GSC Introduces Samsung Cinema LED – HDR LED Display And JBL by HARMAN!

Golden Screen Cinemas or GSC, has announced that it is joining arms with Samsung Malaysia Electronics in introducing Cinema LED technology right here in Malaysia.
GSC & Samsung Partners Up
This new next-generation viewing experience which be made available at GSC’s flagship point in Mid Valley Megamall, marks a milestone for GSC with Samsung’s Cinema LED implementation. The country follows suit from other regions such as China, Korea, as well as in Europe.
The new addition to the cinema will see it deliver a more captivating and vibrant viewing experience, with its audio being provided by audio technologies from JBL by HARMAN Professional Solutions and Samsung Audio Lab. The integration of the new audio tech, includes powerful speakers bordering the screen, and an expanded audio ‘sweet spot’ throughout the theater’s seating space.

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The LED screen, which measures 10.3m wide in size, brings HDR picture quality to the big screen for spectators to be immerse with. It is able to show the brightest colors, better looking whites, and deepest blacks at a nearly infinite contrast ratio.
For more information, you can go and checkout GSC’s website by clicking right here.
Pokdepinion: This sounds awesome. Quite intrigued by how it will change the experience of watching movies in cinemas. That being said, I don’t think I would have the time to go there and experience it myself. *sobs

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As some of you may know by now, Valve was recently sued for patent infringement, with the Steam Controller being the main cause. As a result, the company behind Steam is now getting a fine of USD $4 million.
Valve Gets Fined $4 Million for Steam Controller Patent Lawsuit

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After getting sued by SCUF, the peripheral maker now owned by Corsair, Valve has lost their case and is getting fined USD $4 million (RM16.2 million). However, there is a chance that the final amount could be changed later on.
According to Corsair, the jury verdict was said to be unanimous on the case, which means Valve could end up paying more than just USD $4 million, up to the statutory limit of treble damages. This is rather interesting as the Steam Controller didn’t well in the market and it has now been discontinued, so it’s going to be hard to see how much the figure would change.
The case initially started in 2014 where Ironburg Inventions warned Valve on the patent infringement. Their lawyers argued that Valve is aware that their conduct involved a high risk of infringement, and they did it anyway. Valve on the other hand argued that the Steam Controller and SCUF’s controller look nothing alike and dismissed it.
We’ll most likely see them make an appeal on the decision before they have to pay out. We’ll report more on this as soon as information becomes available so stay tuned.
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Pokdepinion: Given the product didn’t do well, that amount seems a bit excessive to me. But if that perhaps, I suppose they want to set some form of precedence for this kind of thing moving forward.
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HUAWEI Aims Big With The Y7 – Set to release 7th of July!

Today HUAWEI announce that they are planning on releasing the HUAWEI Y7 Prime, which is set to come out on the 7th of July 2017. Here are some of the details that we’ve gathered.
HUAWEI Y7 Prime

The Y7 Prime is retailing at RM 999 and is fitting for people who are looking for simplicity and functionality in one big package.

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The premium range of HUAWEI smartphones have been performing tremendously in Malaysia and we are very encouraged by the strong support received here. As a sign of our commitment to the Malaysian mobile devices market, HUAWEI aims to expand our mid-range consumer smartphones segment, further allowing relationship growth with even more audience segments. Matthew Ng, Deputy Country Director Business Group, HUAWEI Technologies Malaysia

As you can see, the phone packs quite a combo all together considering that it is a mid-range consumer smartphone. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Processor with 3GB of RAM. It comes with a 32GB internal storage with the option to expand up to 128GB. Build wise, it has a full-metal build with a sandblasted finish. The Y7 is packed with a 4000mAh battery which is quite big. It should last a full day of activities for all those picture taking, videos, and social media feeds.
In the camera’s department, it sports a 12MP rear camera with 1.25μm pixels and a 8MP sensor front camera with f/2.0 aperture, suitable for selfie taking. For display, it has a 2.5D 5.5-inch HD display and supports a dual SIM slot. The Y7 Prime runs on the latest Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.1 customization. It comes in two colour options; gold and black.
Pokdepinion: I am kind of intrigued and interested with the Y7. Quite a reasonable price considering it looks like an all-rounder phone. Would certainly have a look into it.
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AMD Radeon RX 6800 Review — the Goldilocks RDNA 2 card?

I would say that AMD has made an astounding leap forward with the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. While the previous generation could only keep up with the mid-range GeForce RTX 20-series cards, the Radeon RX 6800 XT proved capable of trading punches with the GeForce RTX 3080 while consuming less power and also being slightly more affordable. But that was the Radeon RX 6800 XT. Will the Radeon RX 6800 similarly shine at about $70 less? Well, that’s what we are here to see, right?
Unboxing

Packaging wise, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 comes in a much smaller and simpler box than the Radeon RX 6800 XT. Gone is the magnetic lid in favor of a basic hard paper sleeve.

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The inner tray still sports a similar cover over the GPU, with a small pocket behind it for the user guide. And beneath it is the AMD Radeon RX 6800 protected by lots of foam.

Appearance

Design wise, there’s little separating the AMD Radeon RX 6800 from its bigger brethren. Some of the fancy chrome accents from the beefier card has been minimized into little slits, although the triple 80mm fans are still here. The blades are linked together with a ring too, promising good static pressure to force air through the fin stack.

Over on the back side we see AMD kept it pretty similar as well. The backplate is made of aluminium, and is predominantly silver except for the black accents running along its sides. There’s a Radeon symbol engraved into the metal as well, although I think I would appreciate it more if AMD revisited their fancy translucent cube design from the Vega series for branding.

The side is probably where you would really notice the difference between the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and the Radeon RX 6800 XT. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 is actually quite a bit thinner, and the Radeon logo here is in red instead of the translucent white that the heftier card touted. It still takes two 8-pin power connectors, but we will comment more on that later.

For the outputs, AMD kept it down to a simple two DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.1 and one USB-C output arrangement. The hawk-eyed among you might also notice that the shroud doesn’t extend beyond the PCIe bracket on the AMD Radeon RX 6800, thanks to its thinner profile. You can see that AMD probably went with steel here as we can see signs of corrosion.

While the Radeon logo on the side appeared a bit more opaque, it still allows for a similar red glow when the card is running. Overall, if you install this into a build, few would be able to identify whether this is the Radeon RX 6800 XT or the AMD Radeon RX 6800 at first glance. Which is good, as it means that AMD has a very consistent design language over their lineup of reference cards.
Specifications
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

GPU
AMD Radeon RX 6800 (Navi 21 XL)
TSMC 7nm

Clocks
Game Clock: Up to 1815MHz
Boost Clock: Up to 2105MHz

Cores
3840 Stream Processors
60 Ray Accelerators

Memory
128MB Infinity Cache
16GB GDDR6

Memory Speed
GDDR6 16Gbps

Memory Interface
256-bit

Display outputs
2 x DisplayPort 1.4
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x USB-C

Power connector(s)
2 x 8-pin

Recommend PSU
650W

Interface
PCIe 4.0 x16

Multi-GPU support
No

Dimensions
26.7 x 12.0 x 4.0 cm
(2 slot)

Test Machine

CPU
Intel Core i9-10900K @ 5.1GHz

Motherboard
GIGABYTE AORUS Z490 MASTER

Memory
2 x 8GB T-Force Xtreem ARGB 3600MHz CL14

Storage
120GB Kingston UV400 SATA SSD
1TB Kingston KC2500
960GB Kingston UV500 SATA SSD

Power Supply
Cooler Master V1200 Platinum

Monitor
BenQ EL2870U

GPU Driver
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 21.1.1 (Optional)

Performance
Synthetic

Superposition sees the AMD Radeon RX 6800 slot in right where it is supposed to, right under the GeForce RTX 3070 and right below its bigger brother, the Radeon RX 6800 XT. That’s perfectly where it should be slotted into, given its price point.

A similar scenario is seen in 3DMark Time Spy, with a healthy gap between it and the Radeon RX 6800 XT to make sure that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 won’t be cannibalizing the pricier card any time soon.

In 3DMark Port Royal, it falls behind the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. It still enjoys a nice lead over the last-gen mid-range card, the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER. But that only paints one side of the picture. Let’s check out the gaming performance.

Gaming

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 is definitely overkill if you want to game at 1080p, as you will be looking at way over 100FPS in most games except if you want to enable DirectX Raytracing. However, an optimized implementation of raytracing like in Godfall actually has a minimal impact on performance with the Radeon RX 6800, so AMD does still have a fighting chance if they can get more developers to side with them. We can also see that in newer titles Cyberpunk 2077 and Dirt 5, Resizable BAR does serve up a very nice performance boost. Borderlands 3 appears to gain the most from Resizable BAR feature, with a huge 26% uplift.

At 1440p, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 does appear to be better utilized, with most games still well above 60FPS to offer a great playable experience. DirectX takes an even bigger toll on frame rates at this higher resolution, where Control and Watch Dogs Legion dips down to just above 30FPS.

4K is pushing the limits of what we consider playable on the AMD Radeon RX 6800, with some games dipping down below 60FPS by this point. Watch Dogs Legion and Control turns into a slideshow once DXR is enabled, making it nigh impossible to play. Cyberpunk 2077 still offers a console-grade experience with 30FPS at 4K, but of course this is without raytracing enabled as it is currently only available exclusively for NVIDIA’s cards. Here, we see that resizable BAR doesn’t offer much improvements already, albeit with a few exceptions like Borderlands 3.
On average, the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition is about 9% slower than the Radeon RX 6800 with Resizable BAR enabled, while the Radeon RX 6800 XT with both Rage Mode and Smart Access Memory enabled is on average 15% faster at 1440p. Scaling up the resolution to 4K, the gap between the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and the GeForce RTX 3070 widens to 12%, while the Radeon RX 6800 XT maintains a 14% lead. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that NVIDIA has DLSS, which will greatly improve performance in the titles that support it.

