APC Xmas 2021

I am so incredibly happy Intel is properly competitive again, and taking it toe-to-toe with AMD. It’s the best news possible for driving innovation forward, and – as I expect we’ll see soon – prices down. Is Intel #1 again? Well… it depends. Arguably, yes it is – at least today with pricing as it is. At a bare minimum this all means Intel is a serious option for your first choice. And depending on your tasks, it could be the better option. The Big/Little hybrid design still needs time to prove its real world value, and further, if this is the new way forward for desktops and Windows laptops, is AMD compelled to follow suit? Remember, ARM-based designs – which now includes Apple’s M1 – have been kicking winning…

ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2021 Worth $49.99 Reliable burning software for CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2021 is a powerful disc burning software for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. The software quickly burns files, audio and video to all recordable disc types but also specialised media such as BDXL or M-Disc. The built-in disc ripping auto-detects track names and easily turns audio files into custom audio discs complete with individually designed covers and inlays. Playlists can be auto-generated during ripping for easy playback in the desired song order. The program can also finalise discs to make them playable on older retail players or car radios. Built-in disc spanning automatically spreads data across multiple volumes if it can’t fit on a single disc. This makes it easy to burn photo,…

“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.…

It would appear that Nvidia’s 12-pin PCIe power connector may be here to stay. According to Asus’ marketing for the latest ROG Thor II power supplies, the Nvidia 12-pin connector complies with the PCIe 5.0 specification. During the brand’s Z690 motherboard livestream, Asus highlighted the importance of power supplies, as graphics cards are constantly drawing more and more power. Using the GeForce RTX 3090 as an example, Asus claimed that the Ampere-based flagship peaks up to 900W during gameplay, thus requiring power supplies with higher wattage. More importantly, Asus declared that Nvidia’s 12-pin connector is PCIe 5.0 ready and that the new ROG Thor II units will ship with “Gen 5 12-pin connectors.”…

A research team with Denmark’s University of Copenhagen has designed the world’s first quantum computing system that allows for simultaneous operation of all its qubits without threatening quantum coherence. The research is being hailed as a breakthrough, clearing one of the remaining key obstacles for quantum scaling and its eventual mainstream deployment. The Danish team achieved its breakthrough in one particular type of qubit, spin qubits. “To get more powerful quantum processors, we have to not only increase the number of qubits, but also the number of simultaneous operations, which is exactly what we did,” states Professor Kuemmeth, who directed the research. The team is now looking to AI control systems that could automatically keep the system tuned with no human intervention.…

AMD CEO Lisa Su shared the company’s Zen 4 CPU roadmap at its AMD Accelerated Data Center event in November, including a 96-core Genoa model and a 128-core Bergamo chip. This adds yet more excitement to the event after AMD unveiled the EPYC Milan-X chips with up to 768MB of L3 cache and the Instinct MI250X GPU. AMD also shared its first details of the 5nm TSMC process it will use for the new Genoa and Bergamo chips, claiming it provides twice the density and power efficiency along with 1.25X more performance than the 7nm process AMD uses for its current-gen CPUs. The new roadmap covers the fourth-gen EYPC processors. The 96-core Genoa will come on the 5nm process in 2022, while the 128-core Bergamo, also on 5nm, will come…