With all the hype surrounding the best graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD, you might think that a discrete or dedicated graphics card is a given for any PC. However, while most graphically demanding applications need a dedicated GPU for decent performance, there are many use cases where you can get by perfectly well without one.

From midsized and midrange stars to big, beefy monsters, these are the best technically portable gaming rigs you can get. Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI has been showing some of its customers a new multimodal AI model that can both talk to you and recognize objects, according to a new report from The Information. Citing unnamed sources who’ve seen it, the outlet says this could be part of what the company plans to show on Monday.The new model reportedly offers faster, more accurate interpretation of images and audio than what its existing separate transcription and text-to-speech models can do. It would apparently be able to help customer service agents “better understand the intonation of callers’ voices or whether they’re being sarcastic,” and “theoretically,” the model can help students with math or translate real-world signs, writes The Information.The outlet’s sources say... Continue reading…

OpenAI has been teasing that it has some new technology cooking for quite a while, and GPT-5 has been long-teased with that. In a surprising twist, though, OpenAI is poised to announce a new AI-powered search product on Monday, Reuters has reported. This announcement is said to be scheduled a day before Google's I/O conference, maybe even as a calculated preemptive strike against the search behemoth's expected assortment of AI innovations.

In some respects, Apple has fallen behind when it comes to AI. But the brand looks to be making a big push this year, with new M4 chips and the promise of big things that will hopefully be revealed in great detail at its upcoming WWDC event set to take place in June. While we were a bit in the dark about what to expect, we now have some intel that shows that Apple may be partnering with OpenAI to bring some much-needed muscle to its upcoming AI efforts.

The Riffgat offshore wind farm, around 15 kilometers north of the island of Borkum. | Photo: Getty Images Data centers and offshore wind farms could prove to be a perfect pair as AI grows increasingly energy-hungry. Many of the companies racing to roll out new generative AI tools have also made big commitments to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions. A rush of new AI data centers could throw those climate goals off — unless they find a clean source of energy.Conveniently, some of the quirks with AI data centers make them a good match for wind farms at sea. And the offshore wind industry, which has already cozied up with Big Tech, could certainly use a boost as it looks ahead to more uncertain economic waters.“Data centers and AI ... We are excited about that opportunity,” Mads Nipper, CEO of leading offshore wind developer Ørsted, said... Continue reading…

The Windows operating system has existed for over 40 years, and in that time, it's obviously evolved a lot, and it looks radically different from what debuted in 1983. But not every part of Windows can be abandoned or replaced when a new version releases, and sometimes, old code can be left lingering around for years or even decades.

Microsoft places a lot of emphasis on Teams as its premier app for online communication and collaboration, both in personal and enterprise environments. However, it still updates Skype on a regular basis too, which is a bit confusing considering that the two services directly compete with each other in core areas. If you think that two competing services offered by the same company are too many, gear up to be reminded of a third one, as Microsoft has now updated its GroupMe messaging app, offering a Windows 11 flavor with Copilot integration too.

That’s a skinny XPS. | Image: Windows Report Want a look at Dell’s new notebook lineup that’s apparently powered by Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors? Courtesy of Windows Report, these leaked images come ahead of Microsoft’s May 20th event where new Surfaces (and other laptops) are expected to sport the same chips.They unsurprisingly look like laptops — albeit with overall slimmer profiles.The most interesting model is Dell’s new XPS 13 9345, which seems to be a sleeker rebirth of the XPS 13 Plus from 2022. It’s got the same touchy touch-bar on the top row and comes with only two USB-C ports for I/O. Image: Windows Report Dell XPS 9345 Image: Windows Report Dell Inspiron 14 7441 Plus There’s also a leaked... Continue reading…

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I recently got a Steam Deck to see if I could whittle down my gaming backlog by playing anywhere that wasn't my desk. The first thing I did to help with that quest was to add one of the best 2230 SSDs for extra storage space, increasing it to 2TB to stuff with games. Figuring out which games to install was slightly trickier, as I've got nearly 1,400 games in my Steam library, and nearly 1,000 in my Epic Games Store account, which is also playable on the Steam Deck with some extra work. I've been working my way through my backlog of games for a few months now, and one thing has stuck out. For me, this capable gaming handheld is perfect for older RPGs and isometric games of every description. Here are my favorites so far.

Picking the right laptop or desktop PC to handle your day-to-day workloads isn't exactly an easy process. From choosing the right processor and display to figuring out the amount of RAM and storage you need, there are plenty of things to mull over. While you're navigating through all these components, picking all the right parts for your laptop or PC, you'll also come across the terms 'Intel vPro' and 'Ryzen PRO'.