#ThrowBackThursday Today we're addressing one of the most frequently asked questions we see about PC gaming: how many frames per second do you need? Should you be running at the same refresh rate as your monitor's, say 60 FPS on a 60 Hz display, or is there a benefit to running games at a much higher frame rate than your monitor can display, like say, 500 FPS?
We recently experienced an installation of Windows 10 with system files that were totally corrupt. After attempting typical repair options, we used a Windows 10 ISO to perform an in-place upgrade, reinstalling Windows 10 while preserving even the software you have installed.
Wi-Fi is set to get better and faster with its upcoming major update. While plenty of routers are already available with chips using draft specifications, 802.11ax Wi-Fi won't be finalized until December 2019, ushering in a wave of updated devices touting new wireless capabilities that will contribute toward next-generation networks with more speed and less congestion.
Time is running out for 2018 and this will be last update to our series before new GPUs possibly arrive in Q1 2019. In the meantime, we are seeing some interesting trends with further discounts and some previous generation GPUs running out of stock. Here's how prices have changed, what we expect in the future, and the current best value cards.
Today we're looking into how much RAM you need to play the latest and greatest gaming titles. About this time each year we set on a memory capacity quest and last year's expedition lead us to conclude that for gamers 4GB is out, 8GB was the minimum, 16GB is the sweet spot and 32GB is overkill. Read on for our 2018 test.
If it's been a while since you've bought portable flash memory, you might be surprised by the broad availability and affordability of high speed, high capacity microSD cards. Commonly used to expand the storage in devices ranging from smartphones to drones, microSD cards are becoming more frequently purchased than any other SD form factors, although full sized cards remain popular among digital camera owners.
PC has never been a singular platform like, say, PlayStation or Xbox. Instead, it's a series of disparate landmasses sharing the same turbulent sea. PC gaming looks to become more fragmented than it's been in the past few years---for better and worse. More options means more chances for new ideas to flourish and, perhaps, for a new middle class of developers to emerge.
If you want to know what graphics card you should buy or what's the best CPU for your new rig, we've already got you covered. Today we're discussing something else. Welcome to our second annual hall of hardware shame, where we list what we feel were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2018. Some of these products should have never existed, others are just a bit pointless or made promises they did not fulfill.
#ThrowbackThursday It can be easy to talk yourself out of standing at a computer desk. Besides parting with your favorite chair, the price of most adjustable models can discourage many. Read on for a practical outlook on what you can expect from your first standing desk, whether you're building something yourself or having one shipped to your door.
Depending on where you live, you've likely seen a house with crazy flashing Christmas lights that change color and dance to music. Almost every neighborhood or town has "that one house" that goes all out for the holidays each year. In my neighborhood, that house is mine.
Not only is the PC the best platform for enjoying games, but it also offers the broadest range of titles. That means the choices we face when deciding what's going to take up hours of our lives can be overwhelming. That's where this guide comes in, suggesting the best PC games you should be playing right now.
It always surprises us how often we get requests for Crossfire and SLI benchmarks. Despite flatout telling readers not to invest in either technology for years now, there still seems to be quite a lot of interest. Both AMD and Nvidia have made no secret about the fact they're pulling back on multi-GPU technology, but recently two RX 590 cards came our way and we thought, why not?
Today we're benchmarking Just Cause 4 with a boatload of different GPUs to help you determine if your graphics card will handle this brand new title, and if need be, work out a suitable upgrade option.
After a less than encouraging debut of real-time ray tracing in Battlefield V, Nvidia and DICE have been working together to optimize the game's implementation of DXR. The improvements come in the form of new graphics drivers and a game patch, which collectively Nvidia claims can improve performance as much as 50%. We put those claims to the test.
#ThrowbackThursday Enthusiasts' early overclocking endeavors involved soldering and replacing crystal clock oscillators, but evolving standards brought more accessible means to change system bus speeds, while the most daring would gain boosts through hard modding. These are but a few of the landmark processors revered for their overclocking prowess.
MSI's Optix MAG27CQ and MPG27CQ monitors check a lot of boxes on the feature list: 27" curved monitors with 1440p resolutions, FreeSync support, 144Hz refresh rates, and 1ms response times. Let's see how they perform and whether one of them may be a good choice for your next gaming display upgrade.
In an unexpected turn of events, it's now possible to overclock the otherwise-locked $55 Athlon 200GE processor. In what appears to be a slip up by MSI, the component maker has enabled Athlon overclocking with their latest BIOS release across its entire AM4 motherboard lineup.
After another year's worth of testing and plenty of new product launches, it's about time we give our recommendations for the best gaming monitors you can buy right now. This time we're also throwing in several great value picks after spending a lot of time testing lesser known brands, with a few surprisingly good options for less.
If you've been in the PC community for a while, you may have heard the name Puget Systems before. They are a custom system builder specializing in workstations and gaming PCs. This includes workloads such as engineering, content creation, 3D modeling, ML/AI, streaming, and more.
#ThrowBackThursday Pepsi vs. Coke, Edison vs. Tesla, Star Wars vs. Star Trek. History is filled with famous rivalries, but few have matched the intensity and, quite often, the viciousness that comes when two tech industry giants clash heads. Chartering their path from the dawn of computers to the current digital age, here are the five biggest rivalries in computing history.
Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise and has continued supporting the feature in Windows 10, which can be kept on a pen drive in your pocket as a portable operating system.
PlayStation Classic is a faithful reproduction of the experience of playing original PlayStation games in the mid-1990s. The experience is technically accurate, but the PS Classic doesn't feel like it was created by a company with a true and abiding passion for the games of this era, or even with the good sense to fake one.
Having already tested graphics performance in Battlefield V covering a massive range of graphics cards, including a look at real-time ray tracing, we're now focusing on CPU performance. Battlefield V's 64-player multiplayer really puts the hurt on processors, so we threw ourselves at the task.
Since 2014 updates to Diablo III have been light and sporadic, and four years later, Blizzard's announcement of Diablo Immortal at a time when fans are hungry for any news of a Diablo IV has led to big questions about the future of the franchise. What's really going on with Diablo?
First things first, you need to choose sides. Whether you're going AMD or Intel, there are loads of motherboards to choose from. If you've followed our previous motherboard buying guides covering Z370, B450 and X470 motherboards, you're probably in for a surprise once you see how this one turned out.
