Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Folks with LGA 1700 motherboards should keep eyes peeled for firmware updates if they're keen for a CPU upgrade. We already told you about BIOS updates from Gigabyte that add support for Intel's next-generation CPUs, but now there are reports coming in that both ASUS and ASRock are adding that same support to their...
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If you're a usual user of a consumer device like the ROG Ally, when an update comes down, you install it. Certainly the device itself advises you to do so. However, if you already have a ROG Ally and are enjoying the machine's high performance, don't update to BIOS version 319 through the MyASUS app. While it fixes a...
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If you read this site, you know what Intel's processor branding looks like. Chips named like "Intel Core i5-13600K Processor" have been the company's bread and butter since it introduced the "Core i" branding with its Nehalem processors, the first-gen Core i family. Well, that legacy has come to an end, as Intel is...
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"Right to Repair" is a contentious topic. Not among your average citizen, mind you; pretty much everyone agrees that someone who buys a product or device should be allowed to repair it if they have the skills, and that manufacturers shouldn't take steps to prevent users from doing that. It's mostly lobbyists for said...
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If you read that and thought, "PCIe 7.0? What happened to 6.0?", don't worry—PCIe 6.0 is already finalized and still on track for product launches that are likely coming next year or the year after. It's just that PCI-SIG refuses to stand still (as usual) and has now published the first draft specification for PCIe...
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ASUS ROG Ally: Starting At $599.99 The ASUS ROG Ally gaming PC handheld brings premium features to a market awash in me-too gadgets and compromises. It offers high performance in a small form factor at a competitive price. Incredible Handheld Performance Excellent Display And Great Sound Virtually Silent...
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You remember the Ryzen 7040 series? You probably do; we've written about them quite a bit lately. These are the AMD CPUs that were code-named "Phoenix," or possibly "Phoenix Point" depending on which roadmap you look at. They're monolithic chips, unlike the Ryzen 7045 series, and they're also fabricated on a denser...
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Back in the mid-1990s, a fellow named Jason Schreiber said something very clever to a gaming magazine: "a good game is only late until it ships, but a bad game is bad forever." To some degree, that's still true—first impressions are important, and there are probably a lot of people who will never give Redfall a...
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When we're talking about microprocessors, "efficiency" is a two-way street. You can achieve efficiency by using very little power for the performance you're offering, or you can achieve efficiency by offering extremely high performance. Intel has taken the latter path, and it wants everyone to know that its approach...
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Truth be told, most business users could get by just fine on a regular old Ryzen processor. It really is true that typical consumers and gamers have different expectations of their hardware than your usual business user, though. Instead of bleeding-edge performance and the latest features, business customers are more...
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Now, before you get all up in arms, Apple fanboys, we know of course that there's a whole lot more that goes into making a good system than raw performance. Software support, power efficiency, noise level, and yes, even aesthetics all play a part in deciding the ultimate value proposition offered by a computer.
The...
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If you're a casual gamer, or simply someone who doesn't really follow gaming news, you might be surprised at the hype around Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion. After all, the game launched in a sorry state, and while it sold briskly, buzz around the title was fairly negative at launch. Well, that's...
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Whatever you think about Intel's Arc graphics cards, you have to acknowledge that the proliferation of advanced upscaling technologies is largely a good thing. XeSS is an upscaler with similar performance to AMD's FSR2 and NVIDIA's DLSS, and it works on any vendor's recent graphics processor, albeit best on Intel's...
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Since E3 was canceled, everyone's hosting their own game events, and yesterday, the man of the hour was sometimes-beloved industry icon Geoff Keighley as he hosted the Summer Game Fest 2023. This show wasn't tied to any particular publisher or hardware vendor, and as a result showcased an eclectic mix of titles from...
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If you follow the portable PC space at all, you're probably familiar with the products of OneNotebook, if not by that name. The original OneXPlayer made a decent splash when it came out back in 2021, and the sequel to the original, which upgraded to a powerful AMD Ryzen 7 6800U SoC, started shipping to backers in...
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It wouldn't have been unreasonable for Activision-Blizzard's board to be worried about the prospects of Diablo IV. After all, Diablo III wasn't exactly well-received by the fanbase initially, and while Diablo Immortal has been a financial success, buzz on the title has been largely negative. Likewise, reactions to...
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You remember a couple of months ago when Twitter cut off free API access and all those cool Twitter services that you liked immediately died off? The wacky gimmick bots and third-party trend analysis services just vanished overnight. Well, it looks like Reddit is in love with the results of that change, because it's...
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If you're any sort of gamer, you've surely had the experience of excitedly clicking on a trailer for an upcoming game only to realize that the entire thing is hand-crafted CGI, completely unrepresentative of the game it's supposedly promoting. You can imagine your author's disappointment when he loaded up League of...
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If you follow this stuff as closely as your author here does, you may recall that it was rumored once upon a time that there were actually three Arc GPUs: the ACM-G10 that powers the Arc A770 and A750, the ACM-G11 that drives the A380 and lower-end parts, and then a mysterious ACM-G12. This third chip was rumored to...
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Microprocessors are the most complex things humans have ever constructed. In any complex system, radically changing one part of a system always has knock-on effects for other parts of the system. To combat this, you can try to de-couple interconnected parts of the system, and that's been a popular idea in...
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AMD held another webinar in its "Meet the Experts" series, which is a place for AMD to give presentations with its partners. The most recent presentation was about using AMD's Ryzen processors in server and workstation systems, and included presenters from ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI, though none of that is important to...
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The latest generation of generative AI models is capable of astonishing things, like passing the BAR exam and creating photographic images indistinguishable from reality. Yes, indeed—AI is coming for your jobs, and it's not just writers, artists, and other creatives who should be concerned. It's also Minecraft...
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