Interesting things are happening in the gaming community, as Windows 10 operating system has seen an increase in its user base on the Steam platform, while Windows 11 has dipped below the 46% mark for the first time since its launch. According to the latest July data from Steam's hardware and software survey, Windows 10's share rose to 47.69%, marking a significant uptick that contrasts with Windows 11's decline to 45.73%. This trend highlights a growing preference among gamers for the older operating system, which is often praised for its stability and compatibility with a wide range of games and hardware. Many users have expressed concerns over Windows 11's performance and its stringent hardware requirements, which have made it less accessible for some gamers, especially those without the TPM 2.0-enhanced system.

The shift in user demographics is particularly interesting given that Windows 11 was designed with gaming enhancements in mind, including features like DirectStorage and Auto HDR. However, the adoption rate appears to be hampered by issues related to compatibility and performance, leading many gamers to stick with the more familiar and reliable Windows 10. This trend could prompt Microsoft to reevaluate its approach to Windows 11, particularly in terms of addressing user concerns and enhancing compatibility with existing hardware. Other OSes are seeing stagnation, especially with Linux-based distributions recording zero change. Apple's OSX stands at 1.37%, a +0.06% increase from last month.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced the ultimate overclocking motherboard Z790 AORUS TACHYON with the latest 13th gen Intel Core processors has smashed 10 world O.C. records including PCMark 7, 3D Mark…etc, as well as 16 GFP (Global First Place) of individual category test by different core numbers, and obtained 9 HFP (Hardware First Place) highest record in specific CPU ID vs. core count. Designed by world-famous overclocker, GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS TACHYON packs overclocker-exclusive features with top-quality components to become the dream motherboard for overclockers, which delivers unparalleled O.C performance with a more friendly and thoughtful interface to set its leading role on Z790 O.C. motherboards.

"It's inspiring that Z790 AORUS TACHYON breaks 10 overclocking world records and more than 20 various overclocking scores, which not only proves GIGABYTE's strong R&D strength but also demonstrates that GIGABYTE's devotion to providing formidable O.C motherboard. We believe this is just the beginning and will continue to create superior overclocking performance and records by Z790 AORUS TACHYON. We look forward to seeing more overclockers around the world using this motherboard to break more world records!" said Jackson Hsu, Director of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions Product Development Division.

The leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces that the unrivaled Z690 AQUA OC breaks multiple overclocking records on HWBOT.org again. The global professional overclocker, Splave, achieves 6 World Records and 9 Global 1st Places by overclocking the Z690 AQUA OC motherboard with Intel Core i9-12900KS processor. ASRock Z690 AQUA OC defines what a powerful motherboard should be. It is a motherboard made for breaking records. These records commit ASRock's promise to all overclockers, PC enthusiasts and gamers.

While the stay-at-home economy generated high demand for notebook computers from distance learning and WFH applications last year, global notebook shipment for 2020 underwent a nearly 26% YoY increase, which represented a significant departure from the cyclical 3% YoY increase/decrease that had historically taken place each year, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The uptrend in notebook demand is expected to persist in 2021, during which notebook shipment will likely reach 236 million units, a 15% YoY increase. In particular, thanks to the surging demand for education notebooks, Chromebooks will become the primary growth driver in the notebook market. Regarding the shipment performance of various brands, Samsung and Apple will register the highest growths, with the former having Chromebooks account for nearly 50% of its total notebook shipment this year and the latter continuing to release MacBooks equipped with the M1 chip.

or maybe that headline should read "Digital Present", because in many ways, it certainly seems we are already living in a heavily digital present. GameStop, one of the leading physical retailers for both new and used games, that usually has trade-in programs for games consoles as well, has reported a staggering $673 million loss in its 2018 performance.

