PCWorld September 2018

The Note 9 doesn’t come in black. That was the second biggest surprise Samsung had for me during my Note 9 briefing in early August. The first was the price: $1,000 for the 128GB base model and an eye-popping $1,250 for the 512GB version. That’s $100 more than the top-of-the-line iPhone X (which only has 256GB of storage), for those keeping score. So Samsung’s Note 9 brings another first for the Android world: sticker shock. Otherwise, Samsung’s newest phablet is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, what with an endless stream of leaks and rumors spilling nearly every bean there was to be spilled. I already knew about the processor, the new S Pen, the storage increase, and the AI camera. The Note 9 is basically a Note…

The wait is over, friends. After a week of rampant rumors and outright teasing by Nvidia itself, CEO Jensen Huang proudly revealed the long-awaited GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, powered by the company’s radical next-gen Turing GPU, at an event ahead of Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. These graphics cards look like beasts, infused with dedicated tensor and RT cores to accelerate real-time ray tracing, the Holy Grail of gaming graphics, and enough visual firepower to feed 4K G-Sync HDR displays, the Holy Grail of gaming monitors. They’re equipped with a cutting-edge VirtualLink VR connection, too, and a speedier SLI connection called NVLink. The $999 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition blows past the GTX 1080 Ti, and the $699 GeForce RTX 2080 far outpaces the previous-gen flagship in real-time…

While motherboard companies continue to outdo themselves releasing data on Intel’s upcoming 9000-series processors, HP has accidentally disclosed details regarding another of Intel’s upcoming chips: its “Whiskey Lake” notebook processors. As disclosed by Anandtech, the Whiskey Lake-U processors aren’t that different from the existing Kaby Lake-R chips that they’ll replace. In fact, the base clock speeds for the three chips outed by HP are essentially identical with the existing Kaby Lake-R chips. What Intel has done, however, is offer significantly higher turbo speeds as a way of differentiating the two families. It’s worth noting that “differentiation” continues to be an issue, as far as product numbers go. The three new Whiskey Lake-U chips—the 2.1GHz Core i3-8145U, the 1.6GHz Core i5-8265U, and the 1.8GHz Core i7-8565U—use similar product numbers to the 2.2GHz Core…

It looks like the fearsome GPU inside Nvidia’s Titan V will never make it to gamers after all. Poor Volta. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed at Siggraph 2018 in mid-August the Quadro RTX 8000, 6000, and 5000 graphics processors, powered by an all-new and long-rumored “Turing” graphics architecture. Friends, Turing looks ferocious—and it’s brimming with portent about Nvidia’s next-gen GeForce graphics cards. The Quadro RTX GPUs are overflowing with CUDA cores, AI-boosting tensor cores, and an all-new technology dubbed “RT cores” designed to make Nvidia’s new graphics architecture up to 25x more efficient at cutting-edge real-time ray-tracing operation. “Turing is Nvidia’s most important innovation in computer graphics in more than a decade,” Huang said. “The arrival of real-time ray tracing is the Holy Grail of our industry.” We don’t normally cover data…

The bad news: Two of the most-hyped games this fall aren’t coming to PC. Not yet anyway, and maybe not ever: Red Dead Redemption 2 and Insomniac’s Spider-Man. But now for the good news: A staggering number of excellent games are coming to PC this holiday season. Like seriously, too many for any one person to play. We’ve rounded up 15 of the PC games we’re most looking forward to this fall. While a few of the usual heavy hitters make the list (Forza), we’ve also tried to pick out a few surprises, or games you might not have heard of, like The Occupation. Because hey, you definitely know Shadow of the Tomb Raider is coming out this fall, but have you heard the good word about Outer Wilds? Read on for…

Microsoft’s 10-inch, $399 Surface Go tablet is a departure from the company’s Surface tradition, which put forth expensive, ambitious designs to break trail for the rest of the PC industry. Now, the Surface Go’s decidedly mainstream price should appeal to businesspeople on the go as well as consumers considering an Apple iPad or Android tablet. Caveats like its operating system—Windows 10 in S Mode—and its low-end processor may give you pause. And the optional but cramped Type Cover somewhat offsets the Surface Go’s convenience. But our Surface Go review will walk you through the Surface Go hardware, the Type Cover, and the new Mobile Mouse—then tell you how it all works in practice, both as a pure tablet and as a productivity device. Finally, we’ll talk about the Surface Go’s performance,…