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INSIDE: THE BIGGEST PC NEWS FROM COMPUTEX JULY 2021 WINDOWS TIPS: SIX COMMAND PROMPT COMMANDS YOU SHOULD BE USING PLUS: MEET AMD’S FIDELITYFX SUPER RESOLUTION TIGERREVIEWED LAKE H INTEL’S NEW LAPTOP CHIPS TAKE THE FIGHT TO AMD Remember the last time your family visited the forest? It’s a place of wonder and imagination for the whole family—where stories come to life. And it’s closer than you think. Sounds like it’s time to plan your next visit. Make the forest part of your story today at a local park near you or fi nd one at DiscoverTheForest.org. CONTENTS JULY 2021 ≥ DEPARTMENTS ≥ FEATURES 7 News 29 Reviews & Ratings 96 Meet AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 109 Here’s How 132 Tech Spotlight 103 6 Command Prompt commands you should still be using COVER LAPTOP IMAGE COURTESY OF AORUS; INTEL IMAGE COURTESY OF INTEL JULY 2021 PCWorld 3 MASTHEAD EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Matt Egan EDITOR IN CHIEF, CONSUMER BRANDS Jon Phillips DESIGN DIRECTOR Robert Schultz EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITORS Melissa Riofrio, Gordon Mah Ung SENIOR EDITORS Michael Brown, Brad Chacos, Mark Hachman COPY EDITOR Gail Nelson-Bonebrake DESIGN DESIGNER Rob Woodcock ADVERTISING SALES INQUIRIES idg.com/contact-us/ FOUNDERS FOUNDER David Bunnell FOUNDING EDITOR Andrew Fluegelman INTERNATIONAL DATA GROUP, INC. CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD Walter Boyd US PRESIDENT, IDG COMMUNICATIONS Charles Lee 4 PCWorld JULY 2021 REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS You must have permission before reproducing any material from PCWorld. 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To have your name excluded from these mailings, send a request and your email address to PCWorld Subscriber Services at [email protected]. CONTACT PHONE 415/243-0500; FAX 415/442-1891 MAIL Editorial: 501 Second Street #600, San Francisco, CA 94107 STAFF ADDRESS To contact any PCWorld staff member, simply format the address as follows: fi[email protected] PUBLICATION INFORMATION Volume 39, number 7 PCWorld™ (ISSN 0737-8939) is published monthly at $24.95 for one year (12 issues) by IDG Communications, Inc. Copyright 2021, IDG Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. PC World and Consumer Watch are registered trademarks of International Data Group, Inc., and used under license by IDG Communications, Inc. Published in the United States. JULY 2021 PCWorld 5 Remember the last time your family visited the forest? It’s a place of wonder and imagination for the whole family—where stories come to life. And it’s closer than you think. Sounds like it’s time to plan your next visit. Make the forest part of your story today at a local park near you or fi nd one at DiscoverTheForest.org. TECH NEWS AND TRENDS THAT WILL News AFFECT YOU TODAY AND BEYOND. The biggest PC news from Computex 2021 While you were enjoying a hot dog over the Memorial Day holiday last month, AMD, Intel, Nvidia and more were changing the future. BY MARK HACHMAN ne of the most important trade If we had to pick an overall “winner,” well, shows in the PC universe, AMD stole the show. A number of CPU, GPU, Computex, unfortunately and even architectural announcements made O occurred during the wee hours for a jam-packed Computex presentation. But of the Memorial Day holiday in the United our email and internal chat channels were States at the end of May. Fortunately, we kept busy chewing over what Intel and Nvidia had tabs on the announcements from AMD, Intel, to offer, too. In no particular order, here’s what Nvidia and more that you need to know we consider to be the most important stories about, and we’ve summed them up below. that came out of Computex. IMAGE: NVIDIA JULY 2021 PCWorld 7 NEWS COMPUTEX 2021 Unit of Computing (NUC), and just how small they were? No longer. Intel has entered the traditional small-form-factor PC market with an 8-liter “Beast Canyon” NUC that can house a full-length graphics card alongside a Compute Element with a gaming-class AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution looks like a must-have right now. 11th-gen Tiger Lake-H series processor. Intel pitched its AMD’S FIDELITYFX SUPER glimpse of Beast