TechSpot Features

We all think of the CPU as the "brains" of a computer, but what does that actually mean? What is going on inside with the billions of transistors to make your computer work? In this new four-part mini series we'll be focusing on computer hardware design, covering the ins and outs of what makes a computer work.

Sean Murray, lead developer of No Man's Sky, has seen the best and worst of it since the game's incredible first trailer was shown in 2013. But after a failed launch, No Man's Sky has flourished in recent years. While he won't release sales figures, Murray said that "last year we sold the kind of numbers a AAA game would be happy with at launch," using the industry jargon for big budget games.

Pranks are awesome. They are one of those few things in life that most people can unequivocally agree on being great. Pranks are in the same league with cat videos, candy, and free stuff - everyone loves 'em. You're a tech-savvy individual, and it's time that your pranks showed that. We've got some ideas...

Many hardcore computer users might consider themselves above learning new tricks, but there are always new ways to sharpen your skills on the PC and we bet that you will find at least one useful thing here that you didn't know before.

If you've got some $200 to spend on a new CPU and you want something that can handle any and all tasks you throw at it with maximum efficiency, the Ryzen 5 2600 series is a must-have. But should you buy the Ryzen 5 2600X or the non-X 2600?

Critically-acclaimed game Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been updated to receive support for both DirectX ray tracing shadows and Nvidia's DLSS upscaling technology. It's been seven months since ray tracing was shown off in this title and a good six months since the game was released, but hey, the feature was added in eventually and it's a very good game, we must add.

The Web is turning 30 years old this month and clearly we've come a long way since Tim-Berners Lee wrote his paper proposing an information management system to facilitate information-sharing between physicists in universities and institutes around the world. Nowadays it's hard to imagine what life would be like without the web.

Today we're looking at a few different hardware configurations to see if certain matchups work better than others. We're testing some popular games using the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8700K processors, pairing each with the Radeon VII, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080, as all three GPUs provide a similar level of performance.

Earlier this year we first put Nvidia's support for FreeSync monitors to the test, grabbed every FreeSync monitor we had in the office, and verified that in all cases adaptive sync worked as expected. LG recently sent us 5 of their latest FreeSync monitors, which we've used to revisit Nvidia's FreeSync support.

Today we're looking at the very first set of official Ryzen Mobile GPU drivers to come from AMD. Owners of Ryzen Mobile laptops have been waiting for this day for months now, so the fact these drivers are finally out is great news for the small but growing community of Ryzen laptop early adopters.

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.

Today we're discussing quad-core processors, namely how relevant they are in 2019. The last time we covered this specific topic was back in 2017, so this article means to explore if these budget quad-cores are worth buying for gamers, or are they dead on arrival.

It's time for our final look into Metro Exodus, exploring the game's DLSS implementation which is exclusive to GeForce RTX graphics cards. We've been covering both ray tracing and DLSS closely, testing where it makes sense and following up as patches are released. As one of the key features on Nvidia's flagship RTX graphics card, the discussion is not only relevant but necessary.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all you need to know in this article, from old school ways to retrieve keys, to the more modern approaches to make good use of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

Nvidia's deep learning super sampling, or DLSS, is one of the highly anticipated features present on RTX graphics cards. This month DLSS finally made its way to both Battlefield V and Metro Exodus, and as is the usual case for us, we'll be going through a full visual and performance breakdown in this article.

It's time for us to talk about ray tracing once again, this time in Metro Exodus, the latest game to integrate support for Nvidia's RTX technology. Metro Exodus looks to be a better showcase for DXR as a slower paced, open-world shooter that uses ray-traced global illumination. The game is launching with ray tracing and DLSS support from day one.

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.

Ever since Nvidia opened up support for adaptive sync monitors on GeForce GPUs, we've been receiving requests asking what FreeSync monitors we would recommend. The focus on this article will be on gaming and best value.

Today we're investigating claims that the new GeForce RTX 2060 is not a good buy because it only features 6GB VRAM capacity. The RTX 2060 offers performance similar to the GTX 1070 Ti, but that card packs an 8GB memory buffer, as did its non-Ti counterpart. In other words, the RTX 2060 is the fastest graphics card to ever to come with a 6GB memory buffer.

We've covered many ways that you can save space on your storage drives over the years and deleting duplicate files on your system could easily result in a sizable clean out if only a few large files are found. Although Windows doesn't provide a direct solution, there are many apps that can help, so here's a quick look at them.

To the surprise of many, Nvidia has backed down from their G-Sync tower and enabled Nvidia GPU owners to use adaptive sync with a wide range of FreeSync monitors. The feature was announced during CEO Jensen Huang CES 2019 keynote and this week it's been enabled by the latest GeForce drivers.

What a difference a year makes. It was about this time last year that we discussed why building a gaming PC was a bad idea, but thankfully a lot has changed since. You may recall, DDR4 memory and graphics card prices were through the roof a year ago. GPU availability was quite poor and on top of all that, we were at the end of a few product cycles. Fast forward a year, what's changed?

Having a specialized 3d API was arguably both the highlight and the downfall for pioneer 3Dfx. The Glide API combined with Voodoo hardware truly enhanced the gaming experience. If you are old enough, odds are you owned a 3Dfx card and played some of these games. Let us take you a trip down memory lane and remember some of the best.

There are many reasons why you would buy a used graphics card. First and foremost, the savings, of course. With the mining madness now over, we've been given the opportunity of buying graphics cards on the cheap. Also this past generation of GPUs also received a much longer than expected life cycle, meaning you are not getting overly old GPUs, but fairly serviceable gaming hardware.

Though it's a year shy of the big decade marker, 2019 looks to be one of the most exciting and most important years for the tech industry in some time. Thanks to the upcoming launch of 5G and foldable displays, as well as critical enhancements in AI, robotics, and other exciting areas, there's a palpable sense of expectation for the new year that we haven't felt for a while.

As the heads of some of the largest companies in the world, these chief executive officers make decisions that can affect our daily lives, but just how much do we really know about the filthy rich dudes in positions of power? We examine their careers, personalities, and histories, and make a lot of speculative guesses.

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.

ICQ, short for the phrase "I Seek You," laid the groundwork for standalone instant messaging clients when it arrived in November 1996. Think about how long ago that was... Windows 95 was barely a year old, Nintendo had just introduced the N64, and those with a reason to have a cell phone actually used it to talk on.