Feature Index Page 21

  • Analyzing Graphics Card Pricing: July 2018

    It's time to talk about graphics card pricing once again. Today we're exploring cards you can actually buy right now and at what prices, how that compares to previous months, which ones are the best value for money, and whether you should even buy one at all.
    By Tim Schiesser on
  • TechSpot PC Buying Guide - Mid 2018

    The TechSpot PC Buying Guide offers a comprehensive analysis of today's best desktop PC hardware spanning five well differentiated budgets. Starting at ~$400 for an affordable PC, followed by two well-balanced enthusiast-oriented machines, a premium high-end build, and finally a dream machine packing the baddest hardware available, period.
    By TechSpot Staff on
  • The Best Sports Video Game of All Time

    The latest sports games are not always the best. There's an obsession with incremental changes and bullet-point features, one which challenges fan's ability to take a step back and assess each game as its own title. It's something I try to do and I'm taking to its logical conclusion here in this Quixotic attempt to pluck one game out of hundreds and call it the "best."
    By Luke Plunkett on
  • How to Take Amazing Fireworks Photos

    You don't have to be a professional photographer to snap amazing pictures of fireworks. All you need is some basic equipment and know-how, the latter of which we offer up here.
    By Shawn Knight on
  • Things Nvidia Needs to Fix

    The third and final installment in our 'Needs to Fix' series is focused on Nvidia. Having previously discussed what we feel Intel and AMD can do with their upcoming products to become more consumer friendly, it's now time to look at the green team. As before, we're looking at this from the perspective of the consumer, at the product level.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Things AMD Needs to Fix

    This is the second part of our "Needs to Fix" series and it's now AMD's turn. As the underdog, AMD has far more reason to play nice and you could argue they've been forced into doing many of the things we want Intel to do because of their smaller market share. We don't believe AMD is a saint, it's still a big company trying to accomplish what most businesses should: make money.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Productivity Boost: Enable 'Night Mode' on All Your Devices

    It's becoming common knowledge that exposure to blue light can prevent your body from winding down properly before bed and making it more difficult to sleep. If you often work at night or simply like to read on a screen before going to sleep, this can be a game changer.
    By Julio Franco on
  • What is Vcore and How Does It Help with Overclocking?

    Vcore, or core voltage, is the voltage that is supplied to power your CPU. The amount of power the CPU uses and the amount of heat generated are tied to the amount of voltage it draws. The voltage identification definition, or VID, determines the amount of voltage your CPU needs to maintain stability at the default clock speeds.
    By Ryan Fisher on
  • Things Intel Needs to Fix

    As the market leader and long time dominant force in the CPU space, Intel's been able to get away with a lot and this is partly because the competition has allowed them to. In this column we're looking at possible improvements from the consumers' perspective and specific to Intel's personal computing side of the business.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Where is the Windows 10 Recycle Bin? Removing it from the desktop & putting it elsewhere

    Have you ever been to a presentation, or worse, a high-profile company keynote, it gets started on an empty Windows desktop showing nothing but the Recycle Bin icon? Hideous. Preferring to keep our desktop clean, we remove the Recycle Bin icon from Windows 10 as one of the first tweaks to a fresh installation of the operating system.
    By Julio Franco on
  • What's Thermal Throttling and How to Prevent It

    Heat is an inevitable byproduct of work. Heat is also prevalent in electronics, and when it comes to graphics cards you can manage it using passive cooling, fans and even water. But when these solutions aren't working, your GPU has one more way to beat the heat: thermal throttling.
    By Ryan Fisher on
  • How to Bring a Lost Window Back to your Desktop

    At one point or another, you're bound to run into this pesky issue: you can see an application open in the taskbar, but can't see the window on your desktop. A number of things can cause this, such as disconnecting your laptop from a secondary display before dragging the windows back to the primary desktop. It can also occur when you open a program that alters your resolution, among a few others.
    By Julio Franco on
  • How to Combine Many Images Into a Single PDF

    Printing to PDF is a widely available option these days, but what if you have a bunch of scanned pages in JPG format that you want to combine into a single PDF to be shared with someone else?
    By Julio Franco on
  • FreeSync 2 Explained

    FreeSync 2 was announced over a year ago but it's only recently that we're starting to see the its ecosystem expand with new display options. As HDR and wide-gamut monitors become more of a reality over the next year, there's no better time to discuss FreeSync 2 than now, when you can actually buy it.
    By Tim Schiesser on
  • Analyzing Graphics Card Pricing: May 2018

    Today we're checking out the state of the GPU market, what pricing and availability is like relative to various points in the past year, and what the trends in pricing are looking like. We'll also go through some performance figures to show which graphics cards make the most sense to purchase right now.
    By Tim Schiesser on
  • 4GHz CPU Battle: AMD 2nd-Gen Ryzen vs. Intel 8th-Gen Core

