Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
If your heart doesn't set a-flutter when you hear "Intel Arc," well, that's understandable. The extant parts based on Intel's Alchemist architecture are squarely mid-range or entry-level GPUs, and they suffered significant issues on launch that left many gamers unimpressed. Intel's been working hard to turn those...
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Back in 2021, Intel had two different architectures going for its 11th-Generation mobile and desktop Core processors: Tiger Lake was handling laptops, and Rocket Lake was rocking desktops. According to rumors, we'll see the same thing again soon, where a refresh of Raptor Lake powers desktops while Intel's first...
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Modern graphics processors have thousands upon thousands of shader processors, and that's because they're expected to run intense 3D games and do massively-parallel math. You don't typically expect integrated graphics processors to do those things, so that's why they're much smaller, and they don't get any littler...
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Boy, Hogwarts Legacy is a demanding game to run—not only on GPUs but on CPUs, too. If your kid, spouse, or other person for whom you're responsible is pestering you for a PC upgrade to play it or any other game, you probably ought to consider a fresh system. Don't fret, though, because you're in luck: we've got some...
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ASRock's new Blazing Quad M.2 card is the newest in its series of Quad M.2 cards, starting with the PCIe 3.0 "Ultra" and continuing with the PCIe 4.0 "Hyper" card. The latest version supports four M.2 SSDs up to 110mm in length, and it can run all four at the peak PCIe 5.0 x4 rate of 16 GB/sec—assuming your host CPU...
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"RDNA 4?" you cry, "but RDNA 3 just came out!" Indeed it did, and the release of AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX graphics cards just two months ago marked the debut of AMD's third iteration of its RDNA graphics architecture. Despite that, AMD's already talking-up RDNA 4. In an interview with Japanese site...
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Remember those days as a kid, when getting a game rental was the highlight of the weekend? As a long-time PC gamer, it's almost impossible to imagine running out of unfinished games in my library now, but if you still want new titles to try, Ubisoft, Xbox Game Studios, and 2K Games are all offering free rentals this...
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The clever move for folks who don't need to be on the bleeding edge can be to wait for the new hardware to come out, and then buy the old hardware at a deep discount. That hasn't really been possible yet with the GeForce RTX 30 series, though. That's partially because NVIDIA has been content to let the 30-series...
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Hogwarts Legacy is a very cool game, but it is not without its problems. Just like virtually every other major AAA release these days, it launched with significant technical issues on PC, and a fair share of foibles on consoles, too. Well, the first patch is here, and it seeks to smooth over some of the most serious...
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Once upon a time, there was a clear division between typical desktop computers and servers. With Nehalem in 2008, Intel really put the pedal to the metal in the "big iron" enterprise and high-performance computing space, and it soon brought some of those server technologies to the desktop in the form of its "High-End...
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Alright, reader—are you ready to be confused? DLSS is NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling. It has two primary forms: DLSS 2 upscaling and DLSS 3 frame generation. Despite the name, neither one is actually "super-sampling" anything. Instead, they are both "up-sampling"; DLSS 2 is doing it spatially, and DLSS 3 is...
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Greybeards like your author recall the original 3dfx (then stylized as 3Dfx) Voodoo Graphics card with immense nostalgia. It was the card that brought the term "3D accelerator" to the mainstream with incredible performance in the then-new GLQuake. They generally came with 4MB of EDO DRAM on board, but a YouTuber has...
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When the GeForce RTX 3060 launched with 12GB of video RAM, it was a careful choice made by NVIDIA. Because of that chip's 192-bit memory bus, NVIDIA had the option to launch with either 6GB or 12GB of memory. That led to the awkward situation where the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3070 Ti, and even the RTX 3080...
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As we wrote yesterday, Hogwarts Legacy is a bear of a game to run. GeForce RTX 3080 cards struggle in 2560×1440, even with DLSS enabled, and Radeon cards can't run the game playably at all with ray-tracing turned on. Arguably the real problem is the game's incredibly inconsistent performance, though. Players who have...
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Hotly-anticipated, open-world RPG Hogwarts Legacy officially launched yesterday, and I spent most of last night testing the game on a few different video cards. The conclusion? Hogwarts Legacy is a pretty game with a lot to like, but it runs about as well as Hogwarts' jovial mendicant monk.
It's worth noting that...
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Everyone loves Super Mario, and while its fanbase is smaller, Metroid fans are even more rabid. Still, there's one long-lived Nintendo franchise that arguably stands above all in terms of its beloved status, and that's The Legend of Zelda. The next main-series Zelda game, known as "Tears of the Kingdom", will be a...
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The Harry Potter franchise—known more generally as the "Wizarding World" now—is the 10th largest media franchise on earth. 10th place may not sound that great, but it sits among storied company like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shonen Jump, and Super Mario. In that context, it really shouldn't be any surprise that...
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The concept of "open source" originates with software, of course, but that doesn't mean it has to stop there. Open-source hardware is a thing now, and you can also find all kinds of other projects becoming "open source." That means that they're sharing schematics, plans, and diagrams for producing the product yourself...
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If you looked at that headline and thought, "I didn't even know either of those CPUs were out yet," don't be distressed, because they aren't. While both the Core i9-13980HX and Ryzen 9 7845HX have been announced by their respective manufacturers, you can't actually buy a laptop with either processor yet. Despite that...
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When you buy a new HP inkjet printer, the setup software strongly encourages you to sign up for the company's Instant Ink service. It sounds like a good deal on the face of it—every time you print a certain number of pages, HP will send you a fresh ink cartridge without you having to go buy one yourself.
The...
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If you're putting together a PC that has to fit in a space less than five inches long in any dimension, that means you have to settle for mediocre parts with just a couple of CPU cores and weak graphics, right? Well, not necessarily. Check out ASRock Industrial's new 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 series.
These micro-PCs are, as...
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There may not be as many Harry Potter fans as there once were, but the series definitely still has legions of hardcore devotees that snap up every bit of "Wizarding World" media. Those fans are no doubt frothing at the mouth to play the new Avalanche Software title Hogwarts Legacy, which is the first big-budget video...
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