HBO has finally released its first trailer for its adaptation of "The Last of Us," and there's lots to unpack for fans of the 2013 game. "The Last of Us" is one of the most influential video games of the 21st century, a swan song farewell to the PlayStation 3, and a reminder to the industry of what games are capable of as a medium for storytelling. Naturally, there's a lot of pressure on the HBO show to deliver that same experience to a broader audience. Thankfully, Neil Druckmann, the creative director and writer of both "The Last of Us" games, is creatively involved with the HBO adaptation and has reassured many fans that one of the goals is to preserve the integrity of the game's story. With Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey playing Joel and Ellie, there is a great promise to this series that could set it apart from previous video game adaptations.

However, translating a 15-20 hour video game into a 10-episode season sounds like no easy task. Considering a majority of those hours are directly interactable gameplay moments that cannot easily be translated into compelling television, the show has the perfect opportunity to expand the scope of the narrative while still staying true to the spirit of the game.

Without further ado, here are 12 things that we'd like to see in HBO's adaptation of "The Last of Us."

More Types Of Infected

In the original game, there were four known stages of the Cordyceps infection that made up the enemy types the player interacts with. The game defines Runners, Stalkers, Clickers, and Bloaters, respectively in order of strength and the amount of time a victim has been exposed to the mind-controlling fungus. As an infected ages, fungi sprout all over their body and eventually bloom through their own skulls -- an exciting opportunity for the make-up team of this adaptation to create some nasty prosthetics.

While there's lots of room for creativity with just the pre-established infected groups, "The Last of Us Part II" introduced us to Shamblers, a new infected group that has specifically mutated due the humid and damp climate of Seattle, the sequel's main setting.

Considering the first game's story is a full journey across the United States, it would be exciting to see the different locales of Joel and Ellie's story revisited with more infected. If that's too much to ask for, perhaps even region-specific variants of the same groups — mutated to thrive in different habitats. It would make the already well conceived dystopian world of "The Last of Us" feel more tangible and real in a live-action setting.

Ish's Story And Other Memorable Notes

"The Last of Us" reveled in one of modern gamings environmental storytelling cliches: collectible lore notes. Conceptually, it's quite silly to picture zombie apocalypse survivors journaling and then scattering their thoughts all over the place while fighting for their lives, but with the proper suspension of disbelief, "The Last of Us" excelled at keeping these extra bits of worldbuilding as unobtrusive and engaging as possible.

As a show that is promising itself to be one of the first faithful and good live action video game adaptations, it would be an interesting choice to translate some aspects of gameplay into the show. The section of the game that takes place within the Pittsburgh sewers is one setting where this could work.

Ish is a character that is never shown on screen, but his journal entries throughout the sewer level make up one of the more compelling background narratives in the game; a tragic story of a man trying to build a safe community for the disheveled families of the broken suburbs. No, the show shouldn't halt in favor of highlighting this mostly disconnected narrative, but it would be true to the spirit of the game to make use of background elements like the set design to subtly allude to what happened to Ish's community and its children. "The Last of Us" game made every level feel lived in and authentic. I hope to see that same thoughtful approach to the production design of the show.

Savage Starlight, And Other In-Universe Pop Culture

Speaking of collectibles, throughout "The Last of Us" there's a series of science-fiction comic books the player can collect for Ellie called "Savage Starlight." Each issue has strikingly beautiful art as well as blurbs that sometimes thematically resonate with Joel and Ellie's journey. In fact, one the game's most memorable catchphrases, "endure and survive," originates from this in-universe comic, first quoted by Ellie after an action sequence. "It's what the hero says after a big battle!"

"Savage Starlight" and other in-universe media like Twilight parody "Dawn of the Wolf" or the "Mortal Kombat" tribute "The Turning" give the player a great amount of insight into what pop culture was like before the Cordyceps pandemic, and it also humanizes Ellie in a relatable, nerdy way. Though she's a hardened survivor who has spent her entire life on the run, she is also a kid with dorky interests. The moments she engages Joel in her pun books or muses about how she always wanted to play video games are also crucial in breaking up with moments of dread and despair..

