Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
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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That's right folks: buckle up, because we're well into the bumpy roads of sub-nanometer steps in fabrication process improvements. Intel's about to start launching chips fabbed on its 18A process before you know it, and TSMC has its own "A16" process coming up at the end of next year. Today, the company announced A14...
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We reported yesterday on Intel's new Boost profile for its Core Ultra 200S processors. More accurately, it's really the Core Ultra 200K processors, as the applicable chips are the Core Ultra 9 285K, the Core Ultra 7 265K, and the Core Ultra 5 245K, as well as their GPU-less "F" variants. We happen to have a Core Ultra...
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MSI Claw 8 AI+ Windows Gaming Handheld: $899 at Amazon, 7" Model for $799 MSI's second-gen Claw 8 uses an efficient Lunar Lake CPU to deliver better gaming performance and battery life on a gorgeous 8-inch display. Excellent Gaming Performance Hall-Effect Sticks And Durable Chassis Versatile Thunderbolt 4 Connectivity Large And Vibrant...
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It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who keeps up with gaming news, and yet your author here is a bit surprised himself to tell you that the Elder Scrolls Part IV: Oblivion remake is indeed real—and you can buy it right now. If that's all you need to know, scroll down and click on the last link to go to the store...
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Whatever your feelings are on the Elder Scrolls game franchise, it's impossible to deny that the series has had a massive lasting impact on the gaming market as a whole. The beloved franchise had been immune to the plague of reboots, remakes, and remasters afflicting the industry so far, but it turns out that was more...
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The Nintendo Switch 2 comes with 256GB of storage onboard. That's an 8x improvement over the original Switch, but pardon us if we're not exactly impressed considering that current-generation games on other platforms basically start at about 60GB. Fortunately, you can expand the storage just as you could on the first...
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If you haven't heard, Intel's graphics cards are actually good. However, the veracity of that reality strongly depends on your system's CPU. If you're rocking an older-gen chip, chances are you might be significantly less impressed with a new Arc GPU's performance. Fortunately, Intel has finally acknowledged this...
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Intel's been making some interesting moves in the AI space lately, and this week it's gone one better by open-sourcing its AI Playground software. In a fresh video posted to the Intel Software YouTube channel, Guy Tamir — Intel's director of oneAPI development and self-described "tech evangelist" — announced that the company is throwing open
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Bartlett Lake is a real, confirmed CPU family for Intel's LGA 1700 platform. The company confirmed its existence back at CES 2025. However, it's designed by the company's NEX group and aimed at edge compute and networking use, not high-end gaming. That may change according to the latest leaks and rumors, though, which...
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AMD put out a release yesterday, justifiably crowing that one if its EPYC "Venice" processors was the first HPC product to tape out and be brought up on TSMC's advanced 2nm (N2) chip process tech. That's certainly good news for AMD, but it's not the only firm seeing success with bleeding-edge chip fabrication...
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Blackwell-based GeForce GPUs have finally arrived for us mere mortals. Indeed, NVIDIA is officially announcing the GeForce RTX 5060 and its titanium (Ti) sibling today, with availability for some partner graphics cards starting as soon as tomorrow. The GeForce RTX 5060 comes with 8GB of VRAM, while the GeForce RTX...
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The first-generation MSI Claw was based on an Intel Meteor Lake processor, and then the second-generation Claw, for which we have a review forthcoming, is based on Lunar Lake. As a preview for our review, it offers broadly similar performance to handhelds based on AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Well, it looks like the next...
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Nintendo's successor to its unbelievably-popular Switch console is simply known as the Nintendo Switch 2. If you're in a hurry, here are the most important facts about the new system: it launches on June 5th, and the latest information still says $449.99 for the console with Joy-cons and dock, or $499 with a copy of...
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If you recall, Intel exited direct consumer PC sales altogether back in 2023, handing off its last remaining products of that type to ASUS with the NUC brand. Folks reading this site have a pretty high likelihood of having had a good experience with a NUC in the past, and the latest models sporting Arrow Lake...
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We were roundly impressed when AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series managed credible competition against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series—especially when compared dollar-for-dollar, where the unicorn-priced $549 RX 9070 XT nips at the mythical $999 RTX 5080’s heels. Can AMD do it again with the Radeon RX 9060 series? We'll find...
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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's recent appearance at a $1 million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago may have influenced more than just the guest list. According to sources with alleged knowledge of the matter, the Trump administration has shelved plans to impose new export restriction on NVIDIA's Hopper H20 GPU, which is the most...
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In our review of ASUS' brilliant ROG Flow z13 tablet, we noted that while we were fond of the system, we were keen to see what Strix Halo could really do when out from under the yoke of the 80W power limit imposed by ASUS. If you feel the same, you're probably excited about HP's Z2 Mini workstation, but that's not the...
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It used to be pretty commonplace, once upon a time; we could flash a different or modified firmware to our graphics cards in search of higher performance than was possible with the stock code. GPU companies started encrypting their firmware, though, and that mostly put the kibosh on that. Not entirely though, it...
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Nintendo's Switch 2 and its surprising $449 US price point have a lot of people wondering out loud if they shouldn't simply spend that same money on a Steam Deck or similar handheld. The gaming handheld market is in a radically different place now than it was in 2017 when Nintendo unveiled the original Switch console...
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One of the key complaints that PC gaming enthusiasts have leveled against Dell's Alienware gaming machines in recent years is their continued use of proprietary components. Things have improved in that regard with the latest generation of Alienware hardware, but you're still going to need adapters for some of the...
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Nintendo's Switch console is based on a now-aged NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC, and it has been rumored for more than a year that the Switch 2 would make use of an updated NVIDIA chip, likely based on the Tegra processor code-named "Orin". We still don't have 100% firm confirmation of that, but there's a new detail that...
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