As expected apple has unveiled the new 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display. As the name describes, the new iMac has a 5K display but otherwise, it keeps the same form factor as last year’s iMac (it’s still just 5mm thick at the edge). It is priced at just $2,500, and it ships today.

At 5K "5120×2800" Apple says this is the world’s highest resolution display (14.7 million pixels). It has seven times more pixels than your 1080p TV or desktop monitor. To get up to 5K, while retaining good image quality, Apple says it had to use “Oxide TFT” technology.

There’s a 3.5GHz Core i5 Haswell CPU inside (upgradable to Core i7), and the Radeon R9 M290X GPU (upgradable to the M295X).I thought it would be one of Nvidia’s very power efficient Maxwell-based 900M-series GPUs, but for some reason AMD was chosen.

The new 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display will cost just $2,500. Bear in mind that the recently announced Dell 5K monitor will also be priced at around $2,500. Mind blown. For more tech specs and details, head on over to Apple’s iMac website.

Specification:

27-inch (diagonal) Retina display with IPS technology;5120‑by‑2880 resolution with support for millions of colors

Samsung engineers reportedly conducted research on the human eye to determine the monitor's curve radius. Because the display's edges are physically closer to the user's eyes, users don't need to shift their focus to look at the ends of the screen - a feature that Samsung bills as ideal for people who spend extended hours in front of a computer, such as gamers and office workers.

The monitor features built-in dual stereo speakers and a special 'gaming mode' that detects changes in scenes and adjusts colour and contrast accordingly.

The SD590C will be available in the United States at a recommended retail price of $430 USD.

It's looking like Microsoft is trying to do some back pedaling in regards to Crozier's statements today. ZDNet.fr has received a statement from Nicolas Petit, director of marketing and operations division of Microsoft France, who in the translated text stated, "We look forward to seeing you in late September, in San Francisco, for the future of Windows, which actually at this stage does not have a name as such."

Original story Alain Crozier, the President of Microsoft France, today became the first executive in the company to use the term "Windows 9" publicly to describe the next version of Windows.

Crozier made the statement as part of a company press event today that was live-streamed and is now available to watch on the Microsoft France website. During his presentation, he said, "Last year we had Windows 8. In the next few minutes, the next few days, we'll be releasing Windows 9." Crozier is likely referring to the press event scheduled to be held September 30, a week from today, in San Francisco, where the company is supposed to offer the first details on the next version of Windows and how it will help its enterprise customers.

It's possible that Crozier misspoke on the actual release date of Windows 9, which has the internal code name Threshold. Recent Internet rumors claim that Microsoft will wait until sometime in early October to release a public preview of Windows. It's also possible that Microsoft may end up calling the next version of Windows something other than Windows 9 when it is finally released. However, the fact that Crozier did say "Windows 9" today shows that the branding has at least been discussed at the company.

Do you think Microsoft should use "Windows 9" as the final name for the next version of the OS?

Reports from consumers claim that storing an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus can cause the body of the phone to warp.

This is according to Geek.com, which claims some consumers have complained about the phone cases having bent after merely sitting in a pants pocket for an extended amount of time.

The author reported that his own iPhone 6 unit had experienced some warping, although it was significantly less than what others had experienced.

"Just to be on the safe side, shortly after reading these reports I [Geek.com's Russell Holly] checked out my own iPhone 6 and discovered a similar — but significantly less noticeable — effect. Much like these other reports, my phone had been in my front pocket for an extended period of time while I was driving. The phone is otherwise in perfect working order, and has never once been dropped or sat on (or anything)."

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models are designed to be lightweight, made out of aluminum with soft, curved edges. It's possible that the phone's ligtweight construction may be to blame for the warping.

This isn't the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset, but according to Oculus, it's another big step closer. This morning at Oculus Connect, company CEO Brendan Iribe revealed the Crescent Bay prototype, which he says is "a massive leap" over the currently available Oculus Rift DK2.

Crescent Bay includes 360-degree head tracking (which was "not easy"), higher resolution, a lighter body, integrated audio (using RealSpace 3D tech), and more—which all leads to a much better sense of "presence," as Iribe puts it.

The Crescent Bay units on display at Oculus Connect were handmade (we presume that's why the headphones look like they could pair well with an '80s Walkman), and there's no news on if or when they'll be sold to developers.

Like the GTX 750 Ti before it, the GTX 980 makes use of Nvidia's Maxwell architecture, the successor to the Kepler architecture featured in almost all of the 6-series and 7-series GPUs. With Maxwell, Nvidia has continued to focus on the efficiency and performance per watt improvements it started with Kepler, resulting in a flagship GPU with a TDP of just 165W. By comparison, the GTX 780 Ti--the previous holder of the "world's fastest GPU" moniker--had a TDP of 250W.

