General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article


Build a PC: Recommended Builds (August2014)

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 03:02 PM PDT

Budget, baseline, and performance PC builds!

What time is it? It's time to Build a PC with our Blueprints! This month, we've built three rigs at three approximate price points: Budget Gamer, Mid-Grade, and Turbo. That's right, we're mixing things up again. No more rotation of four systems into three slots. For the foreseeable future, there will always be a budget system in our Blueprints section. Yay!

Prices listed here reflect print time and may not match the ones you find elsewhere online. In addition, Newegg has jumped on board to offer packaged deals for each of the builds below in an attempt to offer a better overall value. To see these bundle prices, click the "Buy or get more info at Newegg" button at the bottom of each build. Feedback is welcome. Tell us what you think!

Note: Some of the prices/links listed below may not show up properly if this page is ad-blocked.

BUDGET GAMER

NZXT Source 210 Elite computer case
Ingredients
Part Component Price
Case NZXT Source 210 Elite $50
PSU Corsair CX500, 500 watts $30
Mobo Biostar TA970  $60
CPU AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz $120
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo $35
GPU Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R7 265 $163
RAM 2x 4GB G.SKILL Ares Series DDR3/1600 $72
SSD Crucial MX100 128GB $80
HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB  $65
Total = $675
Click here to see the live bundle price:  buy online at newegg

For the first time in a while, we have reached equilibrium at the budget level. Each part on this list is pretty much the best bang for your buck. You could put a closed-loop liquid cooler (CLC) in here, but the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is too good a value to pass up at this tier. Might as well put the extra cost of a CLC toward something else. If you're prepared to spend about $700, we'd bump the SSD up to a 256GB Crucial MX100, which currently goes for $110. That'll give gamers a lot more room to install their favorite games on a zippy storage device.

Note: We apparently snagged a few of these items on deep discount at the time that we assembled our list, so the Newegg live price might be a little higher.

MID-GRADE

Corsair Vengeance C70 computer case

Ingredients
Part Component Price
Case Corsair Vengeance C70 $108
PSU Silverstone Strider Gold S Series, 850 watts $100
Mobo Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H $175
CPU Intel Core i5-4690K $240
Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO $35
GPU XFX Double D Radeon R9 280X 3GB  $250
RAM 2x 4GB G.SKILL Ares Series F3-1600C9D-8GAO $72
Optical Drive Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD Burner $20
SSD Crucial MX100 256GB $115
HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003 $65
Total = $1180
Click here to see the live bundle price:  buy online at newegg

The Strider Plus, a fully modular 850-watt power supply from Silverstone, is reasonably priced, so it replaces the 750-watt semi-modular Seasonic unit we slotted last month. The extra juice better prepares this system for multiple video cards down the road. Intel's Devil's Canyon Core i5-4690K arrives, replacing the i5-4670K. The new one's base clock speed is 4Ghz, which is 600MHz higher than before, and it will turbo to 4.4GHz. Radeon cards continue to fall in price, and the R9 280X is now within reach; it's now a better value at this tier than a GeForce GTX 760. But the 250GB Samsung 840 Evo at $160 is no longer competitively priced, so we've replaced it with the 256GB Crucial MX100, which isn't as fast but is a much better value.

Note: We apparently snagged a few of these items on deep discount at the time that we assembled our list, so the Newegg live price might be a little higher.

TURBO

NZXT Phantom 530 computer case

Ingredients
Part Component Price
Case NZXT Phantom 530 $130
PSU Cooler Master Silent Pro M2, 1000 watts $180
Mobo Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H $175
CPU Intel Core i7-4790K $340
Cooler Corsair Hydro Series H100i $95
GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB 03G-P4-3784-KR $530
RAM 4x 4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws F3-12800CL9Q-16GBRL  $150
Optical Drive LG WH14NS40 Blu-ray Burner $70
SSD Samsung 840 Evo 500GB MZ-7TE500BW $260
HDD Seagate Barracuda 3TB ST3000DM001 $110
TOTAL = $2040
Click here to see the live bundle price:  buy online at newegg

