Stardock Brings More Touch Controls to Windows 10

A new Stardock utility called TouchTasks makes Windows 10 easier to use on tablets and other multitouch PCs.

“To make the Surface Pro and devices like it a much better tablet experience, we’re releasing TouchTasks 1.0,” Stardock’s Brad Wardell told me. “This is an app that takes advantage of the fact that the touch surface of a tablet extends slightly beyond the display area so you can define spots just off the screen that you can tap to have them do things.”

TouchTasks defines five areas—three on the top of the display and one each on the left and right—that you can tap to perform an action. There are some useful actions built-in, like a customizable application launcher (on the left by default) and a task switcher (on the right).

But you can also access a brightness control panel, the on-screen keyboard, recent documents, the Start menu, a quick nav panel, or Show desktop. Or you can launch any application or press a hotkey. It’s your choice.

TouchTasks works in both portrait and landscape modes, and it will rotate its touch points as you rotate the display. It doesn’t interfere with Windows 10’s built-in edge swipes, either, based on my initial testing.

TouchTasks normally costs $9.99 but it’s available for just $4.99 right now and you can grab a 30-day trial to see if it’s what you want.

Intel Ghost Canyon NUC teardown reveals removable “The Element” module inside

Intel’s upcoming “Ghost Canyon” NUC is expected to be one of the most powerful mini computers from the company to date. Expected to be powered by a 45 watt, 9th-gen Intel Core H-series processor, the small form-factor computer will be aimed at gamers, and it includes a PCIe x16 slot for a discrete graphics card.

But it turns out the GPU isn’t the only thing that’s removable.

A teardown of a pre-production sample by a member of the Koolshare forum reveals that the heart of the computer is a removable module Intel currently refers to as “The Element,” which means you may be able to upgrade the CPU, memory, storage, and other components while keeping your existing case, power supply, and graphics card.

Intel hasn’t shared many details about the upcoming Ghost Canyon system yet, so the KoolShare post also reveals some interesting details including that:

The system measures 9.4″ x 8.5″ x 3.8″ making it small for a desktop, but large for an NUC.

It will be available wot Core i5-9300H, Core i7-9750H and Core i9-9980HK processor options

In addition to a cooling fan on The Element module, there are dual cooling fans on top of the system.

The computer has a 500 watt internal power supply.

There are two Thunderbolt 3 ports, six USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet jacks, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5, an SD card reader, an HDMI 2.0a port, a headset jack on the front, and a 3.5mm audio line out on the back.

According to an Intel spec sheet, the system supports up to three 4K displays if you’re using Intel UHD graphics alone. You may be able to connect additional displays if you add a discrete GPU.

Speaking of GPUs, the computer supports up to an 8″ long, double-width graphics card that uses up to 225 watts of power.

Other features include support for up to 32GB of DDR4-2666 memory, three M.2 slots with support for NVMe and/or Intel Optane memory, and a plastic case with a metal frame.

Intel will offer a 3-year warranty.

Last I’d heard, Intel was planning to bring the Ghost Canyon NUC to market early next year.

Windows 10 is adding a native framerate counter

Microsoft will finally be adding a native framerate counter to Windows 10.

The company has already began rolling out the new feature to the native Windows 10 Game Bar, but some users will probably have to wait a while to get their hands on it.

This new feature will finally allow Windows 10 users to measure their in-game performance without the use of additional tools. While most third-party gaming applications, like Steam or Origin, have their own built-in counters, a native option has been requested for quite some time.

For those who get the Windows 10 October update, Microsoft will easily allow users to monitor performance with the use of Game Bar. By opening the Game Bar program, easily done through the use of Win+G, players will easily be able to toggle a live framerate counter on their games.

Windows users will be able to customize the experience slightly to make times a little bit nicer. With the Game Bar framerate monitor offering a full performance graph, alongside CPU/GPU/RAM performance graphs, it should be one of the better options available. Hopefully, Microsoft will also include benchmark recording for easy charts.

Adding a native framerate counter to Windows 10 is a fantastic move on Microsoft’s part. With the company wanting to bring more gamers over to the Windows Store, especially with Xbox Game Pass PC, adding hardcore gamer features is a must.

