ASUS ROG Phone 3 Review: Fastest Android On The Planet

Since its inception, ASUS has gone the extra mile to bill the ROG Phone as a gaming-first smartphone, and not simply another high-end handset with a flagship processor and fast refresh rate. Now in its third iteration, the ROG Phone 3 takes what we liked about the previous two models and improves upon the brand's gaming-oriented features, to enhance the experience even further. And yes, it's also delightfully fast, armed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G SoC that ASUS claims gives the ROG Phone 3 a double-digit (10 percent) performance advantage over top-shelf phones rocking a regular...

2.5 Geeks: Ryzen 4000, AMD Earnings, OnePlus Nord And Buds, Tiger Lake Benchmarks

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Jul 30, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks podcast, we'll be talking about the AMD from Ryzen 4000 series, AMD's stellar earnings, and how fast DDR4 RAM affects Ryzen performance. We'll also be chatting up the fabulous OnePlus Nord and Buds, impressive Intel Tiger Lake benchmarks and lots more... Audio Kicks In @ 3:40! Show Notes: 05:49 - AMD Brings Power And Performance Of Ryzen 4000 Renoir Processors To Desktop PCs 09:29 - AMD Crushes Q2 Earnings, Setting Records As Ryzen And EPYC Sales Surge 17:03 - Intel Tiger Lake Benchmark Leak Shows Massive Performance Gains 19:23 - Intel...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Threadripper Pro, Death Stranding, Kingston DC SSD, TCL Giveaway Winners!

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Jul 16, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Geeks Podcast, Marco, Chris and Dave will be announcing our TCL 10 Pro Giveaway winners! We'll also be discussing AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper Pro beast chips, Lenovo's ThinkStation P620 workstation that's powered by those chips, our review of the cool new Death Stranding PC game, a big, fast new line of NVMe SSDs from Kingston and new giveaways going on now and to be announced! Show Notes: 03:51 - AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper Pro Processors To Battle Intel Xeon W 11:01 - Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Launches With AMD's New Threadripper Pro 64-Core...

2.5 Geeks: Ryzen 3000XT, Dell XPS 15 9500, Thunderbolt 4, Giveaways And More!

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Jul 10, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Geeks Podcast, Marco, Chris and Dave will be chatting up AMD's new Ryzen 3000 XT series CPUs, Dell's sweet new XPS 15 9500, blistering-fast Thunderbolt 4, Samsung's BIG bad 870 QVO, making a young gamer's wish and details of our next AWESOME GIVE AWAYS (plural) and more! Show Notes: 04:06 - AMD Ryzen 3000XT Processors Reviewed: Zen 2 Turbocharged 14:17 - Intel's Supercharged Thunderbolt 4 Delivers Gobs Of Bandwidth, Aims To Replace All Your Cables 21:05 - Samsung SSD 870 QVO Review: Terabytes Of Solid State Storage 27:48 - Dell XPS...

2.5 Geeks Podcast: Apple Silicon, iOS 14 Reveal, Intel 10th Gen NUC, And Nubia RedMagic 5G

by Brandon Hill - Mon, Jun 29, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Marco, Dave, and Chris are on the scene to discuss Apple's big switch to its own custom Arm-based processors, Intel's 10th generation NUCs and the Nubia RedMagic 5 Android smartphone (among other topics). It's a jam-packed episode that you'll definitely want to check out in the YouTube embed below. Show Notes: 06:00 - Apple Announces Its Own Processors For Macs With Systems Shipping This Year 13:30 - Here’s What Intel Has To Say About Apple’s Seismic Shift To Its Own Chips For Macs 28:00 - Intel NUC10i7FNH: Powerful,...

