Hardware

Good gravy, don't Nvidia's Turing RTX 2080 cards look nice, eh? Yes, they're just a teensy bit hideously expensive, but make no mistake. All three cards announced this evening, from the RTX 2070 right up to the RTX 2080Ti, have all been described to me as 4K, 60fps+ pixel pushers that are almost certainly going to be massive overkill for anyone still playing games at…

Tagged with feature, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Nvidia Turing, Ark: Survival Evolved, Atomic Heart, Battlefield V, Control, Dauntless, Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, Fractured Lands, Hitman 2, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Metro Exodus, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Remnant: From the Ashes, Serious Sam 4, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, We Happy Few.

It's been a long time coming, but Nvidia have finally lifted the lid on their next generation of Turing GeForce graphics cards - and man alive are they mindbogglingly impressive. Announced this evening at their GeForce Gaming Celebration event in Cologne ahead of this year's Gamescom, the successors to Nvidia's GTX 10-series will be led by the mighty GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX…

Tagged with Gamescom 2018, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Nvidia Turing.

Just a couple of weeks ago HTC was confidently rebutting claims about VR dying a huge and monstrous death with record sales of their Vive headset. Now, in a rather more desperate-seeming move, they've announced their Viveport subscription service will shortly be available on arch-rival headset, the Oculus Rift. Who's winning the race for total VR domination? You decide!

Tagged with Hardware, HTC Vive, Oculus, Oculus Rift, virtual reality, Vive, Viveport Subscription, VR.

In the distant past of four or so years ago, buying a gaming laptop was simply a cooler, sexier way of saying you're getting a desktop replacement. They were huge, monstrous great things with often chunky, off-the-shelf chassis shells that would break your back almost as soon as you clapped eyes on one. That's just the way things were. Then, in the hallowed year of…

Tagged with Asus, feature, Hardware, laptop, laptops.

I've reviewed a couple of Turtle Beach headsets here in the past, such as the jumbo Elite Pro and altogether tiddlier Recon 150, but you know as well as I that Turtle Beach as a company have always favoured console-orientated headsets rather than good old PC ones - case in point: the Stealth 300 which only comes with a combined headphone and microphone jack connection…

Tagged with Hardware, Headsets, Turtle Beach.

The MSI Trident 3 8th is probably the most console-like mini PC I've ever laid eyes on. Measuring 346x323x72mm, it's roughly the same size as an original Xbox One, and can be laid down on its side if you don't fancy standing it vertically with its accompanying base. That's pretty handy if you're after a PC that can sit neatly inside a TV stand, although…

Tagged with feature, Gaming PC, graphics cards, Hardware, MSI.

Well, would you look at that? Nvidia have just lifted the lid on their brand-new Turing graphics cards - and ghee whiz do they look powerful. Don't get too excited just yet, though, as the only cards Nvidia announced last night at computer graphics and animation conference Siggraph are (yep, you guessed it) all professional Quadro RTX models: the Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000…

Tagged with graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Nvidia Turing, siggraph.

There's just one week to go until Nvidia's big Gamescom surprise, but will it be the arrival of their new Nvidia Turing graphics cards or something else entirely - something, perhaps, like a bolt from the blue shock announcement about their upcoming Big Format Gaming Displays? We won't know for sure until next Monday, but just in case Nvidia do pull a fast one on…

Tagged with 120Hz, 4K, feature, G-Sync, GeForce Now, Hardware, HDR, Monitors, Nvidia, Nvidia Big Format Gaming Displays, Nvidia G-Sync HDR.

Learning how to build a PC from scratch is all well and good, but having someone make one for you - or at least make most of one for you - can sometimes be a heck of a lot easier, especially if you're after something altogether more petite to maybe sit beneath your telly or perch neatly on top of your desk without having a…

Tagged with feature, Gaming PC, graphics cards, Hardware, Zotac.

Dragon coat-making sim Monster Hunter: World is finally here, and man alive is it a beastly PC port. Things were looking a bit dicey when I first got my hands on the game a couple of weeks ago, with GPU performance hitches aplenty even on some of today's best graphics cards, as well as strained CPU problems and frequent crashes. Thankfully, all those kinks have…

Tagged with AMD, Capcom, feature, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Monster Hunter: World.