SK Hynix Develops 16 Gb DDR4 Chips for 32 GB Modules

SK Hynix announced on Monday that it has completed development of its first monolithic 16 Gb chip. This chip is to be made using its 3rd Generation 10 nm-class process technology. The new memory devices will enable the company and its partners to make more energy-efficient and higher capacity DIMMs, such as 32 GB unbuffered modules for consumers or higher capacity buffered modules for enterprise consumption.

SK Hynix’s 16 Gb chip made using the company’s 3rd Generation 10 nm-class manufacturing technology (also known as ‘1Z’ nm) and is rated for DDR4-3200 data transfer rates. The company states that these chips have a reduced power consumption by 40% when compared to modules of the same capacity based on 8 Gb DRAMs produced using the company’s 2nd Generation 10 nm-class (aka 1Ynm) process.

SK Hynix’s ‘1Z’ nm process technology uses a new substance that enables it to maximize capacitance and improve stability of DRAM devices compared to previous generation process technology. It remains to be seen whether or not usage of the new chemicals translate into additional benefits, such as clock range, or latency. Also, the new technology enables a 27% higher bits-per-wafer productivity, which will make new memory chips cheaper to produce. The manufacturer stresses that its ‘1Z’ nm process does not use extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) and is still a fully DUV process.

In addition to its 16 Gb DDR4 chips, SK Hynix also introduced its 32 GB unbuffered DIMM and SO-DIMM modules that can be used by desktop computers. It is unclear when these modules are to be available, but it is logical to expect them to emerge after the 16 Gb DRAM devices hit mass production in 2020.

The company plans to use its 1Znm process technology to make a variety DRAM types, including commodity DDR4 memory, LPDDR5, and HBM3.

Grab this WD Black SN750 1TB SSD is at its lowest price ever

Amazon’s got a great cheap SSD deal on the WD Black series SSD just in time as the fall’s biggest titles start to take up precious storage on your PC storage.

You can pick up the WD Black SN750 1TB NVMe Internal Gaming SSD with heatsink right now for $179.99, the lowest it’s been all year, a $100 savings off the MSRP and $40 lower than the previous best.

Transfer speeds of 3,470 mbps make it a great choice if you’re looking to improve load times on games over an aging HDD. While excellent for gaming (faster load times), a good SSD is also perfect for tasks such as video editing when working with larger video files. Its custom heatsink allows for the SN750 for longer, sustained peak performance which is always a plus.

Take a look and see how it compares to the best NVMe SDDs of this year.

If you’re unsure or just weighing your options, make sure you bookmark our Black Friday SSD deals page where we will be combing all the major online retailers for the best deals we can find leading up to Black Friday.

Jorge Jimenez is a Hardware Writer from the enchanted lands of New Jersey. When he’s not filling the office with the smell of Pop-Tarts, you can find Jorge streaming bad games with his dog or binge-watching an irresponsible amount of Law & Order: SVU.

GA-PICO3350 is Gigabyte’s smallest motherboard to date (embedded CPU + RAM and storage slots)

Measuring just about 3.9″ x 2.8″, the new Gigabyte GA-PICO3350 motherboard is just a little larger than a Raspberry Pi Model B (3.4″ x 2.2″). But while the Raspberry Pi features an ARM-based processor and embedded memory, Gigabyte’s tiny board has a DDR3L SODIMM slot for laptop-type memory plus an mSATA/mini PCIe slot for storage.

That said, while you could theoretically use Gigabyte’s tiny new Pico ITX board for just about any computing task, its embedded 6 watt Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core “Apollo Lake” processor isn’t exactly a speed demon.

So I suspect this is the type of board that will appeal more to IoT developers than to home users. Still, it’s kind of nifty… mostly because it’s just so small.

In addition to the specs listed above, the board has the following features:

2 x USB 3.0

Gigabit Ethernet

HDMI 1.4a

SATA 6Gb/s connector + SATA power connector

USB 2.0, Serial port, GPIO, LVDS, and SMBus headers

Gigabyte says the system supports Windows 10 64-bit software as well as Linux (although the company suggests downloading “Linux driver from chipset vendors’ website or 3rd party website.”

