GPU Wars: NVIDIA GTX 1070 vs 970 + Unboxing!

It's that time again! A new generation of desktop graphics technology is upon us, and that means more of every PC gamer's favorite pastime: GPU unboxings and head-to-head benchmark battles to see just how much better this year's offering is over last year's and beyond. For Team Green, the new 10-series lineup represents a very important leap forward, crossing the threshold of great VR, high-refresh rate, and ultra-HD performance, but it also marks a step up in MSRP, and—at least for the time being—you'll be lucky to see prices even that low. With everything riding on it, can the sweet-spot GTX 1070 deliver a worthy bang-for-buck? Let's find out.

The Ultimate Guide to Upgrading a PS4 Hard Drive

Well, the current console generation is firmly in its third year now, and if you're like me you've been downloading a steady stream of digital content ever since...and playing a sort of musical chairs with any content that doesn't fit on the standard 500GB hard drive shipped with the Playstation 4. And sure, uninstalling infrequently used games is a fine way to stretch the capacity of built-in storage, but as the generation goes on, I find it harder and harder to part with my favorite titles—a list that keeps growing beyond what 500GB can reasonably handle. And let's not even get started on screenshot and video captures.

If this sounds familiar, then the good news is, upgrading your PS4’s internal storage is about as easy as can be—and no, you don't have to lose your content (or void your warranty) in the process. Yes, this includes PT. That being said, while it's not exactly complicated, it is rather involved, and there's a surprising lack of good guides out there that detail the entire process without skipping over certain optional parts.

Hence the guide you see before you. If you're interested in upgrading your PS4’s hard drive, then read on, because in this guide we're going to do it all, going for maximum storage and zero compromise, leaving no stone unturned. Let's get started!

Oculus Rift Unboxing & Review - VR Begins

Virtual reality. Like the internet, it's something that mankind conceived of in the earliest days of modern technology, even if it wouldn't be realized until much later. For the internet, 'later' came a solid thirty years ago, although it wouldn't reach mainstream popularity for another ten. With the advent of the Oculus Rift, that's where we are again: the dark ages of something world-changing in its formative stages, impressive for where it is now, but most exciting for where it's going to be.

GPU Wars: GTX 970 vs 2x GTX 960 in SLI

It's almost upon us: after decades of efforts and dreams, consumer virtual reality won't be a thing of science fiction much longer. In just over a month both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will make their debut, and you'll need a pretty decent PC to power them—your graphics card being of particular importance. Both headset manufacturers are recommending an NVIDIA GTX 970 at minimum, and your time to upgrade before the big launch is fading fast. But what exactly will you get for your money if you decide to take the plunge? Let's find out!

Amazon Fire 5th-gen Review - The $50 Tablet That Could

The 5th-gen Amazon Fire is an interesting little device, simultaneously ambitious and barebones. While the prospect of a $50 tablet is itself nothing new, in the past this price point was exclusively the domain of Chinese knockoffs and barely-functional toys for small children. But when a name like Amazon steps in, things are immediately a bit different. Amazon has already proven itself as a budget hardware manufacturer with its excellent Amazon Basics lineup, and now the Fire brings the same spirit into the tablet space, and with some pretty impressive results...considering the price.

GPU Wars: GTX 960 vs GTX 770 (Unboxing and Benchmarks)

Not all advances in technology are about being faster or stronger. Sometimes the most interesting developments come in small packages—both literally and figuratively. Such is the case with the NVIDIA GTX 960, a GPU on the low end of the current Maxwell generation that thanks to some aftermarket tinkering might just be able to replace last generation's Kepler mid-range cards despite some rather odd limitations.

BenQ MH630 DLP Projector Review

While TV sets slowly limp from 1080p to 4k and by and large have yet to come down to equilibrium pricing, projectors have also gained popularity as TV alternatives, but with one caveat: most affordable projectors aren't even up to full HD yet, if HD at all. In recent years cheap LED projectors have given projectors new life on the home user market, but at the cost of brightness, pixels, and most advanced features considered standard on higher-end models. Not to mention that while these days practically all projectors brag about being HD, most only accept a 1080p input and then project it at 720p or 480p instead. The BenQ MH630 falls in neither the high-end nor deceptively low-end category, instead offering an affordable set of compromises without sacrificing image quality. And if you're a home user looking to watch movies or play games on the largest display possible, it may just be the best option for you currently out there.

