benchmarking

Microsoft is pouring megabucks and marketing muscle into a narrative that Copilot+ PCs — Windows machines with on-device neural engines and specially tuned Windows subsystems — will remake personal and enterprise computing. The message is clear: these machines are faster than Macs, sip far less...

The gaming‑PC placebo is real: dozens of forum threads and decades of benching show that social comparison — a buddy’s boast about “10 more FPS” or “100MHz more core clock” — routinely convinces otherwise‑happy players that something is wrong with their system, even when subjective gameplay was...

The debate about whether Windows 10 or Windows 11 delivers the better gaming experience is no longer a purely technical argument — it has become a cultural one, tied up with benchmarking obsession, perceived differences versus measurable gains, and a growing tension between security features...

Microsoft’s own preview of Windows 11 25H2 may ship as a tiny enablement package, but running Ubuntu under WSL2 on that same Windows build is not indistinguishable from a native Ubuntu install — Phoronix’s fresh tests show a measurable, workload-dependent performance cost that deserves close...

Windows 11 ships with a cluster of gamer-focused features — Game Mode, Auto HDR, DirectStorage, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and per-app GPU preferences — that can materially change responsiveness, load times and visual fidelity when configured correctly, but many players never look past...

Microsoft’s reported decision to license Anthropic’s Claude models into Microsoft 365 — bringing them into productivity features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook — is the most explicit signal yet that Microsoft plans to move from a single‑vendor AI stack to a multi‑model Copilot strategy...

External portable drives remain one of the most practical — and fastest — ways to move, back up, and archive large volumes of data, and our hands-on testing confirms that the current crop of external SSDs and HDDs gives buyers choices that span blistering performance, rock-solid value, and...

Microsoft says its August Windows 11 security update (KB5063878) is not behind the recent wave of reports alleging SSDs and HDDs have been rendered inaccessible or corrupted, but the episode has exposed gaps in forensic clarity and left many users mistrustful of a conclusion drawn without a...

Intel’s Application Optimization (APO) has received another round of support updates, expanding the number of game profiles and refining how hybrid Intel CPUs are used while gaming — a move that promises small-to-noticeable frame-rate and frame‑time improvements for certain titles, but that also...

Microsoft’s AI team has shipped two first‑party foundation models — MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview — a move that signals a deliberate strategic pivot from being primarily a host and integrator of external models toward building proprietary AI infrastructure optimized for Microsoft’s product...

Alibaba’s Cloud Intelligence business is no longer an experimental bet — it is the engine powering the company’s reacceleration, but sustaining that advantage will demand flawless execution across infrastructure, monetization and geopolitics. Background Alibaba reported that its Cloud...

Windows ships with a concealed power profile that can squeeze a few extra milliseconds of responsiveness out of high-end systems: the Ultimate Performance power plan — a no-compromise mode designed to eliminate micro-latency by disabling many of Windows’ default energy-saving behaviors...

Microsoft’s announcement that it has built and begun shipping two in‑house AI models — MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview — is a decisive shift in its AI strategy: from being primarily a buyer and integrator of frontier models to becoming an active model developer and orchestrator. The move is...

Microsoft’s move to ship MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview marks a clear strategic inflection: the company is no longer only a buyer and integrator of frontier models but a serious producer of first‑party models engineered to run inside Copilot and across Microsoft’s consumer surfaces. Microsoft...

Microsoft has quietly crossed a strategic Rubicon: after years of leaning heavily on OpenAI’s frontier models to power Copilot, Bing, and other signature experiences, the company has publicly launched MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview, its first fully promoted in‑house foundation models — and...

Microsoft has quietly shipped its first fully in‑house AI models — MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview — marking a deliberate shift in strategy that reduces dependence on OpenAI’s stack and accelerates Microsoft’s plan to own more of the compute, models, and product surface area that power Copilot...

The short answer: for most players, switching from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will not change your average framerate in today’s demanding games — but a handful of minimum‑FPS regressions and micro‑stutter reports make the decision more nuanced than a simple “upgrade or wait.” Recent hands‑on...

Microsoft’s latest push on quantum computing — framed publicly as a quiet technical milestone and privately as a strategic cloud bet — marks a turning point in how hyperscalers plan to deliver exotic accelerators to enterprises and researchers worldwide. Microsoft says it has deployed an...

With the code branch for NetBSD 11 freshly created, the storied BSD operating system is preparing to reinforce its position as a bastion of portability and versatility in the Unix world. This imminent release, less than 18 months after NetBSD 10, comes at a critical juncture for open source, as...

Ever since its debut, Windows 11 has existed under the shadow of performance debates and skepticism from its user base. When Microsoft first introduced Windows 11, the company boldly proclaimed that the latest operating system was engineered to fully leverage modern hardware, even demonstrating...