Find out how holoportation 3D telemedicine technology is helping patients in Ghana. Read...

On International Women’s Day 2025, tech leaders urge for gender equity, highlighting the need for systemic change in celebrating women’s contributions in the sector. Read...

IDeaS has unveiled an API data integration developer portal aimed at boosting collaboration among hospitality technology providers and streamlining connections. Read...

Seventy-five per cent of banks are set to increase investment in risk technology, as a global report highlights rising priorities amid macroeconomic challenges. Read...

On International Women’s Day, a sales leader urges businesses in technology to overcome gender barriers and attract more women into rewarding sales careers. Read...

We’re at T-minus eight months before Microsoft officially gives Windows 10 the boot. PC gamers in particular seem unready to let go of the operating system, which might start causing headaches if they intend to upgrade their hardware. For example, AMD’s new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards will require UEFI instead of ye olde BIOS. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is an upgrade to the pre-boot BIOS setup that most people are used to, and odds are good that you already have it if your desktop PC — or the motherboard inside — is less than 10 years old. (In fact, lots of people use the terms UEFI and BIOS interchangeably. Even some technology journalists… ahem.) AMD just announced that all its graphics cards starting with the 9000 series and onward will have “UEFI-only support,” in a document spotted by VideoCardz.com. As I said, most PC users are already on a UEFI system at this point, since Windows 11 requires UEFI for Secure Boot and other security features. But “most” is a long way from “all” — in fact, more than 40 percent of Steam users are still on Windows 10, which boots just fine on older BIOS setups. (It’s impossible to know which Windows 10 users are still running an older motherboard with BIOS instead of UEFI based on Steam data alone.) Get Windows 11 Pro for cheap Windows 11 Pro As VideoCardz points out, AMD’s announcement doesn’t flat-out declare that the new 9000-series cards won’t work on a motherboard running BIOS, or on a UEFI board with the more forgiving CSM (Compatibility Support Module) enabled. But support and performance won’t be guaranteed for these older boards, even with CSM turned on. It’s worth noting that, even if you decide to keep running Windows 10 on your desktop past Microsoft’s self-imposed end-of-service date, there’s no reason you can’t upgrade your motherboard and install Windows 10 instead of Windows 11. But as we reach and move beyond that date, these kinds of issues are likely to pop up more frequently. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Very good 1440p gaming performance DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Gen delivers face-melting visual smoothness and responsiveness in 75 games Tiny two-slot Founders Edition design can fit in any PC and is darned cute! Cons Virtually identical performance to 4070 Super; this a stagnant ‘upgrade’ 12GB memory capacity isn’t enough for a $550 GPU in 2025 Skimpy memory capacity and small 192-bit memory bus make this a bad option for 4K gaming Our Verdict Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 offers no performance increase over its predecessor, and the 12GB memory capacity is too skimpy for a $550 graphics card in 2025. It’s still a solid 1440p graphics card, and DLSS 4’s Multi-Frame Gen delivers transformative visual smoothness in supported games. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: GeForce RTX 5070 Retailer Price Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket When the RTX 5080 launched in January, it became clear that the fate of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series lies in DLSS 4’s hands. The graphics card offered a bare minimum performance upgrade over its predecessor, instead relying on the magic of DLSS 4’s new Multiple Frame Generation feature to drive frame rates forward in supported games. The $550 GeForce RTX 5070 takes that to the extreme. Nvidia’s new graphics card delivers virtually identical performance to the RTX 4070 Super, a year after the 4070 Super launched. It has the same memory configuration as its predecessor. It costs just $50 less. The RTX 5070 is essentially a 4070 Super with DLSS 4. This isn’t an upgrade; it’s stagnation. We’ve spent the past week benchmarking Nvidia’s cute lil’ RTX 5070 Founders Edition in a variety of games and workloads. Here’s what you need to know before buying Nvidia’s latest GPU. Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 performance benchmarks Again, the RTX 5070 delivers nearly identical performance to the 4070 Super. In some games the RTX 5070 is a little faster; in some games, surprisingly, the 4070 Super is a little faster; and in others they’re basically in a dead heat. That’s profoundly disappointing – but just because the RTX 5070 is an atrocious generational upgrade doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad graphics card. It sails past the 100 frames-per-second mark in many of our gaming benchmarks, even with all graphics settings cranked to the maximum at 1440p resolution. In our most strenuous tests – Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode with path-traced lighting – the RTX 5070 manages to hit the hallowed 60fps mark demanded by PC gaming enthusiasts. The 12GB of GDDR7 memory feels skimpy for a $500+ graphics card in 2025 and may limit performance in future memory-heavy games, however. If you already have a gaming PC you can simply drop the RTX 5070 into, it’ll deliver a vastly better gaming experience than the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro for $150 less. That value proposition goes away if you need to build the rest of the rig around it, however. Built for 1440p gaming, with just 12GB of VRAM You could definitely play a lot of games at 4K resolution with the RTX 5070, especially in games that support DLSS. But don’t buy the RTX 5070 for 4K gaming. This card is built for 1440p gaming. Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Nvidia gave the RTX 5070 the same memory configuration as the RTX 4070 Super; 12GB of memory over a 192-bit bus, though the memory has been upgraded from GDDR6X to GDDR7. Here’s a quote from our RTX 4070 non-Super review in 2023 that’s just as applicable to the RTX 5070: “Nvidia’s decision to equip the RTX 4070 with a 192-bit bus and 12GB of memory prevent us from being able to recommend it for long-term 4K gaming, especially with memory requirements only rising in modern games.” Nvidia failed to respond to this criticism and it’s only more urgent two years later. Slapping just 12GB of RAM on a $550 graphics card feels insulting – especially since Intel’s $250 Arc B580 offers the same capacity for less than half the price. AMD’s challenger, the Radeon RX 9070, comes with 16GB of RAM. Nvidia needs to do better here…but the uninspiring memory configuration should hold up fine for 1440p gaming in most scenarios. I’m deeply disappointed that Nvidia didn’t move the needle in performance or memory capacity, and barely nudged the price down in return. But this is nonetheless a good 1440p graphics card. DLSS 4’s Multi-Frame Gen tech will knock your socks off I’ve said it in every RTX 50-series review thus far, and I’ll say it again for the RTX 5070: DLSS 4’s new Multi Frame Generation feature – which inserts up to three AI-generated frames between every two “traditional” frames, to send frame rates and visual smoothness absolutely soaring – is truly transformative. It can make even a clunky game like Star Wars Outlaws feel as sublime as the legendary Doom 2016, though the overall experience is a bit hard to measure with normal tools. The RTX 5070 is the ideal “vehicle” for MFG in a lot of ways. Since MFG’s inserted AI frames don’t respond to your inputs, it can add latency compared to running a game at the same frame rate without MFG. If you can get a game’s baseline performance to 60fps or so before flipping on MFG, it generally feels fine (and looks stunning) in single-player games. As shown above, the RTX 5070 hits 60fps at 1440p even in our most strenuous benchmarks. That means you can crank the eye candy to the max, flip on MFG, and enjoy a mind-bendingly smooth experience in the 75+ games that support DLSS 4, no additional headaches or hassles required. PCWorld video guru Adam Patrick Murray spent days playing more than 20 DLSS 4 games to get a feel for the new technology. You can see his thoughts in the video above; he used an RTX 5070 Ti for testing, but the same takeaways apply to the 5070 as well. There’s a reason Nvidia is betting the RTX 50-series’ fate on DLSS 4. It’s that damned good. Related: Nvidia’s DLSS 4 is so much more than just ‘fake frames’ AMD’s Radeon rival is just around the corner AMD Nvidia won’t like this tidbit, but there’s another crucial aspect to know about the GeForce RTX 5070’s launch: AMD’s direct competitor is launching just a day later. The RTX 5070 launches March 5, tomorrow. AMD’s $599 Radeon RX 9070 XT and $549 Radeon RX 9070 launch March 6. Independent reviews of the Radeon 9070 series have yet to be published, but AMD outfitted both GPUs with 16GB of GDDR6 memory and says it’s targeting “4K gaming at a 1440p price.” The company also promises large improvements in ray tracing performance, and finally invested in beefed-up AI accelerators to power FSR 4, which will be available in 30 games at launch. Given the RTX 5070’s negligible performance upgrade over the 4070 Super, smart buyers may want to see what AMD is brewing before investing $549 on Nvidia’s card. AMD partners have been shipping Radeon RX 9070 stock to retailers for months now so you may actually be able to grab one before the GPUs sell out, too. Should you buy the GeForce RTX 5070? Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry If you’re coming from an RTX 3070 – or anything older or weaker – the RTX 5070 will be a tangible upgrade. You’ll feel the leap forward in performance, and the extra memory capacity. Even though the RTX 5070’s mere 12GB of memory disappoints in a $500+ graphics card in 2025, the older RTX 3070 only had 8GB, and that can feel awfully tight at 1440p resolution. The RTX 3070 already needs to make visual compromises to meet the memory demands of many modern games. The RTX 5070 doesn’t, though the 12GB capacity is nowhere near as future-proof as the 16GB found on virtually all other graphics cards in this price range. The limited capacity means you won’t want this GPU for 4K gaming. While the RTX 5070 is one of the worst generational GPU “upgrades” in memory, it’s still a very good 1440p graphics card. Performance soars over 100fps in many games even with graphics settings cranked to the max, and crosses 60fps even in our most strenuous tests with ray tracing enabled. That gives the RTX 5070 enough firepower to flip on DLSS 4’s jaw-dropping Multi-Frame Gen tech, which unlocks new levels of visual smoothness that must be seen to believed. It’s available in 75+ games. Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry If you don’t plan on utilizing DLSS 4, well, you’re truly missing out. It’s great. But the RTX 5070 loses a lot of its luster when it’s not churning out AI frames. In non-DLSS games, the RTX 4070 Super has offered identical performance levels for over a year now. Bottom line? Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 is a stagnant “upgrade” from a hardware point of view, and it’s skimpy with RAM considering the price. But yes, DLSS 4 software gives the RTX 5070 superpowers otherwise unachievable – at least in the games that actively support it. I’m deeply disappointed that Nvidia didn’t move the needle in performance or memory capacity, and barely nudged the price down in return. But this is nonetheless a good 1440p graphics card. Given the stagnation, and given that AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 launches just a day after the RTX 5070 but with 16GB of memory, I’d strongly suggest waiting for reviews of that graphics card before making a purchase. Weigh all your options before plunking down your $550. Read...