Thermals

Another thing that I can appreciate on the AMD Radeon RX 6800 is that even though AMD made the cooler thinner, it is plenty sufficient to keep the GPU cool. Unlike its bigger brother, the Radeon RX 6800 XT which routinely bumped up against its 110°C hotspot temperature limit, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 here tops out at just 90°C, which is great. The fans spin at a relatively silent 1668RPM on average through out our 30-minute test.
Power consumption is pretty low as well, with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 drawing a peak of 203W, and an average of 193W, which is significantly lower than the Radeon RX 6800 XT’s 266W peak and 254W average. This explains why the Radeon RX 6800 can run cooler than its bigger brother, even with a smaller cooler. We see average clocks of 2241MHz, well above its rated boost clocks, which is a good sign.
Conclusion

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 comes in at a pretty interesting spot with its $579 (~RM2359) MSRP. That puts it at a good $80 more than the GeForce RTX 3070, while coming in at $70 less than the Radeon RX 6800 XT. The difference in pricing is pretty directly correlated to the difference in performance versus the aforementioned cards above and below it, which is good, in a way.
With that said, I do think that it is quite unnecessary to have two cards within $70 of each other, as I do think that someone who can consider the Radeon RX 6800 might just decide to splurge for the Radeon RX 6800 XT instead to get that sweet 15% performance boost. Or perhaps AMD is hoping that people considering the GeForce RTX 3070 would do the same for the Radeon RX 6800? Of course, MSRP is pretty irrelevant at this point, but that’s all we have for reference when it comes to pricing.
Once again, as is the case with the Radeon RX 6800 XT, it really depends on whether you want to play raytraced titles of today, or you are willing to put your faith in AMD working with more developers so we can see more titles that are optimized for AMD’s raytracing implementation like Godfall. If the former is what you want, go with NVIDIA cards. Once you turn on DLSS, even the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti can beat the AMD Radeon RX 6800. But if you believe in AMD, and trust their future plans for stuff like FidelityFX Super Resolution, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 does offer a lot of raw performance for the money.
And unlike its bigger brother, the reference cooler here is actually more than sufficient to keep the GPU running well within its thermal limits, so that’s definitely a win.

Our thanks to AMD Malaysia for sending us the AMD Radeon RX 6800 for review.

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Apple Card User Becomes Victim Of Fraud Even When He Never Used His Card

Over in the US, a man claims that he has encountered a fraud issue with his Apple Card. What’s surprising is that he adds that he has never utilize the card in the first place.
The man, who goes by the name of Larry said that he had to deal with an Apple Card charge that happened in Chicago while he happens to live somewhere else on the West Coast.
Reports suggest that his titanium Apple Card’s information had been skimmed and cloned by a thief, but it doesn’t make sense. Why? Larry adds that he has never used his physical card, where he has said that he’s only used Apple Pay with his card.

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He then sought to seek some answers from Apple Support and it seems that they were confused as to what had happen. Here’s their response:

“I understand this can be concerning, especially regarding your financial security, however it is the most secure system of credit cards I’ve ever seen. Not only is it extreme hard to get a hold of credit card information, but if somehow there are fraudulent charges, you will never be held responsible for unauthorized transactions on Apple Card.”

It’ll be interesting to find out how they solve the issue. Once there’s more info on it, we will update the article accordingly. Until then stay tuned to Pokde.net.
Pokdepinion: I guess anything man-made can be undone it seems…
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realme X2 Pro is the most hyped 90 Hz smartphone right now!

The realme X2 Pro touts a 90 Hz Super AMOLED display, but it’s definitely not the first to offer a 90 Hz refresh rate. However we do think it might very well be the best so far. Why do we say so? Well, read on to find out ;)
Large 4000 mAh battery

It goes without saying that a higher refresh rate display means that you will have higher power consumption. Having a larger battery definitely helps, and the realme X2 Pro’s 4000 mAh is definitely one of the largest. At the very least, it’s larger than the OnePlus 7T‘s 3800 mAh and the laughably small 2800 mAh battery in the Pixel 4. It is also the only one out there with 50W SuperVOOC charging, so it will not only last long, but also charge fast.
Comes with a headphone jack
Having beautiful visuals is just one half of the equation. For a great experience, you also need to have great audio. While you can probably enjoy excellent sound over Bluetooth if you are watching movies on the sweet 90 Hz Super AMOLED display, what about if you are gaming?

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Latency renders Bluetooth earphones useless, and you can use USB-C headphones or dongles with other lesser devices like the Pixels, but why bother when you can just connect a 3.5mm headphone straight into the realme X2 Pro, and still have the USB-C port open in case you need to top up the battery while gaming.
Only 90 Hz smartphone with a 64MP camera

Yes, as far as I am aware, there is only one 90 Hz smartphone with a 64MP sensor, and its the realme X2 Pro. While you might probably be too busy ogling the smoothness of the screen, when you need to take photos, the realme X2 Pro has the upper hand here over most of the other 90 Hz smartphones out there.
Best value for money?

My favorite thing about realme smartphones is the way they manage to deliver excellent value at every price point. While we have yet to know the pricing of the realme X2 Pro, we believe realme Malaysia will surprise us by giving us much better value for money than the other 90 Hz smartphones out there. You will be getting the fluid 90 Hz Ultra Smooth Display in addition to the Snapdragon 855 Plus, 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage and 12GB RAM anyways, specifications which many much pricier smartphones don’t offer in the first place. Well, the only way to find out is to catch the launch happening this 2nd December ;)
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Hitman 3 VR Officially Coming To PC

A fan of virtual reality on PC? What about the Hitman franchise? Well here’s some great news for you: Hitman 3 is coming to the platform on VR.
Hitman 3 VR coming to PC

We're excited to announce that HITMAN 3 – Year 2 starts on 20 January 2022.
Prepare for new maps, new storylines, new modes and new ways to play. pic.twitter.com/ALtABxoaqx
— HITMAN 3 (@Hitman) November 22, 2021

The announcement was made over on Twitter by game developer IO Interactive where they’ve revealed the game’s updates and what to expect as Hitman 3 reaches its second year.
One of the biggest news from the post was the game will be arriving on PC on VR next year in 2022. They’ve showcased that the game to be played with both Oculus Rift S and Valve Index.

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Aside from that, they’ve stated that the game has over 50 million players at the moment which makes it the most popular Hitman game in the franchise. Not to forget, the game developer looks to introduce a bunch of new maps, storylines, modes, as well as a permanent addition of Elusive Target Arcade mode and ray-tracing support on PC.

As you may have known, the VR version of the game was previously available only on PSVR. Hitman 3 VR is scheduled for a release on PC in January 2022. Considering that we’re nearly into December already, that’s not far away from now.
For more on the latest tech and gaming news plus reviews, stay tuned to Pokde.net.
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Pokdepinion: No offence PS gamers, now the game has a real platform to take advantage from. Well at least, that’s what you’d expect anyways.
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New Windows 10 Update Reportedly Breaks Webcam Function

Did you get a prompt for a new Windows 10 update on your PC? You might want to wait out on that one as it has reportedly been breaking the webcam function. This is causing some major headaches for a lot of people, especially those working at home and remotely.
New Windows 10 Update Breaks Webcam Function

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The Windows 10 update KB4601319, which was released in February 2021, has been found to have broken the webcam function. So far, it has been reported to affect some Intel RealSense Depth and Razer Stargazer webcams.
While there’s no confirmed reason behind the issue, it was speculated that this happened as a result of a missing virtual driver from the update. As of right now, the only solution is to either not install the update, or uninstall it completely. Microsoft is said to be working on a solution for the issue at the moment, but no fix has been released yet.
Thank you for bringing the issues with Intel Realsense Camera to our attention. We are aware of the issue and are working on a fix. In the meantime, if you need to get your camera working, please follow the instructions on how to remove an installed Windows Update.
Microsoft engineer on Feedback Hub
Apart from that, it has been known to cause other issues as well, including wireless mouse performance, secondary displays, and other accessories. There have also been issues of random Blue Screen of Deaths, but that may be unrelated.
For now, we recommend staying up from Windows 10 update KB4601319 as it appears to bring more problems than fixes at the moment.
Source
Pokdepinion: This is why if there is a new Windows 10 update, I’m not installing it immediately. You never know what it might end up breaking.
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Redmi 9T With Snapdragon 662 And 48MP Quad Cameras Launched From RM599

Xiaomi Malaysia has introduced the latest entry-level smartphone in the country in the form of the Redmi 9T, where it packs a Snapdragon 662 chipset, a big 6000mAh battery and 48MP quad camera setup.
Redmi 9T launched in Malaysia

Featuring a 6.53-inch FHD+ Dot Drop display, the Redmi 9T also comes with dual speakers for you to enjoy your media content.

