President Donald Trump said that he expects the U.S. government to impose chip tariffs of 25 percent by April 2, adding to the woes of tech buyers already burdened by high prices. But that’s not all, as Trump said he expects to raise them even more over the course of 2025. Trump was quoted by CNN and other publications, speaking from his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. During the same conversation, Trump said he plans to apply automotive tariffs of 25 percent, plus the same for pharmaceuticals as well. The idea, apparently, is to push foreign chipmakers to invest in U.S. chip manufacturing, rather than import the semiconductors into the U.S. form foreign factories. “We want to give them a little bit of a chance,” CNN quoted Trump as saying. Trump’s Commerce Department already plans to assess a 10 percent tariff on goods imported from China beginning in March, which the Consumer Technology Association has warned will force consumer tech prices up to sky-high levels. The tariff, a tax put on imports to encourage domestic manufacturing, is largely expected to be directly passed along to consumers. Acer has already said as much, planning to raise the prices of PCs by 10 percent in March. It’s not clear how the chip tariffs would affect consumers. As most people know, electronics products from TVs to PCs include many several discrete chips, including CPUs, GPUs, and discrete controllers of all types. Some, like Intel’s CPUs, include chiplets manufactured by both Intel and foreign manufacturers like TSMC. How the tariffs would affect an Intel CPU, for example, is anyone’s guess. Rumors have already circulated that some parts of the Trump administration have encouraged TSMC to take a stake in Intel, though the White House has been quoted saying that they don’t believe that Trump is actually in favor of such a move. Nvidia’s GeForce 5000 series of GPUs can already reach a whopping $2,000, with card makers jacking up the prices even more to the neighborhood of $3,000. Tack on an additional 25 percent, and that’s $3,750, potentially. But wait, there’s more. Trump followed up by saying that the chip tariffs would go up even more. “It’ll go substantially higher over a course of a year,” Trump said, according to CNN, as he wanted to give time for those manufacturers to build more factories in the U.S. (According to Bloomberg, Trump said that the chip tariffs would go “very substantially higher” instead.) At some point, a high-end GPU will start pushing into used-car territory — although those prices will probably rise in response to the new-car tariffs, too. Read...

Trusted Tech has launched Certified Support Services, aimed at enhancing Microsoft technology use with expert support and quick response times, amid rising IT challenges. Read...

Technology expert Trevor Long speaks on Apple`s new iPhone 16e. Read...

A Forrester Research report reveals that the rise of deepfake technology poses significant risks for businesses, with scams costing firms millions. Read...

A Forrester Research report reveals that the rise of deepfake technology poses significant risks for businesses, with scams costing firms millions. Read...

Banyan Software has acquired healthcare technology firm Medtech Global, enhancing its reach in Australia and New Zealand`s healthcare markets. Read...

We’ve seen smart locks that you unlock with a keypad, a phone, or even facial recognition, but Eufy’s latest model—which is actually a video doorbell and a smart lock—serves up a relatively new way of opening your door by scanning your palm.  Available for pre-order next month (existing Eufy users can place a pre-order now), the Eufy FamiLock S3 Max isn’t the first smart lock to employ this new biometric authentication method. TP-Link’s Tapo brand showed off a palm-recognition model at CES, for example, and we’ve also tested palm reader-equipped smart locks from Philips and TCL.   The technology is pretty cool, with the integrated reader using near-infrared light to scan the “sub veins” of your palm. The lock then compares the scan to those in a database of previously enrolled palm scans and, if there’s a match, voilà! The lock opens, no touches required.  Palm vein recognition is designed to work even if you have dirty, wet, sweaty, or peeling skin. For its part, Eufy promises that its FamiLock S3 Max can deliver up to 99.99999-percent accuracy (yes, that’s a lot of nine’s).  Designed to run on a 15,000mAh rechargeable battery or AAA backup batteries, the FamiLock S3 Max boasts a traditional keypad for PIN entry. Eufy says the lock meets the ANSI grade one standard, which is the highest level of the ANSI grading system for door locks.  Besides its smart lock capabilities, the Eufy FamiLock S3 Max also works as a video doorbell, serving up 2K video resolution and a 150-degree vertical and 180-degree horizontal field of view (good for a head-to-toe view of your doorstep), The Verge reports.  Dual motion sensors and human recognition also figure into the FamiLock S3 Max’s feature set, while the device itself can connect to Eufy’s HomeBase 3 hub, The Verge adds.  Like the Lockly Visage Zeno, a facial recognition-style smart lock that we recently reviewed, the FamiLock S3 has an integrated screen, handy for seeing who’s at your door without having to dig out your phone or steal a glance at a smart display.  That’s all pretty enticing, but don’t expect the Eufy FamiLock S3 Max to come cheap. Other smart locks we’ve seen with palm recognition have cost upwards of $300 and, at $399, the FamiLock is no exception. (The TCL lock mentioned above is a more affordable option at $199.99, although it’s not a lock/doorbell combo like the Eufy.)  A version of the Eufy lock that jettisons the integrated screen whittles the price down to $349, according to The Verge.  We’ll have a full review of the Eufy FamiLock S3 Max once we spend some quality time with a test unit. Read...