THIS BUILD PREVIOUSLY FEATURED a quad-core Ivy Bridge-E (IVB-E) CPU on the LGA 2011 platform, aka X79. With the zippy Devil's Canyon CPUs available, we've switched to Intel's Core i7-4790K. It's a refresh of the company's newer "Haswell" generation on the less expensive LGA 1150 platform. Since LGA 1150 is limited to 16 PCI Express lanes, whereas X79 has 40, the new mobo and CPU don't handle three or more video cards nearly as well. But if you stick to "only" two video cards, you'd need a benchmark to see the difference between the two platforms. Like the i5-4690K, this chip starts at 4GHz and boosts to 4.4GHz. (We also don't want to recommend an X79 system, since it will be retired within the next few months, in favor of the incompatible LGA 2011-3, aka X99.)

We're also sticking with the GA-Z97X-UD5H motherboard at this higher tier, because its mixture of price, performance, and features is hard to beat. We could get a less expensive SSD, but money isn't as strong of a concern at this tier.

Nvidia Shield Tablet Review

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 02:36 PM PDT

Updated: Now with video review! 

Despite its problems, we actually liked Nvidia's original Shield Android gaming handheld. Our biggest issue with it was that it was bulky and heavy. With rumors swirling around about a Shield 2, we were hoping to see a slimmer, lighter design. So consider us initially disappointed when we learned that the next iteration of Shield would just be yet another Android tablet. Yawn, right? The fact of the matter is that the Shield Tablet may be playing in an oversaturated market, but it's still great at what it sets out to be.

We've updated our review to include the video review above.

At eight inches, the Shield Tablet features a gorgeous 1900x1200 display, which shares the same resolution as Google's flagship Nexus 7 tablet. At 13.1 ounces, the Shield Tablet is about three ounces heavier than the Nexus 7 but still a lot lighter than the original's 1 lb. 4.7 ounces. 

Part of the weight increase with the Shield Tablet over the Nexus 7 is due to the extra inch that you're getting from the screen, but also because the Shield Tablet is passively cooled and has an extra thermal shield built inside to dissipate heat. It's a little heavier than we like, but isn't likely to cause any wrist problems. On the back of the Shield is an anti-slip surface and a 5MP camera, and on the front of the tablet is a front-facing 5MP camera and two front-facing speakers. While the speakers are not going to blow away dedicated Bluetooth speakers, they sound excellent for a tablet. In addition to the speakers, the Shield Tablet has a 3.5mm headphone jack up at the top. Other ports include Micro USB, Mini HDMI out, and a MicroSD card slot capable of taking up to 128GB cards. Buttons on the Shield include a volume rocker and a power button, which we found to be a little small and shallow for our liking.

Nvidia Shield Tablet guts

The guts of the Nvidia Shield Tablet.

All of this is running on the latest version of Android KitKat (4.4). Nvidia says that it will update the tablet to Android L within a few weeks of Google's official release. If Nvidia's original Shield is any indication of how well the company keeps up with OS updates, you should be able to expect to get the latest version of Android after a couple of weeks, if not a months, after release. Regardless, the Shield Tablet is running a pretty stock version of Android to begin with, the main difference being that Nvidia has pre-loaded the tablet with its Shield Hub, which is a 10-foot UI used to purchase, download, and launch games.

Arguably, the real star of the tablet is Nvidia's new Tegra K1 mobile superchip. The 2.2GHz quad-core A15 SOC features Nvidia's Kepler GPU architecture and 192 CUDA cores along with 2GB of low-power DDR3. K1 supports many of the graphical features commonplace in GeForce graphics cards, including tesselation, HDR lighting, Global illumination, subsurface scattering, and more.