There’s no word on the price for the GA-PICO3350, but the similarly-=sized MSI MS-98I6 sells for around $300 — although that model supports faster memory and features dual display outputs and dual Ethernet jacks, among other differences.

MSI’s pico-ITX board is also slightly larger, at 101mm x 73mm compared to 100mm x 72mm for the Gigabyte model.

There’s Finally a Decent Smartwatch for Android

IIswitched from an iPhone to the Google Pixel 2 a few years ago after thinking about the move for a long time. My Apple Watch had held me back. The watch is an expensive device, but it would be rendered a paperweight if I used a Pixel full time, because Apple doesn’t allow it to work with Android phones. There were few alternative watches that would work with my Pixel — or at least few that seemed at all appealing.

Ultimately, I still decided to change over to a Pixel, which had become compelling enough despite the lack of Apple Watch support, and gave up wearing a smartwatch altogether.

But now I’ve finally found a smartwatch I’m willing to wear again, from an unexpected source: Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active2. Awful naming aside, it’s one of the strongest competitors to the Apple Watch I’ve seen.

Companies like Fossil and Misfit make wearables that run Google’s Wear OS, while FitBit and Withings churn out smartwatches focused on fitness or aesthetics. For the most part, smartwatches like the TicWatch look decent online, but are thick and chunky to wear in real life. They feel more like knock-off spy watches than accessories. Worse still, Wear OS devices are notorious for poor battery life and aren’t likely to get updates for the long haul — manufacturers don’t make money from keeping the software up to date, so they simply ignore it.

Samsung’s Active2, though, works with any device, looks great, and can make it almost two days on a single charge (not bad, given Apple targets 18 hours of battery life with its Series 5 watch).

What’s most surprising about the Active2 is an attention to detail that’s rare.

The difference starts with its appearance. I have wanted a circular smartwatch ever since the Moto 360 debuted and ultimately disappointed back in 2014; the shape looks natural for a watch. The Samsung’s Active2 is also slim enough to hide under a shirt or sweater, and small enough that it doesn’t seem like a smartwatch at all. The always-on display, especially with circular analog watch faces, helps it blend in even better.

What’s most surprising about the Active2 is an attention to detail that’s rare. The edges of its round display, for instance, can be used as a way to scroll through the UI—dragging your finger around the edge to the right scrolls down, and to the left scrolls up. While the bezel doesn’t physically move as it does in previous generations of Samsung smartwatches, it understands touch, and it’s more intuitive as a way to interact with a watch.

Many of the watch’s other features take advantage of the round display. The “My Day” watch face, for example, places reminders of the day’s meetings around the edges of the display, which is a helpful way to see what’s coming up for the entire day without jumping into an app.

Though not specifically targeted at fitness tracking like some of its competitors, the Active2 delivers on health features as well. While many watches require you to manually specify when a workout has begun, the Active2 automatically logs workouts, so that you don’t need to explicitly indicate you’re out for a run or cycle. After 10 minutes of activity, a little vibration notifies you the workout has started — which is so much better than fidgeting around with menus to get a workout kicked off.

Active2 has other thoughtful fitness prompts, clearly inspired by the Apple Watch, like a “heart” that fills up (similar to the Apple Watch’s rings) as you exercise and go about your day. But the Active2’s prompts go even further than Apple Watch’s prompts: Rather than pushing you to simply stand up hourly, the Active2 detects and shows inactivity, prompting a short walk or stretch.

I tested the Bluetooth version of the Active2, but I’m thinking of returning it for a refund so I can buy the LTE version, which would allow me to stream music, as well as get calls and notifications on the go.

What I most want from my smartwatch is the option to leave my phone at home entirely while I go for a run or cycle — or even just to escape scrolling through social media for a while — and Samsung might be the first brand to truly pull it off. The Apple Watch only allows Apple Music to sync offline. With the Active2, you can sync the device to Bluetooth headphones directly and use a Spotify integration to play play music offline while still doing GPS tracking on a run with the Strava watch app, finally free of wires.

