Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Everybody's excited about the next Grand Theft Auto game, especially considering all of the rumors surrounding the title. A dynamically-updating map, bleeding-edge NPC AI, and next-gen graphics are all said to be a part of Rockstar's next magnum opus. It's a fair ways away, still, though; the game is slated for launch...
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Look, we're all excited for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and there's really no question that if you're primarily playing PC games, you're going to want a CPU with 3D V-Cache. It absolutely is that big of a difference; just look at our Monster Hunter Wilds numbers from yesterday, where the time-tested Ryzen 7 5800X3D manages...
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Monster Hunter is a series with a long and storied history, but if you're not a hardcore fan of Japanese action games, you might not know that. The upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds, which will usher in the sixth generation of the series with its launch in February, is in fact the twenty-sixth Monster Hunter game release...
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Now that updates for CD Projekt's massive open-world first-person RPG are finally more-or-less done, you might have reasonably thought you wouldn't see fresh news about it. Well think again, folks, because Cyberpunk 2077 is about to get a native release for Apple's Mac computers, and we're real curious to see how it...
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To understand this post, you're going to have to understand who Framework is. A company founded in January 2020, Framework sells highly-repairable laptops, with readily available replacement parts and standardized designs, where possible. The company will sell you an assembled, ready-to-go laptop if you like, or you...
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We could sit and talk all day about who was "first" with a modern-style PC gaming handheld, but Ayaneo was definitely the first to start selling a system that closely resembled modern PC gaming portables like the ASUS ROG Ally and MSI Claw. The mainline Ayaneo handhelds are simply called "AYANEO", and the company just...
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Case design is one of the few places where PC hardware manufacturers can still actively innovate with their products. We've seen some pretty fascinating cases in the last few years, like the back-connect designs from MSI and Maingear. Chinese vendor GameMax isn't doing something so drastic with its new Vista COC...
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Just like the gaming handhelds that use them, graphics docks are popping up everywhere promising improved gaming performance and increased external connectivity for the little handheld PCs, as well as modern laptops with minimal I/O. The latest company to reveal its GPU dock is Ayaneo, who is now taking pre-orders for...
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If you're reading this site, there's a solid chance that the term "inkjet printer" sets your teeth on edge. Don't worry, though; today's story isn't about unreliable plastic printers that take overpriced ink, but instead about Chinese display manufacturer TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), who is using...
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HotHardware's very own Dave Altavilla is on site in Maui, Hawaii, at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit where the chip company has revealed its latest Snapdragon 8-family of processors, known as "Snapragon 8 Elite" due to their inclusion of the same powerful Oryon CPU core used in the speedy Snapdragon X Elite laptop...
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The gaming handheld market is still booming, with customers buying PC-based portables to play their favorite games on the go in surprising numbers. At the heart of the overwhelming majority of these handhelds is AMD silicon—in particular, AMD SoCs based on its "Phoenix" processor, like the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. That...
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Given that AMD's standard Zen 5 processors barely moved the needle in terms of gaming performance, and Intel has admitted that its upcoming "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra 200S CPUs similarly won't be providing a big gaming uplift, hype is at an all-time high for the new Ryzen X3D CPUs because PC gamers are desperate for...
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Even within the niche of PC-based gaming handhelds, there are quite a few systems to choose from. We've written about them a lot, and reviewed a few. If you're trying to sell such a device, you might try to add extra features above and beyond what the competition offers, like the GPD Duo that comes with dual OLED...
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PC enthusiasts have a weird problem with overly-relativistic thinking. Case in point: AMD's newish Ryzen 9000 Zen 5 desktop processors. It's fair to say that they were disappointing given their relatively modest performance gains in typical client desktop tasks over the Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 CPUs. However, that doesn't...
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If you're a gamer, then Warframe is a title that probably needs no introduction—even if you might have mixed feelings about it. An ambitious title that blended genres even when it released back in March 2013, Warframe has morphed and transformed numerous times over the last eleven-plus years to the point that the...
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The early rumors concerning the naming convention of AMD's upcoming mobile processors appears to be true. We already suspected this, but things took a turn when the company revealed the final name of its "Strix Point" SoCs earlier this year: the Ryzen AI 300 family, headed up by the flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX...
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Have you tried the NVIDIA App yet, dear reader? It's a new piece of software from NVIDIA that combines most of the functions of GeForce Experience with the system configuration capabilities of the venerable NVIDIA Control Panel. You can download it right now; we've been using it for months. However, that version is a...
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Are you familiar with the concept of "negative option marketing"? It refers to a class of customer interaction where a customer's failure to take an affirmative action, such as denying an offer, is taken as assent to be charged for services or goods. It's like if I came by and shouted "cut your grass for a thousand...
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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang had high praise to offer for Elon Musk and his team at xAI, calling them "superhuman." In an interview with YouTube channel BG2 Pod, Huang remarked that Elon's specific combination of engineering smarts and project management is "singular", and credited both the X owner and NVIDIA's own...
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Did you recently get served the big update to Windows 11 24H2? The upgrade, which would have been called a Service Pack once upon a time, comes along with the new Copilot AI features as well as the usual stack of OS add-ons. Unfortunately for some, it also brought along a less-welcome partner: blue screens of...
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If you read that headline and are thinking that 6400 MT/s isn't really fast for DDR5, then you've fallen into the same trap we did. The key detail is that the new modules, which feature a clock driver directly on the memory module itself, don't require overclocking to hit that speed. DDR5-6400 is a new JEDEC speed...
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Once upon a time, there were a myriad of CPU architectures vying for dominance. Occasionally, you'd even have multiple architectures from the same vendor competing against each other. As happens in competitive environments, processor ISAs died off one-by-one until the modern day, where we basically have x86-64 for...
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