Gaming

Adrenaline junkie. Just Cause returns to the PC after five years. The third part follows the tradition of the series and offers an extremely crazy and casual gameplay. However, it looks like the developers forgot the technical optimization with all this fun. Here are our first impressions of the retail version.

Rough diamond. Ubisoft does not follow the casual trend of its own franchise over the last couple of years with Rainbow Six Siege. Instead of stupid non-stop action, the title turns out to be a clever tactical sandbox. We have a closer look at the technology.

A familiar refresh. The jump from the Y50 to the 15.6-inch Y700 brings about a few important upgrades, but there are still some major holes in terms of features and accessibility that have yet to be implemented.

Beast of prey. Following the extremely successful V 15 Nitro, Acer presents its next gaming platform. Instead of an upper mid-range GPU, a genuine premium model is in the Predator 15. Can the GTX 980M stand up against the 15-inch competition?

The sky's the limit. Eurocom notebooks just keep getting better and better as Clevo shells continue to evolve. It's pricey, of course, but has key advantages over its closest competitors in the form of 100 percent AdobeRGB coverage and upgradeable LGA 1151 socket.

At the limits. Schenker Technologies obviously has an eye on the performance crown with its XMG U716. The key feature of the 17-inch gaming machine is Nvidia's brand new GeForce GTX 980. How well will the 185-watt model fare against the previously tested 200-watt version?

Full speed ahead. We have built a completely new desktop PC to be up to date for our gaming articles. It competes with high-end notebooks and we are going to use it for comparisons. Who wins the duel?

Maintenance miracle. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare nowadays: The maintenance hatch, which is very easy to remove, allows access to all major components of the new multimedia notebook from Dell. Another highlight is the high-resolution 4K touchscreen and thanks to its GTX 960M GPU, it should also attract gamers. Unfortunately, some issues affect the initial good impression.

Improved. After the very buggy Assassin’s Creed Unity, the gaming world is now looking very closely at the successor. Does Syndicate inherit the same performance issues or did Ubisoft put more effort into it this time? We tested it with dozens of laptops.

Eye candy. Casualization or not: “Star Wars Battlefront” is a real highlight in terms of graphics, which makes most competitors look rather outdated. Find out if you can also enjoy the game on notebooks.

My name is Z5. Sony Xperia Z5. The new top model from the Xperia series is the official Bond smartphone and is supposed to have the best smartphone camera in the world. Our review will check whether owners of the predecessor should upgrade as well and if there are once again temperature issues.

Silent beast. The latest revision in the signature G series takes a small step forward, though not the leap we were all hoping. We detail how the G752 is an improvement over the G751 and how competing models are starting to fly past the popular Asus G series.

Old-school technology, but fascinating. About four years after Skyrim, Bethesda Softworks releases their next role-play highlight called Fallout 4. Visually, the title might not impress much, but it offers a huge gaming world full of possibilities. Our benchmark article takes a look at how the game performs on various notebooks.

New revision. We already checked the Alienware 15 twice. In this review update, the gaming notebook gets a fresh Skylake processor and the fast Nvidia GTX 980M. Can Alienware keep the components of the 15-inch device cool?

Ready for games with Skylake. Fallout 4, Black Ops 3, Battlefront – autumn brings a lot of challenge for gamers. MSI has refreshed its line-up for the gaming festival and improved the GE72 a lot: Apart of an up-to-date Intel quad-core CPU, the 17-inch fireball got an IPS panel and a USB 3.1 port. However, the price went up quite a bit, too. Is this justified?

Incomplete. While the console version received international acclaim, the PC version is causing all sorts of trouble. Performance drops here, crashes and graphics errors there: The fact is Black Ops 3 doesn't currently appear to be very well developed. Does the game degenerate into incessant stuttering on notebooks too?

Moon landing. There is currently much heated debate as to whether Anno 2205 can live up to its predecessor in the realm of game mechanics. Here at Notebookcheck, we're primarily concerned with the city-builder game's graphics. Do the visuals do justice to the future world scenario? We tested a number of notebook GPUs at various settings.

Up to date. Intel's quad-core Skylake processor only has a slight lead over its Haswell predecessor. However, its small boost in performance is accompanied by lower energy consumption. After the release of the GS70 Haswell model, MSI also fiddled with its successor's connectivity options: Two USB 3.1 ports and an NVMe M.2 slot are now on board.

Eye of the dragon. How far can you overclock the GT72S with its Core i7-6820HK and GTX 980 GPU? We revisit the GT72S special edition to find out how much a performance gain users can expect.

Extreme athlete. Desktop performance in a laptop? The brand new GeForce GTX 980 makes this possible. Schenker Technologies belongs to the first manufacturers launching a suitable gaming notebook. We checked whether the steep price is justified.

Skylake on the march. Nexoc joins together the tried-and-true Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M and brand new Skylake Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU. The combo promises both high performance and reduced energy consumption. Nexoc's new device meets these expectations -- but what is a mediocre display doing in a computer in this price range?

Desktop-name, desktop-power. Although we do not appreciate the name of the mobile GTX 980 because it can be easily confused, Nvidia's new gaming flagship performs impressively. Our test covers the performance in Full HD and 4K resolution.

Ghost in a shell. The portable 15.6-inch GS60 gets Skylake, DDR4, NVMe SSD, and USB 3.1 Super Port for its latest refresh. Essentially, pretty much everything but the GTX 970M has been updated. Has gaming performance improved in any way?

Better thanks to Skylake. Although the new Skylake processor in Schenker's XMG A706 only results in a marginal performance increase compared with the XMG A705, the laptop comes with lower power consumption and longer battery runtimes owing to it improved energy efficiency.

Hardware update. 2015 is the year of Intel’s brand-new Skylake generation, which not only offers a better performance but also improved power efficiency. The XMG P506 from Schenker Technologies is a surprisingly thin gaming notebook that utilizes all advantages of the modern technology.

Gentle evolution. Schenker sends its new XMG P706 into the race with efficient Skylake processors, modern DDR 4 memory and other minor modifications. Otherwise, compared with its precursor, the slim 17-inch device has hardly changed - and that is a good thing.

Do you have enough force? The new Battlefront game uses your computer screen to encompass you in epic battles between the Empire and the Rebels -- that is, provided your computer is up to the task. What kind of hardware will enable your machine to render the game fluidly? Read our article to find out.

King of Features. MSI refreshes its gaming laptops with new hardware and exciting features within the framework of the release of Intel's Skylake generation. Read here how the GT72S top model fares against its high-end rivals.