Cloud storage is better, faster, and more affordable per gigabyte than ever before. But it’s not the best way to go for everything, nor can it completely replace local storage and backups. In fact, cloud storage can be drastically inferior to local storage, placing sensitive data in real danger of oversight, theft, and loss. Storing your data locally on a physical drive that you can touch with your hands and manage on premises can be a great way to avoid the pitfalls of remote data storage. Here are several key ways in which local storage trumps cloud storage and remains relevant in 2025. Speed and availability One of the main reasons for backing up important data is that it can be readily recovered in the event of an outage, data breach, ransomware, or loss. However, while cloud backups are convenient for day-to-day stuff like individual files or folders, they’re dreadfully slow when it comes to restoring large swaths of data after a catastrophic loss. Downloading several terabytes of data from a cloud provider can take hours or even days, depending on the speed of your connection. A local drive, on the other hand, can transfer data way faster and gives you more options on how to actually access that data — over your network, with a USB cable, or even installing directly into your PC. Think about it. Why do cloud backup companies like BackBlaze offer restore-by-mail programs, where they ship out a hard drive or flash drive with your data on it, which you can then return for a refund? It’s just plain faster and more secure than going over the internet. Backblaze Local storage also means your data is always available. Even if you have an ultra-fast internet connection, there’s nothing you can do if you experience an internet outage, nor can you do anything if your cloud provider goes down for any reason. Services may promise 99.9 percent uptime, but that 0.1 percent is always there — and according to Murphy’s law, it’ll go down when you most need it. In July 2024, the infamous CrowdStrike disaster took down Windows computers across the world, rendering many sites and services inoperable for extended periods. Similarly, outages at AWS, Azure, Cloudflare, Google, et al. have killed entire chunks of the internet until issues could be addressed. And let’s not forget that cloud services can go down permanently and you could lose all your data overnight. Is it likely? Maybe not, especially with giants like Google and Microsoft. They’ll probably give you some kind of heads up… but even so, scrambling to clone all your data before some arbitrary deadline could be a pain. Not so if you maintain local backups, at least of your most important files and folders. Cloud backups are here to stay, I’m not arguing that. Cloud backups are good to have — as one of several options. Local backups are still important because you never know when cloud backups won’t be there for you. The only way to guarantee your data is available when you need it? Store it locally on premises. Security and compliance If you’re looking after client data, or if you have sensitive personal information that you want to keep away from prying eyes, then storing your data locally gives you more control and privacy. You’ll still be subject to local and national laws, but you won’t have to worry about other laws that might apply overseas and in other territories. Dooffy / Pixabay If you’re based in the US, storing data with a cloud provider in Europe comes with GDPR compliance requirements — and penalties for non-compliance. Cloud providers elsewhere are beholden to the laws of their own countries. That means government intervention can compel those companies to hand over your data. Speaking about small Australian businesses in 2021, David Tudehope, CEO of Macquarie Technology Group, highlighted this issue in a chat with ABC: “[If] they keep their data offshore, even if it wasn’t a conscious choice, that data is now subject to the foreign laws of that country. … It’s subject to a foreign regulator, it’s subject to foreign courts, none of which they realized when they clicked the ‘I accept’ button.” Data breaches One of the best ways to avoid being hacked by malicious attackers is… to avoid presenting yourself as a target. While cloud providers do put a lot of effort into security for the data they oversee, the fact that they store so much data makes them huge targets for cybercriminals. In 2022, cloud-based password manager company LastPass suffered a major security breach when a compromised developer account led to the theft of users’ password vaults full of incredibly sensitive information. On top of putting customer data at risk, the ripples kept going out — and in December 2024, it was reported that cryptocurrency was still being stolen from customers who had their LastPass accounts hacked. Markus Spiske / Unsplash In 2024, cloud-based data storage company Snowflake suffered a major breach when hackers were able to compromise the data of more than 100 customer accounts, including TicketMaster and AT&T. They stole banking information, medical data, and customer call records from millions of customers of those companies, too. While these are isolated incidents, they aren’t unique. Even the most hardened cloud storage companies suffer data breaches, and you can’t fully protect your data just by ensuring you have a strong password and multi-factor authentication enabled on your account. If that data is stored on a server in your office or your home, you retain complete control of its security. With the right know-how, you can guarantee it’s locked down more than any major cloud provider could, and you’re less of a target by keeping your data in a solitary location, without the global access that cloud providers offer. Local storage still matters in 2025 Cloud storage has undoubtedly revolutionized the way we all interact with and think about data. It offers convenience, scalability, and redundancy in ways that are tough to replicate locally. But it’s not perfect. Cloud storage introduces a range of risks and concerns that can overshadow the benefits for some. By maintaining local backups instead of (or in conjunction with) cloud backups, you can ensure that your data (or your clients’ data) is always available, with full control over its security and compliance, while mitigating the risks of cloud outages and data breaches. Whether it’s a managed server, a NAS drive, or a portable SSD you keep in a drawer, local storage remains an important way to maintain swift and secure access to important data in 2025. In need of more local storage? Get started with our top picks for best external drives! Further reading: Why HDDs are still far from obsolete Read...

