Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Hardware enthusiasts who have been around the block a few times will recall some concern over the reliability of chips based on Intel's 14nm FinFET fabrication process. With the fully-integrated voltage regulator (FIVR) being manufactured at such a tiny feature size, overclockers doing even minor overvolts might be...
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The company formerly known as Facebook made a couple of big announcements yesterday in cooperation with Intel, who may be providing some of the potent AI hardware to power Meta's new AI products. The big new things to know about are the Llama 3 AI model and Meta's new AI assistant, simply called "Meta AI".
Meta's...
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If you weren't there in the late 90s, it is very difficult to explain the particular cachet that "3dfx Voodoo" has among a certain generation of PC gaming enthusiast. 3dfx cards never had the best image quality, they rarely actually had the absolute best performance, and for the first two generations, the VGA...
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If you're a budding young tech enthusiast or simply a casual PC purchaser, you may have seen "cache" listed in the specifications for this or that processor and wondered what exactly that is. It's been a major marketing point for CPUs for decades, and recently it has even become a matter of discussion for...
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There can't really be any doubt at this point: AI is going to change all of our lives, and there's no going back from here. Still, there's quite a bit of debate over exactly how it's going to happen. If you listen to hardware vendors like AMD and Intel, they'll tell you that you absolutely need to upgrade your...
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Final Fantasy XIV Online is one of very few true success stories in the MMORPG space, and it comes as all the more of a surprise given the rocky launch of the title. Your author is one of many unfortunate fans of the previous Final Fantasy MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI Online, who pre-ordered the original release of Final...
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When OpenAI's GPT-4 hit the internet, it was pretty much the best large language model (LLM) around. Many of OpenAI's competitors have long since surpassed the original GPT-4 on various metrics, from Claude's enormous context window to Gemini 1.5's excellent performance with complex multi-modal datasets. Of course...
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We didn't cover it, but recently there was a story about how Intel's Raptor Lake -K processors—that's the overclockable members of the 13th- and 14th-generation Core family—were seeing extremely high return rates in certain circumstances, particularly in Korea. The problem seems to be that these CPUs are identified as...
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We were on-site at Intel's Vision 2024 earlier this week, and one of the coolest things that we got to see in person were some live AI demonstrations performed by Intel. These weren't restricted to just high-end server hardware, either—although Intel's folks were proud to show those off, too. If you'd like, you can...
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We were pleasantly surprised when AMD revealed that its current-generation Phoenix and Hawk Point processors would use its latest-generation RDNA 3 graphics architecture for their integrated graphics processors (IGPs.) That's because, historically, APUs have lagged behind discrete GPUs in terms of architecture. We may hit a sticking point
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At Intel Vision 2024, CEO Pat Gelsinger got up on stage to tell the live audience both in Phoenix and on the internet about Intel's vision for its role in the AI-powered future. He talked about many things, including the upcoming Gaudi 3 AI accelerators as well as revealing the name of the next-generation Xeon CPUs:...
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Tech companies have unilaterally decided that generative AI is the next big thing, and vendors at every level of the supply chain are pouring billions of dollars into developing AI hardware and software. That obviously includes Intel, whose presentation today at its Intel Vision 2024 event was heavily focused on AI...
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For quite some time, Apple's App Store guidelines have banned applications from running software that's not "embedded in the binary." In other words, an app that loads another app is a no-go. This, obviously, had the knock-on effect of banning all emulators from the App Store because that's exactly what they are: an...
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If you needed any further confirmation that AMD's "Granite Ridge" desktop processors sporting the Zen 5 architecture were on their way before long, the latest piece of evidence is an update for the popular MC Extractor binary microcode extraction tool. This update adds support for two different AMD CPU identification...
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Much has been written about the performance of Arm-based processors exceeding that of x86-64 CPUs, but depending on your perspective, that fully hasn't come to pass. There are Apple's M-series processors that do perform competitively in many tasks, along with an array of data center-focused products that emphasize...
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It's quickly becoming a tradition for ASUS to announce a new, seemingly absurd product on April 1st and then turn around days later and say "oh, by the way, that's real and we're going to be showing it at Computex." It happened with the ROG Ally handheld last year, and this year the company's ROG Mjolnir power station...
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It's been nigh on nine months since Jeff Kampman from Intel's Graphics Technical Marketing team raised the question: does AMD's 3D V-Cache actually help that much if you're not running a top-end graphics card? Well, we've been busy and haven't had time until just recently to get the testing done, but now we have and...
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If you're not from the American South, you probably have no idea about Waffle House. A regional chain of casual dining restaurants that opened in 1955, the company now has over 1900 stores in 25 US states. The key features of Waffle House are that the restaurants offer cheaply-priced and quickly-served diner food, and...
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Normally we wouldn't report on something like this, because ultimately "some guy on a forum said a thing" isn't exactly newsworthy on its own. However, in this case, the poster in question is Kepler_L2, a well-known fellow who frequently shares insider information and astute analysis of upcoming hardware, particularly...
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It's been a year and a half since AMD launched its Socket AM5 platform and its Zen 4 desktop processors, so the time is nigh for a new generation. Most people are expecting AMD to announce its second series of Socket AM5 processors at Computex in May, and then launch them not long after. There's a new piece of...
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When you hear the brand Zotac, your mind may immediately think of graphics cards, but the company was actually one of the real pioneers in the mini-PC space with its Zbox brand. Zboxes date back to 2011, predating even the original Intel NUC, and Zotac has offered a wide range of models sporting both Intel and AMD...
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It's been a week now since Dragon's Dogma 2 released, and while the Steam reviews are slowly recovering—they're currently at 55% positive, up from a nadir of under 35%—the critical reviews have largely been glowing. It's certainly not a game for everyone, but it's definitely a good game for those who will enjoy it, and overblown controversies
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