The Technology Partener
Alienware is introducing a pair of new, more affordable gaming laptops: the Aurora 16 and 16X, starting at $1,149 and $1,949, respectively. Unlike the flagship Area-51 laptops announced back at CES, the Auroras are meant to be a little more versatile, portable, and comfortable for general laptop use. They replace the older Alienware M, X,…
Tech giants like to boast about trillion-parameter AI models that require massive and expensive GPU clusters. But Fastino is taking a different approach. The Palo Alto-based startup says it has invented a new kind of AI model architecture that’s intentionally small and task-specific. The models are so small they’re trained with low-end gaming GPUs worth…
Over the weekend, Meta dropped two new Llama 4 models: a smaller model named Scout, and Maverick, a mid-size model that the company claims can beat GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash “across a broad range of widely reported benchmarks.” Maverick quickly secured the number-two spot on LMArena, the AI benchmark site where humans compare outputs…
Infinity Nikki and Assassin’s Creed Shadows have become my twin obsessions for their meticulously detailed environments, textures, and weather. With open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki, I continue to be agog at how clothing textures are rendered with such detail and fidelity that by mere sight, I know exactly what a piece of fabric will feel…
If you thought the Steam Deck was big, let alone Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11, get a load of this Frankenstein’s monster of a PC gaming handheld I’ve cobbled together. This is a pre-production version of Asus’s upcoming ROG Flow Z13 tablet combined with a GameSir G8 Plus clamp-on mobile controller; the Z13’s AMD Strix Halo…
At CES 2025, Intel let journalists into its private “Innovation Showcase,” where we saw things like prototype next-gen laptops and giant stereo 3D handheld gaming PCs. While I was there, I also spotted a heavy metal handheld on a table that didn’t seem fully… attached to its screen. When I lifted the screen, it came…
At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, AMD unveiled a slew of new chips destined for devices ranging from desktops to gaming handhelds. AMD is riding high coming into this year’s CES. The company commanded a 28.7% share of the desktop CPU segment in Q3 2024, up 9.6 percentage points compared to the same quarter the…
Just a few days after LG announced its CES 2025 lineup of monitors, Samsung is doing the same. The company just introduced several new models, and perhaps the most impressive among them is the Odyssey OLED G81SF. It’s a 27-inch 4K monitor with a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz, 0.03ms response time, a glare-free display,…
LG isn’t waiting until CES begins to reveal its new collection of gaming monitors. The 2025 lineup is led by the UltraGear OLED Bendable Gaming Monitor, which LG claims is the “world’s first 5K2K-resolution bendable OLED display.” That strikes me as extremely specific, but hey, it’s always worth bragging when you’re first, I suppose. The…
Before we all settle in for The Game Awards next week, this year’s PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted had its own assortment of interesting reveals and excellent trailers. It was an indie-focused showcase, which means that there was quite a bit of inventiveness on display; everything from a unique take on TMNT to a platformer…