Technology always marches forward, but often there are a couple of hobbled lurches backwards at the same time. One of them appears to be Nvidia PhysX, a proprietary graphics technology that was all the rage about 20 years ago but has since fallen out of fashion. The system has been stealthily retired for the new RTX 50-series cards, leaving some old but beloved games in an awkward position. For the uninitiated, PhysX is a system that adds physics effects to games with some dedicated acceleration tech. We’ve seen it in some very specific but very visible graphical examples, like dripping liquids, blowing hair, or hanging cloth. It was used in a lot of the biggest PC games from 2005 to 2013 or so, like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands 2. While you can use the PhysX system on almost any hardware, including running it solely on your CPU, Nvidia’s GPUs had dedicated hardware to run it smoothly without performance problems. You could even use a secondary, older graphics card for dedicated PhysX processing. PhysX isn’t especially useful in modern games, though, because modern game engines can simulate these effects more efficiently and without needing specific SDKs. For example, Batman: Arkham Knight was a huge graphical upgrade that didn’t use PhysX in the PC version like its predecessors did. Unreal 5 doesn’t even support it! So it makes sense that Nvidia didn’t pay too much attention to it in the newest GPUs, which lack the 32-bit CUDA hardware it was originally designed for. But that still leaves a lot of old and beloved games in a bit of a pickle. A ResetEra forum poster (spotted by PCGamesN) put together a list of the major games from that era that used GPU-accelerated PhysX and are going to be struggling to strut their best graphical stuff on the RTX 50 series. Notable titles include the original Mirror’s Edge, Unreal Tournament 3, Batman: Arkham Asylum/City/Origins, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. None of these games absolutely need PhysX to run, but trying to use the PhysX system for these dedicated effects on a new Nvidia GPU — or dedicating that slice of performance to the CPU — will result in a dramatic reduction in frame rates. For example, an RTX 5090 running Borderlands 2 with all the bells and whistles turned on will perform notably worse than an RTX 4090 running the same settings. Personally, I don’t think this is the “stop the presses” emergency that some YouTube gamerbros are treating this as. PhysX effects were never essential to the games they were featured in. (Most of those games were also released on consoles, which didn’t have any PhysX support.) And old games are always at risk of running into issues on newer hardware. It’s just a fact of life. Try booting up the original release version of Skyrim from 2011 on a modern PC if you don’t believe me. That said, this is indicative of a certain lack of concern for preservation on Nvidia’s part — and the preservation of video games is becoming a bigger problem as the medium ages and becomes more focused on software than hardware. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Fantastic 1440p and 4K frame rates; solid improvement over predecessor Transformative Multi Frame Generation technology delivers vastly improved gaming experiences in 75 games and apps $50 less than 4070 Ti 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM and a memory system configured for 4K gaming, unlike the 4070 Ti Cons DLSS 4 MFG is available in a lot of games, but not all of them Prices likely to be inflated on the street Our Verdict The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti marries a solid leap in performance with Nvidia’s game-changing DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation feature, resulting in a truly transformative experience you have to play to believe. It’s so good for 1440p and 4K gaming that it almost renders the RTX 5080 obsolete. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The avalanche of next-generation GeForce graphics cards continues. Nvidia released the $1,999 GeForce RTX 5090 and $999 RTX 5080 in January, powered by a new “Blackwell” architecture and sporting DLSS 4’s fantastic new Multi Frame Generation feature. Now, the $750 GeForce RTX 5070 Ti arrives on February 20, bringing the same arsenal of next-gen goodies to PC gamers who can’t splurge on a four-figure GPU. It’s great. It also immediately makes the RTX 5080 much less appealing. Most gamers should pick up the RTX 5070 Ti instead – assuming you can find one for around its $750 MSRP, and you’re willing to lean into the magical experiences unlocked by Nvidia’s DLSS 4 technology. We’ve spent the past week putting the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti to the test, including extensive experiential testing of Nvidia’s literally game-changing new DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation feature. Here’s what PC gamers need to know before plunking down $750 on this glorious, AI-augmented beast of a graphics card. It’s basically a 4080 Super… As you can see from the benchmarks above, the RTX 5070 Ti delivers essentially the exact same performance as the RTX 4080 Super, last generation’s 4K gaming champion. (We limited our benchmark testing to 1440p resolution because we wanted to focus our 4K efforts on play testing Multi Frame Generation, below.) That means this card churns out frames at a ferocious rate, capable of keeping even high-speed 1440p monitors well-fed – and that’s before flipping on DLSS upscaling or frame generation. Flipping on those must-use technologies sends performance soaring significantly higher. While we don’t have hard 4K benchmark results here, rest assured that the 5070 Ti is also plenty capable at that pixel-packed resolution. PCWorld video producer Adam Patrick Murray tested the 5070 Ti at 4K in his small-form factor PC, which previously housed an RTX 4080. “Performance on this 5070 Ti in my 7800X3D SFF rig felt almost exactly like the 4080 I was using, but it could handle ray tracing way better,” he reports. “And MFG isn’t available on the 4080 so I couldn’t use the transformative experience [with the older GPU].” Unlike the RTX 5080, the RTX 5070 Ti offers a solid (though not hair-raising) performance increase over its predecessor. While we included results for the 4070 Ti Super in the benchmarks above, that card was about 10 percent faster than the vanilla 4070 Ti. That makes