
Nick Evanson
Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in the early 1980s. After leaving university, he became a physics and IT teacher and started writing about tech in the late 1990s. That resulted in him working with MadOnion to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its PC gaming section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com covering everything and anything to do with tech and PCs. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open-world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?
Latest articles by Nick Evanson

Memory prices could leap even higher as the supply of helium, crucial to making chips, is now impacted by the conflict in the Middle East
By Nick Evanson published
News There's no quick fix to getting hold of ultra-pure helium, either.

Microsoft announces that Office has two critical security vulnerabilities, and here's where you can find patches to fix them
By Nick Evanson published
News Both also require local access to exploit, so while they're bad, they're not super bad.

Nvidia will announce an x86 CPU in collaboration with Intel at its GTC event, according to one report, though Intel itself shoots down the whole idea
By Nick Evanson published
News It would be an extraordinarily quick turnaround, given that their joint venture only started last year.

Crimson Desert's updated system requirements look very promising for any PC gamer, and for what must be a first-ever move, the devs have namechecked the ROG Xbox Ally handheld
By Nick Evanson published
News You're looking at 60 fps at 4K, maxed out, on hardware that isn't unobtanium level for once.

As if PC hardware news couldn't get any gloomier, one research report suggests mainstream laptop prices could rise by as much as 40%
By Nick Evanson published
News And it's because CPUs are getting more expensive, too.

Resident Evil Requiem is one of the few games to use GPU data decompression but it's a bit hit and miss as to whether your GPU will ever actually use it
By Nick Evanson published
News It's a puzzle worthy of being in a Resident Evil game.

DRAM maker SK hynix has validated its next-gen LPDDR6 which would be great news for handheld PCs, except that the targeted market is AI devices
By Nick Evanson published
News Lots more performance and way better power efficiency, but destined to be rarer than pixie dust.

Intel has released the SDK for XeSS 3 so hopefully it won't be long before Arc GPU owners get in on native multi frame gen action
By Nick Evanson published
News Until then, you'll just have to use the override option.

Samsung's new 1440p gaming monitor sports a ridiculous 600 Hz refresh rate but that's nothing compared to the 1040 Hz it can do in 1080p mode
By Nick Evanson published
News And if you prefer pixels over performance, how about a 6K gaming monitor?

Modder helps Sony unwittingly beat Valve to the punch: 'I ported Linux to the PS5 and turned it into a Steam Machine'
By Nick Evanson published
News Sounds easy to do, not actually easy to do at all.

A simple check with a magnet was the final clue that made Thermal Grizzly realise it had been hit by a 40,000 euro metal scam
By Nick Evanson published
News Copper's great for coolers but not so great when you need to buy several tons of the stuff.

This 3D printed, laptop-carrying 'suitcase' is not just a thing of beauty but it's also a neat solution to the dearth of eGPUs
By Nick Evanson published
News Just don't go waving it around like a real suitcase.

PS5 Pro owners will soon get an improved PSSR AI upscaler, while PC gamers with RDNA 2 and 3 GPUs are still praying for AMD to add official support for FSR 4
By Nick Evanson last updated
News All these GPUs share very similar parts and features, so if one can do AI upscaling, why can't they all?

Microsoft's update for Direct3D, with opacity micromaps and shader execution reordering now official features, will probably mean little to gamers but graphics devs are going to be happy
By Nick Evanson published
News And happy devs mean better games, right? Right??

The massive difference between how well Resident Evil Requiem runs on the Steam Deck and an Asus ROG Ally just adds more fuel to the rumour that AMD has abandoned driver support for its Ryzen Z1 chips
By Nick Evanson last updated
News And if that really is the case, how long before it does the same with Z2 processors?

Resident Evil Requiem's path tracing is tough on GPUs but it probably won't take as long as ray tracing did to become a mainstream option in games
By Nick Evanson published
The price of perfection Ray tracing? Pffft, easy peasy now.

Resident Evil Requiem PC performance analysis: Great visuals and decent frame rates all round, though path tracing's an obvious frame rate killer
By Nick Evanson last updated
Ray-traced evil Upscaling is a bit of a must-use, but that's a given these days.

You might be as surprised as I was to learn that Assassin's Creed Mirage is one of the few games to use AI neural texture compression—the only one, I think
By Nick Evanson published
News Now this is an AI use case I can get fully behind.

If I had just set a new world record for GPU overclocking, I'd surely be making a lot more fuss about it than AMD has
By Nick Evanson published
News Hitting 4,769 MHz on any GPU is no small feat.

Some users are claiming Discord's default process priorities are causing performance problems in esports games, so I've tested it myself to see what's going on
By Nick Evanson published
News And I have to say, I can't see any serious issues at all.

One leaker's cryptic post suggests that AMD's next Ryzen lineup will have some serious core configurations across the range
By Nick Evanson published
News From a six-core entry-level chip, all the way up to a dual-CCD, 24-core range topper.

Valve wins lawsuit against Rothschild and associated entities, with a jury agreeing they violated an anti-patent troll protection act
By Nick Evanson published
News The court also agreed that they had breached a global license agreement with Valve.

Yes, Chinese DRAM is fine for gaming but don't think for one moment that any of it is a bargain
By Nick Evanson published
News But if you can find something that's reasonably priced, by all means grab it while you can.
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