Intel at its VISION conference, confirmed that its next-generation processor for the ultraportable and thin-and-light segments, the Core Ultra "Lunar Lake," will feature an over four-fold increase in NPU performance, which will be as fast as 45 TOPS. This is a significant figure, as Microsoft recently announcedthat Copilot will perform several tasks locally (on the device), provided it has an NPU capable of at least 40 TOPS. The current AI Boost NPU found in Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processor is no faster than 10 TOPS, and the current AMD Ryzen 8040 series features a Ryzen AI NPU with 16 TOPS on tap. AMD's upcoming Ryzen "Strix Point" processor is rumored to feature a similar 40 TOPS-class NPU performance as "Lunar Lake."

Intel also confirmed that notebooks powered by Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processors will hit the shelves by Christmas 2024 (December). These notebooks will feature not just the 45 TOPS NPU, but also debut Intel's Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture as the processor's integrated graphics solution. With Microsoft's serious push for standardizing AI assistants, the new crop of notebooks could also feature Copilot as a fixed-function button on their keyboards, similar to the Win key that brings up the Start menu.

From all of us here at TechPowerUp, we wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2024! 2023 really blew by as civilization and society fully returned to normal with renewed spirits and determination. We hope and pray that this holds, and that together we make 2024 even better for everyone! It's been an equally eventful year for technology, hardware, and gaming, and we can't wait to tell you all about it, in our upcoming Holiday feature looking back into the year in tech!

As we're about to enter the month of November, October leaves us with a couple of final game releases. This week's AA release is a sequel to a puzzle game that was quite popular when it launched at the end of 2014. The remaining titles this coming week includes RPGs, something musical, something to do with leagues and legends, a cop that's a robot and some seasons greetings.

The Talos Principle 2 / This week's AA title / Thursday 2 November
Born into a new world where biological humanity is extinct but human culture lives on in a city of robots, you find yourself swept up in a mind-bending adventure involving a mysterious megastructure hiding enormous powers. The more you discover, the more you will be confronted with questions about the nature of the cosmos and the purpose of civilization. The broken promise of a better tomorrow, the fear of repeating humankind's mistakes, faith in reason or renouncing humanity altogether - the choices you make and the sides you take will determine the course of events.

TechPowerUp wishes all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous 2023! The year gone by has been quite a mix for tech, with graphics card prices finally getting sane, some interesting game releases, and next-generation platforms and architectures for the gaming PC; however there's more to life than just tech. While the world began to wake up from the horrors of the pandemic, conflict and famine affected millions. We pray that sanity, wisdom, and penance prevails over all. Here's hoping for a peaceful, healthy, awe inspiring, and joyous 2023 for all!

We don't typically cover holiday promotions but this one tickled my schadenfreude bone too much to be ignored. Alphacool decided to cause havoc today by inviting photos of you wearing your ugliest Christmas outfits/accessories in return for a chance to win one of three €1000 vouchers for Alphacool products or five hideously ugly Christmas jumpers/sweaters/hoodies/whatever you want to call them. If interested, you can enter the competition via the company's social media channels on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as by sending an email to marketing@alphacool.com. While it's not part of the competition, I would certainly like to see you share those photos in the comments section too!

TechPowerUp wishes You and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We're all together in one of the most difficult times in recent history, and what's kept us going is the indomitable spirit for life to find a way through, as it did two millennia ago. This motivates us to continue to be at our very best, in bringing you the very latest in hardware and gaming technology, as we have, for the past 18 years. He's to a brighter, safer, and a more hopeful 2022. We begin 2022 with a briskly coverage of the 2022 International CES, and will be visiting our first major expo in two years. CES sets the tone for the rest of the year, and it will be our endeavor to bring you the rich, fast, and decisive coverage you've come to expect of us. Have a great one!