In our performance benchmarks, the K1 killed it. Up until now, the original Shield's actively cooled Tegra 4 is arguably one of the most, if not the most, powerful Android SOC on the market, but the K1 slaughters it across the board. In Antutu and GeekBench benchmark, we saw modest gains of 12 percent to 23 percent in Shield vs. Shield Tablet action. But in Passmark and GFX Bench's Trex test, we saw nearly a 50 percent spread, and in 3DMark's mobile Icestorm Unlimited test, we saw an astounding 90 percent advantage for the Shield Tablet. This is incredible when you consider that the tablet has no fans and a two-watt TDP. Compared to the second-gen Nexus 7, the Shield Tablet benchmarks anywhere from 77 percent to 250 percent faster. This SOC is smoking fast.

In terms of battery life, Nvidia claims you'll get 10 hours watching/surfing the web and about five hours from gaming with its 19.75 Wh battery. This is up 3.75 Wh up from Google's Nexus 7 equivalent, and from our experiential tests, we found those figures to be fairly accurate if not a best-case scenario. It will pretty much last you all day, but you'll still want to let it sip juice every night.

Shield Tablet review

The new wireless controller uses Wi-Fi Direct instead of Bluetooth for lower latency.

Of course, if you're going to game with it, you're going to need Nvidia's new wireless Shield Controller. Sold separately for $60, the 11.2-ounce Shield Controller maintains the same button layout as the original Shield controller, but feels a lot lighter and is more comfortable to hold. While most Android game controllers operate over Bluetooth, Nvidia opted to go with Wi-Fi Direct, stating that it offers 2x faster response time and more bandwidth. The extra bandwidth allows you to plug a 3.5mm headphone into the controller and also allows you to link up to four controllers to the device, which is an appreciated feature when you hook up the tablet to your HDTV via the Shield Tablet's Console Mode. Other unique features of the controller include capacitive-touch buttons for Android's home, back, and play buttons. There's also a big green Nvidia button that launches Shield Hub. The controller also has a small, triangle-shaped clickable touch pad which allows you to navigate your tablet from afar. One quibble with it is that we wish the trackpad was more square, to at least mimic the dimensions of the tablet; the triangle shape was a little awkward to interface with. Another problem that we initially had with the controller was that the + volume button stopped working after a while. We contacted Nvidia about this and the company sent us a new unit, which remedied the issue. One noticeable feature missing from the controller is rumble support. Nvidia said this was omitted on the original Shield to keep the weight down; its omission is a little more glaring this time around, however, since there's no screen attached to the device.

The controller isn't the only accessory that you'll need to purchase separately if you want to tap into the full Shield Tablet experience. To effectively game with the tablet, you'll need the Shield Tablet cover, which also acts as a stand. Like most tablets, a magnet in the cover shuts off the Shield Tablet when closed, but otherwise setting up the cover and getting it to act as a stand is initially pretty confusing. The cover currently only comes in black, and while we're generally not big on marketing aesthetics, it would be nice to have an Nvidia green option to give the whole look a little more pop. We actually think the cover should just be thrown in gratis, especially considering that the cheapest 16GB model costs $300. On the upside though, you do get Nvidia's new passive DirectStylus 2 that stows away nicely in the body of the Shield Tablet. Nvidia has pre-installed note-writing software and its own Nvidia Dabbler painting program. The nice thing about Dabbler is that it leverages the K1's GPU acceleration so that you can virtually paint and blend colors in real time. There's also a realistic mode where the "paint" slowly drips down the virtual canvas like it would in real life. 

Shield tablet review

The Shield Controller is a lot lighter and less blocky than the original Shield Portable.

But that's probably not why you're interested in the Shield Tablet. This device is first and foremost a gaming tablet and even comes with a free Android copy of Trine 2. Trine 2 was originally a PC game and it's made a great transition to the Shield Tablet. While the game was never known to be a polygon pusher, it looks just as good as it ever did on its x86 debut. 

