PCWorld January 2017

Tech and trends that will affect you today and beyond. AMD'S ZEN IS finally here. In August, AMD stunned the hardware industry by showing that its Zen architecture could compete with Intel’s best. Now AMD has revealed more details about what executives call its most exciting processor in 20 years, including its brand name, its clock speed, and the five underlying “SenseMI” technologies that make the chip so efficient. What AMD has previously referred to as its Zen architecture now has a formal brand name: Ryzen, which unfortunately sounds like the title of a bargain-bin videogame. The first chip in the desktop family, code-named Summit Ridge, will be AMD’s focus for 2017. Using Handbrake and ZBrush benchmarks, AMD recently demonstrated that its 8-core Summit Ridge chip can keep up with, or even potentially…

EVEN AMD FANBOYS have to admit that the company's CPUs haven’t been competitive with Intel’s chips in a decade. With AMD finally unveiling its official CPU brand, Ryzen, as well as the first chip’s base clock speed, there are signs Intel might actually have a fight on its hands. Here’s every single thing we know about AMD’s Ryzen CPU so far. Your conspiracy theory? Wrong AMD shocked the PC world in August by showing its 8-core Summit Ridge CPU (featuring Zen architecture) matching the performance of an 8-core Intel chip in the open-source Blender application. The internet, of course, immediately spawned conspiracy theories that AMD “probably” used Blender because it could recompile the open-source program to run better on the Zen architecture. Wrong. PCWorld asked AMD officials if this was true. We were…

YOU KNOW HOW many cores it has (eight). You know what motherboard socket it will fit in (AM4). But one tantalizing thing you don’t know about AMD’s much-hyped and highly-anticipated Zen CPU is just how much it’ll cost. All the benchmarks and all the talk of a clean-sheet design and 40 percent IPC increase, be damned. You just want to know if Zen (aka Summit Ridge) will be affordable. AMD isn’t doing this just to play with your emotions, though. The company is currently engaged in a high-stakes poker game with Intel, the all-time reigning world-champion of CPU pricing, so this isn’t the time to act like a shirtless drunk in a Reno casino with the hole card. The good news is AMD's reluctance doesn’t stop us from making guesses as to just…

THE DAYS ARE numbered for the last remaining Galaxy Note7 holdouts. In an effort to safeguard any devices that are still in circulation, Samsung announced it will be pushing out a software update that will prevent charging, effectively bricking the beleaguered handset. In a press release, Samsung said that while it has had “overwhelming participation” in the Note7 U.S. recall program, some 7 percent of devices remain in customers’ hands. Starting Dec. 19 and continuing over the following 30 days, the company will be working with carriers to ensure any outstanding devices are rendered inoperable and returned, though it remains to be seen how smoothly the rollout will go. In a statement released shortly after Samsung’s announcement, Verizon initially said it would not be taking part in the update “because of the…

IT SURE LOOKED like Microsoft was putting MS-DOS out to pasture. Now it’s saying that the MS-DOS command prompt cmd will continue to live on. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Microsoft is not removing Cmd from Windows, but rather changing the default shell, launched via File Explorer and the [Win] + [X] power-user menu, from Cmd to PowerShell. Users can opt to change the default shell back to Cmd via Settings and can continue to launch whichever shell they prefer, be it Cmd, PowerShell, or Bash (if enabled) via the Start menu. The Windows Cmd shell has a long heritage and is an essential tool used by millions of businesses, users, and developers every day. It remains an integral part of Windows.” Microsoft may be making this move because, while to most…

A SILICON VALLEY biometrics company says it has developed a fingerprint sensor that can sit under glass so smartphone screens don’t need a cutout or extra button to accommodate the sensor. The Synaptics FS9100 sensor can sit under a millimeter of glass and still provide accurate fingerprint readings, so it should be easier to integrate one under a display. At present, most fingerprint sensors have to sit above the glass, necessitating a cutout in the face of the phone or a dedicated button that houses the sensor. That’s the case on market-leading handsets like the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S7. And while there are some fingerprint sensors that work under glass, that glass needs to be thinner than 1mm, so the glass needs to be shaved in the area of the sensor. Eliminating…