Another year is drawing to a close, all around the world and here on TechPowerUp as well. A special year, to say the least; it's not the worst in recorded human history, but it's been one of the hardest ever, with more limitations imposed in our lives than in any other we can remember. Most of us have adapted to a new, hopefully temporary reality, one where social distancing and face masks have become commonplace. A reality where countless human lives were lost to an invisible, undiscerning enemy; where economic recession has thrown families and friends out of business or even from their homes. Globalization is indisputable, and while it has many positives, nothing could ever be without fault; the increased interconnectedness of our world means that the system becomes all the more fragile even as it becomes stronger. And while the argument for technology being a potentiator for human loneliness and creating isles of silence between us individuals of the human species presents valid points, one can certainly say that it was technology that helped bridge sentimental and physical gaps for all of us.

Every year ends on a high here at TechPowerUp, as we look back to a year's work in bringing the fastest, best, and most incisive technology content to our readers. There can be no better year-ender than the Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year we wish for you, your colleagues, family, and friends!

From all of us here at TechPowerUp, spread across the globe, Thank You for 2018. We once again wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

TechPowerUp wishes you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas, and a Prosperous New Year! We hope you have a great time today, and unwrap something from your loved ones that loves ones and zeroes! 2017 has been an epic year in the world of PC technology, and we will see it off with a special surprise for our fans, as we turn the page onto 2018 with the International CES, promising another mega extravaganza of new technology and things that we badly want.

We would like to thank you for all your love and support through 2017, and we promise to make 2018 an even better TechPowerUp for you!

TechPowerUp wishes you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas, and a prosperous 2017! Another year draws to a close in the tech world, and 2017 promises to be an even bigger year, right from the get go, with the 2017 International CES in early January, and a slew of major tech launches throughout the year. We'd like to thank all our readers and users of our software for all the love and support. Don't forget to tell us what you got under your tree!

As many of you will know, back in June last year we lost our good friend and Senior Moderator Dean Kortenhoven, better known to us as Kreij to Cancer. For those of you that knew Kreij you will know that not only was he a leading light within this community but he was one damn fine human being. TPU, his family and anyone who knew him well are the poorer without him.

Kreij is remembered throughout our community in many ways, none more prominent than our Memorial build giveaways that not only support current members with the opportunity to win good quality hardware/systems (giveaway builds are geared to be able to game/crunch/fold well) but just as importantly to add more machines to the constant war against this ugly and hateful disease, for that we have our crunching/folding friends to thank as well as our outstanding TPU forum community, we thought it would be a good idea to compliment the existing memorials with something a little different in the form of a Christmas competition but with a little twist. The competition will involve a little writing but in return the winner will receive a graphics card kindly donated by our friends from XFX to whom we are very grateful.

More details and the competition opener will be published shortly, the final twist is that the competition will be hidden within an existing Kreij thread, so practice those forum searching skills to find and participate!Written by Tatty_One

Well folks, it is this time of the year again! Everyone at TechPowerUp (and NextPowerUp) would like to wish you a Merry Christmas with your loved ones! We hope the festivities are grand and the presents of high performance. May all your wishes have come true and you are able to celebrate in a tranquil atmosphere.

And, we also want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for making 2014 another awesome year. We had lots and lots of interesting things to tell you about, but rest assured, that 2015 will be even greater! We hope you will enter the new year with a great big bang and wish you all the best for the new year.

From all of us, here at TPU/NPU: Merry Christmas, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël, Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Buon Natale, Feliz Natal, Feliz Navidad,...

Right before for Christmas Thermalright presents two new CPU coolers, which have been designed especially for fans of compact Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX systems: The Macho 90 and the Silver Arrow ITX.

The Macho 90 is the newest member of our highly successful Macho Family and rounds off the series. The layout is tailored to fit the typical limitations encountered when dealing with small sized Mini-ITX motherboards. The height of just 135 mm allows the installation of the cooler in various compact PC cases. In order to avoid incompatibilities to RAM modules or motherboard components as much as possible, the nearly square heatsink has been placed directly above the CPU-socket.

We at TechPowerUp Wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! It's time to unwrap those shiny boxes under your trees! Aside from being the best time of the year to overclock, winter also marks some of the most important times of the year for the PC enthusiast community. We're barely off 31st night, and the 2014 International CES will be upon us. Hope to see you there. In the mean time, let's see some of those heavy, rumbling boxes!