the new RTX 5070 Ti a welcome 20 to 30 percent faster than its predecessor, for $50 less than its predecessor launched at. You love to see it… though to be fair, we called the 4070 Ti “technically hobbled and wildly overpriced” at the time. Fortunately, the criticisms that earned such stark feedback have been corrected in the RTX 5070 Ti. (More on that later.) Casting a wider gaze, the RTX 5070 Ti’s arrival means that you can now get 4080+ level performance for significantly less than the $1,200 that the RTX 4080 debuted at in late 2022. And since the RTX 5080 is only 10 to 15 percent faster for 33 percent more money, it makes the RTX 5070 Ti the smart choice unless you seek maximum performance for ultra-fast 4K experiences. …but with Nvidia’s must-use Multi Frame Gen tech As Adam testified above, 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. We’ve already spent considerable time in our RTX 5090 and 5080 reviews discussing the gloriousness and caveats of MFG. We’ve also explained how DLSS 4 is so much more than “fake frames,” and how the fate of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series depends on MFG. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is absolutely the enthusiast-grade graphics card I’d buy right now. So, with 75 games and apps now available with DLSS 4 (either natively or via a “DLSS Override” option in the Nvidia app), we decided to spend several days actually play testing as many MFG games as possible, rather than spending those days running endless benchmarks. You can see Adam’s thoughts on playing not one, not two, but twenty 4K games with MFG on the RTX 5070 Ti in the video below. I asked him for a tl;dr teaser to include here, and he simply said “Holy hell, this just f***ing works.” “The goal was to get acceptable [graphics] settings to hit 50+ FPS at 4K [to combat potential latency issues] and then turn on MFG,” Adam says. “I could play most of the games at max settings but with some upscaling involved, so turning on MFG allowed me to hit 120+ FPS and completely change the experience of the games.” There are a few caveats, but nothing show-stopping. Hit the video to get the full scoop (and maybe subscribe to PCWorld’s YouTube channel while you’re at it?). There is no RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition PNY Nvidia’s diminutive two-slot Founders Edition models were a hit with RTX 5080 and 5090 buyers sick of beefy 3+ slot designs, but they’re not an option for the RTX 5070 Ti. This GPU will only be available as custom boards from Nvidia partners like Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte. That means most (all?) RTX 5070 Ti will be thicker designs with ample cooling attached. Hope you have room in your case! It may also mean that it could be hard to find an RTX 5070 Ti for close to its $749 MSRP. (Though it’s hard to find any high-end GPUs right now, to be fair.) With past custom-only releases, Nvidia partners usually provided an MSRP model, but with very low stock. Instead, board makers tend to prioritize more glamorous custom models with overclocks, extra features, and much larger premiums. We’re already seeing early RTX 5070 Ti listings nearing the $1,000 price point. Paying the price of an RTX 5080 is a hard sell for the 5070 Ti, however – though the looming threat of tariffs mean it could make sense for worried U.S. buyers. The RTX 5070 Ti fixes the RTX 4070 Ti’s worse sins Last generation, we called the RTX 4070 Ti “technically hobbled and wildly overpriced.” Thankfully, Nvidia fixed the most glaring issues in the RTX 5070 Ti, starting with a price point that’s $50 lower. It was actually the RTX 4070 Ti Super that corrected the vanilla 4070 Ti’s crippled memory subsystem – the new RTX 5070 Ti just keeps those much-needed tweaks intact. With 16GB of cutting-edge GDDR7 memory paired with a wide 256-bit bus, the RTX 5070 Ti is a glorious option for both 1440p and 4K gaming alike – especially when paired with Multi Frame Generation. (Did we mention MFG is amazing?) AMD’s counterpunch is right around the corner AMD If you’re open to an AMD graphics card, you may want to hold off buying the RTX 5070 Ti. AMD renamed its next-generation GPUs to better align with Nvidia’s models. That means the Radeon RX 9070 XT – teased at CES, and launching sometime in early March – should be Team Red’s 5070 Ti competitor. While it’ll come with a new FSR 4.0 implementation that finally mirrors DLSS’s setup, AMD isn’t currently expected to have a Multi Frame Gen-like feature at launch. More importantly, rumors suggest the Radeon RX 9070 XT could wind up nearly as powerful as the 4080 Super (and thus the 5070 Ti). If that’s true, AMD could decide to severely undercut the 5070 Ti’s pricing…whenever the 9070 XT actually releases. Of course, if you delay buying an RTX 5070 Ti at launch, stock may take a while to replenish, if prior RTX 50-series releases are any indication. Decisions, decisions. Should you buy Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti? Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry If you want a high-performance graphics card capable of flying through 1440p and 4K gaming, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is a no-brainer among currently available options. Gaming only gets better once you flip on Multi Frame Generation in 75 supported games and apps – the visual smoothness it provides is truly transformative, even if you’re coming from a 4080 Super already. Just ask Adam! I wouldn’t recommend buying the RTX 5070 Ti if you’ve already got a comparable RTX 40-series card. But if you’re coming from the 30-series or prior, and willing to hold your nose over how much more graphics cards cost now – the RTX 3070 Ti cost $600 and the 2070 Super cost $500, before inflation – you’ll love the RTX 5070 Ti. The jump forward in raw performance alone is worth it, and then adding MFG on top (in dozens of supported titles) can make your games feel like a whole new experience. With a 25 to 30 percent leap in performance plus Multi Frame Gen, for $50 less than its predecessor, the RTX 5070 Ti offers a compelling all-around package – one that, unfortunately, the RTX 5080 didn’t quite nail. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is absolutely the enthusiast-grade graphics card I’d buy right now if I were shopping around… though you may want to see what AMD’s imminent Radeon RX 9070 XT offers when it hits the streets in early March. Read...

