PCWorld May 2019

ConceptD could be the gaming PC of your dreams, but it’s not for gamers. ConceptD is Acer’s new brand of PCs made for creative professionals who need gaming-class graphics power, but in quieter, cooler systems, better suited for corporate and studio environments. Acer introduced ConceptD at the company’s next@acer event in New York. The brand’s genesis came about after Acer discovered that 50 percent of its so-called “hardcore gamer” customers also used professional creative applications on their gaming PCs. Acer further discovered that another 15 percent of its gaming PC customers were using their systems exclusively for professional creative applications—not gaming at all. This last group simply needed the horsepower. What they didn’t need were the heat, noise, and in-your-face aesthetic that come with gaming PCs. (My take: Gamers probably would welcome cooler,…

Acer CEO Jason Chen thinks his company can get bigger if it thinks small. As the fourth- or fifth-largest PC vendor worldwide by shipments (per IDC and Gartner numbers, respectively), Acer already sells plenty of what it calls “value” PCs—commodity systems that offer good specs for the price. It’s thriving in the gaming and education markets, too, where performance and sturdiness matter. Compared to PC juggernauts Dell, HP, and Lenovo, however, Acer still has a long way to go. So the company’s next move is to pursue what Chen calls “microtrends,” courting users whose numbers might be too small—or their needs a little too niche—to draw much attention from bigger players. Acer sees an opportunity to shine by providing a more curated PC experience—a completely different strategy from its approach to…

It was promised at GDC, and now it’s here. Nvidia recently released Game Ready drivers that unlock DirectX Raytracing support on the GeForce GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti, and on GTX 10-series graphics cards from the 6GB GTX 1060 on up. You read that correctly: You no longer need a pricey GeForce RTX 20-series graphics card to experience ray tracing in games that support it. Nvidia and its partners also released a trio of new tech demos that allow gamers to see the power of ray tracing for free. If you want to experience the best possible ray tracing, you’ll still want to upgrade to an RTX graphics card. (Our guide to the best graphics cards can help you choose one.) Those GPUs feature dedicated RT cores that accelerate ray tracing,…

While Qualcomm has integrated several gaming-specific technologies into its Snapdragon mobile processors, the company recently announced something a little different: a version of its Snapdragon 730 optimized for gaming, dubbed the Snapdragon 730G. Though mobile gaming may be an idle pastime with American consumers, it’s a way of life overseas. Over 586 million mobile gamers are in China alone—twice the population of the United States, according to Qualcomm’s Hiren Bhinde at Qualcomm’s technology summit last December. It isn’t clear which phones and mobile devices Qualcomm has in mind for the Snapdragon 730G, but recent gaming phones from Asus ROG and Razer indicate that Qualcomm was designing for what they hope will be a trend. Though most premium smartphones use Qualcomm’s 8-series CPUs like the Snapdragon 855, the new 7-series chips are designed…

One of the complaints surrounding AMD’s efforts to ship mobile Ryzen chips for notebook PCs was a fundamental one: Where were the notebooks? In early April, AMD answered. The company announced the second-gen Ryzen Pro mobile processor for commercial notebook PCs, which will appear first in notebooks from HP and Lenovo. There are three new Ryzen Pro chips: the 2.3GHz, 4-core/8-thread Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U; the 2.1GHz 4-core/8-thread Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U; and the 2.1GHz 4-core/4-thread Ryzen 3 Pro 3300U. All are 15W parts, meaning that they’re aimed at more mainstream and ultrathin notebooks. They all use the older 12-nm manufacturing process, but they boast the discrete-class integrated “Vega” GPU that other mobile Ryzen chips do as well. AMD claims the new processors will enable up to 10 hours of battery life,…

Aside from bringing its Xbox games over to the PC, Game Bar is arguably the best gesture Microsoft’s made to Windows 10 gamers. It adds a tiny bit of console-esque simplicity to the PC, letting you take screenshots, record video, or stream games with simple system-level shortcuts. But…I never use it. It’s my third-tier preference for screenshots and video, after the tools built into Steam and Nvidia’s Shadowplay. Microsoft’s looking to move up in the world though, and it’s doing so by adding a lot more functionality to Game Bar over the next few months—most of it unique to Game Bar, i.e., not duplicated by Steam or Shadowplay. In fact, Game Bar isn’t really a fitting name anymore. Game Overlay might be more appropriate, albeit less elegant. SWISS ARMY KNIFE Windows Xbox Insiders…