    We can say upfront that this article is in no way buying advice, but we're testing purely for the science of it. For the unaware, IPC (instructions per cycle) provides a good indicator of how fast a processor is, so with that in mind we're putting Intel and AMD's latest CPU architectures to the test running at a flat 4GHz.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Galaxy S9+ vs Pixel 2 XL Camera

    Google's Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL have commanded the phone camera throne since launch, producing astonishingly good photos that are unsurpassed by rivals of a similar era such as the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 8. In 2018, a new challenger has appeared in the Samsung Galaxy S9+ packing an upgraded camera system in an attempt to retake the crown.
    By Tim Schiesser on
  • 25 Great Games You Can Play on Laptops and Budget PCs

    Just because you don't have access to the fanciest gear around doesn't mean you have to play subpar games. Even if you're on a potato computer or low-end PC, there's plenty out there for you to enjoy. Here are some of Kotaku's top picks for quality games that should run on almost anything.
    By Patricia Hernandez on
  • Why You Can't Buy Books from the Kindle app on iPhone or iPad in 2018

    Apple users: Did you know that you can't buy Kindle books from the Kindle app on your iOS device? In fact, you can't purchase them from the Amazon app either. Even if you're an Amazon Prime member and you want to download a free book. Nah, not possible. But there's a workaround.
    By Julio Franco on
  • Far Cry 5 Benchmarked: 50 GPUs Tested

    To play Far Cry 5, Ubisoft recommends that you have a Core i7-4770 or Ryzen 5 1600 processor along with a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290X -- fairly heavy recommendations. Benchmarking the game has been made easy by its built-in benchmark which appears to do a good job of replicating the kind of performance you can expect to see when playing the game.
    By Steven Walton on
  • The Ultimate 44 Used Graphics Card Pricing & Benchmark Guide

    Along with our recent editorials on why it's a bad time to build a gaming PC, we've been revisiting some older GPUs to see how they hold up in today's games. But how do you know how much you should be paying for a secondhand graphics card?
    By Steven Walton on
  • The Authoritative Guide to Blockchain Development

    Cryptocurrencies, ICOs, magic internet money---it's all so damn exciting, and you, the eager developer, want to get in on the madness. Where do you start? I'm glad you're excited about this space. I am too. But you'll probably find it's unclear where to begin. Blockchain is moving at breakneck speed, but there's no clear onramp to learning this stuff.
    By Haseeb Qureshi on
  • Five Years Without Facebook

    In 2012 I wrote an article about leaving Facebook. I've kept this stance for about five years now, but an accumulation of several small things during this time have had me questioning whether or not abandoning the social network was the brilliant idea I once thought it was.
    By Shawn Knight on
  • Revisiting the Radeon R9 280X / HD 7970

    Continuing along with revisiting some of our favorite old graphics cards, today we'll be checking back in with the Radeon R9 280X, which is also to say that we're checking back in with the 7970 GHz Edition, both of which are essentially a factory overclocked Radeon HD 7970, so we'll technically be revisiting that, too, the very same card we first reviewed in December 2011!
    By Steven Walton on
  • Building a Budget PC: Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?

    At a time when graphics cards are extremely overpriced, AMD's new Ryzen APUs offer an affordable means of building a basic gaming PC. But we've been keen to see if the APU holds its ground against bargain priced second-hand GPUs. Today we're going to find out.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Six Mobile Tech Trends to Watch in 2018

    We're a few weeks into 2018, MWC is now behind us, and we're starting to get a good look at the trends in mobile technology that will dominate discussion throughout the year. Based on what we've seen from announcements, trade shows and product launches so far, here are six trends to watch in 2018.
    By Tim Schiesser on
  • Ranking the Fallout Games

    In the 20+ years since the Fallout franchise was introduced to the world, all of the games have been met with praise---which means that ranking them isn't easy. It's especially difficult to pit the games against each other when you consider that the post-nuclear franchise underwent a genre change.
    By Patricia Hernandez on
  • Revisiting the GeForce GTX 680: GTX 1050 Ti-Class Performance for Less?

    After recently retesting the GeForce GTX 580 eight years after its release, we thought it would be interesting to check back in on the GTX 680, another old friend that was released about six years ago as Nvidia's latest and greatest graphics card and a successor to the aforementioned 580.
    By Steven Walton on
  • Don't Bother with A320 Motherboards, Go for AMD's B350 Instead for Raven Ridge

    We've learned most of what there is to know about AMD's new Vega-infused CPUs, but those of you thinking about buying the Ryzen 3 2200G or Ryzen 5 2400G after seeing how it competent it is as a budget gaming platform may be asking yourselves whether the chip would be best installed on an A320 or B350 motherboard.
    By Steven Walton on
  • The Quest to Make a Better Video Game Controller

    Next time you play a video game, look down at the controller in your hand. Is it comfortable? Does it work well with the game you're playing? Are your fingers all being used efficiently? If you could change one thing, what would it be?
    By Kirk Hamilton on