Alibaba Cloud has been named a leader in AI by Forrester and Gartner, solidifying its role in cloud computing and advancing AI technology on a global scale. Read...

On Monday, browser maker Opera published a seriously impressive demo of what it calls “Browser Operator,” showing off its upcoming AI-powered browser technology that allows you to assign shopping tasks to Opera, which it then pursues independently. Opera calls this “agentic browsing” and claims that it’s a “paradigm shift for browsers.” The tech industry likes to overuse that phrase, with almost everything being a paradigm shift in some way, but in this case it might actually be appropriate. Agentic browsing allows you to prompt the browser to research a shopping task for you, using AI, in much the same way you might check a number of shopping sites or ask a travel agent to plan a vacation for you. Opera says the browser does all of this locally, using your PC’s resources, rather than sending the information to the cloud. The shopping task is treated like an AI prompt, which you type into a small window at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Crucially, Opera’s demo does not show the browser actually completing the transaction. It basically pauses on a screen with the shopping site’s own “checkout” browser shown but not clicked. In the video demonstration, Opera’s Browser Operator is asked, “Find me 12 pairs of white Nike socks in men’s size 10 that I can buy.” The browser then executes several steps, similar to the “deep research” AI models that have begun to circulate, which break down the prompted task into a series of steps, which are then executed. Opera also showed off how Browser Operator could work in a series of queries. A second prompt asked Browser Operator to book tickets for Newcastle United’s next Premier League game at its home stadium, with preferred seats around midfield but with a total price limit. After the tickets were found and approved, the user asked Opera to research flights and a hotel for those dates as well. YouTube / Opera Right now, all of this is just a demo. “Opera’s Browser Operator is currently available as a preview of the upcoming functionality,” the company said. “Opera expects to launch the new Browser Operator as part of its AI feature drop program in the near future.” Opera hasn’t said if it will charge for the feature. Typically, AI models require several gigabytes worth of downloaded data. And, of course, there’s the trust aspect — even if Browser Operator doesn’t complete the transaction, can you be sure you received the best deal? That the AI actually did everything you asked it to do? Users will undoubtedly have to test out Browser Operator themselves. Can Opera pull it off? Demos aren’t always to be trusted, but it’s a fascinating proof of concept nevertheless. Further reading: Opera’s Air browser helps battle doomscrolling Read...