APC Xmas 2022

BEN MANSILL likes numbers that go up. Except when they're prices. “And then there’s the Nvidia RTX 4090. Holy smokes, this thing. Never have we seen such a massive generational uplift, it’s truly astonishing.” Well, it’s decision time – if you were holding out to hear about whether Intel’s 13th Gen should be your next upgrade, that is. Last month was AMD’s moment in the spotlight, and now the Labs have been churning through the 13900K and 13600K and generating numbers, and more importantly – opinions in Chris’ opinionated head. I just love this game. Even if you’re not on the cusp of upgrading it’s so fascinating to watch on as the battle rages, and new capabilities and performance becomes real. We’ll certainly be looking closely at other chips in the new Ryzen…

1 ABELSSOFT WASHANDGO Removes data trash quickly and safely. At the click of a mouse, WashAndGo analyses your PC and finds any accumulation of data junk. After you have decided whether the cleaning should be fast or intensive and whether you want to create a backup for the sake of safety, you can enjoy a faster and tidier PC after just a few seconds. Of course, you can also take a back seat and have the cleaning carried out automatically – at every PC start, weekly or daily – just as you like. Download link: www.apcmag.com/exclusives 2 ASHAMPOO HOME DESIGN 7 Design, extend & furnish with the 3D home design software. Design, furnish and visualise your dream home, extension or redecoration on their PCs. The project wizard combined with multiple automatic features helps users get started…

"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. We know…

AMD has finally unveiled its next-generation GPU architecture, RDNA 3, and the first two cards to be built using the architecture: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the Radeon RX 7900 XT. Both cards will be available to purchase on December 13, 2022. We’ve been waiting a long time for details on these two cards, so let’s not dally around. AMD’s bringing some impressive specs to bear with its two brand new enthusiast-grade cards, and the RX 7900 XTX is promising to deliver up to 61 TFLOPs of compute performance – nearly three times the 23 TFLOPs from the RX 6950 XT. The RX 7900 XTX will employ the power of 96 RDNA 3 Compute Units (CUs), tantalisingly close to a triple-digit count. It will operate at a game clock of 2.3GHz,…

"DisplayPort 2.1 is more than just backward compatible with DisplayPort 2.0." VESA released version 2.1 of the DisplayPort specification in mid October. The update brings several important changes concerning efficiency, but as you will read, VESA strove to keep things smooth for both implementers and consumers. DisplayPort 2.1 is more than just backward compatible with DisplayPort 2.0. Due to the efforts of VESA and its partners, “all previously certified DisplayPort 2.0 products… have already been certified to the stricter DisplayPort 2.1 spec.” So yes, any GPU, Docking Station, monitor, cable (or anything) certified for DisplayPort 2.0 will fall under the stricter newer v2.1 specification. VESA says one of the most important things it has tried to achieve with this update is to offer a robust experience. This philosophy applies to users connecting peripherals…

Shaun is an Australian editor for PC Gamer, GamesRadar and PLAY, and writes for APC, TechRadar and more. Last month Elon Musk – best known as the billionaire who smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast – bought Twitter for US$44 billion. At the time of writing, mere days after the space guy took the bird site’s reins, the site is in chaos. It’s in chaos, not because one of Musk’s first actions was to lay off 3,700 staff – in other words, half of the company’s workforce, including those in the company’s Australian office – but because of a series of seemingly off-the-cuff implementations dreamt up by the genius billionaire himself. The first was changing the site’s verification system. For those lucky souls unfamiliar with Twitter, verification used to work like this:…