Piltch Point (Video)

This week, Avram Piltch brings us the latest news on AMD's product launches. The company and its partners released new products based on the 7nm architecture. These products include the 3rd generation Ryzen processors, supporting motherboards, and new videocards.

The biggest release is the Ryzen 3000 series, the latest refresh in the company's processor lineup. The new processors are the first products on the market to use the 7nm architecture, with AMD beating Intel by quite a margin. They also outpace Intel's core count for the price, with the Ryzen 9 3900X offering 12 cores for $499, while the closest comparable Intel processor, Intel Core i9-9920X, offers 12 cores for $1199. That's more than double the price for the same core count. The base frequency is higher, with 3.8GHz versus 3.4GHz. Read more specs.

These new processors have moved to the X570 chipset, allowing for big improvements in overall performance. While the processors will work with the previous generation chipset, the X470, the new structure brings PCIe 4.0, which brings with it faster SSDs and higher peripheral throughput. Additional throughput could also make for better videocards in the future, as more motherboards begin to support the chipset.

The last product category is videocards, with the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700. These new cards compete with the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2060 and actually get higher framerates than their comparable GeForce cards. You get 10% and 11% higher framerates, respectively. The RX 5700 runs $350, while the RTX 2060 averages just over $350. While you won't get raytracing with the new card, you will get really good 2K gaming. This isn't a big loss, as there are still very few raytracing compatible titles in the wild. Read more.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch shows off the newest entry in the Raspberry Pi family: the Raspberry Pi 4. While this new model was not supposed to come out until this year, improved processor sourcing made it possible to bring it to market significantly earlier than expected. The newest model is a welcomed update to the Raspberry Pi 3, with the ability for more RAM, faster processing, and updated ports.

The most notable update is the changing of the video ports. Rather than a single HDMI port, the newest model has dual micro HDMI ports. This change allows for the use of two monitors rather than one on the previous model. In addition, both monitors can be run at 4K, albeit with performance degradation. In dual 4K, the monitors refresh at 30Hz. In single 4K or dual 1080p, the monitors can run in 60Hz, a marked improvement. The dual 4K monitors can also cause a lot of lag on the system itself.

In addition to the updated video ports, the USB ports also saw an upgrade. The center USB ports are now blue, indicating that they are now USB 3, rather than the USB 2 on the previous model. With the addition of USB 3 comes the ability to gain some huge performance improvements on external devices, such as SSDs. It also allows for important peripherals like the Google Coral Accelerator, which makes the Raspberry Pi better at image processing.

The new hardware comes along with a new version of the Raspbian operating system, Raspbian Buster. The new OS was not released ahead of the hardware, meaning that a lot of software does not work with it just yet. Of course, this is not unusual for Linux distributions, so users shouldn't be worried. Updated software will be released over the coming weeks, bringing back potentially lost features.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is available now online and from some local retailers.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch discusses the impending impact of the trade war between the United States and China. The US imposed a 10% tariff on imports from China a while back, but a new and stronger tariff system is going into place now. The new tariffs will be 25% on billions of dollars worth of products, and will almost immediately be felt by consumers.

These new tariffs were felt in full force during Computex 2019. While it is not unusual to hear a company say that they aren't sure what the price point is going to be for a new product, this year the responses were different. Many companies said that they had a target retail price for their products, but that they weren't sure what the actual price was going to be, because they couldn't entirely predict how these taxes were going to affect the prices in the end.

Manufacturers are already beginning to look for ways to prevent these new tariffs. MSI CEO Charles Chiang spoke with Avram during Computex, explaining their plans. They and other larger manufacturers are beginning to look for new countries to manufacture their product in, such as Taiwan and Vietnam. While this would eventually represent cost savings, it is not inexpensive to move a manufacturing line, meaning that costs will still go up in the short term, but hopefully, less than they would with the tariffs. Not everyone can do this, though, so smaller brands might see big challenges in the upcoming months.

Another challenge to moving manufacturing to another country is infrastructure. Countries like Taiwan have a total population less than that of Shenzhen, the province of China where most manufacturing occurs. Add to that the need for roads, shipping, electricity, water, and more, and it creates hurdles that are not surmountable in the short term. The country could ramp up for production eventually, but it won't be able to handle a large influx in the next quarter.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch is back from Computex 2019 in Taipei with some of the best technology he and his team from Tom's Hardware encountered. From processors to computer cases, Avram's got it all.

First, we've got the big announcements from AMD. In particular, the 3rd generation Ryzen processors. In addition to the Ryzen 3, 5, and 7, this year they have introduced the Ryzen 9, sporting a 12-cores and 24-threads. It will run $499 and compares to an 8-core processor from Intel. This new processor and the rest of the lineup will be available on July 7, 2019. In addition to the new processors, the new boards will support PCIe 4.0, which will allow for significantly faster SSDs. Current benchmarks top out at 5GBps, with future hardware expected to be in the 8GBps range.

In computers, he saw some interesting new products. In particular, is the MSI GT7600 Titan laptop. Rather than using a mobile processor, this beast uses a standard desktop processor and is overclocked to 5GHz. To accomplish this, the company designed special cooling to pipe out all of the additional heat that an overclocked desktop processor is going to add to a laptop. The drawback to this power, of course, is the weight; it comes in at about 9 pounds. If this is what you do for a living, though, the weight is not going to be a concern.

In addition, ASUS showed off the newest model of ZenBook Pro Duo, the laptop with a second screen above the keyboard. The jury's still out on whether this second screen adds anything useful to the experience, but a second screen is always nice. For those looking for a more complete monitor, they also showed off the ROG Strix XG17, a fully portable monitor that can connect to your laptop, or anything with HDMI, as a second screen.

