Reviews
Diablo 3 players don't need any more bad news. The game is already staggering from a debut marred by enormous lag spikes, dropped games, and auction house errors. Now, widespread allegations of hacking are taking further chunks out of Blizzard's hide. This time though, there's an added twist: A significant number of those hacked claimed to...
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Solid State Drives are a fabulous way to boost a system's performance, but for all their strong points, they aren't an easy upgrade for a lot of people. Performance can vary significantly between manufacturers, only the most expensive drives can replace the need for an HDD in an enthusiast / data-heavy system, and reinstalling a full...
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Dedication. Diligence. Sacrifice. These are the words that describe us here at Hot Hardware, because when we set out to review these Corsair Vengeance gaming keyboards and mice, we sent the family off to bed night after and night and worked deep into the early morning hours. We spent many--many--hours testing, testing, and testing some more,...
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We won't burn up too much of your bandwidth setting the stage here. AMD's second-generation Bulldozer core processor microarchitecture, codenamed Piledriver, has made headlines at HotHardware many times in the past few months, including our CES sneak peek of the chip that AMD is launching today for the mobile market, codenamed Trinity. ...
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We really dig it when the two big discrete GPU makers are firing on all cylinders. Our workload may increase exponentially as NVIDIA and AMD volley grenades back and forth, but the excitement that’s generated as a result, is a rush for hardware guys like us. And if the overall engagement and comments posted by you all reading this are...
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There are two types of power users on this planet, and they consist of those who use a 30-inch monitor, and those who don't. The latter far outnumber the former, but thanks to a number of factors, this particular digital divide is growing smaller by the day. For one, 30-inch monitors are somewhat more affordable compared to a few years ago,...
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How do you make the experience of buying from a boutique system builder easier than it already is? If you're Digital Storm, you answer that question by offering a line of pre-configured machines that are fully loaded to meet your budget and ready to ship in 72 hours. Not only do you save the time and energy required to build your own system...
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A couple of years back we attended an IDF event in San Francisco, and among other disclosures, behind closed doors the company was showing off a PCI Express-based SSD with current generation Intel NAND Flash and based on an array of SandForce controllers. As it turns out, that product never saw the light of day and was more of a demonstration...
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After testing the GeForce GTX 680 last month, it was practically a foregone conclusion that a dual-GPU powered graphics card based on the same GK104 GPU was coming down the pipeline. The GK104 at the heart of the GeForce GTX 680 was able to best AMD’s current flagship GPU more often than not in our testing, and it did so while consuming...
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The HTC One X generated quite a buzz when the smartphone was first announced at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. The initial announcement featured information and specifications for two versions of the phone, an international model built around NVIDIA’s quad-plus-one core Tegra 3 SoC (system on a chip) and a U.S. model powered...
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A few days ago, news broke that Max Payne 3 would require ~35GB of storage space. That's a huge number; even Rage, released last year, came in at a hair under 20GB. If you've followed game development at all, you've undoubtedly come across figures showing how the cost of developing a next-generation title has risen at an geometric rate...
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History has a habit of repeating itself; just as we had to burn through our review of the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime in short order, we're on the fast track again with the new ASUS Transformer Pad 300 (TF300T). With a tablet this hot off the press and moving to retail channels so quickly, we wanted to get the word out to you as soon...
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One of the great things about Intel’s “Tick, Tock” release cadence is that it gives us all an early glimpse into the company’s future plans and potential product offerings, especially since they’ve been able to execute so well over the last few years. Seeing Conroe eventually evolve into Penryn, and Nehalem into...
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You might say Intel has been absolutely killing it as of late. Whether you consider their recent earnings announcement beating Wall Street's expectations, the Ultrabook craze, their re-entrance into the handset arena with their Medfield platform, or the proliferation of their 2nd generation Core Sandy Bridge-based processors in...
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LG and Verizon Wireless have brought the same display technology used in LG's premium HD televisions to a new smartphone dubbed the Spectrum. Featuring a 4.5-inch True HD IPS display and a resolution of 1280x720, the LG Spectrum uses Real Stripe subpixel arrangement which LG says is denser and 1.4 times sharper than the PenTile subpixel...
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It's only been five months since Skyrim hit store shelves, but the amount of work done on the game by both Bethesda and an army of modders has been enormous. With the Creation Kit now in the wild for several months, we've rounded up some of the best mods available and brought them for your consideration. We'll also walk you through the modding...
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Although solid state drives have generated the lion’s share of buzz in the storage space these last few years, traditional hard drives with spinning media continue to be a mainstay of the industry, and have evolved to offer higher capacities and more performance than ever before. Of course, even the fastest of today’s hard drives...
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Intel has historically stuck with SATA-based solid state storage solutions, but today the company is taking a different approach with its first PCI-Express solid state storage device. Like the SSD 710 family of products, the newly announced Intel SSD 910 is based on 25nm MLC NAND Flash. The two product families share a number of...
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In addition to building graphics cards, Zotac is one of only a handful companies to fully embrace small form factor and home theater systems. Whether you want to build something yourself from the ground up, quickly assemble a barebones rig, or pick up a fully built HTPC, Zotac has you covered. The company offers a wide array of mini-ITX motherboards...
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Windows Phone is only about a year and a half old in the market at this point but Nokia has a much longer lineage. In the past 12 months though, their two worlds have collided in a fashion that will have repercussions for quite some time to come, with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop firmly committed to focusing his company's turnaround on what...
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In preparation for the impending arrival of the company’s 3rd Generation Core processor products based on its Ivy Bridge microarchitecture, Intel has readied a new chipset dubbed the Z77 Express. We have already been able to show you a number of Z77 Express-based motherboards, thanks to a handful of sneak peeks while out at CES early...
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We’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen recently from Corsair, and we were glad that the company saw fit to send us a couple more mid-tower cases to pore over and test: the Corsair Carbide 300R compact gaming chassis and the Obsidian 550D quiet case. The two are dissimilar from one another in terms of design and purpose, but...
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