What should you look for when choosing a motherboard? The best CPUs might get all the attention, but motherboard choice can be just as crucial. We’ll show you how to buy based on the features that you need—without breaking the bank. Choose your CPU and chipset Your first decision also involves the CPU. Your choice here is either AMD or Intel. Motherboards only work with the specific families of processors they're designed for. Our guide to the best CPUs can help you pick the ideal processor for any budget; your needs there should drive most of your decision making. To read this article in full ..read more

Let’s get ready to rumble! Today we’re pitting the first two “sweet spot” 1080p graphics cards from this generation in an epic head-to-head showdown: Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 versus the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT. Mainstream options like these have historically been priced competitively to garner the attention of as many gamers as possible. With recent MSRP and street pricing raging out of control, are they still attractive choices? Which is the best graphics card for you: The RTX 3060 or the Radeon RX 6600 XT? Let’s look at their pricing, performance, and more to answer those questions. To read t ..read more

The latest version of Radeon Software adds an unusual (and welcome) new twist: The ability to automatically overclock your Ryzen processor if you’re rocking an all-AMD gaming desktop. Yes, your GPU software can speed up your CPU now, too—and it can do it all with a single click. The addition might not come as a surprise if you’ve been paying close attention to AMD’s behavior over the past year. Now that Ryzen bests Intel processors and Radeon graphics cards go blow-for-blow with Nvidia’s top GPUs, gamers can get no-compromises performance from an all-AMD rig for the first time in many yea ..read more

Intel says its upcoming 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs will be the company’s “most significant” change in more than a decade. Alder Lake will likely be Intel’s first attempt to wrest the ”best CPU” performance crown back from a surging AMD, too. Yes, we know, we’re months away from a real show down, but in the spirit of sports analysts and Las Vegas bookies calling odds on the Super Bowl winner before the first game has even been played, here’s where we think Intel’s 12th gen Alder Lake may stack up against AMD’s mighty Ryzen 5000—including AMD’s unexpectedly radical V-cache upgrade. Watch our predi ..read more

Just five years ago, debating the merits of a 6-core CPU versus an 8-core model wasn’t possible. We were all stuck with 4-core chips at a consumer level—to break past that barrier, you had to pay serious bucks for a high-end desktop (“big socket”) CPU. Not that you needed to go that extreme for gaming. Nowadays, game developers have begun adapting to the new normal of high core-count processors. And if you’re going to have a PC for years, you want one that’s going to comfortably see you through the duration. But choosing between a mid-tier 6-core CPU and a higher-tier 8-core CPU isn’t a simple ..read more

In a country famous for putting just about anything in vending machines, Japan may have topped it all with a vending machine that dispenses CPUs. The twist? You don’t know what CPU you’re going to get. The vending machine snap was taken by Twitter user Nullpo_x3100 and noticed by Wccftech’s Hassan Mujtaba.  Although we wouldn’t put it past someone in Japan to actually sell CPUs like this one day, the machine here is actually more akin to a loot box you’d find in a videogame. After dropping in 1,000 Yen (or about $9), according to Mujtaba, the machine drops a Ryzen box with random processo ..read more

AMD’s Smart Access Memory allows you to combine a Radeon RX 6000 series GPU with a Ryzen processor to unlock even more gaming performance—dramatically so, in some cases. Before we show you how to enable Smart Access memory, we’ll discuss the hardware requirements. Next, we’ll walk you through how to configure your BIOS to activate SAM. And lastly, we’ll show you how to confirm it’s working. Let’s get smart! (And be sure to check out our explainer on how Smart Access Memory and the Nvidia-equivalent Resizable BAR work). Smart Access Memory hardware requirements AMD 500 series motherboard (X570 ..read more

Sometimes simple is better. The Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics cards we’ve reviewed so far—the $550 Asus ROG Strix, and the $419 XFX Speedster Merc 308—represent the pinnacle of those manufacturers’ lineups, bristling with heavy-duty coolers and fancy extras like dual-BIOS switches and glittering lights. And yes, both designs impressed. But the $399 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600 XT takes the opposite tack, cutting out the fat to focus solely on delivering good performance and good cooling at a good price. (In theory, at least, since the crippling GPU shortage means graphics card prices skyrocket t ..read more

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