Ben Funk
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Recent posts
Windows 11's Insider Preview builds keep coming fast and furious. Just a couple of weeks ago, the next version of Windows made the shift from developer builds into beta, indicating that Microsoft thinks that it's time to let more people in. The Beta Ring gets fewer builds that have purportedly undergone additional...
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Laptops are complicated beasts. There's a whole PC jammed into the base of a foldable computer and as such thermal management is a huge challenge. To get the best performance out of a CPU or GPU requires giving it as much power as possible without overheating the innards or making the outside of the system too hot to...
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It seems that just about everyone's excited about Valve's Steam Deck, the tiny portable computer with big PC gaming aspirations. Right out of the gate, just securing a position to pay for one was a hot commodity on online marketplaces like eBay. That doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon, either. Already...
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While it may not have been the first 3D accelerator to market, the 3dfx (then, 3Dfx) Voodoo Graphics PCI was the add-in card that kickstarted the 3D gaming revolution. The company made its name on Voodoo graphics, but ultimately could not weather the storm of speedy cards that could process both 2D and 3D graphics...
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Halo Infinite is the first brand new Halo installation since 2015, when Halo 5: Guardians came to the Xbox One. To say there's a lot of hype around the much-delayed return of Master Chief after apparently going rogue in the previous installment, ultimately being recovered by Spartan Locke. Apologies for the spoilers...
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17-inch laptops are becoming somewhat of a rarity these days. Every manufacturer has a couple of models in their line-up, but they don't get a ton of attention because they're typically quite bulky and harder to tote around than sleeker, smaller machines. However, the system we'll be showing you today isn't just any run-of-the-mill 17" notebook....
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If you've been following New World, the first title out of Amazon's PC game development, you'll know it's been a bit of a bumpy ride. Something about the game was reportedly causing certain GeForce RTX 3090 cards to keel over and die. Reports were pouring in all over Reddit of graphics cards from a variety of...
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Mobile workstations come in all shapes and sizes. Recently we took a look at the HP ZBook Fury 15 G7, a powerful mobile workstation with ISV-certified drivers that could replace many desktops, but in a more portable form factor. Many engineers need the type of power and reliability offered by a machine the size of the ZBook Fury 15 G7,...
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A lot can happen as a system is under development, especially with a relatively new family of hardware. Maybe the drivers and BIOS aren't quite tuned for the best possible performance or power efficiency, and sometimes early reviews aren't completely indicative of what a user will experience when they first purchase a laptop, even a new one...
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Water-cooled graphics cards aren't exactly new. For years, enthusiasts who build their own custom liquid cooling loops have incorporated blocks onto their GPUs to keep the heat at bay without producing a ton of noise. In recent years, some manufacturers have released cards with their own closed-loop AIO coolers...
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Windows 11 is coming this holiday season, although upgrades from Windows 10 won't happen until much later. We're sure that users who are hungry to get their hands on Microsoft's latest OS will be able to do so fairly quickly, though. That's especially true considering Windows 10 Insider Previews have all but dried up...
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In the spring, Id Software and Bethesda announced that they would bring real-time ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 to the Vulkan-powered Doom Eternal. When we reviewed thsi latest Doom title, we found that it was already pretty stunning graphically while running really well on all kinds of different hardware. High performance and a bevy of...
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Just last week, many Western Digital MyBook Live owners lamented the fact that their personal cloud was being attacked and wiped remotely. Those storage devices were older and hadn't been supported since 2015. As a result, those NAS products proved to be a lesson in not putting unsecured and unpatched devices on your...
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We were really impressed with Intel's latest high-performance notebook CPUs from the Tiger Lake-H family when we got to try them out in a test platform. Intel arguably produced the single fastest x86 notebook CPU on the planet, with blistering single-threaded speed and heavy multi-threaded prowess. However, we were itching to get our hands...
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Ever since the introduction of Windows Vista in early 2007, Microsoft has enforced the rule that Windows drivers must carry digital signatures by default. Any software that runs in kernel mode, in fact, has to be signed by the company. This is a security measure that should prevent malicious software from digging its...
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Windows 11 upgrades may be free, but the hardware is certainly going to cost you. That's the message sent by Microsoft yesterday as the company published system requirements for the upcoming operating system, due during the Holiday season later this year. At first blush, the Windows 11 system requirements calling for...
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The PCI Express 4.0 interface has been around on AMD's Ryzen platform for a long time now, ever since the launch of Zen 2 and the X570 chipset. The new spec has finally gone mainstream on Intel's platforms, as well, with the release of the Rocket Lake-S 11th Gen Core processor family and the accompanying Z590 PCH. That means that neither camp...
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When AMD unveiled "Big Navi", now known as the Radeon RX 6000 series, the new GPU family brought with it support for Microsoft's nascent DirectX Ray Tracing. DXR adds photorealistic lighting, reflections and more visual effects to make games that support the technologies look more true to life. However, real-time ray...
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Intel's Tiger Lake-H family of notebook processors has been divided into two two groups: some very exciting eight-core parts with 45-watt TDPs, and some slightly less exciting but still very fast 35-watt CPUs. Both of these product groups have shown best in class single-threaded performance for high-performance and...
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Back in September of last year, the x86 version of the Samsung Galaxy Book S failed to wow us with its performance and battery life. This ultralight laptop is powered by Intel's Lakefield-based Core i5-L16G7 processor, which was the company's first attempt at creating a hybrid processor with a big.Little architecture...
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Notebooks often have limited storage capacity, despite significant advancements over the last few years. An M.2 drive is only the size of a stick of gum, but not every laptop can fit more than one or two drives at a time, and some users aren't comfortable opening up their machine to upgrade them, which ultimately limits their storage capabilities....
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Back in 2006 when Nintendo first launched the Wii, there were three games worth playing: Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (also on the GameCube), and Rayman Raving Rabbids. Ubisoft's title was the first third-party attempt at motion controls and was a blast in multi-player. The series featuring weird...
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