Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Nintendo is ripe for a new piece of hardware, which is always a momentous event for game console purveyors. As a result, any sort of leak, rumor, or filing concerning new hardware by Nintendo is noteworthy, even when it doesn't seem like a device that the company might actually bring to market.
What we have here is...
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Back at Innovation '23, Intel announced that its Meteor Lake processors would be officially-launched on December 14th. Despite the fact that they haven't made their debut, Intel's first disaggregated CPUs have already appeared in a few places, including a handheld from Hong Kong as well as in some Lenovo laptops being...
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Much has been made of AMD's mobile SoC naming convention, but it's really not that complicated. The first digit tells you what year it came out, the second digit tells you where it sits in the product stack, and the third digit tells you exactly which Zen CPU core it's using. With that knowledge, we can accurately...
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It's a pain point for any system builder: you spend the time to coordinate parts that will look good together, and then you go to wire it all up and it doesn't matter because even with good cable management your aesthetic is still ruined by the heavy cable bundles required for power and data connections.
A few...
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When we saw the system requirements for Remedy's Alan Wake II, we knew this game was going to be a PC system smasher. Of course, we already knew that—the game supports path-tracing, also known as full scene ray-tracing, and we've already tested that feature extensively in Cyberpunk 2077, so we're familiar with...
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If you follow technology news much at all, you're probably familiar with the latest iteration of the GPT line of AI models, known simply as GPT-4. At its heart, GPT-4 is a large language model with billions of parameters, able to converse in many languages on almost any topic. GPT-4 is so smart that it can ace the...
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Are you a Skyrim fiend? Do you have thousands of hours in Bethesda's fantasy magnum opus, and long for more to do in the land of the Nords? Well, good news. Now you can conquer Skyrim in Age of Empires 2, thanks to an expansive custom map by creator /u/Grouchy_Bluejay4511.
If you're not an AoE2 player, then you...
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Remedy Entertainment's Control was one of the first games to really showcase the potential of real-time ray-tracing with its gorgeous reflections and excellent ray-traced shadows. The company's next game, a sequel to 2010's Alan Wake simply titled Alan Wake II, promises to up the ante in terms of graphics technology...
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In case you're unfamiliar, "delidding" is the process of removing the thick metal plate attached to the top of modern CPUs. This plate is known as the "integrated heat spreader" or "IHS," and it protects the fragile silicon die of the processor from cracking when fumble-fingered users are installing their cooling...
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Remember the days when graphics cards, like any other expansion card, simply took up a single slot? Sure, there'd be some cooling apparatus on them, and occasionally you'd see some ultra-high-end board with an extremely overbuilt cooler that took up two slots, but for years and years, graphics cards were...
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A major part of Intel's chip dominance over the last 30 years has been its bleeding-edge process technology. For decades the company was ahead of everyone else in fabrication, and this often gave its architectures superior performance simply on the basis of physics. That's not to discredit the hard work of Intel's...
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It's been a month since the release of the franchise-rebooting Mortal Kombat 1, and the reviews are in. Generally speaking, people are pretty fond of the game, citing its gorgeous Unreal Engine-powered graphics, new assist character mechanics, and improved accessibility features as high points for the...
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Spotted by sleuths at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair this past weekend, footage of what is likely the most interesting product showcased at the fair has come to light. Laptop OEM Emdoor is getting ready to launch its first gaming-focused product, and that's an 8" gaming handheld that you'll see pictured throughout...
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Laptop aficionados and HotHardware devotees will both recall when we reviewed the Alienware m18 R1 earlier this year. That machine was gorgeous inside and out, with the latest Core i9 processor and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics wrapped up in a slick "Metallic Moon" aluminum chassis. We had little to complain about with...
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Well, the Microsoft purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King has finally closed, and we're now observing what may well be the the first knock-on effect of the acquisition. Anyone who didn't expect major ripple effects from the purchase hasn't been paying attention to the actions of Microsoft's previous acquisitions, like...
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It's common for gamers to talk about input lag as stems from input devices and display devices, but the majority of the motion-to-photon lag for most PC gamers actually comes from the software stack itself. NVIDIA has its Reflex technology to counteract this latency, and AMD has its Anti-Lag, but Radeon Anti-Lag isn't...
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Let's talk display technology. Almost all TVs and computer displays these days are based on LED-backlit LCDs. The only other common display technology anymore is OLED, and despite the similar name, those have nothing to do with this post, so let's set them aside for now—even though they're arguably a superior...
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If you're into PC hardware, you're probably familiar with Galax whether under that name or as one of its sub-brands, like KFA2 and Gainward. Galax has been known as a global seller of graphics cards and other PC parts. Indeed, it actually began operations in 1994 in Hong Kong, but it's celebrating 2023 as its "20th...
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Surprise, surprise: an upcoming first-party Nintendo game has leaked to the internet ahead of its launch date. Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the long-awaited new traditional-style side-scrolling title in the famous franchise of everyone's favorite video-game plumber, has found its way to pirates through the usual...
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Have you been enjoying Counter-Strike 2, PC gamers? Despite the fact that the game has become Valve's lowest-rated release ever (largely due to complaints from players who are no longer able to play it), it's still been an enormously-successful launch for the company, with nearly a million players online and playing...
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You want to get fat paid by Microsoft without having to sign a pesky employment contract? Just find a major security hole in one of the company's many new AI-powered services. That'll earn you a cash prize of between $2,000 and $15,000, depending on the severity and ease of the exploit.
To be clear, simply getting...
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To appreciate the subject of this post, you're going to have to take a trip back to 1993 with us. The gaming scene on the IBM PC had been growing rapidly for a few years, championed by graphics-heavy games taking advantage of the explosion of clones of the expensive Video Graphics Array (VGA) adapter. Gorgeous titles...
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