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For cameras, it comes with a 48MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide lens, 2MP macro shooter, and finally a 2MP depth sensor at the back. As for selfies, there’s a 8MP front camera for you to use.
The Redmi 9T supports 18W fast charging but the charger that’s provided in the box supports up to 22.5W.
Redmi 9T will be available for RM599 for the 4GB+64GB variant and RM699 for the 6GB+128GB version starting from the 15th of January 2020. Both of them will be available online at their official online stores at Shopee and Lazada as well as offline at all authorized Mi Stores and other official retailers in the country.
If you want to learn more on the Redmi 9T, do head to the link right here to find out our full thoughts on the device.
Pokdepinion: Be sure to check out our full review of the device to find out how it performs!
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Recently, Bloomberg reported that Sony will be forced to cut down their PS5 production numbers by about 4 million units due to some manufacturing issues. Now, it appears that the information isn’t accurate as Sony has chimed in on the matter.
Sony Debunks False Reports on Lower PS5 Production Numbers

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Sony Interactive Entertainment have given a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, stating that the report by Bloomberg is false. In fact, there have not been changes to the number of units being manufactured since it began mass production.
While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false. We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
It’s rather surprising to a large company like Sony directly shooting down reports such as from Bloomberg. However, given how the report has affected the company’s stock value, we can understand why they’d like to clarify on the whole situation.
With us getting closer and closer to the launch of the next generation of gaming consoles, PlayStation fans can rest assured that there will be no sudden reduction in PS5 units being shipped out, so it should still not be a trouble to get your hands on it this holiday season.
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Pokdepinion: It’s great to know that there are no issues in the manufacturing process. If there is an unusually small amount of units available, I’m very certain there will be people buying it just so that they can sell it off immediately for an easy profit.
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Digi Introduces Hari Gaji Specials — For Both Prepaid And Postpaid Customers!

The folks at Digi has launched their Hari Gaji Specials, a monthly promo that offers value-for-money data deals for both Prepaid and Postpaid customers.
Digi Hari Gaji Specials

From today till the 27th of February, Digi users can find the 4-day limited time deals on the MyDigi App and Digi Store Online. The offer is for those who wants additional data before the month ends.

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For Digi Prepaid users, you can get free 5GB internet when you make a digital reload of RM30 and above on MyDigi app, Touch ‘n Go, Boost, Shopee or Lazada apps.
As for Postpaid subscribers, you can now purchase a 15GB (7 day) Internet pass for RM15 through the Digi Store Online and MyDigi app.
For more details on the offer, you may head to the link right here. Stay tuned to Pokde.net for more on the latest tech and gaming news plus reviews.
Pokdepinion: I guess they do come in handy when you’re about to reach your limit of data. For me personally, I’d rarely run out of it since I don’t really go outdoors a lot.
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MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE motherboard leaked with 960 EUR price tag

Rumors have pointed to the 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10900K drawing over 300W, so you can pretty much expect board manufacturers to make sure that their boards won’t just go up in flames when you overclock one of the 10th Gen parts. Well, MSI definitely went above and beyond with the MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE which features an impressive VRM configuration, among other things.
MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE

The leak have hinted to an 16+1+1 power delivery configuration from Intersil. The leak also goes on to reveal that each of the power stages can handle 90A, which is much higher than the 60A power stages we see on most premium AMD X570 offerings. With the rumored 16 phases, you are looking at a power delivery system that can deliver 1440A the CPU cores alone without breaking a sweat. Can, and should, are very different things, BTW. Of course, it is worth noting that the MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE is their highest end board, so you would expect such over-the-top specifications as this board is meant to handle extreme overclocking on the Comet Lake-S platform.

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🌈
*Dynamic Dashboard 2.
A colorful OLED panel Indicates the status of your GODLIKE and shows off your own persinality.
— 比屋定さんの戯れ言@Komachi (@KOMACHI_ENSAKA) April 19, 2020

In addition to the ridiculously impressive VRM setup, the networking components are also pretty interesting. 10 GbE LAN from Aquantia is the fastest port, paired up with a Realtek 2.5 GbE LAN, and of course there’s WiFi 6 too, courtesy of the Intel AX201 chip. There will also be two Thunderbolt 3 ports, which will let you connect other peripherals like high speed storage or external GPUs. Last but not least, there a Dynamic Dashboard 2, which is a color OLED panel to show you the status of your board or just for customization. All of that doesn’t come cheap, with the pricing leaked to be a whopping 960 EUR (~RM4558).
More affordable MSI Z490 boards?
          MSI MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS            MSI MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI          MSI Z490-A PRO
Meanwhile if you want to look further down the range, KOMACHI also leaked out images for the MSI MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI, MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS and the MSI Z490-A PRO. While most of the Z490-A PRO looks pretty basic, especially its PCH heatsink which is a disgusting spring-loaded chunk of aluminium, the VRM looks pretty beefy. Motherboard makers designing boards for the Z490 platform are most probably required to ensure that they are capable of at least handling a Core i9-10900K at stock, thus necessitating these impressive VRM configurations.

pic.twitter.com/0unsnbkWeR
— 188号 (@momomo_us) April 18, 2020

Here are the prices of the MSI boards leaked by @momomo_us, so you know that you have more affordable options ranging all the way from 960 EUR (~RM4558) down to 200 EUR (~RM950). I am not sure if the prices here are inclusive of VAT, although I definitely hope so. With the boards costing a pretty penny and the 10th Gen Comet Lake processors not looking all that affordable, Intel Z490 might be a pretty premium platform for gamers to adopt.
Pokdepinion: Man a color OLED display on the motherboard itself. Sure seems interesting!
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AMD demos its AMD Naples against the Intel E5 Xeon CPU – First chip will be ready on Q2 2017

AMD is looking forward to entering the server and datacenter market with its new high performance CPU for server, “Naples” based on the new “Zen” architecture. If the Ryzen CPUs targeted at consumers are to be used as a benchmark, AMD’s new server CPUs will seriously disrupt the market with their value for money.

AMD Naples is the next generation AMD CPU for servers, being the most powerful CPUs AMD has designed yet with up to 32 cores and 64 threads for the cloud datacenter and traditional on-premise server configurations.

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In the preview, AMD compared its new processor against today’s competitive offering, promising to surpass the competition on critical parameters, with 45% more cores, 60% more input / output capacity (I/O), and 122% more memory bandwidth.

Those aren’t plain numbers though, as those specifications help to deliver performance up to 2.5x faster, or even being able to process an analysis that the competition has entirely failed to work with.

AMD Naples is a highly scalable SoC architecture, with up to 32 cores and 64 threads and industry leading memory bandwidth at 8-channels of memory per CPU. In a 2-socket server, it will support up to 32 DIMMs of DDR4 in 16 memory channels, delivering up to 4 terabytes of total memory capacity.
The AMD first CPU for server are scheduled to be available in Q2 2017, with volume availability in the second half of the year through OEM and channel partners.
Pokdepinion: Most of us knows that AMD Ryzen has literally killed Intel’s high performance chip in most benchmarks save for gaming. With Naples, can we expect the same thing to happen? Will we see the rebirth of SeaMicro soon?
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Synology DiskStation DS220+ Review – Almost perfect solution for Home NAS storage with Seagate IronWolf

Buy Synology DiskStation DS220+
Buy Seagate IronWolf

At this point, it’s definitely not the best time to live in already. The outbreak has brought about so many changes in the way we do things, and probably the first thing most of us are soon going to realize once all of this is behind our backs, is the importance of backups. Our reliance on data has never reduced, and it’s only going north from this point onwards. The wakeup call that we should realize by now, is the fact that Google Photos ended their unlimited photos backup earlier last month. We have also seen these occurrences happening to Flickr, among other free solution providers and there is only one message we get in the end, “deal with it!”
They’re right. If a giant like Google can’t support the entire civilization, I don’t think anyone can. Storage is expensive and redundancy, even more than that. Our pictures aren’t getting smaller in size, videos demand higher framerates with higher resolutions, number of documents keep increasing as we strive to reduce paper, where does it all end? To keep a copy of something that will probably never be retrieved even after 10 years, and have multiple backups of it, data storage is a real problem. And I say, it’s each their own’s problem. If we lose our data, it’s entirely only on us and usually, by the time the damage is done, it’s too late. The solution? Start with a basic Home NAS (Network Attached Storage) and realize what I’m talking about. I’ll walk you through, with my tool of choice today, the Synology DiskStation DS220+ Home NAS.

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Unboxing the Synology DiskStation DS220+

Upon removing everything from the box, we are presented with the DS220+ unit itself, a power adapter, two CAT5e LAN cables, a few screws and a Quick installation guide. I don’t think we were expecting anything else here, and we’ll get to why 2 LAN cables later on.
Appearance

I’m not particularly a huge fan of the front removable glossy shield, to be honest. I was hoping it was a door with some locking mechanism, an effortless extra layer of security for the expensive stuff that we’re going to be putting inside. I do, however, like the way the bays are removed, the installation and inserting back. It’s not really a new sight if you’re used to NAS storages. It works, so let’s not “fix” it.

The front façade has pretty well organized LEDs that gives us all the necessary status that we need about the NAS storage; the power status, network status, and each disk’s status. These LEDs’ brightness can be adjusted, turned off, or even scheduled from the DSM (DiskStation Manager), Synology’s own web-based OS for their NAS solutions. Under the LED houses a USB3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) port with a Copy button and finally the power button at the bottom.

Upon removing the disk caddies, you can see a slot for upgrading the RAM from 2GB to up to 6GB by adding a stick of 4GB SODIMM DDR4 RAM.

Moving to the back, the prominently placed humongous fan sits gracefully at the crown while two Gigabit Ethernet ports snugly hug each other right under it. There is also another USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) port at the back and a 12V power socket just below. There’s a physical hard reset button and for those who find the NAS enclosure more precious than the data in the disks inside itself, there’s a Kensington lock slot too which I found it amusing given that the front door and the disks are so easily removable.