TL;DR: Get the 100W Omega USB-C GaN Charger for just $59.99 (reg. $119)—smaller, ultra-fast charging, and powers three devices at once—perfect for travel and everyday use. If you’re tired of carrying bulky chargers or waiting forever for your devices to power up, it’s time to upgrade. The 100W Omega USB-C GaN Charger was designed to be the smallest, most powerful multi-port charger on the market—and right now, you can get it for just $59.99 (reg. $119). This award-winning GaN (Gallium Nitride) charger is 81 percent smaller than Apple’s 100W charger, yet it simultaneously delivers ultra-fast charging for laptops, tablets, and smartphones. With two 100W USB-C ports and a 22.5W USB-A port, you can power up three devices simultaneously without slowing down.  The 100W Omega GaN Charger was made for efficiency, speed, and portability. Next-gen GaNFast technology delivers cooler, more efficient charging without the bulk. That means no more carrying multiple chargers or dealing with slow power-ups. It can fully charge a 16? MacBook Pro in just 1.5 hours. Its smart power distribution ensures each device gets the right amount of power, whether you’re charging a laptop, tablet, or smartphone—all at once. Get the 100W Omega USB-C GaN Charger while it’s just $59.99 (reg. $119).   100W Omega USB-C GaN Charger – $59.99 Get It Here StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...