Here comes the jolly Christmas! While the whole world is overwhelmed in delightful spirit, are you ready to light up your holidays with more Christmas flavors? This year, SP/ Silicon Power, the world's leading provider of memory storage solutions, is glad to present you the "White Christmas Series", which features snow-white and extremely elegant designs to dress up your storage devices with splendid Christmas-fashion. Inspired by the pureness of white snow, SP "White Christmas Series" perfectly turns the devices into the most eye-catching and stylish fashion accessories.

SP "White Christmas Series" products are tastefully designed with modern and aesthetic elements which at the same time completely deliver the charming seasonal touch. These products embrace the holiday spirits and thoroughly express the sense of warmth and joy for Christmas. Not only showing various Christmasy gestures by exceptional designs, SP "White Christmas Series" also incorporates wide range of product lines including Diamond D20 portable hard drive, Stream S03 portable hard drive, Armor A30 portable hard drive and Ultima U03 flash drive. The diverse trendy designs can totally match your different style needs and help to perfectly convey your great taste. In addition, SP "White Christmas Series" stands out by the incredible performances which just make it as flawless as the pure snow.

We at TechPowerUp wish you a Merry Christmas! May you look back to the year that was as enriching and look forward to an even better 2013. We hope you gift and receive everything you appreciate in life, especially things rich in silicon.

The Day Z mod for ArmA 2 has been a runaway hit, boosting ArmA 2 sales and raising its profile among PC enthusiasts. The mod team has been open with its plans to spin off into its own stand-alone game, but it sounds like that's happening sooner than expected. Modder Dean Hall told VG247 that making it a stand-alone product could happen "certainly before Christmas," but that will rely on reaching an agreement first. Apparently he has entertained offers, but felt they were based on the mod's rocketing success rather than an understanding of the game.

"We're really on borrowed time," he said. "I want to see it become a standalone game, following the Minecraft model of a low price point, but that will only work if we say that everyone is going to pay, and in order for people to not feel ripped off we need to have a load of new content; so, things like base-building, tidying and cleaning up animations and add ragdoll physics as the like."

Church Of Kopimism: The New File Sharing Religion (updated)

With file sharers all over the world being hunted by copyright holders and aided by the governments they lobby, there's now a new angle to this fight: file sharers turn their hobby into a religion. Since 2010, a group of self-confessed Swedish 'pirates' have tried to have their beliefs recognized as an official religion, but were denied several times. However, just before Christmas, they have finally succeeded in convincing the authorities that the Church Of Kopimism is a real, genuine bona fide religion. How they exactly achieved this isn't clear, however. The Missionary Church of Kopimism was founded by philosophy student Isak Gerson, who is one of a large group of Swedes that believe file copying to be a sacred act. Gerson is ecstatic at this development and hopes more people will now feel able to come out as 'Kopimists'.

Gerson explained to TorrentFreak, "I think that more people will have the courage to step out as Kopimists. Maybe not in the public, but at least to their close ones. There's still a legal stigma around copying for many. A lot of people still worry about going to jail when copying and remixing. I hope in the name of Kopimi that this will change."

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

It is the time of the year once more and we at TechPowerUp! would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas! Hopefully everyone is able to enjoy this precious time with their friends & loved ones, that the season manages to inspire and bring some peace and tranquility during these turbulent times!

Another year is drawing to a close and we would like to wish all our readers a merry Christmas with sleds full of hardware, gadgets and other fancy gifts and hope you all will have a great and memorable time with family and friends. This year has been another great one for TechPowerUp! thanks to you all! Enjoy the holidays and have a pompous start into the new year!

I also want to take the opportunity to thank the entire TechPowerUp! team for the incredible jobs they are doing. It is unbelievable the amount of time and dedication they put into the site and community! It would simply not be the same without all of you!

We at Techpowerup.com want to wish all of you around the world a happy and blissful Christmas! May there be boat loads of cool gadgets, hardware and other toys under the tree this holiday season! While 2009 was quite the year with ups and downs, you all have made it a memorable one here at techPowerUp! and we hope to welcome you all next year as well - bringing you the latest in hardware and gaming!