Canyon as a sneak peek, RESOLUTION withholding pricing and availability details. FidelityFX Super Resolution is AMD’s answer But we looked closely at what details were to Nvidia’s DLSS technology (go.pcworld. available, as well as what we think this bad com/dlt2), both of which use some box will be able to accomplish. computational magic to eke out more frames on your games. AMD’s technology, though, INTEL’S 5GHZ REFRESH OF can improve not only its own GPUs but the TIGER LAKE competition’s as well—yes, even Nvidia’s We originally thought the launch of Intel’s GTX 10-series GPUs! Even better, there are Tiger Lake-U parts last September (go. four levels of graphics performance (in addition to the native performance of the GPU), which, according to this AMD slide, offer frame rates ranging from 49 fps to a whopping 150 fps. That’s simply insane. INTEL’S BEAST CANYON NUC Remember when Intel introduced the so-called New Intel’s Beast Canyon NUC is, well, a beast. 8 PCWorld JULY 2021 pcworld.com/tglu) needed a little more oomph. Well, Intel delivered. The company launched a new 5GHz Tiger Lake chip that it claims can top the Ryzen 5800U in both gaming and content creation. By how much, you ask? If you cherry-pick a HandBrake video transcoding benchmark, the new 2.9GHz Core i7-1195G7 outperforms the comparable Ryzen by a whopping eightfold. And did we mention Intel now has The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition is a pretty notebook. a 5G module, too? What’s inside is even prettier. AMD’S RADEON RX 6000M Advantage Edition. We call it a “worthy TAKES ON NVIDIA’S RTX competitor to Nvidia’s GeForce” right in GPUS the headline, and we’ll show you why with This is what you were waiting for: a new our tests. AMD GPU that can go head-to-head with Nvidia’s RTX GPUs. At Computex the NVIDIA’S MONSTROUS notebook graphics wars just began heating GEFORCE RTX 3080 TI up. AMD launched the Radeon RX 6800M, What Nvidia calls its “new gaming flagship” 6700M, and 6600M, all with differing GPU may have deserved a higher place in levels of horsepower. AMD said the RDNA our list, given that, well, it’s a new premium 2 chips offer 1.5X the performance over the GPU. Combine the $1,200 price tag and original RDNA designs, while also the fact that graphics cards are still selling operating at 43 percent less power. And out almost immediately, and the result is a boy, are there benchmarks! graphics card that you’ll probably never get your hands on. However, Nvidia’s RTX 3080 PCWORLD REVIEWS THE Ti specs are appropriately massive, and we’ve AMD RADEON RX 6800M even been able to review the GeForce RTX PCWorld reviewed the AMD Radeon RX 3080 Ti (go.pcworld.com/38ti) itself. Prepare 6800M, built into the Asus ROG Strix G15 to be amazed. JULY 2021 PCWorld 9 NEWS COMPUTEX 2021 THE NEW AMD ADVANTAGE AMD LAUNCHES NEW APUS EDITION NOTEBOOK FOR LOW-COST PC BUILDS PROGRAM AMD announced that its hotly anticipated After reading about Intel Evo’s go-to-market Ryzen 5000G APUs (go.pcworld.com/5apu) (go.pcworld.com/g2mb) brand for its will launch on August 5. An APU is a Ryzen co-engineered ”Project Athena” (go.pcworld. chip that integrates Radeon graphics, com/patn) premium notebook designs, you providing DIY builders with a cheap, purpose- might have thought Intel was the only chip built foundation for building a PC. But things vendor spending time and money to make have changed somewhat with the ongoing sure your next gaming notebook was chip shortage, and we’ll explain why that is. designed properly. Did you notice the AMD Advantage program at the bottom of our AMD’S 3D V-CACHE CAN Radeon RX 6000M story? Here’s what AMD is BOOST PERFORMANCE BY doing to guarantee your next Ryzen/Radeon 25 PERCENT notebook is a compelling product. What is a 3D chiplet? And what is AMD’s 3D V-Cache? That, my friend, is the future. AMD WHAT IS ALIENWARE’S announced a way to stack memory on top of ELEMENT 31? its Ryzen processor, dramatically increasing Liquid metal always conjures up images of the the cache size and the performance. And it’s T-1000 Terminator rather than a cooling coming later this year. We explain what it all solution inside a premium notebook. We’re means in our report. not going to spoil (well, in this story, anyway) what Element 31 actually is.