All facets of GameStops' business have worsened: new hardware sales, new software sales, and pre-owned (which declined some 13.2% YoY) all lost money for the company, with no bright spot to be seen anywhere in the previously bright sheen of this particular part of the retail games and entertainment market. GameStop spoke of a "new cost savings and profit improvement initiative in place, we will focus our efforts on driving profitability", which justifies the company's positive outlook for 2019. How GameStop is optimistic about its future with these losses and a projected 5-10% lowered sales for the games market throughout 2019 is somewhat of a strange marriage of concepts, but if it works for the company, it works. Especially with the increased effort from a number of companies in bringing cloud gaming to fruition, with Google's Stadia and Microsoft's own expected push, it seems that a hugely important part of the market for the likes of GameStop (and let's mention other, digital storefronts as well) is going to be left dry without any sort of cut in game sales.

EVGA today announced a new development achieved by its engineering teams and in-house overclockers Vince "KINGPIN" Lucido and Illya "TiN" Tsemenko. The new solution, dubbed the ROBOCLOCKER, aims to allow for greater efficiency and ease-of-use in extreme cooling solutions using liquid nitrogen, by providing a basis for a semi-closed loop.

EVGA says this new extreme cooling solution allowed KINGPIN and TiN to break 5 new 3DMark World Records, thus paving the way for future World Record overclocking setups. You can watch a video demonstrating the ROBOCLOCKER in action after the break.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, announces new high-speed DDR4 memory specifications designed for the latest 7th Gen Intel Core processors and Z270 motherboards under the extreme performance Trident Z series.

With 16GB (8GBx2) and 32GB (8GBx4) kits becoming the mainstream memory capacities in PC systems, 8GB-based kits are in greater demand for higher performance than ever. Upon the launch of Intel's latest Kaby Lake platform, G.SKILL bumps up the maximum frequency speeds to a blistering DDR4-4266MHz at CL19-19-19-39 for 16GB (8GBx2) kits and DDR4-4133MHz CL19-21-21-41 for 32GB (8GBx4) kits.

AMD's new A10-6800K "Richland" APU is turning out to be quite the chip for competitive overclocking. Finnish overclocker "The Stilt" cracked the 8.00 GHz mark with the chip. Skills aside, "The Stilt" relied on liquid-nitrogen cooling that kept the chip at -185°C, a core voltage of 1.992V, a base clock of 126.99 MHz (~127 MHz), and 63.0x BClk multiplier. All four cores were enabled during the feat. Other key components of the bench include an ASUS F2A85-V Pro motherboard, and 2x 4 GB dual-channel memory of an unknown make, running at 1692 MHz (DDR) Find details and validation links here.

If you thought the overclocking and benchmark feats we reported on a few days ago here and here were impressive, wait until you see what four cards can do. Overclocking champion Shamino over at Kingpin Cooling has set four 3DMark and one Unigene benchmark record:

Kingston Technology Europe Ltd, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced that the Romanian overclocking team, Lab501 achieved three new world records with the world's fastest dual channel memory kit, the Kingston HyperX KHX2544C9D3T1FK2/2GX, during a live overclocking session.

The three new records for RAM modules were set on the 3rd of December 2011, by Matei "Matose" Mihatoiu, Tudor "Monstru" Badica and Razvan "Micutzu" Fatu, the three Romanian overclocking champions from the world renowned Lab501 team. The records were achieved in an overclocking event organized in the eMAG showroom in Bucharest, Romania, in front of approximately 100 overclocking enthusiasts and two local TV crews.

Panasonic today launched the Toughbook CF-H2, its second generation, fully rugged tablet PC designed specifically for health workers. Setting new standards in ease of use, connectivity and productivity, the CF-H2 is a lightweight, water-resistant, shock and drop-tolerant and easily disinfected tablet device that meets the highest demands for mobility and networking within clinical environments. It allows doctors and nursing staff to benefit from instant access to medical records at the point of care, accurate documentation on patient conditions and medication, and enables greater efficiency of clinical processes.