With gaming as the primary driver for Shield Tablet, you may wonder why Nvidia didn't bundle its new controller. The company likely learned from Microsoft's mistake with Kinect and the Xbox One: Gamers don't like to spend money and getting the price as low as possible was likely on Nvidia's mind. Of course, not everyone may even want a controller, with the general lack of support for them in games. Nvidia says there are now around 400 Android titles that support its controller, but that's only a small percentage of Android games and the straight truth is that the overwhelming majority of these games are garbage. 

Nvidia is making a push for Android gaming, however. The company worked with Valve to port over Half Life 2 and Portal to the Shield and they look surprisingly fantastic and are easily the two prettiest games on Android at the moment. Whether Android will ever become a legitimate platform for hardcore gaming is anyone's guess, but at least the Shield Tablet will net you a great front seat if the time ever arises.

Luckily, you won't have to rely solely on the Google Play store to get your gaming fix. Emulators run just as well here as they did on the original Shield and this iteration of Shield is also compatible with Gamestream, which is Nvidia's streaming technology that allows you to stream games from your PC to your Shield. Gamestream, in theory, lets you play your controller-enabled PC games on a Shield.

At this point, Nvidia says Gamestream supports more than 100 games such as Batman: Arkham Origins and Titanfall from EA's Origin and Valve's Steam service. The problem, though, is that there are hundreds more games on Steam and Origin that support controllers—but not the Shield Tablet's controller. For example, Final Fantasy VII, a game that we couldn't get to work with the original Shield, still isn't supported even though it works with an Xbox controller on the PC. When Gamestream does work, however, it's relatively lag-free and kind of wonderful. The one caveat here is that you'll have to get a 5GHz dual-band router to effectively get it working. 

Nvidia Shield Video demo.

Would we buy the Shield Tablet if we owned the original Shield (now renamed the Shield Portable)? Probably not. If we were looking for a new tablet and top-notch gaming performance was on the checklist, the Shield Tablet is easily the top contender today. We'd take it over the second-gen Nexus 7 in a heartbeat. While we understand why Nvidia decided to separate the cover and controller to keep the prices down and avoid the Kinect factor, we think a bundled package with a small price break as an alternative would have been nice. All things considered though, consider us surprised. The Shield Tablet is pretty dang cool. 

$300

Update: The original article incorrectly labled the Shield Portable benchmarks with the Nexus 7 figures. The issue has been resolved and both benchmark charts are listed below. 

Rebooted King's Quest Adventure Game Won't Be a Point and Click

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 12:49 PM PDT

King's QuestKing's Quest is coming back in a different way

News broke last week at Gamescom that Activision is bringing back the Sierra brand, which it will use as a launching ground for different indie developed titles. One of the first will be a reimagined version of King's Quest developed by The Odd Gentlemen, a small game studio known for The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. There aren't a lot of details to share just yet, but one thing we do know is that the reimagined King's Quest won't be a point-and-click game.

"There's not much I can say about King's Quest," Activision's MacLean Marshall posted to Twitter. "All I can say is that I've seen it, and it's not a point-and-click game. But it looks awesome."

The Odd Gentlemen later took to Twitter to clarify that even though it won't be a point-and-click title like the original, "the game is very much an adventure game. It doesn't only use the mouse."

Marshall had a lot more to say to GameInformer about the sudden Sierra movement, though nothing too specific about King's Quest, other than Activision might allow more than one studio to use the same characters and universe. Color us intrigued.

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Microsoft Yanks Patch Tuesday Kernel Update Containing a BSOD Bug

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 12:20 PM PDT

BSODJust when you thought that BSODs were a thing of the past

After installing Microsoft's August 2014 Patch Tuesday updates, you may have noticed some wonky behavior in Windows. If you're especially unluckly, you may have even been experiencing those dreaded Blue Screen of Death errors that have largely been eradicated in recent years. It turns out there's some potentially buggy code that could cause BSODs after installing the updates, which prompted Microsoft to pull the patch offline while it investigates the issue.

"Microsoft is investigating the behavior in which systems may crash with a 0x50 Stop error message (bugcheck) after any of the following updates are installed:

  • 2987291: MS14-045: Description of the security update for kernel-mode drivers: August 12, 2014
  • 2970228: Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows
  • 2975719: August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2
  • 2975331: August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012

This condition may be persistent and may prevent the system starting correctly," Microsoft says.