It would be a shame if these things didn't translate into the HBO show in some fashion. While there are no collectibles or optional dialogue trees in this new medium, the show can still slow down the pace and focus on these unique worldbuilding details that help make this story stand out.

Ellie's Life Before Joel In The Boston QZ

The opening act of "The Last of Us" follows Joel and his partner Tess (played by Anna Torv in the adaptation) and their life as bounty hunters, navigating their way through the Boston Quarantine Zone. The player only gets a taste of what an active QZ is like as the game quickly has our lead characters escape through the border, but through optional lore and collectibles we come to understand that these Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) run zones are the remnants of the United States military. In order to delve into the story's politics, the player must do their homework.

One way to make daily life in the apocalypse more of a presence could be to incorporate the prequel comic, "The Last of Us: American Dreams" into the show. "American Dreams" follows a day in Ellie's life before she meets Joel — the day she was transferred into the Boston QZ, about a year before the events of the game. The comic shows Ellie's admittance into a military boarding school, the beginnings of her relationship with Riley (played by Storm Reid in the adaptation), and a slice of life look into childhood in the apocalypse.

"The Last of Us" game mostly never strays away from Joel's perspective, but knowing that Ellie and Riley's story will be covered in this series, it could be beneficial to set up these characters and the perspective shift to Ellie in the Winter chapters early. If anything because it will further cement that for these girls, the post-apocalyptic world is all they've ever known.

FEDRA, Fireflies, And Other Factions

In the universe of "The Last of Us," many parts of society have broken off into their own factions as a means for survival. We know that FEDRA is built out of the remnants of the U.S. military, and that the rebel group the Fireflies was created in an effort to restore government systems in response to the oppression taking place in QZs. Everything deeper about the history of this conflict is mostly told in broad strokes.

However, we know there are other rebel factions out there. In optional conversations, Joel will recount memories of civil unrest in QZs around the states, some less organized and much more violent than the Fireflies. "The Last of Us Part II" introduced the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), a resistance group that successfully took control of the Pacific Northwest, partly composed of ex-Fireflies.

Again, Joel and Ellie's adventure from the Boston QZ to Salt Lake City covers a lot more ground, and this show is their opportunity to fill in any gaps they've created in expanding the world since the sequel game. It looks like Mazin and Druckmann are heading in this direction, since the trailer for HBO's "The Last of Us" highlighted Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen, an original character for the show, described as "the ruthless leader of a revolutionary movement in Kansas City." Judging by the fact that she is not explicitly labeled as part of the Fireflies, it will be interesting to see whether another faction will play in this story, and if it will help color in the scale of post-apocalyptic America.

Troy Baker And Ashley Johnson In Substantial Roles

In June 2022, it was announced that the original Joel and Ellie, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, are among the HBO show's already stacked cast. This point is admittedly more of a want than a need, but the motion-capture and VA work that these two actors gave as Joel and Ellie were incredibly impactful, career-defining performances.

Sure, the 3D models rendered by Naughty Dog were meticulously detailed and lifelike, but Baker and Johnson made them truly come to life in a way that set the standard for storytelling in video games in 2013. While we're confident Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey can deliver, the task in front of them is far from easy. How do you capture the spirit of these recent, beloved performances and still set yourself apart?

As the world of "The Last of Us" expands in this adaptation, there is surely no dearth of roles Baker and Johnson can embody, but one hopes their place in the series will be memorable enough to tribute their time as Joel and Ellie, and will hopefully act as a thoughtful passing of the torch to Pascal and Ramsey.

Joel & Tommy's Bloody History

In the intro of "The Last of Us," we're introduced to Joel's little brother, Tommy Miller (played by Gabriel Luna in the adaptation). When we see him again after the big time skip of the game, it's obvious they have a fraught relationship. Joel intends to hand Ellie off to Tommy and let him finish the job of delivering her to the Fireflies, a payback for the years Joel spent protecting Tommy in the early apocalypse. Tommy however, does not see his brother as a savior, and his time "surviving" with him has left him traumatized.