I’d like to also talk a little about the HDD that I’ll be using. We’re using the Seagate IronWolf series hard drive which is specifically designed for NAS storage. It is essential to pick the right drive for NAS storage because we want something that was designed to run continuously day and night with capabilities of intensive read and write sequences. Look no further, get the Seagate IronWolf or IronWolf Pro without a doubt. Seagate IronWolf uses AgileArray which is ground breaking excellent combination of hardware, firmware and software to achieve highest levels of reliability by better handling errors recovery, optimizing RAID, higher vibration tolerance (especially since we have multi bay NAS), improve streaming, and reduce power consumption. That’s like a match made in heaven for a storage solution. So, again, if you’re hunting for a storage solution specifically for NAS, just get the Seagate IronWolf. You’ll find 99% of tech enthusiasts suggesting the same too.Also, always make sure you purchasing original IronWolf drives from authentic resellers, as not only it will entitle you the drives with warranty complimentary 3 years of warranty, it also provide rescue data recovery service to help fend against data loss or drive damage.
Specifications

CPU
Intel Celeron J4025 (2C2T) 64-bit 14nm 2.0GHz burstable up to 2.9GHz

RAM
2 GB DDR4 (non-ECC) upgradeable to 6GB

Drive Bays
2 bays, compatible with 3.5” HDD and 2.5” SATA HDD/SSD

Max Single Volume
108TB

Hot-swappable
Yes

LAN ports
2 x 1Gbps RJ45 with Link Aggregation support

File System Support (Internal)

Btrfs
EXT4

File System Support (External)

Btrfs
EXT4
EXT3
FAT
NTFS
HFS+
exFAT

Dimensions
(165 x 108 x 232.2) mm

Weight
1.3kg without drives

Fan
1 x 92mm fan

Power Supply Adapter
60W

Setting up

Synology really have made setting up the DS220+ an extremely simple task. Even finding the NAS in your local network, if you’re a newbie, there is a tool that they have designed, available here.

For this review, we are coupling the DS220+ with a pair of 4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS storage so we have two choices here:

Combine both of them into a single array of 8TB of total storage with no redundancy
Have a total storage of 4TB with the second disk acting as a mirror of the main storage

See, I’m not mentioning RAID here because RAID is not the only choice we have. Since the DS220+ is a 2-bay NAS storage, these are the options available:

RAID 0 – Combine both of the disks into a single array, increasing its performance by striping, but there will be no redundancy. If one of the disks fail, we will lose the entire data pool. In my setup, we could get 4TB + 4TB = 8TB of total storage with faster R/W capabilities.
RAID 1 – Mirror the second disk. Whatever I send to the DS220+ gets written in one of the disks, and the other disk mirrors it. In case one of the disks fail, we do not lose our data, but we max out at 4TB while the other 4TB is essentially just there for rainy days.
Basic – As the name suggest, this allows us to use the DS220+ with a single disk and in future, we can migrate it to RAID1 on this NAS, or even RAID5 in a much larger NAS.
JBOD – Just a Bunch Of Disks. We can create one huge storage pool and just keep adding disks as we wish, but since ours limit us to two, we could get 4TB + 4TB = 8TB here. JBOD stores data randomly across multiple disks, so if one disk fails, data on that storage is definitely gone. It doesn’t mean our volume would still be mounted though, but we can run some recovery tools and retrieve whatever bits and pieces that are on the other disk.
SHR – Yeah, I had the same expression. What’s SHR? Then I found out that it’s Synology Hybrid RAID that creates flexible storage with optimized capacity and performance. It’s quite a long explanation, so you can head over here to read it In short, it solves a major problem in RAID configuration that demands similar sized disks.

Already finding it hard to decide? Nobody asked Google which one would they pick when they provided the free storage, did they? Suddenly there are so many factors involved. The greed to have more storage, the cost of having it, the fear of losing. Isn’t this getting fun now? We’re just getting started. We still have another decision to make. Once we have chosen our pool type, we need to format it to a volume with either;

Ext4 – it gives us better performance. If speed is what we need, ext4 is the choice. Also, if we have an older Synology NAS with older DSM, we would want to use this for cross compatibility.
Btrfs – The more versatile storage that lets us create snapshots, set folder quota, and data integrity protection.

I’m settling with SHR storage pool, which means, my dependency of NAS storage is going to be on Synology from this point onwards (Goodbye, WD) and since performance is not much of my priority for NAS, I happily settled for btrfs file system for my volume. That’s really all we need to know for setting up because the rest is intuitively done using the DSM wizard. Speaking of DSM.
DSM 7.0
DiskStation Manager (DSM) is Synology’s rendition of their DiskStation OS. No other NAS, and I repeat, no other NAS comes any close to the beauty of Synology’s DSM UI and UX. It’s like the MacOS of NAS. DSM is the one thing that has always attracted me towards Synology and it just keeps on getting better and better.
When I got my DS220+, it was pre-installed with DSM 6.2.4 and I was using it for a couple of weeks until Synology announced the availability of DSM 7.0. So I reset everything, installed DSM 7.0 and started this review all over again. That’s because, DSM 7.0 brings about some really cool features. I’ll highlight some of them here apart from praising its even more beautiful UI this time.
          DSM 6.2.4            DSM 7.0
ActiveInsight lets you scale your NAS system even outside of your home with intelligent monitoring and customization. If you want to build your own mini Google and have the money to play with, this one lets you do it. You will be warned with potential anomalies in any of the NAS that you have connected to the pool. It’s currently in Beta and there will be subscription to it in a later date. Since I have only one Synology NAS here, let me show you a sample diagram instead of how your mini-Google can actually look like.

Synology Photos is probably the one reason you would want to upgrade to DSM 7.0 immediately. You get a Google Photos like interface with face recognition and quite the shebang. There might be some clunky feeling when you first start using it, especially the mobile app, but hey, give it more time to mature. Google Rome was not built in one day, right?
SAN Solutions is really not a joke. If you have ever worked in a datacenter, you would understand the complexity of SAN storage especially one that is decentralized. With DSM 7.0, we can now administrate iSCSI and Fibre Channel SAN. Of course, you don’t setup something like that with DS220+, but this one did get me excited.
User Experience
I think the first and foremost evaluation point for a NAS storage has to be its setup process. Synology claims that we can get it up and running in less than 10 minutes and they were not kidding. The setup process is a wizard that is really straightforward. Once the NAS is detected, we install the DSM, optionally connect the Synology account, and we’re in. Of course that’s all in its barebones.

My first priority was to setup the SSL certificate (and it should be yours too). It’s 2021 and SSL should be a common practice especially when dealing with something that has internet accessibility. With the DS220+, we can setup Synology’s own certificate, or use Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, or even upload our own self-signed or 3rd party certificate. Once this is done, we can be more confident in using internet based services.
Now just setup a shared folder which will be guided by the wizard. This is where we will need to make our decisions that we discussed in the setting up part earlier. Once this is done, we’re ready to start transferring file, but we need a protocol to connect to it.
Which leads us to the file transfer methods. The Synology has pretty much every method to interconnect which includes SAMBA (SMB), Apple Filing Pool (AFP), Network File System (NFS) that includes up to NFSv3, Secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP and SFTP) and rsync backup. All of this can be setup in the File Services menu and again, it’s all very well organized. Just remember, do not use SMB1.0 to avoid potential ransomware attacks.

Now, most of the security will be managed by the Security Advisor which I kinda liked. It runs the tests for us, and the presents insightful actions to fix them.
As far as user and roles is concerns, the DSM has a very elaborate option that lets us setup multiple user roles and groups with relevant access to services. We can even bind a Domain or use LDAP or Synology’s Single Sign On (SSO) to integrate to web services and applications.
The next interesting part is the Synology’s QuickConnect that allows accessing the NAS from outside of our local network. Give it an ID and the rest is all handled by the DSM. There is also DDNS which is very useful when we use dynamic IPs – which is very much the case for most of us in Malaysia.

For the advanced users, you will be happy to know that there is also Telnet and SSH capabilities on the DS220+. Of course, it’s only allowed for administrator group users. For those who want to implement SNMP network management, yep, you got it, it’s possible too.
Here comes my favorite part. The Synology is not just a NAS. We can actually turn it into a micro-server if we want to. We’re talking about serious business here. You can run an Apache HTTP server, or a NodeJS environment, or PHP7.4 instance, Perl, Python2, PhpMyAdmin for database administration, MariaDB, WordPress, Docker containers, CardDAV server, a dedicated DHCP server, DNS server, iTunes server, just to name a few. Thanks to the Package Center, you are able to host all of these on the Synology DiskStation DS220+ itself.

From the Package Center, you can install the Synology Photos that can fast track your personal Google Photos alternative which you can couple with the “Photos” app on your smartphone and sync straight into your DS220+ which is nifty!
The Synology DiskStation DS220+ is perfect! Well, almost perfect for the most part. There are some parts where the DS220+ really could use some love. For starters, the lack of anything above Gigabit port does sound a bit discouraging. There’s not 2.5GbE, no 5GbE nor any 10GbE. Surely, most routers at home would not be equipped with anything above Gigabit, neither do we have internet faster than that at the time of writing, but a lot of home PCs now have dual LAN ports with such capabilities. My ROG Rampage VI Extreme has a 10GbE that I could hook to the NAS and totally run a beautiful rsync backup for my PC.

Synology did equip the DS220+ with dual Gigabit LAN ports though, that we could use for setting up Link Aggregation. This itself works with various methods, whether we’re just hooking two LAN cables to our router, or connecting to IEEE 802.3ad LACP, or Balance XOR, or just use the other LAN port for active/standby.

Next, Synology only included 2GB DDR4 onboard RAM that is not removable and our only choice is to add another 4GB stick and make it 6GB. We could have had 8GB if the default was 4GB. It just ticks me off a bit. The processor is pretty ace though. The 14nm Intel Celeron J4025 two-cores two-threads CPU has a base clock of 2.0GHz that can be burst up to 2.9GHz with a 4MB cache. It has a maximum support of 8GB DDR4 RAM, which is why the 2GB DDR4 is really a turn off. This CPU is also packaged with Intel UHD 600 Graphics which is why this love-hate relationship leans more towards the loving side still.