With the latest Intel Core i5-2557M (1.7GHz) Ultra Low Voltage processor with vPro and the Intel HD 3000 graphics for enhanced multimedia capabilities, the Toughbook CF-H2 performance has been improved more than 400% over its CF-H1 predecessor. The CF-H2 is ideal for power hungry healthcare applications such as Electronic Patient Records (EPR) and Patient Administration Systems (PAS). RAM has also been raised to 2 gigabyte as standard, with up to 6 gigabyte optional, and it comes with a 160 gigabyte hard disk drive as standard with 128 gigabyte SSD as an option.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced that its Dominator GT GTX6 ultra-high performance DDR3 memory was used to set two new world records for dual-channel memory frequency at CAS 7 and CAS 8. The record-setting frequencies of 3078.2 MHz, CL8-11-8-31, 1T, and 3059.4 MHz, CL7-11-8-31, 1T, were achieved by renowned extreme overclocker "Mat", aka Matthias Zronek, from Overclockers.at.

"I've worked with the Corsair Dominator GT memory for quite some time now, and can easily say that these are great memory modules, dedicated to world-record overclocking," stated Matthias Zronek. "What surprised me the most is the potential of the Domintator GT GTX6. Even at 3000MHz and higher frequencies, at CL7, there is still headroom for lots of optimization."

To the excitement of audiophiles and music enthusiasts worldwide, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. is hosting world famous recording legends Bill Schnee and Doug Sax at its Technical Audio Devices (TAD) suite in the Venetian Sands during the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), January 8 ' 11, 2009. Longtime collaborators, Schnee and Sax are showcasing their new high resolution recordings to be issued on a music-only format utilizing Blu-ray Disc technology, giving consumers an unprecedented opportunity to experience digital music that rivals 2-channel analog sound. With this unique partnership, Pioneer demonstrates its commitment to consistently offer consumers high performance entertainment that replicates the true intentions of creative professionals.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the world's leading motherboard, graphics card, barebone system and notebook manufacturer, today has disclosed the remarkable achievement that the newly lunched X58B-A Black Series motherboard is creating the world record of overclocking. Reaching the B-Clock of 215MHz, ECS X58B-A has set up a mile stone of overclocking the latest high-performance Intel Core i7 processors among Intel X58 Express chipset based motherboards.

Instead of staying focus on pursuing the processor's core speed, ECS X58B-A provides another path to the wonderland of outstanding performance. With ECS's innovative design, the X58B-A motherboard is capable to reach the unbelievable B-Clock of 215MHz and to overclock the processor up to the core speed of 4GHz simultaneously. Performance extremists will experience dramatically increased computing capability which comes from the incredible core speed as well as the extraordinary QPI bandwidth under this configuration. Simply by using air cooling system, ECS X58B-A creates the world records of overclocking the B-Clock up to 215MHz that realizes the possibility of building an exceptional platform even without any additional efforts such as preparing those complicated cooling equipment.

Oh snap, another world record in the intense world of benchmarking. MemoryExtreme Team ITALY recently nabbed the 3DMark crown in both 3DMark05 and 3DMark06. System specs and screenshots are below. Enjoy.

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 5800MHz
• ASUS P5E3 WS
• 2 x 1024 Cellshock DDR3 1800
• 2 x Radeon HD 2900XT 1250MHz/1880MHz
• Ultra X3 1600W power supply
• CPU pot MM rev3
• GPU pot Tek 9 3.0
• 80 liters of liquid nitrogen

Kinc and Crotale, two world-renowned overclockers, decided to put their names to the test recently. They took all their ultra-awesome overclocking equipment, set up camp at Dreamhack 2007, and promised a raging crowd of fans a world record. They lived up to both their names and promise by completely decimating the previous world record. Kinc and Crotale scored 29,325 points in 3DMark06 live at Dreamhack 2007 with the following system:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (431x13, 5522MHz)
• ASUS P5E3 WS Pro (Intel X38)
• ASUS Radeon HD 2900 XT CrossFire 1200/980MHz
• Corsair Dominator DDR3-1800 @ 1698MHz 6-6-5-15
• SilverStone 1200W
• Liquid nitrogen for cooling both graphics cards and processor

Some people love Wikipedia for the large amount of useful information on it. Others hate it when they fail college essays because they used Wikipedia as their only source. However, regardless of how good or bad it really is, Wikipedia is immensely popular. Since 2001, the encyclopedia anybody can edit has seen over eight million articles in different languages, boasts 3.4 million editors, and is the sixth most visited website on the internet, behind Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner and eBay.

