PCWorld May 2018

For years, PC gamers have needed to pick a poison: Buy a desktop with the most powerful components available, or sacrifice some performance for a laptop they could take on the road. Intel’s new 6-core mobile Core i9 chip, its fastest notebook CPU ever, paves the way for 5GHz gaming laptops, making that decision a little easier. Using new “thermal velocity boost” technology to propel the new Core i9-8950HK from a base clock rate of 2.9GHz to a whopping 4.8GHz, the new unlocked 8th-generation Core i9 sits atop five new Core i5 and Core i7 high-performance mobile H-series chips, plus four more U-series Core chips aimed at lower-power systems. (All are Coffee Lake 14nm chips.) Intel also launched a new lineup of desktop Core processors, plus a new designation (Core i7+)…

Know why the MacBook Pro 15 is so thin? It’s because of all the times Dell’s powerhouse XPS 15 has stomped on it. Yes, that’s a cheap shot, but it’s been mostly true—and Apple’s beatdown will only get worse as the newest XPS 15 (model 9570) ups the ante to a 6-core, 12-thread Core i7-8750H. Part of Intel’s new enthusiast-class Coffee Lake H (see page 7) series of chips, the Core i7-8750H is essentially a mobile version of Intel’s powerful Core i7-8700K chip. For the Dell XPS 15, the big deal is upping the core count, which Intel claims will increase “overall performance” up to 88 percent over previous iterations. Intel’s prior Core i7 processors topped out at four cores and eight threads. Dell didn’t just stop there though. While the…

The Origin PC EVO15-S wowed us late last year as one of the first gaming laptops wielding Nvidia’s potent GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q graphics. Now the slim, sleek, and supercharged notebook is getting a CPU upgrade to match. Recently, Origin announced that the EVO15-S and its classy professional cousin, the Origin NT-15, can be ordered with the 6-core Core i7-8750H processor that Intel just revealed. Before now, Intel’s fastest mobile CPUs topped out at four cores. Boutique PC builders like Origin thrive by offering buyers wider component selection than they’d find elsewhere. The processor isn’t the only hardware receiving a speed boost. Boutique PC builders like Origin thrive by offering buyers wider component selection than they’d find elsewhere. Unlike many premium gaming notebooks, a wide variety of panel options exist for the…

Acer’s Aspire S24 caught our eye in a way few all-in-one PCs do, because we almost didn’t catch it. At 0.235 inches, the display on the Aspire S24 is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thin, a refreshing change from the chunky, top-heavy profiles of most machines in this category. The super-slim screen makes the Aspire S24 look premium, even though at its heart it’s still a mainstream PC. By focusing on the display technology, Acer gives it some distinction, balancing value with design. This is a machine you could place at a reception area or have out in the family room with no aesthetic risk. And it has one more forward looking surprise, too. PRICING AND SPECS Announced recently with a starting price of $879 and available later in April, the Aspire S24 is a solid midrange…

Intel’s Kaby Lake-G chip harbors a mystery. PCWorld has learned the company’s exciting CPU/GPU combo chip may actually be based on AMD’s older-generation Polaris cores rather than the newest Vega cores. This revelation doesn’t change how we feel about the chip, having already tested it (and liked it) in Intel’s Hades Canyon NUC, which earned an Editors’ Choice award. But an industry standard system utility identifies the Kaby Lake-G as having an AMD Polaris bloodline. And we’ve discovered other evidence suggesting the chip’s GPU core is Polaris. MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE In January, Intel unveiled it had linked a Core i7 to an AMD Radeon RX Vega M with its advanced Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge. And thus the Kaby Lake-G mobile chip—and a once-unthinkable Intel/AMD partnership—was born. >But that Vega may not be Vega after…

Cortana, where art thou? That’s what PCWorld wanted to know when we spoke with Microsoft’s recently-minted Cortana czar, Javier Soltero. The digital assistant, which made a splash in Windows 10 with her snappy comebacks and silly knock-knock jokes, is still offering to help you with your calendar and search. She’s even migrated to mobile apps for Android and iOS. But Cortana hasn’t talked her way into our homes like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have, making her staying power look uncertain. That’s where Soltero comes in. We sat down with Cortana’s new chief in the wake of a significant management shakeup that will see senior executive Terry Myerson leave, as well as the creation of a new “Experiences and Devices” team that seemingly downplays Windows. Does that mean Cortana has been demoted?…