Reviews
By now, AMD's Radeon RX 5700 family of GPUs is a pretty well-known quantity. The Navi architecture that makes up the current crop of AMD-based graphics cards offers pretty good bang for the buck from the mainstream Radeon RX 5500 XT up to the biggest and baddest Radeon RX 5700 XT, thanks to aggressive pricing and the...
Read more...
Samsung announced its latest flagship, large-format smartphones -- the brand-new Galaxy Note 20 5G and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G -- at this month's Galaxy Unpacked Event, along with a host of additional wearable and tablet products. As is typically the case when Samsung updates its premiere line of devices, the new...
Read more...
Intel held a virtual Architecture Day 2020 event this week, and similar to its late 2018 event, the company disclosed a number of details regarding its Six Pillars of technology innovation -- Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security and Software. During the event, Intel’s execs and architects...
Read more...
Google’s Pixel phones are well known for their superb cameras, timely updates, and unique features (Call Screen, Now Playing, etc...) But the company’s handset strategy -- and its lineup -- is difficult to decipher. It’s like Google is beating its own drum, blissfully (or purposefully) unaware of the market. On one side,...
Read more...
Full disclosure, I've never been much of a mini-ITX form factor kind of guy. I mean I get the allure of a space-efficient PC design that can more easily integrate in to an office or home environment, but there are almost always caveats. Typically the trade-offs are either sacrificing performance and features, or you end up having to tolerate...
Read more...
Since its inception, ASUS has gone the extra mile to bill the ROG Phone as a gaming-first smartphone, and not simply another high-end handset with a flagship processor and fast refresh rate. Now in its third iteration, the ROG Phone 3 takes what we liked about the previous two models and improves upon the brand's gaming-oriented features,...
Read more...
By now, everyone with even the vaguest of interest in PC technology can tell you how much snappier solid state drives are than even the fastest of spinning disks of yesteryear. There have been some interesting wrinkles recently, like ultra-high speed drives that ride the PCI Express 4.0 bus, but in test after test...
Read more...
It’s hard to believe that OnePlus is already six years old. The company’s all grown up now. You can find the OnePlus 8 in T-Mobile and Verizon stores, and the OnePlus 8 Pro competes directly with the best flagships from Apple and Samsung. But this has come at a price -- literally. With the OnePlus 8...
Read more...
If there’s still any doubt that truly wireless earbuds are a thing, let us introduce you, dear reader, to the second wave -- exemplified by the OnePlus Buds. See, the first wave really took off when Apple introduced the original AirPods -- meh sound, OK battery life, high price. The focus was on convenience, reliability, and calls. Other...
Read more...
We all know that bigger is better, right? At least in generalities, it's often true. More CPU cores help performance in multi-threaded workloads, while high frequencies boost performance in lightly-threaded tasks. With graphics, it's all about more as well; more shading resources, more ROPs, more VRAM, and a wider bus means more frames per...
Read more...
If you're a mobile gaming enthusiast, you're likely going to be in your happy place this morning. ASUS has just announced the third coming of its ROG Phone, aptly named the ROG Phone 3. Hailing from the ASUS Republic Of Gamers line of products, everything about this new mobile beast is dialed in for serious gaming...
Read more...
Depending on your age and background, the Sony brand might be synonymous with Bravia TVs, Alpha cameras, PlayStation game consoles, or even Walkman audio players. And you’d be right in thinking that way, but did you know Sony also makes Xperia smartphones, and even sells them in the US? Well, it’s true. Sony's Android handsets...
Read more...
Backpacking across the country "Once...there was an explosion." So opens the oft-memed narrative of Kojima Productions' first post-Konami title, Death Stranding. If you've not been paying attention to the game, which launched in November as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, this title is about to make its jump to the PC. On July 14, non-PS4 gamers...
Read more...
Kingston recently released its DC1000M series of solid-state drives for data center applications, capped off by a massive 7.68TB model. The DC1000M series leverages a hot-pluggable U.2 (2.5”, 15mm) form factor, that’s compatible with U.2 backplanes and the drives target mixed-use, data-intensive workloads, including Cloud computing,...
Read more...
Last month, AMD made the 3rd Generation Ryzen 3000XT series processors official after weeks of leaks and speculation. In case you missed the original announcement, Ryzen 3000XT series processors are tweaked versions of the original 3000X series products, but with higher clocks and the ability to maintain turbo frequencies longer, to boost...
Read more...
Remember when Coca-Cola reformulated its popular soft drink in the mid 1980s? The so-called New Coke formula barely lasted a few months before it failed and the original was brought back. The company already had a good thing on its hands and it was a valuable real-world lesson in not trying to reinvent the wheel when the one you have spins...
Read more...
Although much of the excitement in the solid state storage market revolves around the latest, bleeding-edge NVMe-based drives, there is still a massive need for SATA-based solutions. Not only are there a myriad of legacy systems ripe for upgrades that rely on SATA, but owners of current-gen systems often want more...
Read more...
Personal electronics take quite a beating. Think for a moment about all the places your smartphone can end up: on top of the car, buried in a bag, shoved into a pocket along with keys, tossed on a seat where it may bounce off and hit the floor, and so many other situations. Just like a phone, a tablet can end up in a...
Read more...
For better or for worse, gaming phones are a thing. What started out as a trickle of pricey, specialized handsets from established gaming brands like Razer and Asus ROG has turned into a steady stream of affordable, tricked out smartphones from Chinese sub-brands like Xiaomi’s Black Shark and Nubia’s RedMagic. Which brings...
Read more...
The Intel Data Center Group (DCG) unveiled a plethora of new products today targeting AI and big data analytics workloads, including 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors, 200 Series Optane Persistent Memory, AI-optimized Stratix 10 NX FPGAs, and faster 3D NAND-based solid state drives. Over the last few years...
Read more...
Intel has been steadily updating, upgrading, and augmenting its line-up of small form factor NUC systems for many years now. Initially, most of the systems had a similar design language, but over time, Intel has expanded its offerings to address the needs of many more customers and potential use cases. Recently, we...
Read more...
It's official: from what we've seen so far, AMD's Ryzen 4000 series of mobile APUs are a hit here in the HotHardware labs. It started with the svelte ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming notebook, which impressed us with excellent performance at a reasonable price point, all packed into a lightweight 2.7-pound 14" chassis...
Read more...
