Zak Killian
Recent posts
If you're reading this site, Noctua almost assuredly needs no introduction to you. It's rare that Austria's premiere purveyor of puissant cooling apparatus actually launches a new product, and rarer still that it replaces its top-end...
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On Intel's current platforms, if you want a PCIe 5.0 SSD connected directly to your CPU for the most optimal performance, it's going to split off of the PCIe x16 slot normally meant for graphics. That's because the only PCIe 5.0 lanes on...
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Public opinion is turning against AI on certain topics. Some people have been dubious about the practical benefits of all the power and money spent on developing and operating AI for some time, but recently, leadership at multiple...
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If you want a PCIe 5.0 SSD right now, your options are basically limited to drives based on Phison's potent E26 controller. We like Phison around here, but from a consumer perspective, it's always good to have competition. That's why we're...
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Intel's Arc launch was weak, to be sure, but we've retested the parts several times since launch, and the software is competent at this point. All Intel needs now is some new graphics hardware. That's on the way, and we'll get a sneak peek...
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The download size of video games is getting out of hand. For a massive open world game with ten years of updates like GTA Online, 110 GB isn't out of the realm of possibility. When a first-person shooter like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3...
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When AMD announced its new "Strix Point" Ryzen AI 300-series laptop chips at Computex, it said that they would be available in July. But when, AMD? Recent rumors reported that the launch day for AMD's Zen 5 architecture would be July 15th, but we had no confirmation from the manufacturer...
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AMD's upcoming Ryzen AI 300 series processors based on its 'Strix Point' design are pretty cool, but they're essentially an iteration on its previous-gen Phoenix parts. The really exciting new chip supposedly still on the way from AMD is 'Strix Halo', a monster microprocessor meant for...
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DigiTimes Asia is a site that frequently shares semiconductor scuttlebutt and anonymously-sourced industry leaks. The site posted up one such story back on Thursday, alleging that Intel's hotly-anticipated Lunar Lake processors have been delayed. Intel, for its part, has responded today in the...
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There's ample reason to be excited for Zen 5. After all, AMD says that it is the largest re-architecting of its CPU core since the original Zen. However, the company also acknowledged at Computex that the generational performance gain...
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"The year of the Linux desktop" is a long-standing meme among PC enthusiasts, but thanks to controversial decisions by Microsoft, continual development effort from Linux lovers, and the massive success of Valve's Steam Deck, Linux is...
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If you've followed the market of handheld machines out of Asia as well as recent mini-PC releases like Minisforum's own MS-A1, you've probably seen an OCuLink connector. This port is a standard connector from PCI-SIG that offers internal...
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AMD's Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are desktop CPUs based on mobile silicon. These laptop-derived chips have fewer CPU cores and lower clock rates than the full-on desktop models, but they also include powerful integrated graphics...
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Intel's top-end desktop CPUs have had some stability problems. This has been an on-going story, and we've reported on it a couple of times before, but the short version is that certain games and apps are likely to crash on some Core i9 and...
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It wasn't all that long ago that the idea of using integrated graphics for gaming was strictly a last resort endeavor. Chips like Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator and even early integrated Radeon parts weren't powerful enough for much...
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Do you need a new mobile workhorse, or just want a lightweight, powerful laptop with all-day battery life? Whatever the individual reasons, a lot of people are understandably very excited about Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series processors and...
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The 2024 PCI-SIG Developers Conference, or "SIG DevCon", took place last week, and one of the most impressive demos on the show floor was undoubtedly Cadence's. The company demonstrated PCIe 7.0 running stable on optical fiber at 128 GT/s...
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Minisforum has made a name for itself selling mini-PCs based around mobile hardware. There are systems like the Neptune HX100G, which pairs a Ryzen 7 7840HS with a discrete Radeon card, and then there are machines like the BD790i, which is...
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Next month, most of the big laptop OEMs are expected to release machines based on AMD's Ryzen AI 300 processors sporting the shiny new Zen 5 CPU architecture and RDNA 3.5 graphics. Naturally, everyone's chomping at the bit to know how...
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The simple fact is that the main bottleneck in game smoothness is system memory performance. When we talk about games being "CPU-limited," we're actually talking about a memory performance limitation most of the time. That's why AMD's 3D...
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Application performance obviously uses hardware speed as a baseline, but software optimizations are ultimately where large gains can be realized. It's not uncommon for developers to make an application run five, ten, twenty, or even a...
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Intel shared a lot of information with us at Computex concerning its Lunar Lake mobile processors launching soon, but had very little to say about its upcoming Arrow Lake desktop CPUs. There were a few tidbits buried in the presentations...
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