There is also a lack of NVMe slot for caching purposes like the DS720+ has. This would’ve given the DS220+ a definite huge advantage if it was there, especially for home use which the current speed provided is suffice. So don’t let this turn DS220+ unfavourable though, because at the price of RM1,499 this is still worth every bang of the buck you spend on it.
Conclusion
The Synology DiskStation DS220+ is more than just a storage box, it’s a mini little server that you can have at home without hurting your pocket. If you’re planning to get your first NAS storage, I highly recommend you to start with the DS220+. Sure, it would be nice to have 4GB of RAMs instead, or a 10GbE port, but if we’re talking about a starting point as the first NAS, I can’t think of another solution that would come close to this.
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A Florida Teen Has Set An Unofficial Fastest Typing World Record At 293 WPM

That’s roughly 5 words per second, if you’re counting.

A 16-year-old Florida resident by the Internet alias of MythicalRocket has set an unofficial typing record of 293 words per minute over a 15-second burst. The unofficial record-setter uploaded a video showing his endeavor achieving 293 wpm with near-perfect 97% spelling accuracy on Monkeytype on 30 April.

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MythicalRocket strictly speaking isn’t just some random guy in one American state that you find many weird things happening (just ask the Internet what “Florida Man” is all about): in fact, he’s already been doing speed typing for a few years by now. His keyboard of choice? A full-size SteelSeries Apex Pro with optical switches – though he thinks the switches makes little difference in speed.
In a Twitter DM with Tom’s Hardware, he said: “I used to use the (SteelSeries) Apex 7, which is basically the Apex Pro but with brown switches, and I was pretty much just as fast (…) the switch initially took a while to get used to, but after a few weeks, I got back up to speed.” He also says that SteelSeries keyboards are “pretty much” the only thing he uses. He also says the low-profile Logitech G915 (renamed as G913 in Malaysian markets) isn’t what he likes due to the low-profile nature of the switches.
Many speed typists went with more efficient layouts such as Dvorak or Colemak – and he knows Colemak and Canary layouts too (which he also achieved 200+ WPM on). However, his record run actually uses the ubiquitous QWERTY layout – and apparently the layout “isn’t actually all that bad”, he says.

As of right now, the official Guinness World Record holder belongs to Barbara Blackburn at 212 WPM with Dvorak layout – which has since been unofficially beaten numerous times – though MythicalRocket seemingly has no plans to contact the organization in order to validate his record attempts.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
Pokdepinion: I can’t even see where his finger is typing on with that speed…
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Asus ROG Media Press Taipei – Join The Republic

So yesterday, my Computex 2016 trip came to an end. We attended the Republic Of Gamers (ROG) media press event right after our Zenvolution media press so this post is considered a little late. But this was intentional. I went to Computex mostly for the ROG stuff and I wanted to consolidate my opinions based on the media release AND the Computex exhibition. So let’s begin!
Join The Republic is the tagline this time around. No registration needed :P
The opening speech was done by Mr. Jonny Shih, chairman of Asus and he seems excited with the offerings that he has to propose this year. But of course, he has all the reasons to be excited because Asus has really filled up their arsenal this year as compared to the last year.
Mr. Jonny was all dressed up specially for this event.
The highlight began once Derek Yu – the ROG General took the stage. Derek has a solid portfolio with ROG and he was definitely THE person to present the products.

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Derek Yu – The ROG General
So first up is the ROG Avalon which is at the moment in it’s working prototype level. The goal here is to build a very modular form factor rigs, reducing cables and supporting plug-and-play methodologies. Some of the highlights are the swappable back for I/O flexibility and plug-and-play SSD cage which means replacing hard drives will be a piece of cake. At first I was wondering, why would I even want to swap my SSDs that frequently. I myself have a hot-swappable SSD/HDD feature in my desktop and never really used. Then I realized that because of the Avalon’s portability, there really could be a need for this. If you are a true gamer, your game data would be relatively huge – saved data + game’s external data. You can seperate your games into multiple HDDs/SSDs and never risk losing them again. Then again, my games are rather specificly limited so I probably wouldn’t need that feature.
The ROG Avalon. Redefining modular simplicity.
The one feature that enticed me the most was the cable-free PSU interface. Because this is still an early prototype, there will be some questions that need to be ironed out moving forward. What will the capacity of the available PSUs be like? How many modular ports will be available on the Avalon since the PSU is now mounted to the system unit. But the biggest fact nowadays is that the number of users who are adopting liquid cooling is now massively increasing. And if the modularity of the system unit doesn’t comply to this, that would be a big problem. However, the ROG Avalon has been tailored to fit for both environments. Liquid or Air is now only YOUR choice.
The ROG Avalon prototype on display
The ROG logo dons on the side of the case. Plus points if this makes into a black and red theme.
Similar, yet so different..The I/O cards are totally swappable! Wanna know some example use case?
One for workstation, another for home theater. Get the idea of modularity yet? :)
This is the mainboard indeed! Two-face interfaced for storage optimization.
This is the bottom part..Nifty, right?!~
Moving on, we had the ROG G31 Edition 10 Gaming Desktop. This is where things get rather interesting. Previously, you would have seen the ASUS GR6, GR8 and the likes surfacing on gamer’s desktop and there were mixed feelings about it’s acceptance.
G31 Edition 10 Gaming Desktop. Asus is back to hit the scene even harder!
I always told my fellow readers to treat it more like a console rather than desktop looking at it’s size constraints. It fills the gap between the two rivals providing the best of both worlds in a small package. This time around, things are about to get a lot more different because Asus has crammed in TWO units of the GTX1080 into the G31 Edition 10 (The Edition 10 is actually referring to their 10th Anniversary). To make things neat and smart, the PSU has been isolated from the machine in a very beautifully designed package. The extraterrestrial design scheme is applied to both the system unit AND the PSU chamber.
I would take out my desktop’s CPU to trade with this one just for the looks! But I would need a 1200W option then :P
Can you imagine that inside this, Asus has crammed TWO units of the GTX1080?
Specs wise, we believe it will house the Intel 6th-Gen processor and up to 64GB RAMs. Apart from this, M.2 PCIe SSDs (note the plural) are going to conform to the space limitations just wonderfully with actually providing faster speeds than conventional SSDs. What a combination!
That’s how it’s connected..
2-way SLi of GTX1080 baby!
The 3D Vapor Chamber technology. Cooling has rather been improved on this little tiny monster. But we’ll only base ourselves on results.
Then, comes the ROG Swift PG248Q. Having a smaller display allows for higher overclocking possibilities. If you are not keen of wide and huge displays and are prone to get headaches due to this, you might as well opt for a smaller display but higher clock range. The PG248Q is overclockable to a whopping 180Hz refresh rate and obviously, GSync comes standard. This monitor has also been set as the exclusive monitor of ESL One 2016 & International 2016.

If we are going to talk about monitors and GSync, my personal choice is still the PG348Q which I am still hoping for it to hit the Malaysian markets soon. Oh yes, it’s not new but it WAS on display indeed.
The PG348Q 3440 x 1440 Curved IPS with GSync at 100Hz. Just perfect!
I think for it’s next generation, it should have an option to tilt the projector to face the wall…
Oh yes, the extraterrestrial alien design is the ROG official scheme basically.
Okay, it’s time to move on to the next agenda. I have toyed around with the GX700 previously, and I told you guys, there will be a GX800 update coming soon. Well, it is here and so far the most significant update is that they have SLI-ed the laptop.
GX800 announced..
Look at that. The comparison is against GTX980 with Hydro and GTX980 without Hydro.
For now, the display unit was packaging GTX980 on SLI and not GTX1080. However, one of their representative did hint that there might be a GTX1080 edition too. Asus was being sneaky this time around but GTX1080 SLi will finally make this laptop unleash the real potential (and hopefully price). Other additions were the MechTAG keyboard with RGB LED effects on each of the keys.
MechTAG keyboard with ROG Aura RGB LED
So far they Asus rep claimed that the dock is not reverse compatible. That would be a bummer but there is only one way to find out – once we get our hands on it.
+1 for the glow!
IPS GSync display
The dock does look similar to it’s predecessor and I’m getting an itch to try crossing them out!!!
Oh, and it was an engineering unit and guarded by the Asus rep so we weren’t really allowed to check it’s details. So we’ll KIV this one until it reaches our shores.
ROG Centurion – TRUE 7.1 Gaming Headset!
Yep, that’s next in our list – the ROG Centurion True 7.1 Gaming Headset. Sound is very specific to me and I don’t like to jump into them unnecessarily. But if we are talking about a TRUE 7.1 environment here, it might be a game changer. I’ll be honest, headsets were never Asus’ main league, but they are putting a lot of effort into this area, so we’ll see when we get our hands on one.
Don’t go on the looks, daddy! Don’t go on the looks! Aaarrgghh! It’s such a beauty! Hope it performs as well as it looks!
Thank you Asus! And to other brands, I can’t see my own ear so stop putting controls on the headset!!!
Oh yes, how can we forget the GTX1080?
To those who are waiting for the GTX1080, here’s the Strix GTX1080 gaming graphics card. 1936-MHz in OC mode and just like the GTX980Ti, the Strix GTX1080 will be harnessing the same design – DirectCU III with their patented wing-blade fans which are now available on quite a number of ROG products. Yep, this time it’s AURA RGB lightning so you can match it to your scheme. You would be wondering, the GPU is always facing down most of the time, why would you need RGB? Oh, that brings us to the next exciting part of our event.
You see, with the availability of the Thunderbolt 3 capable of data transfers up to 40Gbps, the possibilities in the tech industry are about to take the next level of height. Now, we can separate segments of hardware to off-load performance chambers into different silos that could work independently rather than relying on the resources of the rest of the hardware. Yep, the first thing that comes into our minds automatically is our GPU. Hence, let me introduce to you, the ASUS ROG XG Station 2 – the external graphics dock.
Although I’d rather have the window span all the way so the GPU is shown in it’s entirety.
This is going to solve the problems for the on-the-go gamer. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now officially entering the era where gaming on ultrabooks and tablets will become mainstream. As much as VR is getting hyped in the world right now, this is actually the one detail that many are missing out at the moment. Ultrabooks and tablets are getting raw processing power that can now be extended to areas where the limitation is only our imagination. Welcome to the future, guys!
So, under an encasing that stands about 273.7mm in height, 452.8mm in length and 154.9mm in width, we have 4 units of full power SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports, 1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 port, 1 A/C Power socket, 1 unit of Thunderbolt 3 slot, 2 units of XG Station 2 TypeC Port (get it? 2 units?) and 1 unit of the USB 3.0 Type B input. Which means, this can literally become your ultrabook “dock” at home. Plug in everything and station it permanently. When you’re back from your daily chores, just plug in your same laptop to this dock and your ultrabook literally turns into a gaming monster. Sounds like a dream most of us have had in years. My project? Asus Transformer 3 Pro hooked to the XG2. Hands down!
Pokdepinion: This year is going to be very interesting for me personally. Asus has plenty in their arsenal and we have enough to toy around. As silent as Asus was last year, this year they have come rather deadly against their rivals. Game On!
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OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite Unboxing and First Impressions

OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite Unboxing

The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite comes in a black box with the Nord wording clad in white with a blue background. You can also see the OnePlus logo taking a small amount of space on the top-left corner, so you know where they want you to focus more on. Given it’s your standard smartphone box thickness, I’m sure you know that a charger is inside here.

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Inside the box, you can find the following items:

Quick start guide
Warranty card
67W SuperVOOC charging brick
USB-C to USB-C cable
Clear TPU case
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite smartphone itself

OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite First Impressions

As you can see, we got the Chromatic Gray OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite (that name is a mouthful). It’s the safer option  but if you want something livelier, there’s always Pastel Lime. Regardless, you’d definitely want to use a protective case on this as soon as possible since the rear is a fingerprint magnet. It’s a good thing they included one inside the box.
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is powered by the Snapdragon 695 5G, a 5G-enabled midrange chip so you can expect decent experience for everyday use. The chip is mated to an 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and, in this case, 256GB UFS 2.2 storage. All of these together make for a promising device for those not looking to splurge on a smartphone purchase.

Apart from that, you get a 6.72-inch Full HD+ LCD display with 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, giving you a practical display that is up to par with the technology of today. All of this is juiced up by a healthy 5,000mAh battery, which can be charged really quickly with the included 67W SuperVOOC charger. It is missing one major feature but I’ll get to that in the review. In the meantime, check out the rest of the specifications right below here:
OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite Specifications

Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G
2 x Kryo 660 Gold @ 2.2GHz + 6 x Kryo 660 Silver @ 1.7GHz
6nm

GPU
Adreno 619

RAM
8GB LPDDR4X

Connectivity
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz and 5GHz)
Bluetooth 5.1, LE
USB Type-C
GPS, Glonass, BDS, QZSS, Galileo
NFC
5G

Storage
256GB UFS 2.2
Up to 1TB expandable storage (MicroSD)

Display
6.72″ FHD+ LCD Display, 680 nits (peak)
Adaptive 120Hz Refresh Rate
240Hz touch sampling rate
Corning Gorilla Glass

Rear Camera
108MP f/1.75 wide angle camera (Samsung HM6), OIS AF, 6P lens
2MP f/2.4 depth camera
2MP f/3.3 macro, fixed focus

Selfie Camera
16MP f/2.0 wide-angle selfie cam

Battery
5000mAh
67W SuperVOOC Fast Charging

OS
OxygenOS 13.1
Android 13

Ingress Protection
No

Dimensions
165.5 x 76 x 8.33 mm, 195g

Colours
Pastel Lime and Chromatic Gray

For now, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is in the middle of benchmark tests among other tests. I’ll be publishing my review of this smartphone soon so stay tuned to Pokde.net.
If you want a more premium OnePlus smartphone experience, click right here.
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ZOTAC launches world first AMD Radeon Gaming Mini– Powered by AMD RX 480 for VR ready and Next Gen Gaming

ZOTAC is pleased to introduce MAGNUS ERX480 as the world’s first AMD powered Mini PC equipped with AMD Polaris Architecture. The ZOTAC ZBOX MAGNUS Gaming Mini PC series, renowned for whisper quiet performance, brings a refreshing level of Power and speed for every gamer.

“We are always aiming to provide powerful solutions avaialable to a wide audience and the MAGNUS ERX4800 could be it” – Jacky Huang, Director of Mini PC.

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MAGNUS is designed for gaming and entertainment. Hosting power that surpasses the requirements for experiencing virtual reality, MAGNUS is an ideal solution for both high-end gaming, premium entertainment, and much more.

“The Radeon RX 480 with Polaris architecture changes the gaming hardware dynamic with an effective cost-performance combination. We’re excited to partner with ZOTAC, a well-established gaming mini PC manufacturer, to bring together the world first and most powerful AMD based gaming mini PC equipped with a Radeon RX 480” – Spencer Pan, AMD Corporate VP and President of Greater China.
The ZOTAC MAGNUS ERX480 is small, powerful, and whisper quiet continues to be the hallmark of the MAGNUS series. An Intel 6th generation Skylake CPU, a dedicated AMD Radeon RX480 graphics, and DDR4 memory support to generate the power to play even the latest games with intricate details and silky smooth frame rate.

MAGNUS ERX480 is VR ready and it can also do more with newer standards. Native 4K output at 60Hz is now standard with DisplayPort 1.3 and HDMI 2.0 and quad display support comes standard to provide a multiscreen experience in one of the tiniest package. Powerful Async shaders and new geometry capabilities enable unique support for DirectX 12 and Vulkan.
ZOTAC MAGNUS ERX480Front viewZOTAC MAGNUS ERX480Rear viewZOTAC MAGNUS ERX480Top viewZOTAC MAGNUS ERX480Bottom view

The MAGNUs series continue to provide a premium computing experience by taking care of the details. It comes equipped with both USB 3.0 Type-C and USB 3.1 Type-A for speed and convenience. For the connection, it has 802.11ac WiFi connection and dual gigabit LAN port. Measuring at 8.27 x 7.99 x 2.45 inches, it’s one of the smaller VR ready systems. A matte black finish underlines its power and whisper quiet performance.

MAGNUS ERX480 comes in barebones, PLUS a windows 10 versions.
Pokdepinion: ZOTAC pushing its graphics card line-up with NVIDIA’s GPUs but on the barebone PC they have start to pick AMD’s part. This is quite interesting.
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[E3 2019] Phantasy Star Online 2 Confirmed to Release Outside Japan

After years of waiting, it didn’t seem like Phantasy Star Online 2 was ever going to come to the West despite Sega’s promises. Now, we have the official announcement and yes, it is finally coming.
As announced during the Microsoft E3 2019 press conference, Phantasy Star Online 2 will be coming in Spring 2020 for the Xbox One and PC. It’s worth noting that this is an exclusive deal for the west with Sega and Microsoft, as the game is available on the PlayStation 4 in Japan, and on Nintendo Switch with a Cloud version. A PS Vita version is available there as well.
A trailer showcasing multiple opening sequences for each of Phantasy Star Online 2‘s Episodes was shown as well. The trailer promises that the game will be launching in the west with all the content and updates currently available on the Japanese version, which is at Episode 6.

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The game has a dedicated English community, who already fully fan translated the game and quickly updates to include all the new content added with each update. Most people who wished to try out the game most likely have already done so by now. It’ll be interesting to see how many players will be motivated to play on the western server as well.
You can catch the announcement trailer at the top of this post. To check out the official website for the western version, click right here.
Pokdepinion: Been wanting to play this game for a while. Hopefully it doesn’t feel super outdated because it took way too long to reach here.
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Facebook brings improvements – New Tools for Group Admins and Improvements to its 2FA

When your platform has well over two-billion users, the mammoth of the challenge puts security above anything else and this is not a system-wide problem as users need to be educated as well on best security practices. There is definitely no one size fits all approach in this but Facebook is constantly striving to find new and interesting ways to help their users get around with improved safety and security practices.
2FA Improved
For starters, Facebook continues to encourage two-factor authentication (2FA) as an extra layer of protection to your Facebook account and the social media giant has just made improvements to this by making the setup even more seamless. Now, the setup flow will no longer require to register a phone number just to use 2FA feature. This will definitely give more choices to the users and make it easier to secure your their accounts. If you haven’t setup 2FA on your Facebook, you should definitely do it right away!

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Tools for Group Admins
Facebook also recognises that admins of Facebook Groups dedicate their precious time to their communities and with their feedback, Facebook has known how to make groups better. Today, Facebook has announced several updates to help admins keep their groups safe and manage them more efficiently as well. Here are some of the tools that Facebook has introduced for Group Admins:
Admin Support
To provide group admins with more timely and personalized help, Facebook is piloting admin support, a dedicated place for admins to report an issue or ask a question and get a response from Facebook. The social media giant aims to respond within one business day. This feature can be found within admin tools, and is currently available to a limited number of group admins on iOS and Android in English and Spanish.

