As most of you are probably aware, Creative Labs, is one of the Founding Fathers of PC Audio and has manufactured sound cards and other audio-related hardware for 30 years. The original Sound Blaster was the de facto standard for DOS gaming audio almost right from its release in 1989. As high-profile PC games like...Read more...
The Zen 2-based AMD Ryzen 3000 series is easily one of the most anticipated product launches in the PC space in recent memory. AMD has essentially promised to address virtually all of the perceived shortcomings of the original Zen-based Ryzen processors, with the Ryzen 3000 series, while continuing to aggressively challenge Intel on multiple...Read more...
AMD has been talking about its next-generation Navi GPU architecture for ages. It was over 3 years ago that we first mentioned Navi here on the HotHardware, and since then there has been a slow, steady stream of information disseminated to the public, leading up the last month’s big architecture disclosure at E3 and the official unveiling...Read more...
NVIDIA dropped a hint that something “Super” was coming just prior to Computex and since then a handful of leaks have let the cat mostly out of the bag. Today, however, we can dispel the rumors, officially reveal what NVIDIA’s got coming down the pipeline, and show you exactly what NVIDIA’s...Read more...
The EVO series is a member of Origin's thin-and-light family of gaming laptops. The words "thin-and-light" aren't often used when describing powerful gaming laptops, but considering Origin has managed to squeeze both an Intel 9th generation 6-core processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPU into the EVO17-S, a...Read more...
A few months back, Samsung launched its SSD 970 EVO Plus series of solid state drives, which featured the company’s latest TLC NAND flash memory and an updated firmware optimized for higher performance. When the line-up initially arrived, capacities up to 2TB were announced, but only the 250GB – 1TB models...Read more...
Generally speaking, pricing on flagship smartphones has continued to climb, because all of those fancy bells and whistles found on the top-end models do not come cheap. Not everyone has or is willing to spend a grand or more on a top-shelf handset, though, and some of the cheaper alternatives make too many sacrifices to hit a lower price point....Read more...
HP is hoping to offer gamers the best of both world with its Omen X Emperium 65. Although HP is careful not to call the Omen X Emperium 65 a television, per se, there's no escaping that fact that this is a massive display that would be more at home in your living room, den, or bonus room than your average...Read more...
The OnePlus 7 Pro is one of the most highly anticipated Android phones to hit the market this year for a number of reasons. At first blush, it was about a few stand-out specs. The phone's 6.7-inch display supports a speedy 90Hz refresh rate and a super-tight 3120x1440 QHD+ resolution in punchy, HDR10+ certified OLED...Read more...
Just prior to hosting its Next Horizon E3 Livestream event, AMD treated press and industry analysts to additional deep dive technical details regarding its next-generation Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU microarchitectures. The actual product details disclosed during the E3 Livestream, which included 16-Core Ryzen 9 3950X and...Read more...
AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5700 series of graphics cards is based on the AMD’s new Navi GPU architecture, which features a totally new compute unit design infused with “RDNA”, or Radeon DNA. For the past few generations, AMD’s GPUs have leveraged GCN-based, or the company's Graphics Core Next...Read more...
Humans have been dreaming up machines that take care of everyday household tasks since the Industrial Revolution. Smart home devices of various types have existed for several decades, but have become increasingly popular over the last few years as they have become more powerful, intelligent, and connected. Many consumers are now able to do...Read more...
A few weeks back, we took a look at the WD Blue SN500 SSD. That solid state drive is an affordable NVMe M.2 option, that’s targeted at mainstream systems and budget-constrained users. The WD Blue SN500 offers the benefits of NVMe, with pricing that is in-line with legacy SATA devices. The drive we’ll be looking at today, however,...Read more...
There is a fledgling wireless standard that effectively renders the vast majority of home networks out of date -- don't panic though, your stuff isn't necessarily obsolete. It is called Wi-Fi 6, if using the simplified nomenclature that the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced last year, or 802.11ax if you want to stick with the...Read more...
In case you haven't been paying close attention to the PC hardware scene lately, take note that Intel has been stepping up its game with respect to graphics. The first major waves made by Intel's newly formed Graphics and Visual Computing group came with the hiring of key executives from AMD, including Raja Koduri and...Read more...
Over the last few months, Intel has disclosed a number of details regarding its next-generation 10nm processors, codenamed Ice Lake. At an Architecture Day held in December ’18, we learned about the company's Sunny Cove microarchitecture that will be employed in Ice Lake and future-generation processors, in...Read more...
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su took to the stage at Computex to kick off the show’s initial international press conference, during what was the company’s very first ever opening keynote address for this venue. Of course, AMD participates in Computex every year because it is such an important event for the PC ecosystem as a...Read more...
When's the last time you saw a full-featured smartphone launch for well under $500? There have been a few to hit the market in this price range recently, usually with significant caveats, but in general the trend is towards more expensive flagship devices that are commanding upwards of $1000 quite often. Google's new...Read more...
Fractal Design released their highly acclaimed Define S2 PC case a little over seven months ago and they are already back with a new iteration; the Fractal Design Define S2 Vision RGB. That's a mouthful, but even if the name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, the DIY PC chassis is easy on the eyes. The Fractal...Read more...
Enterprise-class solid state drives used to be rare beasts that commanded heavy price premiums over their more common, consumer oriented counterparts. As leading SSD and Flash memory manufacturers have evolved their processes and technologies, however, availability and pricing for many enterprise-class solid...Read more...
WD’s Blue family of solid state drives has historically been comprised of nothing but SATA-based offerings, but the company recently updated the line-up with some brand-new NVMe-based drives. The WD Blue SN500 we’ll be showing you here today is the first Blue-branded NVMe SSD from the company, and as has been the case with many...Read more...
Lenovo's line of Legion laptops and desktops are designed for gamers, but one complaint levied against last year's Legion Y730 model was the lack of more powerful graphics options. However, Lenovo was obviously listening to consumer feedback and the new Lenovo Legion Y740 we are looking at today, rights this previous...Read more...