Feature Index Page 9

  • Superhuman: The Future of Email or a Monumental Waste of Money?

    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."

    By Arjun Krishna Lal on

  • 21 Years of Hitman: How Stealth Action Got Perfected Over the Last 2 Decades

    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.

    By Sami Haj-Assaad on

  • TechSpot's Guide to Spring Cleaning your Gadgets and Computers

    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.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • CPU and GPU Availability and Pricing Update: March 2021

    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?

    By Tim Schiesser on

  • Should You Be Wary of All the Free Games?

    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?

    By Sami Haj-Assaad on

  • What is a Checksum, and What Can You Do With It?

    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.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • In-Home Streaming Faceoff: Steam Remote Play vs. Moonlight

    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.

    By Arjun Krishna Lal on

  • Screen Tearing or Input Lag? To Vsync or Not to Vsync?

    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.

    By Arjun Krishna Lal on

  • History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 5

    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.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • Anatomy of a Gamepad

    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.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • Most Watchable Games for Non-Gamers

    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?"

    By Rob Thubron on

  • 4 Years of Ryzen 5, CPU & GPU Scaling Benchmark

    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.

    By Steven Walton on

  • I have a confession to make: I've spent several hundred dollars on Steam Controllers

    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?

    By Arjun Krishna Lal on

  • 13 Years of Assassin's Creed

    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.

    By Sami Haj-Assaad on

  • FreeSync and G-Sync: What You Need to Know

    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.

    By Sami Haj-Assaad on

  • What Ever Happened to AIM?

    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.

    By Shawn Knight on

  • 17 Years of Far Cry

    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.

    By Rob Thubron on

  • Anatomy of a Keyboard

    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 Nick Evanson on

  • How to Export Old Device Drivers to a New Windows Installation

    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.

    By Mark Turner on

  • Core i5 10400F + Radeon RX 6800 Tested: Looking for the Best Value CPU

    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.

    By Steven Walton on

  • Anatomy of a Mouse

    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.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • The Best and Worst PC Hardware of 2020

    Let's do a brief recap of 2020's best and worst PC hardware products. We have 5 categories to work through covering mostly PC hardware components like CPUs, GPUs and motherboards, as well as laptop hardware and monitors.

    By Tim Schiesser on

  • AMD Smart Access Memory Tested, Benchmarked

    Today we're taking a detailed look at how AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology influences performance in a wide range of games. All in all, we plan to benchmark 36 games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K.

    By Steven Walton on

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 + Radeon RX 6800: Tested at 1080p, 1440p and 4K

    The Radeon RX 6800 is bound to be a popular GPU choice and with so many of you using the still amazing Ryzen 5 3600, it makes sense to see how it performs with the new RDNA2 GPU.

    By Steven Walton on

  • Resolution Scaling: The Secret to Playable "4K Gaming"

    Resolution scaling is a great option if you're looking to eke out an additional 10-15% performance, after tweaking settings. If you're playing at a high resolution like 4K, and you combine res scaling with image sharpening, the results are often very close to native.

    By Arjun Krishna Lal on

  • Explainer: What are MMX, SSE, and AVX?

    Computer technology is no strange to acronyms: CPU, RAM, SSD, to name but a few. Ever so often, new ones appear on the scene in the never-ending quest to improve the capabilities of our computing devices. Today we'll explain processor instruction set extensions MMX, SSE, and AVX.

    By Nick Evanson on

  • How Arm Came to Dominate the Mobile Market

    Whenever you think of mobile computing, Arm is likely the first company that comes to mind, or it should be. Billions of Arm chips are used on phones, TVs, embedded systems and tablets. But they're coming for more.

    By William Gayde on

  • Revisiting Video Game Music: PC Edition

    Forging ahead with our reminiscence of the most memorable video game music, part two focuses exclusively on PC video game soundtracks. We've got our hands full as there's a lot of excellent material to consider, so here comes our list.

    By Shawn Knight on

  • A Beginner's Guide to the Linux Command Line

    Do you think of the command line as an antiquated leftover from the past, or an old fashioned way of interacting with a computer? Think again. In Linux, the command line remains the most flexible and powerful way to perform tasks.

    By Himanshu Arora on

  • Against All Odds: How Nintendo Made It

    Few companies can brush off failure and come back stronger like the world's most famous gaming company. Nintendo has been synonymous with video games for decades, but it's not always been rosy for the Japanese giant.

    By Rob Thubron on