Online admin education resources
To help admins learn how to keep their communities safe and engaged, Facebook created an online learning destination. It includes tutorials, product demos, and case studies – all drawn from the experience and expertise of other admins – that can be found on here.

New features for group rules
When admins or moderators remove a post that violates the rules of their community, they can now notify the member with details on which group rule they broke. Admins and moderators will also be able to collaborate by adding notes in their admin activity log when they remove a post.

Preapproved members
Group admins can spend a lot of time managing their groups, and look for ways to do so more efficiently. Admins and moderators will now be able to select members whose content will automatically be approved every time they post, saving them time to focus on connecting with their members.

Pokdepinion: I highly encourage everyone to activate 2FA feature as it does not only come handy, but also plays a major role in safeguarding your account. As for the group admins, I know that one of the features listed here has been very high on your wanted list, so, rejoice!
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Shenmue 3 Developers Reject Refunds Made for Epic Games Store Exclusivity

When Shenmue 3 was first revealed, many gamers were excited that the series is finally getting a sequel after all these years. It was so well-received that the Kickstarter campaign for the game reached nearly USD $700K in funding in just 7 hours. At E3 2019, it was announced that the game will be an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC, and that made many gamers upset.
Naturally, this led to a noticeable amount of gamers to request for refunds. However, the developers have rejected the requests. In fact, the following is a message that they’ve given to backers that requested for refunds:

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Hello [Backer],
Thank you very much for contacting us.
The launch was previously planned for distribution on Steam, however it was decided together with Deep silver after much discussion that the Epic Games Store would be the best distribution platform option.
Shenmue III will be distributed through the Epic Games Store and will require the Epic Games Store Client to activate.
We apologize for the sudden change in platform, however, refunds will not be granted for this change.
We thank you for your support and look forward to delivering the Shenmue experience fans everywhere have been waiting so long for.
Best Regards,
The Shenmue III Team
Developer Ys Net and publisher Deep Silver had previously been advertising Shenmue 3 to backers (who have already paid money for the title) as a digital Steam key. Many upset gamers will surely still try to force their way through this, perhaps by contacting their banks to do a chargeback.
If you wanna check out the game’s official Kickstarter page, click right here.
Shenmue 3 will be coming to the PlayStation 4 and PC via Epic Games Store on 19th November 2019.
Pokdepinion: I honestly don’t feel like this is a thing worth requesting a refund for. If the game ends up a buggy mess or just have the performance in general affected, then yes, but not this.
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OPPO F7 For Free When You Subscribe To Digi Postpaid – Also Includes The OPPO F7 128GB Variant!

O-fans are in for a treat as they could walk away with a brand new OPPO F7 for free when they subscribe to Digi’s Postpaid 150 or Digi Postpaid 250 plan.
Get OPPO F7 For Free With Digi Postpaid

With Digi Postpaid 150, you will be getting a standard OPPO F7 for free. On the other hand, you can also get the F7 128GB storage variant with 6GB RAM when you subscribe to Digi’s Postpaid 250 instead, which will give you a larger storage compared to the standard variant.

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Customers who subscribed to Digi Postpaid 150 will have 60GB of mobile data and unlimited calls to all networks. In addition to that, it can be share up to two lines without any additional charges. On the other hand, with the Digi Postpaid 250 plan, users will have double the data that Postpaid 150 offers which is 120GB of mobile data, they will also get to share up to four lines to friends and family for free. Unlimited calls also being available for the plan too.
OPPO F7 Specification

CPU/Chipset:
Mediatek Helio P60

GPU:
Mali-G72 MP3

RAM:
4GB / 6GB LPDDR4

Display:
6.23″, IPS LCD 1080 x 2280 pixels (~405 ppi density)

Storage:
64GB / 128GB

Camera:
Main Camera(s)
16MP, f/1.8, phase detection autofocus, LED flash
Front Camera
25 MP, f/2.0

OS:
Android 8.0 Oreo (ColorOS 5.0)

Connectivity:
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.2

SIM:
nanoSIM

Battery:
Li-ion 3400 mAh (non-removable)

For more information on where to get the device, you can click here to check that out.
Pokdepinion: While we have posted previously on Celcom’s deal, where they are quite similar in sense that you can get a brand new OPPO F7 for free, we can’t decide for you which one is better. Both of them has their own perks. So choose wisely before you pick one (well that’s if you’re already planning on getting an OPPO F7 via a postpaid plan to begin with!).
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We’ve heard quite a bit of rumors on Grand Theft Auto 6, most of them seems to point at the game taking place in modern day Vice City that will continuously grow over time. Now, it appears to have been potentially teased on Instagram, which results in even more rumors.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Vice City Potentially Teased on Instagram
Picture credits: Reddit u/NeckSmooth
The last time we saw a mainline entry of Rockstar Games popular franchise was GTA 5 in 2013. It’s 2021 and Grand Theft Auto 6 is still nowhere to be seen. There have been many rumors about the game, but nothing concrete as of yet. However, a recent Instagram post might just change that.

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Tony Mesones, the Soundtrack Manager / Music Supervisor at Rockstar Games, posted a picture on Instagram Stories of what appears to be Miami with a caption of “Who said it would be cold??”. While it could just be a simple vacation photo, there may be more to this than meets the eye.
This particular Instagram Story also tagged the official Rockstar Games account. Needless to say, many people who saw it took it as a sign that he may be pointing towards something related to Grand Theft Auto 6 since it’s supposed to have Vice City in it.
If it is indeed pointing towards a game, there is also a chance that it might be a remaster of GTA Vice City, which has also been rumored for some time now. For now, we will just have to wait and see. We will report more on this as soon as information becomes available so stay tuned.
Source
Pokdepinion: I’m honestly fine if it ends up being just a remaster provided that’s not considered a mainline entry. It’s actually my favorite among all the GTA games.
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Black Shark 4 Pro Review — Setting The Benchmark For Gaming Smartphones?

Recently, the folks at Black Shark has launched their new flagship device in Malaysia. So if you’re curious on what it has to offer, here’s our Black Shark 4 Pro review. Is it the gaming smartphone for you? Let’s find out.
Black Shark 4 Pro Unboxing

From the packaging, you can expect the following items to be included:

Black Shark 4 Pro
Hard case
SIM ejector
Documentation
Stickers
120W fast charger
USB-C cable

Appearance

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The Black Shark 4 Pro sports a 6.67-inch AMOLED display that comes with 144Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support. As you can see, there’s a punch-hole camera on the top of the display, centered in position. Bezels are minimal, which is certainly pleasing to the eyes..

At the bottom is where you’ll find a microphone, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C port, and one of the phone’s speakers.

Over on the right side of the device, there’s the power button right in the middle. You’ll see that the magnetic physical triggers are located over here as well, at the end of the edges, accompanied by their switch (for the triggers).

On the opposite left is where you can find the SIM tray as well as the volume rockers.

As for the top, there’s the secondary speaker of the device plus a secondary microphone.
We got our hands on the blue variant of the device and it’s quite the eye-catcher. The triple camera layout is located in the upper-middle part of the rear, arranged horizontally. Just sitting below it is the phone’s triangle LED light. Of course, you have the Black Shark branding right in the middle.
Black Shark 4 Pro Specifications

CPU
Snapdragon 888, 5nm FinFET
1 x Cortex-X1 @ 2.84 GHz + 3 x Cortex-A78 @ 2.42 GHz + 4 x Cortex-A55 @ 1.80 GHz

GPU
Adreno 660

Memory
12GB

Storage
128GB

Display
6.67″ FHD+ (2400 x 1080) AMOLED display, 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10+

Audio
Dual speakers, DTS Ultra X

Camera
64MP f/1.8 main camera, PDAF
8MP f/2.2, 120-degree ultra-wide
5MP f/2.4, macro, AF
AI Camera, Auto HDR, Pro Mode, Portrait, Beauty, Panorama

Selfie camera
20MP f/2.5 selfie camera

Connectivity
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax, WiFi 6
Bluetooth 5.2
USB Type-C 2.0
3.5mm headphone jack

Software
JOYUI 12 based on MIUI 12.5

Battery
4500mAh
120W fast charging

Dimensions
163.8 x 76.4 x 9.9 mm

Weight
220g

Ingress protection
N/A

Performance
Kicking off with the Antutu V9 benchmark, we see that the Black Shark 4 Pro takes top spot with a score of 822,014. Off to a pretty good start, I’d say.

We see similar results in Geekbench 5, where it outperforms every other device on the list. It just manages to outperform the Xiaomi 11 by a small margin, as you can see from the graph.

To my surprise, I expected a similar result on 3DMark for the device. Here you’ll find that it doesn’t even make it to the top three on this list. That being said, it still performs admirably in all three tests.
Heading to PCMark’s Work 3.0 test, we find that the smartphone takes back the top spot, outperforming other flagship devices that we’ve tested so far.
Finally, we head over to the battery test on PCMark. Despite how you can see that it’s bottom of the list, you have to remember that it’s running on Ultimate mode, with the refresh rate set to 144Hz (mind the error on the image). It managed to last 6 hours and 20 minutes.
As for personal use, I find that the smartphone would last me around a day and a half before I need to recharge the device. Of course, this is subjective as it’s dependent on your usage. This is what I found after turning the highest possible settings available. You could find better battery life out of it by switching to a lower refresh rate and turning off the RGB lighting at the back.
When it comes to charging, it is a speedy experience thanks to the 120W fast charger. I had no issues in getting a maxed out charge from 18% in just 30 minutes.
User Experience
The Black Shark 4 Pro has, what I would describe as, a massive redesign where it looks like a proper smartphone, especially when you compare it to the Black Shark 2 Pro that we reviewed previously. The back of the device is flat with a sleek appearance.
It uses a Samsung E4 AMOLED panel and it’s definitely more than enough to enjoy watching content. The experience is further helped with the offering up to 144Hz refresh rate and 720Hz touch sampling rate, which makes everything smoother. When it comes to the dual speakers, I can say that I was impressed by it. Sound quality has depth and it’s pretty loud. I would rate it as one of the best that we’ve tested so far.