Windows 10 Upgrade Prompt Hits Windows 7 and 8 PCs

For the past couple of weeks rumors have abounded suggesting Microsoft's massive new operating system is closer to the finish line than many of us expected. Early reports said the final build would release as early as July, and now listings on Newegg show a release date of August 31st for OEM licenses. But now it's official: while we don't know exactly when Windows 10 will hit, we know it's just around the corner.

Motorola Nexus 6 - Bigger Really is Better (Review)

Well, it's that time of year again: Google I/O time, where one of the most important companies of the 21st century takes to the stage to talk about what's next for their many properties—most importantly to some, Android. While rumors have circulated predicting the cessation of Google-branded Nexus devices and it's unlikely we'll see any new entries to the product line over the next few days, there's still plenty to love about the most recent Nexus products, specifically the Nexus 6. Following a troubled launch and Android 5.0 bugs that had to be patched out, it seemed at first this giant-screened phone (I refuse to use the word 'phablet') was just not destined for greatness. But time has passed, the Nexus 6 is now readily available, and Android 5.1 has mostly solved the performance issues of its predecessor. Even with new Nexus devices potentially on the horizon later this year, is it finally the Nexus 6's time to shine? I say yes.

AMIDuOS - Finally, a Great Way to Run Android Apps on Windows

It's a testament to the prevalence and progress of mobile devices: our smartphones and tablets have reached the point where they aren't merely stand-ins for 'real' computers on-the-go, but are actually so elegant and useful that sometimes we wish 'real' computers imitated them and even ran the same software. In fact, the notion of running Android apps on desktop PCs is nothing new. Bluestacks, Andy, Genymotion—all have made valiant attempts at achieving this dream, but unfortunately have also suffered from a variety of issues ranging from performance to complexity to compatibility. Needless to say, there hasn't been any one solution that stands out as more than a mere novelty, but with AMIDuOS, all that has changed in a big, big way.

Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi – A Worthy Compromise (Review)

It’s been some time since we last saw a major step forward for laptops in the 12-13″ range. Initially the form factor was the sole territory of low-powered netbooks, but then in 2009 Intel and NVIDIA teamed up for a one-two punch with the Atom and ION chips, offering then-unparallelled performance for such small packages, and soon after Intel joined the graphics game with their own Intel HD chipsets. In the years since we’ve seen upgrades only trickle in, with each successive model being an appreciable step up from the last, but never enough to justify the cost of upgrading from similar products. While netbooks stopped being called netbooks, the product category remained and simply fell into a new niche as super cheap ultraportables without substantially more grunt than their original predecessors.

Monoprice 9927 Earbuds - A Deep, Bassy Bang for Your Buck (Review)

When it comes to choosing a pair of headphones of any form factor, it can be difficult to sort through product opinions to come to any solid conclusion about the product at hand. Some audiophiles base their purchasing decisions solely on brand or just assume that higher price equals better sound, while less knowledgeable customers will struggle to find any noticeable difference between the audio quality of a $30 pair of cans and a $300 pair.

In other words, both the high-end and low-end camps have their own rampant forms of skewed opinions, which can make it tough to make an informed purchasing decision when you don’t commit to either camp hardcore yourself.

How to Make LibreOffice Look Awesome

If reading my last post has gotten you jumping on the LibreOffice train, you may be finding yourself thinking right now: “Eww, that thing looks like Office 97!” Because, well…yeah, it kinda does. While a UI overhaul is a frequent topic for discussion in LibreOffice circles, to date the makers of the software have been reluctant to incorporate any significant updates to the office suite’s look and feel. But this is open source software. It exists on your terms, not the other way around. While the default configuration may be none too adventurous, it’s actually relatively simple to shake things up for yourself and get a pretty radically different-looking office suite. You could even clone the basic appearance of recent versions of Microsoft Office if you like. Here’s how it’s done:

Who Needs Microsoft Office Anymore?

