Zak Killian
Recent posts
You know, your author here would really like to have a Steam Deck. The thing is, he just can't justify the purchase. If you're in the same boat, don't miss your chance to pick up a free Steam Deck in Valve's Game Awards giveaway on...
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"But Zak," you cry, "there is no GeForce RTX 4070 Ti!" Not yet, there's not, but all information indicates that that's the name NVIDIA will use when it re-launches the un-launched GeForce RTX 4080 12GB. We've seen both rumors and leaks...
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It's a bit of an open secret, but in case you're not aware, most processors these days are pushed far beyond the "sweet spot" in their voltage-to-frequency curve. That means that you can trim the voltage and reduce power consumption...
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When we're talking about a memory interface, there are a bunch of salient specifications, but the two most important are generally its width and its transfer rate. Usually, when we hear about new memory, the main marketing merit is its...
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Back in August, we reported on a leak from Skyjuice over at Angstronomics that gave different values from earlier leaks for some of the specifications in AMD's RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 family. While the Navi 33 specifications were...
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In an unprecedented move, NVIDIA "unlaunched" the "GeForce RTX 4080 12GB," leaving the extant GeForce RTX 4080—based on GA103, with 16GB of memory—as the singular GeForce RTX 4080 model. This was done pretty late, though, and those chips...
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Intel's had a history of experimenting with different types of voltage regulation when attempting to optimize the efficiency of its processors. The 4th-generation Core CPUs codenamed "Haswell" used a fully-integrated voltage regulator...
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For quite some time now—since the mid-1990s or thereabouts—there's been a significant split in the PC market between standard consumer desktops and workstation systems, also known as "high-end desktop" (HEDT) systems. HEDT machines...
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As you may well know, the original Nintendo Wii is based on fundamentally the same CPU as Nintendo's previous home system, the Gamecube. That's an IBM PowerPC chip known as "Broadway," which is essentially the same thing as the PowerPC...
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Have you seen that GeForce RTX 4080? It's crazy stuff, and AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX looks like it'll be pretty incredible when it comes out in a few weeks, too. Those cards start at about $1,000 and go up from there, though. You can build...
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It would not have been totally unreasonable to think that Intel would stick to enthusiast desktops for Raptor Lake and skip budget or mobile offerings. After all, Raptor Lake is by some measure a stopgap solution, basically a tweaked Alder...
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If you watched the company's presentation on November 3rd, then you're well-aware that AMD is launching the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and similarly-named Radeon RX 7900 XT on December 13th. As it turns out, that may not exactly be the full story...
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AMD Ryzen 7000 Series - Starting At: $250 (7600X), Ryzen 9 7950X - $699 AMD's Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series processors are a major upgrade over the previous generation and the updated platform offers a host of benefits. ...
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What's the biggest media franchise in history? Star Wars? Marvel? Mickey Mouse? Nah, son. Pokémon is the biggest media franchise in history, by dollars earned. Despite that, the previous main-series games Sword & Shield were roundly...
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Inflation comes for everyone, friends. The prices of just about everything have gone up drastically in the last couple of years, and that even includes games consoles. While Sony is so far the only company to actually raise the price of...
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When AMD revealed its Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs early this month, its presentation focused on comparing against its own previous-generation parts. There were some comparisons to the GeForce RTX 4080 in the press materials, but nothing...
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There's a long history of vendor-locked graphical techniques that only see implementation in a few games. Names like Quincunx and Truform (among many others) resonate in PC gamers' memories, and it sometimes inoculates us against...
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Publicity is a hell of a thing. By all the data we have, incidents of melting 12VHPWR connectors on GeForce RTX 4090s are vanishingly rare. Despite that, everyone knows exactly what Sasa Marinkovic (AMD's Senior Director of Gaming...
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There's been much ado in the DIY PC hardware space about the issue of the new ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 12+4-pin peripheral power connector melting on GeForce RTX 4090 cards. There's a class-action lawsuit, AMD's managers are memeing on NVIDIA...
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While we tend to think of the computer industry as centered on Taiwan, the companies that do most of the R&D are all based in the US, including AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, and others. China would like to have its own home-grown...
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Streets of Rage is a name that will make many Gen X and Millennial gamers turn misty-eyed. A trilogy of belt-scroller titles that released for Sega's 16-bit Genesis console (known as the "Mega Drive" internationally), they were regarded as...
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One of the noteworthy takeaways from AMD's announcement of the Navi 31-based Radeon RX 7900 XTX was its lower power spec (355W) relative to NVIDIA's power-thirsty GeForce RTX 4090. Of course, it's not expected to be as fast as NVIDIA's...
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