This is probably the reason why we’ve all come here: the gaming part of the review. The physical triggers utilize a magnetic mechanism where the triggers will pop out when you slide the buttons on top. When you bring them out or close them down, there’s a reloading sound that activates. While I personally enjoy them during my gaming sessions, I think they could further improve it by making the travel distance shorter.
We then head on to thermals of the device. I found that it does a rather good job in keeping temperatures in check. Games such as COD Mobile and PUBG Mobile ran without issues. So I went ahead and test the game on the most challenging game (for a smartphone), which is Genshin impact. I played the game on the highest setting possible and recorded about 42°C after 20-minutes of gameplay.
This is pretty impressive to be honest. Black Shark has stated that they’ve used a “Sandwich” Liquid Cooling System and it has definitely helped out. I find that it spreads the heat out to the sides of the device, hence why it’s able to keep itself at good temperatures.

The phone comes pre-installed with Game Space, their very own app that lets you customize your experience with the smartphone. Here, you will find settings that you can tweak around such as performance, display, touch, audio, network and more. You will also be able to connect your other Black Shark accessories, should you happen to have them too. If there’s one thing that I’d complain here, the usage of English is questionable on some parts.

The phone sports JOYUI 12 as its skin, which is based on MIUI 12.5 from Xiaomi. I can’t complain much right here as I find no issues with it whatsoever. The UI is smooth and there’s no sense of sluggishness. It’s generally straightforward to use.

The camera UI is just the same as the recent smartphones from Xiaomi. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing much to complain right here where it’s pretty straightforward. You can easily customize the modes to your liking, so that’s a win.

Moving forward to the cameras, the smartphone comes with a triple camera setup consisting of a 64MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide lens, and finally a 5MP macro shooter. The Night mode does help out surprisingly well in getting sharper details. Overall the cameras give a decent performance but if it’s one thing that I find lacking is its macro mode.
When I tested it out, results were a bit of a hit or miss. If I try to focus on a certain part, it sometimes has trouble doing so. Then again, I’m not expecting much since the main focus of the device isn’t the cameras.
Check out the full-sized images by heading to the link right here.
Black Shark 4 Pro Verdict

Starting from the price of RM2,599, the Black Shark 4 Pro is a worthy offering in the gaming smartphone market. It offers several top-of-the-line specifications and it does rather well when it comes to gaming itself. There are pros and cons as you’d expect.
The review unit that we had is slightly different from the one offered in Malaysia, where it comes with 12GB RAM mated to a 128GB internal storage. If anything, I wished that the battery would perform slightly better. There is the speedy 120W fast charger however to combat that and get you up and running in no time.
After all is said and done, we award the Black Shark 4 Pro with our Silver Pokdeward.

We would like to thank Black Shark Malaysia for providing the Black Shark 4 Pro that was used in this review.
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[E3 2021] Advance Wars Remake Coming to Nintendo Switch

[E3 2021] Advance Wars Remake Trailer

It looks like Nintendo didn’t forget one of their most popular franchises on the Game Boy Advance as they have officially announced the Advance Wars Remake for the Nintendo Switch at E3 2021. To be precise, the title of the game is “Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp”.
The game is said to be fully developed from scratch with new 3D graphics as opposed to the original’s 2D sprite animation. They are still keeping the grid-based strategy format that the franchise is known for.
The Advance Wars Remake will be coming to the Nintendo Switch on 3rd December 2021, with pre-orders for the game opening up starting 22nd June 2021.

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Source
Pokdepinion: This is one of the best games I’ve played on the Game Boy Advance. I’m a big fan of strategy games like Super Robot Wars so this was right up my alley. I’m definitely going to pre-order this game.
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This Game of Thrones PS4 Dynamic Theme is FREE – Here’s How to Claim It

This Game of Thrones PS4 Dynamic Theme is FREE

One of the hottest things that are happening as of late is the arrival of a new season of Game of Thrones. I’m sure many of you religiously watch the TV series and are huge fans of it. If you want to amp up that excitement, you can opt to use this Game of Thrones PS4 Dynamic Theme, which is available for free.
The only downside is that it is only available for gamers in the US region. Now that isn’t necessarily enough to stop you if you’re from a different region. You can always just create a PlayStation account, set the region to US, and then download it on your machine without any problems. You can still keep using your original account so don’t worry about that.
There’s also no requirements for subscribing to any premium service in order to get that. All you have to do is head on over to the Themes section on the PlayStation Network. For an easier time, you can click right here to head straight to the specific page.

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Fair warning, you might get sick and tired of hearing the Game of Thrones theme song on loop. However, you can always just customize and turn that off in the Settings Menu on your PlayStation 4 user interface. Have fun with your new dynamic theme.
Pokdepinion: For me, I’m quite fine with the theme that I’m using. I know many of you are big fans of the series so it’s still pretty much worth sharing.
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YouTube Wrongly Flags Robot Fighting Videos As “Animal Cruelty”

There are literally millions of videos that’s on YouTube and of course like any other site, they need to maintain the standards of the platform. Well apparently the site’s algorithm wrongly flagged several ‘robot battle’ videos for showcasing ‘animal cruelty‘.

The news was revealed as users found out that users that uploaded videos of the sort found that their content were being removed on YouTube. Later they found out that the reasoning behind it was simply because they are thought to showcase cruelty to animals.

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In response to the issue, YouTube has confirmed the error and they believe that they have now corrected it. With that said, videos that was taken down by the algorithm should be available on the video platform again.
Pokdepinion: This is rather hilarious. At least it shows that YouTube do take their content maintenance seriously I suppose.
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Alienware Teases New 18-inch Gaming Laptop

It wasn’t too long ago that someone spotted what it seemed to be an 18-inch Razer Blade put through its paces on Geekbench. That was a leak all things considered – but Alienware has come first and is officially teasing the revival of 18-inch class gaming laptops.

The signs are all around you, something big is coming soon. pic.twitter.com/EyU8BvdYIF
— ALIENWARE (@Alienware) December 5, 2022

The big ’18’ wordmark is shown in the clip with the preceding text “When Something This Big and Powerful Arrives” – one thing we can all agree is this will be a laptop measuring 18 inches. We don’t know if this will be still using 16:9 displays, or rather, extending existing 17-inch display with 16:10 aspect ratio to form a slightly different 18-inch chassis from the ones in years before.

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The takeaway from the text seems to point at a rather supersized laptop – think multi-GPU, multiple drive arrays, dual power bricks, that kind of stuff. Of course, multi-GPU is effectively dead these days – so we’ll likely be just seeing full-fat RTX mobile graphics with 175W TDP at disposal instead (or MXM-based cards in extreme cases). This will coincide with Intel and AMD’s HX-series CPUs, designed for even more powerful, 55W TDP-class laptops that utilizes beefier cooling systems.
The clip ends with a simple “Coming Soon” – though do expect some form of announcements in the upcoming CES event. In any case, expect this laptop to be the new flagship from Dell’s gaming sub-brand, and it will be a no-holds-barred gaming laptop for those who needs it.
Source: PCMag
Pokdepinion: Surely this is going to cost more than $5,000 full-blown isn’t it…
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Sony announces Exmor RS IMX318 sensor — 22.5 MP, 3-axis electronic stabilization, hybridAF

We know megapixels aren’t everything. We have seen smartphone cameras touting a lower megapixel count beat those with higher megapixel counts. Sony is the one producing many of these smartphone camera sensors, both big and small, including the spectacular 12.3 MP IMX377 used in the Nexus 6P. Today they announced their new Exmor RS IMX318 sensor, which sports 22.5 megapixels and several other interesting technologies.

The Exmor RS IMX318 is a type 1/2.6 stacked CMOS, which means that each pixel is 1.0 μm, the smallest ever in the industry. Smaller pixel pitch usually results in worse light capturing ability, which means poorer low light performance, but according to Sony the performance is unaffected when compared to the older IMX230 which feature 1.12 μm pixels. Sony achieved this through employing manufacturing technology that improved the  light utilization efficiency and circuit design technology that eliminates noise. Slimmer smartphones with great low light performance?

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Hybrid autofocus is no longer something new, combining phase detection autofocus and contrast detection autofocus. Previously the autofocusing was processed by an external application processor, but now the processing is done on-sensor by the IMX318’s internal signal processor. This allows for AF as fast as 0.03 seconds (and as fast as 0.017 seconds when shooting video at 60fps). Great news for those who like to capture fast moving objects like their children or pets.
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The IMX318’s internal signal processor also has electronic image stabilization (EIS) built-in. The motion information is picked up by the external 3-axis gyro sensor. As image stabilization is done on-sensor, the application processor is less stressed, which means lower power consumption and longer battery life. The smoother video capability allows for applications in smartphones and also more mobile gadgets like drones which definitely require some form of image stabilization for usable videos.
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Another feature that is interesting is the ability to take full resolution (22.5 MP) stills while recording 4K video. This is made possible by faster data transmission between the image sensor and the application processor, through the adoption of MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) latest C-PHY 1.0 / D-PHY 1.2 specifications.

Pokdepinion: The sensor seemed quite interesting until I saw that it sports EIS. I think that means that Sony isn’t going to include optical stabilization into their smartphones any time soon. Or maybe they are planning to with double image stabilization?
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