PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News
Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.
Intel's X99 chipset, aka Wellsburg, is the company’s latest chipset for the high-end desktop market segment. Motherboards making use of the chipset have been readily available since last summer of 2014. Still, it took some time for...
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Over the past few months, a number of details regarding AMD’s next-generation Radeon 300-series graphics cards has trickled out, even though the cards aren’t due to launch for quite some time. While official details of the actual GPUs that...
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AMD has just announced a capability that’s already been baked into its GCN-based GPUs, that enables something called Asynchronous Shaders. Asynchronous Shaders are a feature of new or next-gen APIs like DirectX 12, Vulkan, and AMD’s own...
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Soon after NVIDIA unveiled its G-SYNC technology, AMD announced that it would pursue an open standard, dubbed FreeSync, leveraging technologies already available in the DisplayPort specification to offer adaptive refresh rates to users of some discrete Radeon GPUs and AMD APUs. AMD’s goal with...
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CES is the time of year when computing companies of every type show off their next-generation hardware, and AMD is no exception. Hot Hardware sat down with the Sunnyvale-based company to talk about its major plans for 2015 in both gaming...
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As CES kicks off this year, we're seeing a number of new products from companies that focus on two critical markets: ultramobile computer hardware and high-end enthusiast equipment. Acer is one of the first companies to announce...
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Now that Intel's newest LGA 1150 motherboard chipset is out in full force, numerous enthusiast-class boards abound. We've already taken a look at five Z97 motherboards from Gigabyte, EVGA, and MSI, and this time around we're reviewing the Asus Z97-Pro (Wi-Fi ac). This board is one of Asus'...
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AMD this week delivered its Catalyst Omega drivers that are the culmination of six months of development work. AMD Catalyst Omega brings over 20 new features, a wealth of bug fixes to the table along with performance increases both on AMD...
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When you think Amazon, you probably imagine books and freaky fast shipping. You probably don't think about drones and robots, both of which have crept into the company's fabric over the past year or so. In addition to preparing a Prime Air...
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Aereo may be remembered as the most highly disruptive service in the technology space that the masses couldn't find a need for. Now, it'll also be remembered as a company that couldn't battle its way beyond a brutal court decision that effectively made its core service illegal to offer. For...
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One of the disadvantages to buying an Apple system is that it generally means less upgradeability and flexibility than a system from a traditional PC OEM. Over the last few years, Apple has introduced features and adopted standards that...
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ARM has announced its next generation of graphics hardware (codenamed Mali). The new GPUs are meant to highlight a significant improvement in energy efficiency, with ARM claiming that its next-generation GPU architecture will be a whopping 45% more power efficient than previous models. The new...
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In the interest of full disclosure, I’m going to start this piece off with a bit of a confession: Last year, when I was first exposed to NVIDIA’s G-SYNC technology, I turned to one of our contacts at the company and said, “The moment someone comes out with a nice 4K...
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Just about a year ago, AMD released the Radeon R9 290X, based on the GPU formerly codenamed Hawaii. At the same time, the company also re-jiggered and re-named the rest of its line-up to create a fresh, top-to-bottom line-up of graphics cards in the Radeon R7 and R9 series. The Radeon R9 290X...
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It has been more than a year since AMD launched its last major update to the top end FX processor line -- the FX-9590. The company has been quiet in the face of Intel's high-end launches, but today AMD is shipping a new CPU that's aimed at multi-core performance enthusiasts who don't want a...
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AMD is launching a new family of products today, but unless you follow the rumor mill pretty closely, it’s probably not something you’d expect. It’s not a new CPU or APU. And it’s not a new GPU or memory kit either. Well then, “what could it be” you ask? Today, AMD is launching its first line of solid...
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Before we dive in and show you the brand-new ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q G-Sync enabled monitor, we have a confession to make: We are ecstatic that there is finally some innovation happening in the monitor market. For years, 30” panels with native resolutions of 2560x1600 and paltry 60Hz...
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AMD updated its family of Kaveri-based A-Series APUs for desktop systems today. We first took an official look at Kaveri back in January, when we evaluated the A8-7600 APU. That particular APU is being re-launched today at a new price point, but AMD is also introducing a couple of new APUs as well, namely the A10-7800 and the A6-7400K. As...
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It has been almost two years since AMD launched the FirePro W9000 and kicked off a new battle in the workstation GPU wars. Today, we're reviewing the company's FirePro W9100 -- a new card based on the same Hawaii-class GPU as the desktop R9 290 and R9 290X, but aimed at the workstation market and professional consumers. Does...
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AMD has had a tough time competing with Intel on the desktop lately, but when it comes to mobile technology, in the notebook arena, performance, value and power efficiency are measured against a very different yardstick. That's not to say that CPU throughput and IPC isn't important in a notebook, not by a long shot, but multimedia...
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You might recall that we recently rounded up a collection of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics cards and put them through a gauntlet of benchmarks and tests. Each of the cards represented brought something unique to the table and stood out in some way, but curiously missing from the...
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It has been nearly a year since we visited ARM in Cambridge, UK, and the company recently held another tech day -- this time in Austin, Texas. During the three-day session, ARM covered a wide range of topics, with a primary focus on server ecosystems and next-generation mobile hardware...
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