AMD's Chief Architect Of Gaming Solutions, Frank Azor Joins Our 2.5 Geeks Podcast

by Brandon Hill - Fri, May 22, 2020

We've got a heads up for you folks that tune in to our weekly 2.5 Geeks podcast. As a reminder, the next show goes live Friday (5/22) at 5PM EST, and we'll have none other than Frank Azor on the line to rack his brain on all things gaming related.  For those that don't already know, Frank serves as AMD's Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions. So, we'll be sure to pepper him with questions on AMD's current Ryzen 3000 processors and Radeon RX 5000 Series graphics cards; and perhaps he'll be able to give just a hint of what to expect with Ryzen 4000 and Radeon RDNA 2 graphics that are currently...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Guest Details! Unreal Engine 5, Dell XPS, Radeon Pro VII, Surface Devices

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, May 14, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Dave, Marco and Chris kicking around the amazing new Unreal Engine 5 on PlayStation 5 demo, Dell's HOT new 2020 XPS 17 and XPS 15 laptops, AMD's powerful new Radeon Pro VII pro-graphics card, Microsoft's new Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3 devices, reveal net-week's special guest and more! Show Notes: 05:00 - Epic's Amazing Unreal Engine 5 PS5 Demo Will Leave You Slack-Jawed And Drooling 19:00 - Dell's Gorgeous 2020 XPS 15 And 17 Unveiled 29:34 - AMD Radeon Pro VII PCIe 4.0 Workstation Card Sizzles 37:14 - Details On Special AMD...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Ryzen 3 3000, Intel 10th Gen Desktop, OnePlus 8, iPhone SE & More

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, May 08, 2020

In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Marco, Dave and Chris chat about AMD's sweet new low cost Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3100 processors, Intel's powerful 10th Gen Core Comet Lake-S Desktop CPUs, new OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro Android flagship phones, Apple's low cost iPhone SE, and announce a VERY SPECIAL GUEST coming to the podcast later this month, and hint at our next gaming rig giveaway! Show Notes: 05:31 - Intel 10th Gen Core CPUs And Z490 Boards Launch At 5GHz Plus To Combat Ryzen 3000 17:42 - AMD Ryzen 3 3300X And 3100 Review: Serious Quad-Core Value 26:53 - OnePlus 8 Pro...

Broadband And WiFi Optimizations To Boost Work From Home Network Performance [Updated]

by Marco Chiappetta, Brandon Hill - Mon, Apr 20, 2020

With the massive uptick in people working from home due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing guidelines in place, the load on our broadband infrastructure has skyrocketed. Here are some tips – mostly free – to maximize and optimize your Wi-Fi and broadband performance so that you can get work done more quickly and efficiently, with better quality video conferences and virtual happy hours. Also these, these tips should help with your online gaming performance when you need some [well-deserved] downtime during this chaos as well. First up, there are a number...

Dell XPS 13 (2020) Review: Laptop Excellence Refined

by Ben Funk - Tue, Apr 07, 2020

When we evaluated the late 2019 model of Dell's XPS 13, we thought a few small things kept that ultraportable from achieving complete perfection. That machine shipped with Intel's Comet Lake-U family of processors, which are plenty fast on the CPU side of things. However, they lack the graphics "oomph" of Intel's latest Iris Plus graphics, available in Ice Lake-based 10th-Gen processors. This (very slightly) older model also had a 1920x1080 display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, while the Ice Lake-equipped 2-in-1 model had a slightly higher resolution 1920x1200, 16:10 display. We felt like adding those...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile, Doom Eternal, NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 And More

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Apr 02, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Marco, Dave, and Chris will be covering AMD's hot, new Ryzen 4000 Mobile platform in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop, id Software's killer and hella-fun Doom Eternal, and NVIDIA's latest DLSS 2.0 release with much better visuals and performance... Show Notes: 03:02 - ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Review: AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile Unleashed 12:54 - AMD Launches Ryzen 4000 Series For Laptops: Zen 2 Mobile Unleashed 17:05 - Doom Eternal: Demon Killing Gameplay And GPU Performance Review 19:50 - Doom Eternal Tips And Tricks For Optimizing Your Hell-Raising...