Good news, potential graphics card buyers. Now that the world's supply of affordable GPUs have been ripped back from the cold, dead hands of the global crypto-mining community, AMD have announced they're going to start bundling in some free games with new graphics card purchases again - specifically, upcoming Greek stab'em up Assassin's Creed Odyssey, mythological co-op shooter Strange Brigade, and space action RPG Star…

Tagged with AMD, AMD Radeon RX 500 Series, AMD RX Vega, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Star Control: Origins, Strange Brigade.

In the great 'CPU core-off' at Computex 2018, AMD definitely came home the winner. Their monstrous 32-core 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper not only had more core doodads than Intel's mysterious 28-core effort, but it was also destined for actual, real-life PCs owned by regular humans, not corporate enterprise servers that are presumably controlled by heartless robots. It also has, I have to say, the best…

Tagged with AMD, AMD Ryzen, AMD Ryzen Threadripper, cpu.

The AOC G2590PX is the latest version of the excellent AOC G2460PF. Now with a marginally bigger screen and a sleeker, more modern design, I was absolutely convinced this 1920x1080, 144Hz, AMD FreeSync display would be an absolute shoo-in to replace the G2460PF as one of my best gaming monitor recommendations for 2018. Sadly, it would appear my confidence was misplaced.

Tagged with 144Hz, AMD FreeSync, AOC, feature, Hardware, Monitors.

Finding the best gaming monitor for your PC is hard. Usually you can glean a few details from a monitor's specs sheet, but trying to decide what that screen actually looks like and whether its colour accuracy is any good is nigh-on impossible to do from the comfort of your own home. Even if you go and look at some in the flesh at an…

Tagged with 144Hz, 4K, AMD FreeSync, AMD FreeSync 2, feature, FreeSync, G-Sync, Hardware, HDR, High-refresh, Monitors, Nvidia G-Sync HDR, resolutions.

It's been quite a while since we've had a wireless mouse in for review at Castle Shotgun, and for that I apologise. To rectify the situation, I've got Razer's Mamba + Firefly Hyperflux combo in today, which is absolutely 100% the name of a mouse and mouse mat and definitely not a binned subtitle for Kingdom Hearts 3. The main attraction here is Razer's aforementioned…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, mice, mouse, Razer.

Deciding on a list of best gaming headsets is always a tricky proposition. What's comfortable for one person might be pure agony for someone else, and not everyone has the same taste in musical preference. Some like an overwhelming amount of bass in their game music, while others prefer a more balanced approach. As such, lists like this are always going to be highly personal.…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Headsets.

Good news, hunters! The crashing problem that was plaguing Monster Hunter: World's early review build looks as though it's now been completely fixed. There was a small 132MB update waiting for me on Steam this morning, and over the course of the next four hours it didn't crash on me even once. Hooray! We already know MHW puts quite a strain on both your graphics…

Tagged with feature, frames frames frames, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Monster Hunter: World.

The great graphics card drought is finally over. At long last, prices have returned to normal (all right, semi-normal) levels, and shops - shock horror - have finally wrestled their stock back from those pesky cryptocurrency miners, making now a great time to pick up one of today's best graphics cards and give your PC a long overdue update. To that end, we've rounded up…

Tagged with AMD, feature, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia.

Nvidia have confirmed that something is definitely going down at this year's Gamescom. We don't know what yet - it could finally be the proper reveal of the company's next-gen Nvidia Turing graphics cards, for instance, or maybe a deep dive into their upcoming Nvidia BFGD (Big Format Gaming Displays), or something else entirely. We just don't know. What we do know, though, is that…

Tagged with Gamescom 2018, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Nvidia, Nvidia Turing.

The new Turtle Beach Stealth 300 is a bit of a weird one. It's a wired headset that comes with a 3.5mm audio connection, but due to its built-in bass amplifier, it also needs to be charged via USB every 40 hours or so - something that, normally, you only need to do if it's wireless. Straight off the bat, then, the Stealth 300 is…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Headsets, Turtle Beach.