I’m not being facetious, that’s a legitimate question. There’s no doubt that Microsoft Office has been king of word processors and slide presentations pretty much since the beginning. Office was what put Microsoft on the map in the early days. However, it’s also well-known to fall a little on the pricey side, so it’s no surprise that as time has gone on and technology has matured we’ve seen more and more cheap or free alternatives crop up. Initially these alternatives weren’t even worth the money you saved, but by now a few true competitors have emerged, such as Google Docs or OpenOffice and its fork, LibreOffice. While in terms of plain feature comparison Microsoft Office still takes the cake hands-down, not everyone uses an office suite the same way, and many consumers end up paying mostly for features they’ll never even use. So I ask the question: who needs Microsoft Office anymore? Well, let’s find out.

Port Forwarding – What, Why, and How (Tutorial)

Technology imitates life. Even in cases when it wouldn’t necessarily have to, it often does. It’s just what comes naturally to both the people making the technology and the people using it. But just because some aspect of technology is functionally similar to what you and I already know and experience every day doesn’t mean it’s immediately obvious precisely how, or how to use it, or even why we’d want to. Port Forwarding is an excellent example of this kind of scenario.

Nimble Sense, Now Bringing Your Hands into VR

It’s already been a long, hard wait for Oculus’s virtual reality headset to hit the consumer market, but brace yourself, because it’s about to get even harder.

It’s been said in VR circles that Oculus is the first pillar of VR—that being the sense of presence in a virtual space. It’s your eyes and ears, your very head. And while we’ve seen some pretty creative inventions attempting to be the second pillar, it’s been pretty obvious that these are mere iterations along the path to a more practical, more streamlined future.

HP Pavilion 22/25bw – Great for the eyes and wallet (Review)

In recent years it seems monitor product announcements and reviews have grown increasingly rare. Occasionally at events like CES we’ll see a company or two bring an interesting display with them, but these are typically ultra-widescreen or ultra-HD affairs that don’t make it to market—at least, not in a timely fashion or at a consumer price level. In the meantime more and more devices are coming with integrated screens, meaning you settle for whatever you get and don’t really consider the display separately from the rest of the product. But on the desktop PC side of technology, monitors remain a very important investment for everyone to make, whether you’re into creative productivity or gaming or really anything else. While the monitor we’re here to take a look at today is by no means the best and fanciest out on the market (and it doesn’t claim to be), all things considered HP has struck a pretty great balance with the Pavilion 22bw/25bw, addressing a wide variety of needs in a single, affordable package.

Windows 10 Technical Preview Hands-On

It’s been well over a week since Microsoft first went public with the next version of the world’s most-used operating system, dubbed Windows 10 because apparently Microsoft feels the leap is so big as to warrant two integers and also because the release pattern will be changing from here on out to a quicker, incremental update system akin to Mac OSX or Linux. In fact there’s more than one thing about Windows 10 that is reminiscent of Linux distributions—a strange, but refreshing change for the Redmond-based company. While pre-release versions of Windows 8 were aimed squarely at developers, even the language in the name ‘Windows 10 Technical Preview’ demonstrates Microsoft’s shift to a consumer and business focus, and it shows in how they’ll be building the OS from now until release just one year from now.

Has the Apple Gone Rotten?

Apple hasn’t been the same since the untimely death of founder and CEO Steve Jobs three years ago—few people will argue that. In days since all the familiar Apple products have gone on being iterated year in and year out, but if it seems to you that each successive generation brings with it fewer improvements and more problems, you’re not alone. The Apple Maps fiasco that left Apple actually recommending Google Maps after removing it from their own system, the so-called ‘antennagate’ affair that dropped iPhone signals just for holding the device in a particular hand, accusations of secretly collecting personally identifiable GPS data that anyone could access, iOS bugs that entirely break some features, drain batteries, or slow CPUs to a crawl, and now the king of all controversies, the instantly infamous ‘bendgate’ problem that leaves iPhone 6 Plus devices broken just for sticking them in your pockets—what does it all indicate for the future of the tech giant?

Virtual Reality: It’s All About Social

If you cringed at the word ‘social’ in the title, my apologies. I did the same thing. No, really, I did. Because up to this point, ‘social’ and ‘gaming’ (which virtual reality is definitely linked to) have always gotten together to spawn the likes of Zynga and other infamous companies which like to exploit social media platforms by bombarding the world with games that everyone is playing, so, you know, you totally should too. For the next five minutes at least, until the next fad outdates the game you just downloaded onto your smartphone, rendering all those in-app purchases lost cash.

Indeed, there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who play social games obsessively, and those who hate them passionately.