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Review: AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile Unleashed

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Mar 30, 2020

We first got our hands on the AMD Ryzen 4000-powered ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 during CES early this year. If you are unfamiliar with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, it is a new breed of thin and light gaming notebook, that packs the performance of a much larger desktop-replacement type machine into a slimmer and sleeker 14”, sub-20mm class notebook. There will be multiple models of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 available when it hits store shelves in the coming days, but at the heart of the particular system we’ll be showing you here today is the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-core / 16-thread processor....

2.5 Geeks: Ryzen 4000, Galaxy S20 Ultra, Upgrading GPUs, Working From Home, Alienware Giveaway!

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Mar 19, 2020

In this latest episode of 2.5 Geeks, the team talks about AMD Ryzen 4000 series mobile CPUs, Samsung's big, burly Galaxy S20 Ultra, the benefits of upgrading from integrated graphics for a performance lift, working from home during a pandemic, Epic's Tim Sweeney stepping out in defense of NVIDIA GeForce NOW, and details about a SWEET Alienware gaming PC that we're giving away... Show Notes: 06:27 - AMD Launches Ryzen 4000 Series: Zen 2 Mobile Unleashed With Big Performance Gains 22:19 - Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G Review: Big, Bold, Tricked-Out 42:03 - Gaming Level-Up: Benefits Of Upgrading Integrated...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Zen 4, NVIDIA Ampere and Xbox RDNA2 Rumors, Samsung T7 SSD, Alienware Giveaway And More!

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Mar 05, 2020

In this latest episode of our 2.5 Geek podcast, the team talk AMD's Zen 4-based EPYC super-computer design win, NVIDIA's Ampere next-gen GPU citings, Ray Tracing in the Xbox Series X and AMD's "Big Navi" Radeon, Samsung's T7 Touch snappy external SSD, and how you could get in on our giveaway to win a killer Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition Gaming PC and 34-Inch curved Alienware monitor, sponsored by Asetek! Show Notes: 04:03 - AMD 5nm Zen 4 EPYC CPUs And Radeon Instinct GPUs To Power El Capitan Supercomputer 13:07 - Xbox Series X Ray Tracing Demos, Big Navi Radeon Unveil Rumored For AMD Analyst Day...

2.5 Geeks: Threadrippper 3990X, Galaxy S20, Best 144Hz GPUs, MiSTer Retro Gaming & More!

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Feb 27, 2020

On this latest episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Marco, Chris, and Dave talk AMD's 64-core Threadripper 3990X beast, Acer's big and beautiful 43-inch Predator 4K HDR gaming monitor, the best graphics cards for high refresh / high FPS 1080P gaming, the Samsung Galaxy S20 series and LG's just-announced V60 ThinQ, MiSTer FPGA-based retro gaming and much more -- including news of our next, awesome giveaway! Show Notes: 04:48 - AMD Threadripper 3990X Review: A 64-Core Multithreaded Beast Unleashed 19:53 - Best NVIDIA And AMD GPUs For High Refresh Rate Gaming 33:26 - MiSTer...

2.5 Geeks: AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, Big Navi, NVIDIA Ampere, Surface Pro X vs Surface Pro 7, And More

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Jan 24, 2020

On this latest episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks, Marco, Dave, and Chris discuss AMD's new Radeon RX 5600 XT mid-range gaming GPU, talk of AMD's upcoming "Big Navi" graphics offering, NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series rumors, our impressions of Microsoft's Snapdragon-powered Surface Pro X versus the Surface Pro 7, drop hints of our next giveaway, and more... Show Notes: 03:35 - Microsoft Surface Pro X And Pro 7 Review: Snapdragon And x86 Experience 17:38 - AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Zen 2 APU Delivers Strong Performance In Lenovo Laptop Benchmark Leak 18:13 - AMD...