There are a couple of other known issues associated with the update, both of which relate to fonts, though the BSOD problem is by far the most concerning. If you're negatively affected by the update, or simply don't want to risk that something will go wrong, Microsoft details a step-by-step instructions to get things working again.

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Blizzard's Bumping Up the Price of World of Warcraft Subscriptions in the U.K.

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 11:53 AM PDT

WoWAs subscribers flee, subscription pricing goes up

Gravity ensures that most of what goes up must also come down (even that helium filled balloon will return to Earth one day, minus the helium inside), but when it comes to World of Warcraft, the world's most popular MMORPG, the opposite is true. That's to say that hot on the heels of Blizzard Activision announcing that WoW's number of subscribers have gone down, the price of a subscription is going up.

"We regularly look at our pricing around the world and from time to time we make changes in light of local and regional market conditions. As such, we want to give everyone a heads-up that we will shortly be adjusting the pound sterling subscription price of World of Warcraft," Blizzard Activision announced on Battle.net.

Beginning November 13, a monthly sub will rise to £9.99 for 30 days (up from £8.99), to £28.17 for 90 days (up from £25.17), and £52.14 for 180 days (up from £46.14). The suggested retail price of the 60-day prepaid time card will be £20.99.

Players with recurring/auto-renewing subscriptions at the time of the price change will keep their current price for two years, as long as there are no interruptions.

Some 800,000 players fled World of Warcraft in the last quarter, bringing the total number of subscribers to 6.8 million. That still qualifies WoW as biggest MMORPG in the world, though it's a far cry from its peak of 12 million in 2010.

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Take a Sneak Peek of Three Upcoming Gigabyte Motherboards for Haswell-E

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 09:51 AM PDT

Gigabyte X99 Gaming G1 WiFiA colorful collection of motherboards

Intel's next generation Haswell-E processor launch is just around the corner, and the closer it gets, the more products we're seeing from its hardware partners. Haswell-E will usher in a new Intel X99 chipset with support for DDR4 memory. The upcoming CPUs will slip in socket 2011 motherboards, of which we've already seen several. You can add three more options to the list -- while details are light, we have pics of three upcoming Gigabyte motherboards for Haswell-E.

The three boards include the Gigabyte GA-X99-UD7 WIFI, Gigabyte GA-X99-SOC Force, and Gigabyte GA-X99-Gaming G1 WIFI. As suggested by the model numbers, all three are X99 motherboards. Unfortunately, we don't have any fascinating details to share about any of the boards, though we do have a trio of pics you can click through in our gallery below courtesy of Fudzilla, which got its hands on the product shots.

Word around the web is that Intel will launch its next flagship Core i7 HEDT (high-end desktop) processors, otherwise known as Haswell-E, on August 29. It's rumored the chip maker will debut two 6-core CPUs and a single 8-core part, the Core i7 5960X with 20MB of shared L3 cache and a 3GHz clockspeed.

The two 6-core parts include the Core i7 5930K (15MB of shared L3 cache, 3.5GHz) and Core i7 4820K (specs unknown).

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Hackers Gain Access to Personal Info of 4.5 Million Community Health Patients

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 09:29 AM PDT

Keyboard DoctorMajor hospital group falls prey to hacker attack

A hacker attack believed to have originated in China resulted in the theft of personal details of 4.5 million patients of Community Health Systems Inc, one of the largest hospital groups in the nation. Cyber thieves made off with a treasure trove of personal details, including patient names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers, and social security numbers, or pretty much all the necessary info to steal someone's identity.

Those affected include anyone who was referred for or received services from physicians associated with Community Health Systems within the last five years. The hackers didn't make off with credit card, medical, or clinical information, though the data they did steal is considered protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).