I had worried that the Active2’s battery life wouldn’t be good enough. For the last two years, I’ve worn a Withings Steel HR, which only needs charging once every month. The Apple Watch I wore before that needed to be charged much more frequently — about once every two days — and I rarely remembered to charge it before the battery died.

Despite my fears, I was delighted by the Bluetooth Active2: Every night after a full day’s use — including workout tracking — I dropped it onto the magnetic charger with a solid 60% of battery life leftover.

Samsung didn’t get everything right with the Active2. One of the biggest pain points is its app store. Samsung has its own entire ecosystem of apps, if you’re noton a Samsung phone like the Note 10, you need to install three separate apps to even get started with the watch. That’s notincluding the Samsung Health app, which you’ll also need if you want health data on your phone andthe third-party syncing app for Google Fit if you want your data in there instead of Samsung’s silo.

Unlike the Apple Watch, Active2 allows third-party watch faces, but almost all of them are terrible. And its app store does a terrible job of showcasing watch faces that aren’t hideous. Instead, it shows a giant list of poor quality designs before you eventually find a good one buried at the bottom. That’s a shame, really, because the included watch faces are really good— they show off interesting ways to take advantage of the display, and I found myself wanting even more.

The Active2 has other minor quirks, like coming with always-on display disabled by default and burying the setting to turn it on yourself deep in a menu. Samsung did the same with the setting for the bezel-scrolling feature, which is also disabled out of the box.

Then there’s Bixby, Samsung’s voice assistant. Settings need to be disabled in multiple places to avoid accidentally triggering it on the watch. And Samsung wouldn’t let me use a different, more capable assistant, like Alexa or Google Assistant. I found myself even wishing Siriwas on this watch, something that I’ve never wanted any other time in the past — Bixby is that bad.

But, amongst all of these quirks and annoyances, the Active2 is surprisingly delightful. It delivers a good smartwatch alternative for anyone who is notdeeply invested in the Apple ecosystem (it works with an iPhone too, but has limited functionality due to Apple restrictions), at a fraction of the price — and with great aesthetics on top. I went in with low expectations, but was delighted to find myself enjoying wearing a smartwatch again.

If you’re in the market for a watch that isn’tthe Apple Watch, the Galaxy Active2 is what you should get. Samsung has delivered something for everyone, and the quality is at the level you’d actually wantto wear on your wrist, rather than hide it up to your sleeve.

AOC Reveals Agon AG273QX: A 27-Inch 165 Hz FreeSync 2 Monitor

AOC has introduced its new Agon-series 27-inch gaming display featuring a variable refresh rate of up to 165 Hz enabled by AMD’s FreeSync 2 technology. Like all Agon monitors, the AG273QX is aimed at demanding gamers and supports a multitude of features for the target audience, including special gaming modes, RGB lighting on the back, as well as G-Menu software for adjustments.

The AOG Agon AG273QX display uses an 8-bit 27-inch VA panel featuring a 2560×1440 resolution, 400 nits peak brightness, a 3000:1 static contrast ratio, a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz, a 1 ms MPRT response time, and 178°/178° viewing angles. Being an AMD FreeSync 2-certified monitor, the AG273QX fully supports a variable refresh rate (presumably with a 48 Hz to 165 Hz), direct-to-display tonemapping, low framerate compensation (LFC) mode, and can hit 90% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The LCD also meets DisplayHDR 400 requirements with an HDR brightness of 400 nits and supports at least HDR10 transport. Unfortunately, AOC does not disclose how many backlighting zones its new monitor has.

When it comes to connectivity, the Agon AG273QX has a D-Sub, two DisplayPort 1.2, one miniDisplayPort, and two HDMI 2.0 connector. In addition, it has a quad-port USB 3.0 hub, and a headphone output, which is common for gaming displays these days. As an added bonus, the monitor has two 5 W speakers.

Since the product is designed primarily for gamers, the Agon AG273QX not only features a stand that can adjust height, tilt, swivel, and even pivot, but also a handle for easy carrying. Meanwhile, it also supports three pre-configured game modes (FPS, RTS, Racing) as well as three customizable game modes. Last but not least, it also comes with G-Menu software to make adjustments without using the OSD buttons.