The article that claimed the honor of being the two-millionth published was about the Spanish television show "El Hormiguero".

Nobody is ever satisfied with just leaving a world record intact. And so, renowned overclocker "MickeyMouse" recently slapped together a Core 2 Duo E6850 clocked at 5,190MHz , two ATI Radeon HD 2900XT's in CrossFire, a couple gigabytes of DDR3 clocked at 923 MHz with 7-6-5-15 timings. With a little help from liquid nitrogen and dry ice, MickeyMouse pushed his system all the way to 34,792 points, snagging the world record. MickeyMouse aspires to break 35,000 points.

Jon "elmor" Sandström decided to have another crack at the record books, and was recently gratified. Using a fully modded ASUS P5W64 WS Pro, a Core 2 Extreme X6800, 2GB of Mushkin XP2-8500 (running on a 1:1 ratio at 3-3-3-5), an S3 Trio64+ PCI graphics card, a Silverstone Zeus 850W power supply, and of course, several liters of liquid nitrogen, Elmor set a new Core 2 Duo speed record. His Core 2 Extreme X6800 reached speeds of 5854 MHz, as proven by his CPU-Z Validation. Rumor has it that Elmor still has 30 liters of LN2, and is going to try beating the SuperPi record.

Intel (or "Chipzilla", as The Inquirer lovingly refers to them), according to Intel spokesperson Danny Cheung, has sold one million quad-core Xeon 5300 processors. "Clovertown" was unleashed just last November, and thanks to great performance and competitive pricing, is solely responsible for re-claiming the Server market for Intel. The entire Clovertown line is priced between $455 and $1,172 USD, according to Intel's price list.

Another achievement by Marcus 'Kinc' Hultin who has now set a new 3DMark 05 world record with pair of ASUS Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics cards. With the cards overclocked to 880/990MHz core/mem (air-cooled) and an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 at 5341MHz, 2x1GB Corsair 6400C3 and an ASUS P5W64 WS Pro, Kinc managed to reach 34,126 points in 3DMark 05.

We're still far from the peak of the cards' performance though. I would certainly bet a penny or two that we will see 35,000 soon.

Most people might think that an old application such as Aquamark cannot be used to judge the gaming performance of systems that are designed to run games like Company Of Heroes and Supreme Commander. Well, to a lot of overclockers, Aquamark is still a very useful tool to benchmark computers.

And on to the juicy stuff. HWBot user Joe_Cool, on May 31st, officially smashed the Aquamark record to smithereens. Joe_Cool got his score of 267,877 points with...

• A lot of liquid nitrogen, enough to cool both his CPU and GPU.
• An Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ 5247MHz
• An NVIDIA 8800GTS @ 828/1134 (2268 DDR) MHz

Joe_Cool is still testing with this deadly combination, so he may smash his own record in the coming days. We'll keep you posted.

Here is the result and result details.

The 100 000 point barrier in 3DMark 03 goes down thanks to Kingpin! A Core 2 Extreme CPU clocked at 5.2GHz and two GeForce 8800 Ultra cards (with frequencies for core and memory 985/1243 respectively) were used to achieve this feat.Congratulations!

IBM today simultaneously launched what it claims is the fastest processor in the world and an ultra-powerful new computer server that leverages the chip's many breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualization technology. IBM's new POWER6 chip is a 64 bit, dual-core processor with 790 million transistors running at up to 4.7GHz and 8MB of on chip L2 cache. At 4.7GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half. Also announced today is the IBM's new 2- to 16-core server which offers three times the performance per core of the HP Superdome machine. The new server is also the first ever to hold all four major benchmark speed records for business and technical performance.

Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, sold 40 million copies in 100 days making it the fastest selling operating system in history. Premium Edition accounts for 78 percent of sales. Chairman Bill Gates credits an accelerated consumer shift to the digital lifestyle. Windows operating systems run on more than 95 percent of the world's computers.