2.5 Geeks Podcast 1/15/20: CES 2020, Ryzen 4000, Intel DG1, Concept UFO, ThinkPad X1 Fold, Windows 7 EOL

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, Jan 16, 2020

In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks webcast, Marco, Brittany, Chris and Dave discuss the Best of CES 2020, AMD's hot new Ryzen 4000 Mobile processors, Intel's encouraging DG1 graphics demo, Alienware's sweet new Concept UFO gaming handheld PC, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold foldable tablet PC, and what to do about that Windows 7 migration that you need to make the jump for to Windows 10 -- and of course, details of our latest giveaway with Lenovo! Show Notes:  1:47 - HotHardware's 12 Best Of CES 2020 2:33 - Alienware Concept UFO Invades Nintendo Switch-Style Gaming With PC Master...

Addlink S70 SSD Review: Speedy, Affordable NVMe Storage

by Ben Funk - Mon, Dec 23, 2019

Addlink isn't a particularly well-known manufacturer in the PC storage space, but the company has been in the business for a little over a decade. Online shops carry all sorts of flash memory products from Addlink, from micro SD cards to PCI-Express 4.0 solid state drives, and all points in between. However, just because you may not be as familiar with a certain brand or product doesn't mean it's not worth paying attention to. At the risk of giving away the conclusion in the first paragraph of this review, we dare say that Addlink's S70 M.2 SSD is one of those situations. As you'll see in the features...

HotHardware 20th Anniversary AMD, Gigabyte And Thermaltake Holiday Red Gaming Rig Giveaway

by Dave Altavilla - Fri, Dec 06, 2019

It's special time for us here at HotHardware.com, not only because it's the holiday season but also because we're celebrating 20 years on the wild wild web! The very first version of HotHardware went live in 1999 and we have been partying like it ever since. With this major milestone – made possible by all of you, our loyal readers and #PCMasterRace gamers around the world – we thought it would be great to give something back. So we teamed up with the good folks at Gigabyte and AMD, along with the talented team at Thermaltake, to put together a righteous, red and radical killer...

ASUS ROG Phone II Review: A Mobile Gaming And Battery Life Beast

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Nov 12, 2019

The concept of a purpose-built gaming phone is still somewhat in its infancy, though we are starting to see generational upgrades, such as the ASUS ROG Phone II. As the name implies, this is the second generation of ASUS' gaming handset. Like the original ROG Phone released last year, the ROG Phone II combines bleeding edge hardware with gaming-centric software optimizations. ASUS sprinkles in some nifty features (like Air Triggers) and then surrounds it all with optional accessories to amp up the experience. What ASUS has essentially created is not just a gaming phone, but a smartphone gaming...

2.5 Geeks: Intel Tremont, Core i9-9900KS, SHIELD TV 2019, GTX 1660 Super, 20th Anniversary Talon Giveaway!

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Oct 31, 2019

On this episode of HotHardware's 2.5 Geeks Marco, Brittany and Chris chat about Intel's new Tremont CPU architecture, NVIDIA's sleek new SHIELD TV 2019 Android TV media streamer, the just-released GeForce GTX 1660 Super, Falcon Northwest's HOT AMD Ryzen-powered 20h Anniversary Talon gaming PC and details of our totally AWESOME killer gaming PC giveaway with Falcon Northwest, AMD and Obsidian Entertainment! Show Notes: 02:13 - Intel Tremont CPU Microarchitecture: Power Efficient, High-Performance x86 06:15 - NVIDIA SHIELD TV 2019 Review: AI Enhanced Android TV Streaming 16:05 - GeForce GTX 1660...

Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: The Fastest Gaming CPU Bar None

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Oct 30, 2019

Intel has been talking about its Core i9-9900KS processor for months now. It was all the way back in May that the company first revealed what would become the new flagship processor in its mainstream computing platform. The Core i9-9900KS is not something totally new, however. As the “S” in its name implies, the Core i9-9900KS is something akin to a special edition of the existing Core i9-9900K. The processors are built from the same slab of silicon – an 8-core, Coffee Lake-refresh based die, packaged up for Intel’s LGA1151 socket. What makes the Core i9-9900KS different...