When I say "high-end CPUs", I mean any CPU with more than 8 cores. These processors are undoubtedly made for particularly demanding workloads, and have their place on the market. That said, the relevance of high-end chips has gone down with time, especially for those only interested in gaming, occasional productivity, or even AI/ML workloads. Due to the advances in computational power, challenges with scaling, and more emphasis on the GPU, high-end CPUs just aren't as necessary anymore.

Amazon has announced its fall Prime Big Deal Days event. It starts at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 7th, and runs through Wednesday, October 8th. Of course, we’ll bring you all the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets once they become available.Amazon’s latest Prime Big Deal Days sale is shorter than the extended four-day Prime Day in July. Even so, that should be plenty of time for Prime members to save ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The previous Prime Day delivered some of the lowest prices we’ve seen on popular devices like the iPad Air and AirPods 4, and we’re hoping for a similar caliber of deals this time around. In years past, we’ve seen deep discounts on big-name brands like Samsung, Apple, and Beats, plus all-time low prices on Amazon devices.Although the next Prime Deal Days doesn’t start for another few weeks, Amazon is offering early deals starting today. You can save up to 50 percent off select Amazon devices, including the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro Tablet, Kindle Kids, and Echo Dot Kids bundle. Other deals include a discount on the Kindle Paperwhite Essentials bundle, Luna Wireless Controller, and the Ring Battery Doorbell with Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera bundle. Meanwhile, eligible Prime members can get three months of Kindle Unlimited for free.While Prime Day deals are exclusive to subscribers, Best Buy, Walmart, and other retailers often offer similar discounts, so you’ll have plenty of ways to shop. If you want to sign up for Prime, a subscription runs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. If you’re between the ages of 18 and 24, you can get a six-month subscription for free, with it renewing after that period for $7.49 per month (half the normal cost of Prime). Prime Big Deal Days will take place in the US, the UK, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, and Sweden, and for the first time, Colombia, Ireland, and Mexico.Before Prime Big Deal Days gets underway, Amazon is holding a fall hardware event on September 30th. Amazon traditionally uses the annual event to reveal a slew of new products, including Echo smart speakers, Fire TV devices, Kindles, and more. Hopefully, we’ll see at least some of the new tech discounted during Amazon’s annual pre-Black Friday sale.

If you're looking to take your storage to the next level, this Gen 5 M.2 SSD is going to be the one. The Crucial T700 delivers blazing-fast speeds up to 12,400 MB/s. In addition, you get 2TB of storage, which is great for any device that you're trying to upgrade. The great part is that it's now down to its best price, coming in at $182 for a limited time. You're saving 27% off its usual retail price, making it a fantastic time to pick one up.

Say whatever you like about Capcom, but they make it very easy to explore some of its most famous series. For instance, if you want to explore the history of Mega Man, the company has several collections related to the different storylines and series it created over the years.

If you're a Microsoft 365 fan, you either love Copilot or you hate it. Unfortunately for the latter camp, Microsoft would really, really prefer that you did love it. In fact, it wants you to use its AI assistant so badly that it's introducing a new feature that gives you the power of Copilot at your fingertips at no extra cost. However, if you are a subscriber to Copilot, don't fret; there's still something here for you.

When the fall season draws near, it brings with it a new season of basketball for fans to get excited about. But as people wait for the first tip-off of NBA basketball to usher in the new season, there are tons of great basketball video games to keep them busy. Over the years, many consoles have featured classic and iconic games that highlighted the appeal of basketball as a sport. But not every game that featured basketball tried to simulate what fans watch on television. Sometimes, they went above and beyond what we know about the game.

While Sony and Nintendo continue the console wars, Microsoft's mission has changed. Once a big fan of exclusive titles, the company has shifted gears and wants to bring its games and libraries to as many devices as humanly possible, even its competitors'. The best bit? It seems to be working.

If you, like me, find yourself experimenting with apps and services all the time, keeping a tab on what's going on behind the scenes on your home network is important. I've previously dabbled with system utilities like Activity Monitor and netstat to take a peek behind the scenes, but I've been on the lookout for a utility that offers more than just a pretty interface. And that's basically how I discovered RustNet — a cross-platform network monitoring tool built with Rust. RustNet takes an interesting approach by turning your terminal into a live dashboard where you can watch incoming and outgoing connections, see which apps are talking to which services online, and even filter or inspect traffic based on your needs. It's a simple and straightforward way to get a clear view of traffic spikes and background activity that you might not have noticed otherwise. So, if you care about security, performance, or just want to understand your machine's network activity better, I'd highly recommend looking into RustNet as it can potentially turn your good-old command line into a full-fledged network control center.

Tired of feeling like your tasks are spread across a dozen different notes in Obsidian? You are not alone. It’s a common problem for many of us who rely on a digital brain like Obsidian. But if there was a way to effortlessly gather, manage, and track every single one of your tasks from across your entire vault? A third-party plugin called Tasks solves this problem.

When I got my existing gaming PC in 2022, the RTX 3080 was already a 2-year-old card, but still one of the fastest in the world. The RTX 40 series wasn't out yet, and even after it launched, my RTX 3080 was pretty powerful for quite a while. In early 2024, however, it had started to feel limited, especially in the most demanding titles like Alan Wake 2 and the path tracing mode in Cyberpunk 2077. I've been thinking about upgrading my GPU for a while, and I think I finally know what I'll be switching to.

Microsoft is rolling out a new aggregated gaming library inside its Xbox PC app today on Windows. The updated app will now list games from Steam, Battle.net, and other PC storefronts — making it a launcher for games you have installed on your PC.Microsoft has been testing this aggregated library in recent months with Xbox Insiders, but it’s now available to all Xbox PC app users. It’s designed primarily for the new fullscreen Xbox experience that will ship on the Xbox Ally devices, but it’s also part of Microsoft’s efforts to make the Xbox app on Windows the home of PC gaming.“When you install a game from a supported PC storefront, it automatically appears in ‘My Library’ within the Xbox PC app, as well as the ‘Most Recent’ list of titles in the sidebar, so you can jump back into your favorite games with just a click,” explains Jason Beaumont, vice president of experiences at Xbox.Alongside the library integration, Microsoft is also rolling out a new My Apps section in the Xbox PC app that allows PC gamers to quickly install and launch third-party apps like browsers, gaming utilities, and rival storefronts. This new feature is also designed primarily for handhelds, to help people download and launch games from multiple stores.Later this month, Microsoft will also add cloud-playable games and game history to the Xbox app that syncs your recent games list on Xbox consoles, PC, or handheld. Microsoft already started rolling this out on Xbox consoles last month. “Once this feature is released, look for the ‘Jump back in’ list on the Home screen of your console, PC, or handheld to find your recent play history and pick up where you left off,” says Beaumont.

AI has taken over several cumbersome online experiences, ranging from workplace companions that automate email responses to agentic AI tools handling hotel bookings for a vacation. However, NotebookLM is the quiet underdog that excels at any task I've thrown at it. Google designed it around the premise of simplicity and power, devoid of the typical LLM limitations like hallucinated data and unverified sources in every corner of the internet. NotebookLM only works with what I supply, and its multimodal nature makes it indispensable for wolfing down user manuals or learning new skills like brewing coffee.