TechSpot Features

So you're going to buy a game from one of those no-good-gray-market key sites like G2A? Are those legit? What do developers and gamers think?

Many of the breakthroughs made since the advent of the transistor were simply inconceivable a century ago, but what makes tech culture even more interesting are the anecdotes and fun facts that came along the way.

For the past two months, I've been using Superhuman, an invite-only email client Silicon Valley startup owners swear by. With a wait list that's 250,000 users long, it's touted it as "Gmail, if it'd been built today, not a decade ago."

The Hitman series helped define the modern stealth action game, with the formula evolving and building up a large following spanning 20 years. Here's a recap of the key titles featuring genetically engineered and professional hitman Agent 47.

With spring upon us, it's not just our homes and cars that deserve a bit of elbow grease to make them shiny and spotless -- our tech and computing devices need just as much care and attention.

The rest of the year is filled to the brim with what looks to be an excellent selection of new PC-exclusive and cross-platform releases. Here's a condensed list of some of the more exciting and anticipated PC game releases.

Science fiction books, movies, games, TV shows and other media have long been home to amazing technology. Many of these ideas can serve as inspiration for today's scientists, but just how close are we to the real-life versions?

CPU and graphics card pricing and availability are still a mess, but is the situation improving? Can we expect to get back to PC building any time soon?

It's not every day that you can get a free AAA game like GTA 5, but thanks to periodic giveaways, gamers' libraries are bursting with great titles. But we must ask, how this is a valid business strategy?

A checksum is a number, in the form of a binary or hexadecimal value, that's been derived from a data source. The important bits to know are that it's typically much smaller than the source, and it's also almost entirely unique.

Whether you just want to play Skyrim in bed, or take your your work apps with you to the living room, solutions like Steam in-home streaming and Moonlight offer a near-flawless experience.

Screen tear or input lag? To vsync or not to vsync? For the longest time, this was an either-or question in the PC gaming space. You could either have a tear-free, properly frame-paced image or low input latency. But here's a trick to try.

In the last decade, graphics processors became one of the largest, most complex, and most expensive components that could be found in almost any computing device.

Input devices have a key role in the computing and gaming landscape. Today we'll finish our autopsy of the major input devices by chopping open a classic gamepad: Microsoft's Xbox 360 controller.

Not everyone likes gaming. Picture the scene: you're with a perfect new partner who shares many of your likes and interests, but upon asking if they prefer shooters or RPGs, they respond with, "Oh, I don't really play games, though I enjoy Candy Crush---does that count?"

We want to see how the Ryzen 5 1600X, 2600X, 3600X and 5600X compare in half a dozen games using the GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3070, Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5600 XT, using both the ultra and medium quality presets at 1080p, 1440p and 4K.

Over the past 5 years, the Steam Controller has been my go-to device for PC gaming from the couch. I've tried Microsoft's controller, DualShock, DualSense, and even the Switch Pro and none come even close. But then, what went wrong with the Steam Controller?

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 and SD cards. With this guide, we'll break down what all the different codes and ratings mean, and offer the best choices for a range of categories.

Who would have guessed that stealthily scaling a building with a trusty hidden blade would become an annual tradition, but back in 2007, the exploits of Altair in Assassin's Creed were practically revolutionary.

Adaptive sync display technologies from Nvidia and AMD have been on the market for a few years now and gained plenty of popularity with gamers thanks to a generous selection of monitors with plenty of options and a variety of budgets.

One of the greatest tools to be spun out of AOL was its instant messaging client, affectionately known as AIM. Released in the spring of 1997 it allowed users to register an online handle, create buddy lists, and chat with friends in near real-time.

From what began life as a tech demo, the series has endured for over 16 years, producing 14 games (including Far Cry 6) that have sold over 50 million copies and spawned an utterly atrocious movie. This is the story of Far Cry.

Nvidia is a dominant force in computer graphics but there was a lot of work involved in getting to that level since the NV1 debuted in 1995. Lesson learned as the chips that followed included some surefire hits.

Input devices have a key role in the computing landscape, so the guts of them must be pretty cool to look at. Naturally, this means getting our scalpels out for another dissection of the anatomy of hardware.

By far the most common types of display panels used on PC monitors are TN, IPS and VA. We're sure you've heard these terms before if you've researched monitors to purchase, and to be clear, the type of panel is a key piece of information that reveals a lot about how the monitor will behave and perform.

When we look at the video games that have truly stood the test of time, MMORPGs are always near the top of that list. The genre has been around for decades, but what's the secret sauce that makes MMOs so popular and long-lasting? And which titles are worth playing today?

There's plenty of graphics history and technology to unpack here after AMD purchased ATI, it didn't just absorb the company, but continued its reputation of being a graphics powerhouse for years to come.

Finding drivers online for old hardware can range from difficult to impossible. But we discovered that you can export drivers for third-party devices from one copy of Windows to another -- great news if you have a previous instance of Windows where your old device is installed and functional.

We check out Intel's Core i5-10400F, a direct competitor to the Ryzen 3600 to see how this budget CPU performs when paired with a last-generation high-end Radeon gaming GPU.

Computer mice are often inexpensive and basic, but some of them boast all kinds of extras. In this Anatomy feature we'll dig into the guts of one inexpensive mouse and one Logitech MX model to see how the two compare on the inside.