Specs	GTX 680	GTX 780	GTX 780 Ti	GTX 980	GTX 970
CUDA cores	1536	2304	2880	2048	1664
Base clock	1006 MHz	863 MHz	876	1126 MHz	1050 MHz
Boost clock	1058 MHz	900 MHz	928	1216 MHz	1178 MHz
Texture units	192	128	192	128	104
Texture fill rate	128.8 billion /s	160.5 billion /s	196.2 billion /s	144 billion /s	109 billion /s
Single precision	1 teraflop	4 teraflops	5 teraflops	5 teraflops	4 teraflops
Memory config	2GB 256-bit GDDR5	3GB 384-bit GDDR5	3GB 384-bit GDDR5	4GB 256-bit GDDR5	4GB 256-bit GDDR5
Memory speed	6.0 Gbps	6.0 Gbps	7.0 Gbps	7.0 Gbps	7.0 Gbps
TDP	195W	250W	250W	195W	145W
Power connectors	2 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin, 1x 8-pin	1 x 6-pin, 1x 8-pin	2 x 6-pin	2 x 6-pin
Outputs	DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI, 2x dual-link DVI	DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI, 2x dual-link DVI	DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI, 2x dual-link DVI	3x DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, dual-link DVI	3x DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, dual-link DVI
Launch price	$500	$650	$700	$550	$330

Nvidia has accomplished this power-saving feat by making some significant changes with its Maxwell architecture. Just like Kepler, the Maxwell GM204 chip featured in the 980 is built on a 28nm process made up of an array of graphics processing clusters (GPCs), streaming multiprocessors (SMs), and memory controllers. Inside each GPC is a dedicated raster engine (the conversion of vector graphics into pixels), along with four SMs containing 128 CUDA cores, a Polymorph Engine, and eight texture units. That adds up to a total of 2048 CUDA cores and 128 texture units.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that's a significant decrease from the 2880 CUDA cores and 240 texture units of the 780 Ti, or even the 2304 CUDA cores and 192 texture units of the 780, although it's a significant boost over the 680 many potential 980 customers will be upgrading from. Memory bandwidth has taken a hit too, with the 980 featuring a 256-bit memory bandwidth compared to the 384-bit bandwidth of the 780 Ti and 780. But why compare GK204 to the fully unlocked GK110 chips of the 780 Ti and 780? The 980 matches and usually bests the performance of the 780 Ti, and yet it does so using far less power. That's a mighty impressive feat of engineering, particularly given the 980 hasn't relied on a new production process for its power saving prowess.

Those power savings come from a set of underlying improvements to the architecture, most notably by giving each of the four warp schedulers (the distribution of threads/work across the GPU) their own pool of CUDA cores and execution resources, rather than having to share them out across each scheduler. This--along with a larger 2MB cache that Nvidia says results in fewer requests to the GPU's DRAM, and improved memory compression techniques--has resulted in a highly power-efficient architecture. There is a performance hit to this new setup, which has largely been negated by the 980's much higher base clock of 1126 MHz, and a boost clock of 1216 Mhz.

Design and Features

Housing all that silicon goodness (in the reference design at least) is Nvidia's excellent and rather attractive aluminum cooler. Whether manufacturing partners will adopt it, though, remains to be seen. It's certainly not the cheapest cooler to produce, and with such a low TDP on the card, partners could get away with being a little thriftier. Still, let's hope some adopt it, because it remains a fine performer, particularly for a blower-style design. And, with it cooling the low TDP of the 980, it's very quiet and cool, even under load.

On the output side the reference board comes with one DVI port, One HDMI 2.0-compliant port, and three full-size display ports. Power comes from two 6-pin inputs. The GTX 980 will fully support DirectX 12 when it's released, although Nvidia has announced that all Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell GPUs will support the API, so don't feel you need to buy a new GPU just for DX12.

There's also support for Nvidia's G-Sync technology, which syncs the refresh rate of the monitor to the frame rate of your game. If you've not had a chance to check it out yet, I thoroughly recommend you head down to a shop that's got one of the coveted G-Sync monitors in stock and give it a look. No matter how much your frame rate bounces around (within reason: anything less than 30fps is still going to look a bit ropey), games look incredibly smooth, without any of the tearing and artifacts you might see from a normal monitor, and without the input lag you'd get from using V-sync.

Backing up the power-efficient hardware is a suite of additions to Nvidia's GameWorks middleware, and its GeForce Experience software for end-users. The most interesting, if not the most practical, is Nvidia's new Voxel Global Illumination technology, or VXGI for short. In essence, it picks up where Epic's now defunct voxel cone ray tracing technology left off, by trying to create a realistic lighting model without giving the GPU too much work to do.

Performance Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven

Tomb Raider
Metro: Last Light
Battlefield 4
Crysis 3
Bioshock Infinite

Verdict