"The company and its forensic expert, Mandiant (a FireEye company), believe the attacker was an 'Advanced Persistent Threat' group originating from China who used highly sophisticated malware and technology to attack the company's systems," CHS stated in a regulatory filing. "The attacker was able to bypass the company's security measures and successfully copy and transfer certain data outside the company."

CHS is working with law enforcement authorities, though that comes as little consolation to those affected by the theft. Perhaps of more value is CHS's offering of identity theft protection services.

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Newegg Daily Deals: Intel 730 Series 480GB Solid State Drive, AMD A10-6800K Richland, and More!

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 08:09 AM PDT

Intel 730 Series SSDnewegg logo

Top Deal:

It's about damn time a manufacturer blinged out a solid state drive with a skull! Why? Uh, that's a good question. But forget about the 'why' and ask instead, "Why not?" Then look at your own storage device -- is it marked with anything worthy of a case window? Want one that is? Then check out today's top deal for an Intel 730 Series 2.5-inch 480GB SSD for $360 with free shipping (normally $400 - use coupon code: [EMCHRDC42]). This more to this drive than just a sweet design -- it combines data center DNA for rock solid reliability with performance tuning to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 550MB/s and 470MB/s, respectively. It's also backed by a 5-year warranty.

Other Deals:

Intel Core i5-4460 Haswell Quad-Core 3.2GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor for $180 with free shipping (normally $190 - use coupon code: [EMCPBWF26])

AMD A10-6800K Richland 4.1GHz (4.4GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop Processor for $120 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [EMCPBWF27])

Asus VE248H Black 24-inch 2ms Full HD HDMI LED Backlight LCD Monitor w/Speakers for $145 with free shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code: [EMCPBWF25]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit for $125 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [EMCPBWF76])

Surface Pro 3 Docking Station Now Available in Canada and U.S.

Posted: 17 Aug 2014 11:47 PM PDT

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Docking Station in Action

Connect up to two external monitors to your Surface Pro 3

The Surface Pro 3 Docking Station on Friday became available for purchase both online and offline in Canada and the United States. By far the most expensive accessory for the 12-inch tablet at $199, the Docking Station promises to transform your Surface Pro 3 device into a full-fledged desktop workstation.

The Surface Pro 3 Docking Station has: three USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Mini DisplayPort video output, 3.5mm audio input/output connection, security lock slot, and power supply input.

Combine the Docking Station's Mini DisplayPort with the one already present on the tablet and you get the ability to connect up to two external displays. Alternately, you could use either one of those ports to connect a 4k display just as Microsoft Surface senior product manager Suneel Goud likes to do.

"I personally use it at work to connect to my 4K external monitor, ergonomic keyboard and mouse, printer, external hard-drive, and multimedia speakers. And I still have open ports for additional accessories," Goud wrote in a post on the Surface Blog Friday.

Image Credit: Microsoft/Suneel Goud

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Microsoft Releases Hotfix for Recent Internet Explorer Speed Issues

Posted: 17 Aug 2014 10:40 PM PDT

IE Hotfix

Couple of recent security updates to blame

When a Microsoft exec revealed that company currently has no plans of porting Internet Explorer over to Android and iOS during a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, we were left scratching our heads as to why that might be. Here's a possible explanation: It could be that the Internet Explorer team is too busy fixing IE for Windows to build entirely new versions of the browser.

No sooner had Microsoft finished patching 26 Internet Explorer vulnerabilities as part of its August Patch Tuesday update than it realized Internet Explorer was a tad slow as a result of all the recent patching and that the issue was serious enough to warrant an out-of-band fix.

"After you apply the MS14-037 (July 8, 2014) or MS14-051 (August 12, 2014) cumulative security update for Internet Explorer, web applications that implement consecutive modal dialog boxes may cause Internet Explorer to become slow and unresponsive over time. This issue occurs in Internet Explorer versions 7 through 11," Microsoft wrote in it security advisory.

In case you've the security updates that are to blame for this issue, all you need to do is to download the appropriate hotfix file based on your operating system and browser combination from this link.

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