The exact details of Joel's violent past are mostly kept vague, but when fighting packs of hostile hunters throughout the game, Joel admits he's "been on both sides." Sure, there is mystique to the ambiguity of Joel's past, but one of the core ideas of "The Last of Us" is an unwavering amount of empathy for any person, bad, good or anywhere in between. We want to see Joel at his lowest; how much violence is Joel capable of in pursuit of protecting his clan, and by extension, what changes when he meets Ellie?

Tommy eventually found penance in becoming a Firefly for a while, then moving to Jackson to start a humble little community. As a direct character foil to Joel's negative character development, it would be great to see Tommy's "redemption" play out on screen and add more dimension to the Fall chapter of the story.

A Deeper Look Into Bill And Frank's Relationship

A common theme on this list is the desire to flesh out parts of the game's narrative and world that was previously shown between the lines. In an early section of "The Last of Us," the player meets Bill, a cranky and lone wolf smuggler who lives in his own abandoned town in the outskirts of Boston. He's an interesting character foil to Joel: a man who has once had "a partner" to survive with, but has closed his heart off to fend off for himself. He warns Joel about the dangers of becoming too attached, holding a mirror to Joel's own insecurities traveling with Ellie.

When the player digs into notes and optional conversations, they can find out that Bill's "partner" Frank was actually his lover who passed away, and they had a harsh falling out right before Joel and Ellie reached him. It completely reframes Bill and adds a layer of queer loneliness to his story, something that could truly shine if its given the right amount of attention in the adaptation.

Luckily, alongside Nick Offerman's casting as Bill, we know Murray Bartlett will be in the HBO show playing Frank as well. Considering Frank is never shown alive in the original game, it's safe to say Mazin and Druckmann have more to say about these characters. While "The Last of Us" games don't shy away from portraying LGBTQ+ characters, this is an opportunity to revisit a memorable gay character with more confidence and depth.

Justice For Henry And Sam

One of the earliest gut punches in "The Last of Us" comes in the form of Henry and Sam, two brothers making their way through Pittsburgh who end up temporarily traveling with Joel and Ellie. Through their companionship, Joel and Ellie develop a unique trust in the brothers, and Ellie gets to finally interact with someone around her own age with Sam.

Joel and Henry share little tidbits about what the world was like before the apocalypse with the kids, while Ellie and Sam wax on about faith, god, and life after death. Typical kid stuff. The pair are deeply loveable characters, but their role in the narrative means their time is cut all too short. As two of the only significant Black characters in the story, it always felt like there was more to be seen and done with them.

In the HBO show, it was announced with the casting of Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard that their origins will be altered for the show. Instead of Pittsburgh, Joel and Ellie will encounter the brothers in Kansas City. Whatever the reason for this change is, we're hoping it will allow Henry and Sam to serve a stronger narrative and thematic bite and a longer presence compared to what they have in the game.

The Note From Ellie's Mother

In the one portion of the game where the player is able to play as Ellie, there is a great amount of detail in her backpack and its contents. Riley's firefly pendant, her switchblade, the comics, and Walkman she passes the time with — but one of the more special collectibles is the letter Ellie's mother, Anna, wrote to her child before she died.

The dire situation Ellie finds herself in the Winter chapter is one of the most harrowing parts of the game, but should the player sit down and read this note, they will find one of the main sentiments of "The Last of Us" summarized in a few lines: "I'm not going to lie, this is a pretty messed up world. It won't be easy. The thing you always have to remember is that life is worth living! Find your purpose and fight for it."

While that line and the closing "Make me proud, Ellie!" remark is enough to make a player cry, the note also reveals that Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, and the person who gave Joel his mission to deliver Ellie to Salt Lake City, made a promise to look after Ellie in Anna's absence. "There's no one in this world I trust more than her. When the time comes she'll tell you all about me. Don't give her too much of a hard time. Try not to be as stubborn as me."

This note simply must make it into the final game in some capacity, as it gives so much more emotional stakes to Joel's entire mission, as well as informs Ellie's scrappy fighter persona. She is her mother's daughter.