AOC will start sales of its Agon AG273QX in November. In the UK the product will cost £439, so expect its MSRP in the US to be around $499.

AMD 2nd Gen EPYC Rome Processors Feature A Gargantuan 39.54 Billion Transistors, IO Die Pictured in Detail

The AMD 2nd Generation EPYC Rome processors launched in August & since then, we have been getting more details about the chip itself along with its features. The latest details for the I/O die which include close-up die shots have been revealed by Hardwareluxx, giving us a better look at AMD’s most innovative server chip to date.

AMD 2nd Gen EPYC Rome Processor IOD Detailed – 8.34 Billion Transistors on a Single Die, 39.54 Billion on The Entire Chip

There have been many details that AMD has just recently started revealing for their 2nd Gen EPYC Rome processors. The AMD EPYC Rome processors are composed of a 9 die design which is also to be referred to as MCM (Multi-Chip-Module). The 9 dies include eight CCD’s (Compute Core dies) & a single IOD (Input / Output die). Each CCD is composed of two CCX (Compute Core complexes) that feature four Zen 2 cores with their own respective L2 cache and a shared L3 cache. All eight CCD’s are connected to the I/O die using infinity fabric.

Each CCD measures 74mm2 and is composed of 3.9 Billion transistors. The IOD featured on Ryzen has a die size of 125mm2 and is composed of 2.09 Billion transistors. The IOD featured on EPYC is composed of 8.34 Billion transistors and measures at 416mm2. It’s the biggest die on the 2nd Gen EPYC chip. The IOD combined with the 8 Zen 2 CCD’s measure at 1008mm2 while being composed of a whooping 39.54 Billion transistors.

Now the IOD featured on the one is much bigger than the one featured on the Ryzen processors. This is due to the more demanding feature set of the server platforms. When exposed through the use of transillumination, the IO die is clearly exposed and the internal blocks can be revealed much clearly.

It is stated that much of the central space on the IOD is dedicated to the SRAM and crossbar switch while the PCIe Gen 4 interfaces can be found on the sides of the IOD. The upper and lower areas of the die feature the four 72-bit DDR4 memory channels. Now here’s the interesting part, EPYC 2nd Gen has the ability to scale up to 162 PCIe lanes by offering twice the bandwidth through PCIe Gen 4 and reducing the Infinity Fabric’s reliance on the bus to expose more lanes on custom processors that are planned for launch later. The extra PCIe lanes are already there but they are being used by the interconnect.

In addition to the IOD, the Zen 2 CCD or Compute Core Die have also received their own die shots from OC_Burner at Flickr. For those who haven’t seen them before, the following is what each core die of your Ryzen processor looks like. The same die is being used across Zen 2 based Ryzen, EPYC and the upcoming Ryzen Threadripper processors:

Also, the IOD for EPYC processor is compared to the IOD on Ryzen processors revealing just how big of a chip the server-aimed IOD is. AMD already briefed on how they will be configuring various 2nd Gen EPYC Rome processors based on different core counts. While all EPYC Rome chips have a total of 8 CCD’s, not all of them would be enabled on many processors.

Even some CCD’s have to be partially disabled such as the 16 core model. The 16 core model has only four CCD’s enabled & each CCD is partially enabled with only four cores which means there are only 2 cores enabled on each CCX. Some CCD’s have three cores enabled per CCX while others such as the 48 core variant have all 8 CCD’s enabled but two of the CCD’s have a CCX with all four cores enabled and the other with a just three cores enabled.

But this is just the start, AMD is expected to use more advanced packaging and chiplet designs in their next-generation server processors codenamed EPYC Milan and EPYC Genoa which would use the Zen 3 and Zen 4 core architecture, respectively. If everything runs smoothly for AMD and their long-term Zen roadmap in the years to come, we can see them dominating all sectors of the CPU market again. AMD’s EPYC Rome has already secured major deals with Amazon (AWS) and will also be providing 7nm Rome processors to power the Atos BullSequana XH2000 Supercomputer while a future-generation EPYC line would be powering the Frontier Supercomputer that is being built by U.S. Department of Energy and aiming deployment in 2021.

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