Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
File this one under "fun to think about, probably not changing your day job": a new study just dropped that suggests gravity itself might be the smoking gun that our entire universe is one big computational simulation. Yep, we're talking simulation theory again — the idea that reality is just a very elaborate piece of...
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In a twist straight out of a sci-fi flick, researchers have discovered that AI agents—specifically large language models (LLMs)—can independently develop their own communication systems and biases, all without human intervention. This revelation comes from a recent study by City St George's, University of London, and...
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DOOM is back—and it's never looked meaner. DOOM The Dark Ages is the latest installment in Id Software's iconic franchise, which just launched, bringing with it a brutal blend of medieval mayhem and modern firepower. Powered by the latest iteration of the id Tech engine, Id Tech 8, this entry trades Mars for dark...
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AMD's "AMD Gaming" account just dropped a spicy little teaser on Xwitter reminding everyone about its May 20th Computex conference—and in the process, all but confirming the Radeon RX 9060 XT. The post features a sleek, compact dual-fan GPU render with a single 8-pin power connector. There's a disclaimer saying it's...
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Intel is once again in the crosshairs of a fresh speculative execution exploit, this time dubbed "Branch Privilege Injection." The new vulnerability, revealed by researchers at ETH Zurich's COMSEC group, is capable of extracting sensitive kernel memory using techniques that bypass existing Spectre-class mitigations...
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If you asked us what we would want out of an upgraded Arc B-series ("Battlemage") GPU, it probably wouldn't have been "more video RAM," but that's because we're primarily gamers, not primarily AI researchers. The B580's 12GB of video RAM is more than sufficient for its needs as an entry-level gaming GPU, yet it's...
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When it comes to "companies that gamers groan in irritation," you probably think of names like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision, NCSoft, Konami, and maybe Nexon or Capcom. You might not think of Nintendo just yet, but the company is rapidly speedrunning its way to the very top of that list with aggressively...
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Almost two years ago, people were already complaining of stability problems in Unreal Engine games played on Intel CPUs, but the issue really came to light when huge numbers of customers trying to play Tekken 8 in Korea started returning their Raptor Lake chips in droves. Intel responded by launching a comprehensive...
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Somewhere out in the cosmic deep—about 600 million light-years away—a wayward monster has been caught in the act. Using a combo of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble, and the NRAO Very Large Array, NASA has identified a 'wandering' supermassive black hole snacking on an unlucky star. The scene unfolded in what...
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We're going to cover several separate stories all in this one post, so buckle up kids, because there's a whole bunch of news here. Microsoft's Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, has spoken on record several times about his intent to create an Xbox handheld. More recently, rumors flew that Microsoft was collaborating with...
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Just last night, I was looking for a single-slot graphics card to upgrade an older machine. The options in the market are dire, with the GeForce GT 1030 retaining a triple-digit price some eight years on from its 2017 launch, simply because it remains one of the best choices. We desperately need new low-power GPUs...
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ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 RTX 5090 Gaming Laptop: Starting at $2699, $4999 as tested The newest flagship gaming laptop from ASUS packs in Intel's latest CPU technology, NVIDIA's fastest GPU, and an absolutely brilliant screen—and it does it all in an attractive chassis. Core Ultra CPU Blends Power And Efficiency GeForce RTX 5090 Crushes...
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Way back in September of 2022—over two and a half years ago—an early leak gave us the names of the GTA VI protagonists: a young guy named Jason and his paramour, a woman named Lucia. The first trailer showed us these characters and their close, obviously romantic relationship, but it didn't actually give us their...
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Sparkle is a company that has been around since 1982, yet the vendor has only recently started selling products for the consumer PC market. Its most visible offerings are graphics cards, which it bases exclusively on Intel's Arc GPUs. Sparkle favors mythical creatures for its GPU lineups, like "Orc" and "Titan";...
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Doubters be damned, Intel's third-generation Arc Celestial GPUs are absolutely on the way. Not any time soon, mind you, but they're coming for sure. Intel Fellow and friend of the site Tom "TAP" Petersen told PC World back in December that design work for the Xe3-based third-generation Arc discrete GPU was done and...
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Rumors of a bigger Battlemage GPU's demise may have been greatly exaggerated. Tech sleuth Haze spotted something interesting in the public shipping database over at NBD DATA: multiple entries for things like "SOCKET STIFFENER (STF), DESIGNED FOR BATTLEMAGE-G31." The listings are dated late March and were destined for...
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In a move announced with all the fanfare of a tax audit, Microsoft has quietly hiked prices on every piece of Xbox hardware it sells—consoles, controllers, and headsets alike. The news was buried in a support article on the official Xbox website, which is kind of like hiding a price hike in the fine print of a dentist...
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We "know" a lot about Intel's upcoming Panther Lake processors, but much of the information that we had came from leakers, not from any official source. Leakers are, understandably, loathe to share their sources. Well, a few critical pieces of information about Intel's Panther Lake processors just got confirmed by...
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The Venn diagram of "quirky input hardware fans" and "retro gaming enthusiasts" is nearly a circle, so we're rock-solid confident that you will find this new mouse colorway from 8BitDo quite tantalizing indeed. The Retro R8 mouse isn't a new product, and the extant pointing device is already well-regarded, but now the...
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The hype around Grand Theft Auto VI continues to reach absurd new heights, as the game's one and only trailer has now smashed past 250 million views on YouTube, alongside over 1 million comments. For a relatively short teaser with no real gameplay footage, those numbers are basically unheard-of, and just further proof...
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If you've been thinking about building a new high-end AMD system—or upgrading an older AM5 rig—now's a great time. Amazon just slashed prices on several top-tier Ryzen CPUs, including the brand-new Zen 5 parts, and even better, most of them come with a free copy of February's system smasher Monster Hunter Wilds. We've rounded up the best deals
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When it first leaked that Bethesda was working on a remake of the fourth game in its seminal Elder Scrolls series using Unreal Engine 5, some folks may have groaned in resignation, expecting that the re-release would be brutally demanding and suffer performance issues. Well, it turns out that the remake is really more...
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