Alienware might've missed Computex last month but the company is back at full force for E3 2016. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Alienware, they are announcing a couple of new products that take advantage of the latest and greatest the industry has to offer.


Firstly, it is the Alienware 13 OLED which is a first of it's kind. Alienware says they are the first to put an OLED display on a gaming laptop and this means that the display on the Alienware 13 OLED has an impressive 100,000: 1 contrast ratio to deliver the best viewing experiences. The QHD OLED touch display is designed in partnership with Samsung so you can expect a good display.

The Alienware 13 OLED can be configured with 6th generation Core i5 and i7 processors paired with up to 16GB of DDR3L memory. In terms of graphics horsepower, there is the option of a GX 960M with 2GB of video memory or the GTX 965M with 4GB of video memory. Price begins at US$ 1,299 (~MYR 5,400)


Next up in line is the Alienware Alpha which is the smallest gaming pc from Alienware. What's interesting about this new model is that in select models, Dell is including an additional port than enables Alienware's Graphic Amplifier that will enable this tiny pc to run VR and 4K games.

Alinware's new console sized PC can be configured with 6th generation Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, up to 16GB of RAM and can be configured with either a GTX 960 or Radeon R9 M470X graphics card. Pricing for the Alienware Alpha begins at US$ 599 (~MYR 2,500)


And finally, we have the two Alienware tower computers. Most notably is that both systems can be configured with dual graphics from either AMD or Nvidia. The Alienware Aurora (pictured above) is a more mainstream system that starts at US$ 799 (~MYR 3,300) and begins with a Core i3 processor paired with 8GB of DDR4 memory. Whereas the Alienware Area 51 is the more extreme on that will only come with the new Broadwell-E processors that intel unveiled during Computex 2016. The Area 51 will begin at US$ 1,699 (~MYR 7,000)

ORIGINAL SOURCE: DELL

The wait is over and AMD has finally revealed their first graphics card that will be part of their new Polaris architecture. Enter the Radeon RX 480, the first card to feature AMD's new Polaris architecture and the card will be available beginning June 29 for just US$ 199 (~MYR 820)

With 5 teraflops of compute power, AMD says that the Radeon RX 480 is definitely capable of powering VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. For a mere $199, AMD is seriously pricing the RX 480 for success when compared to Nvidia's latest offering which is the $380 GTX 1070 that pumps out 6 teraflops of compute power.

AMD Radeon RX 480 Key Specifications

— 1.08GHz Boost clock
— 2,304 Stream processors

ORIGINAL SOURCE: ANANDTECH

Alongside the announcement of the new Transformer lineup, Asus also sneaked in a new accessory called the ROG XG Station 2 that is a external graphics card dock that connects through Thunderbolt 3. Just like the Razer Core that we saw at CES this year, Asus's graphics card dock will also unlock desktop grade graphics to laptops.

The ROG XG Stations 2 will be compatible with the new Transformer 3 and Transformer 3 Book tablets that Asus just announced and will certainly also support ROG laptops with Thunderbolt 3. Asus says that the ROG XG Station 2 will turn a laptop into a VR gaming powerhouse provided that you have the graphics card.

While, Asus has not revealed any pricing or availability yet. We do know that the ROG XG Station 2 will support both AMD and Nvidia graphics card. The graphics card dock itself will have a 680W power supply and comes with an exclusive proprietary connector that improved performance up to a further 15%.

Additionally, the dock also comes with four extra USB 3.0 ports and a network LAN port.


ORIGINAL SOURCE: ASUS

HP is planning to jump back into the gaming scene once again and their new OMEN series will be used here on out to showcase their offerings for games. Just like what they did with their HP Spectre lineup earlier this year, the new OMEN series by HP is more of a subsection of the company. There's even a custom logo for the HP OMEN series that goes in place of the HP logo.

Starting off HP's series of gaming machines is three hardware products; a laptop, a tower PC and a monitor. All of these products not only come with the custom branding that HP is using for the OMEN series but they also bleed the color red.

The HP OMEN laptops are not going to win any design awards but HP has put in quite a number of exciting hardware into their new 15.3-inch and 17.3-inch OMEN laptops. Both variants can be configured with a 4K IPS display (but a 1080P option is the baseline) and the laptops will come with Intel's RealSense camera.

Both the HP OMEN 15.3-inch and 17.3-inch will be available beginning July 2016 for $899.99+ and $979.99+ respectively.

HP OMEN Laptop hardware configurations

— Up to Core i7 quad-core CPUs (Skylake)
— Up to GTX 965M graphics

AMD Radeon Pro Duo Key Specifications

AMD has seemingly stayed away from making CPUs for the last few years as intel is getting all the limelight over and over but that doesn't stop the company from making new developments. Alongside the release of their new AMD 125 Wraith CPU cooler that is designed to make old CPU coolers look bad, the company is also taking wraps off 4 new desktop CPUs on the FM2+ socket. Only select 95W+ AMD CPUs will come with the new Wraith cooler

The highest end AMD A10-7890K APU will be the most powerful chip AMD has produced but it will only be available in a couple of weeks time opposed to the other 3 CPUs which are available imminently. The A10-7890K will be AMD's next generation flagship APU and the chip has a boost clock speed of 4.3GHz, 4 cores, a 95W TDP and also Radeon R7 graphics that packs 512 Steam cores and clocked at 900MHz (Sea Island GCN). No official pricing is revealed yet.


Down the line, AMD is also updating their mainstream offerings with the A10-7860K and A6-7470K which are updated APUs with Steamroller cores and Radeon graphics. Additionally, AMD is also unveiling their very first CPU with their Excavator architecture but unlike the other processors unveiled today, the new Athlon X4 845 ($69.99) is not an APU.


ORIGINAL SOURCE: WCCFTECH via AMD

But specs aside, AMD is marketing the R9-380X as a graphics card that is designed to run games at 1440P. Not a conventional marketing tagline but this new graphics card performs marginally better compared to cards from competitors (and by competitors, I mean Nvidia) in the same price range.

With it's $229 (~MYR 988) price tag, AMD might have just got themselves a pretty compelling graphics card here. It might not be as powerful as the Tahiti cards but not everyone out there has a 4k monitor and 1440p is pretty common in gaming setups. Not to mention that AMD is releasing this card during the week before the holiday shopping starts (black friday).

We're starting off this week with some solid reports, first it's the report that Nokia is prepping a new smartphone and now we have a statement by an AMD's exec saying that Microsoft is launching the final version of Windows 10 by the end of July.

If you've read our article about Windows 10 facts you need to know, you would be aware that Microsoft is targeting to launch Windows 10 in the Summer. July is definitely counted as Summer already but it seems a bit of a rush given that it's just three months away and the current Windows 10 preview builds are still trying to find it's identity.

The AMD exec which accidentally revealed the info also added that Microsoft is aiming to launch Windows 10 during the Summer to make it in time for the back to school promos for devices. This looks to be a strategic move by Microsoft, trying to capsize the sales of laptops before classes start during the Fall.

Either way, this information is not 100% accurate by no means and we'll most likely hear everything from Microsoft during BUILD 2015 happening next week. Stay tuned for our coverage of that next week.

SOURCE: NEOWIN