As usual, unique computer cases were all over the floor, from the P200, a mostly open-air design from Thermaltake to a Heineken beer keg that can serve beer and computer power in one. There's a lot more to the Computex 2019 coverage, and it can all be found at Tom's Hardware.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch discusses some of the new computer components that were announced this week. Starting off is Intel's 45-watt 9th generation H-series processors. The Core i9 (9980HK) now features 8 cores, which is more powerful than any mobile processor in history. The Core i5 and Core i7 feature 4-cores and 8-cores, respectively. These procs are still running on the 14-nanometer architecture that we've had for a few generations and is not running on the 10-nanometer design that the industry is waiting for. The difference between last year's processors and this year's processors is likely marginal.

Any time there is a new generation of processor, there comes a collection of new laptops that use them. This announcement is no different, as many of the major players announced new laptops that feature the new generation of processors. ASUS, for example, has announced new ROG Zephyrus laptop models. While the newer processor is nice, the real winner in these models is the 240-hertz refresh rate. That is an amazing accomplishment on a laptop screen.

In addition to Intel news from ASUS, we also have some AMD news. The company has announced a new AMD-powered gaming notebook, the ROG Zephyrus G GA502. This is the first AMD-powered gaming notebook using the new high wattage Ryzen processor, with NVIDIA graphics. They are running as low as

NVIDIA has also announced a new mobile video card: the GeForce GTX 1650. This new card is not a high-power card but is instead designed to be more of a mainstream card.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch shows off the HP Spectre x360 13" 2-in-1 notebook. This new model of the popular Spectre x360 series has some interesting new features. One of the most interesting, though seemingly simple changes, is the angled back corners. On these corners, which are cut at a 45-degree angle, house the power button and charging port. This minor change is a nice design change but also has a nice functional change. With the charging port at an angle, it makes it easy to get to without having it stick out into your desk or pushing back into the wall.

The laptop is ultra thin, but you don't have to sacrifice a standard USB-A port for the size. With more laptops coming with only USB-C, it's nice to have a laptop with both choices. The laptop comes in a couple of color schemes, including a copper-banded and a blue. There are also two choices for screen resolution, both an HD (1080) and UHD (4k). While the screen is colorful, it does suffer from a lack of brightness.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch shows off the brand new Hack Computer, a laptop designed to help teach kids about computers. There are two parts to the computer: the hardware and the operating system. The hardware is a quality laptop manufactured by Asus. Featuring a 1080p screen and lightweight design, it feels at home in the $299 price point. As for the operating system, it is a Linux build with tools and features specifically for the Hack Computer.

Where the Hack Computer really shines is the learning platform. Featuring characters that give you quests, Hack uses those quests to teach kids about the computer and how to code. For example, when in a game, there is a button that allows the child to flip the game over and exposes the inner workings. From there, the child is encouraged to alter the game parameters. As they do, they are given hints on ways they might want to accomplish their goal. They are also given information about coding and the inner workings of the computer.

Some of the information that is given is helpful, while others would seem more at home in a beginning engineering course. It is a little odd to tell an 8-year-old child that Latin root of the word cursor, for example. It's almost as if the target audience of the product changed at some point, but the original content was not removed. Speaking of content, the platform is a little light right now. That is because the platform is designed to expand over time, with a monthly subscription, though you get the first year of content included.

Fortunately, the Hack Computer offers an app store of sorts, so you can install some software you might consider missing as shipped. The Hack Computer is available now for $299.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch talks about the death of a product that never made any sense: the Intel Compute Card. This tiny computer was about the size of a credit card but required a docking station to be used. Intel believed that this platform was the future of integrated devices, like smart TVs and refrigerators, but manufacturers never agreed. "Secure computing" also didn't pan out as a business model, because of the requirement for a lot of overhead. The problem is, this concept has been around for years, and will not be going anywhere any time soon. Samsung DeX is the same concept, with all of the same limitations. Microsoft Continuum was, again, most of the same issues. So, while Compute Card is gone, the idea is not.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch discusses the future of USB, known as USB4 (or USB 4). While not everything is known about the new standard, such as the final marketing branding, we do know some. For example, we know that USB4 will be capable of up to 40Gbps transfer rates, equaling what Thunderbolt 3 supports currently. It will also support a smart switching capability when using both video and data over the same bus. Currently, each side gets 50% of the bandwidth, whether or not that is what is needed. In the new version, if video needs 20%, it will leave the other 80% of the bandwidth available for data transfer. This is similar to how Ethernet switches work today. For anyone using the port for external video cards, this will be an especially powerful upgrade.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch discusses the history and milestones of the Raspberry Pi. It's hard to believe that its been 7 years since the original Raspberry Pi model released. In that time, almost everything has changed, except for the price of the computer. The original intention was to build only about 1000 devices, with the hope of getting more applicants to Cambridge University. Things changed really quickly, as educators, programmers, and makers all over the world took an interest in this full-featured computer with a very small price tag. Rather than 1000 devices, the organization has now sold over 25 million, with that milestone being hit only recently. One of the main reasons why the project has been so successful has been its $35 price. It's hard to imagine a computer with as much power as the Pi costing so little, but every top model has run in that price range. Another big reason is the organization tries to never end of life any of their products. In fact, 3 of the 5 products that have been discontinued have been because a key component was no longer available, making production impossible. No wonder the Raspberry Pi Foundation is so well regarded in the industry.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.