A Deeper, Fleshed Out Marlene

Ultimately, that connection to Ellie's mother would also strengthen Marlene and her presence within the story. The original actress, Merle Daindridge, will be reprising her role in the live-action adaptation. While Marlene is only seen in the first and last acts of the game, the part she plays as the leader of the Fireflies is crucial.

We'll spare the details for those who have potentially not experienced the game's ending before, but as important moral questions are raised by its climax, we want the show to address some nuances that remain in the game's optional lore. Yes, Joel's journey cements him as a surrogate father to Ellie, but it's crucial to remember that Marlene is just as much as a crucial figure in Ellie's life — she's essentially Ellie's godmother.

Seeing more of that relationship on screen will help add layers of depth upon what's already a strong canvas. The online arguments over the game's climax and its moral questions are already intense; but in true spirit of the original game and its high, thought provoking ambitions, we hope the show only adds even more complexity as the story finds a wider audience.

More Existential, Quiet Moments

There is no shortage of zombie slaying, crafting, and upgrading in the gameplay of the PS3 classic, and sure, that's all plenty of fun — but what makes "The Last of Us" different and special compared to all other games out there is its focus on quiet, character moments. Fighting off hordes of infected is cool, but the game is better remembered for the majesty of its famous giraffe scene even more. One of the most engaging and additive moments in "Left Behind" is pressing triangle to make Ellie read puns out of a joke book, it invokes a feeling of joy and tranquility for the player to participate in with its characters.

This is ultimately why we believe, out of every game to live action media adaptation out there, that "The Last of Us" has the biggest chance to succeed as an HBO show. As a season of TV, there is time for these moments of quiet, character driven beats. While it remains to be seen how effective they will play with the sense of interactivity gone, at least it will be truer to tone than a botched and reduced 2 hour film.

"The Last of Us" and its longform narrative, its deep commitment to its characters and their existence within this world, and its equally dire and optimistic tone makes the game's story one of the best in the history of video games, and hopefully with the right amount of love and attention to detail, this can remain true in television.

Read this next: The 20 Best Dystopian Movies Of All Time

The post 12 Things We'd Like to See in HBO's The Last of Us appeared first on /Film.

A beautiful blue flaw in a gem-quality diamond from Botswana is actually a tiny fragment of Earth's deep interior -- and it suggests our planet's mantle contains oceans' worth of water. Scientific American: The flaw, technically called an inclusion, looks like a fish eye: a deep blue center surrounded by a white haze. But it's really a pocket of the mineral ringwoodite from 660 kilometers down, at the boundary between the upper and lower mantle. This is just the second time scientists have found this mineral in a chunk of crystal from this zone, and the sample is the only one of its kind currently known to science. The last example was destroyed during an attempt to analyze its chemistry. [...] The discovery indicates that this very deep zone of Earth is soggy, with vast amounts of water locked up tight within the minerals there. Though this water is chemically bound to the minerals' structure and doesn't flow around like an actual ocean, it does likely play an important role in how the mantle melts. This in turn affects big-picture geology, such as plate tectonics and volcanic activity. For example, water could contribute to the development of areas of mantle upwelling known as plumes, which are hotspots for volcanoes. The stunning bit of diamond-encased mantle was discovered by Tingting Gu, a mineral physicist now at Purdue University, who was at the time doing research at the Gemological Institute of America. Her job was to study rare inclusions found in diamonds. Inclusions are undesirable for jewelry because they cloud a diamond's sparkle. But they're often interesting to scientists because they trap bits of the environment where the diamond formed millennia earlier. The vast majority of diamonds form between about 150 to 200 km below Earth's surface. But a handful come from much deeper. It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly how deep, but the new sample was remarkably accommodating on that front, Gu and her colleagues reported on Monday in a study published in Nature Geoscience. Ringwoodite can only form at incredibly high pressures. It is not found in Earth's crust, but it is sometimes seen trapped in meteorites that underwent major cosmic trauma. In Earth's mantle, ringwoodite exists at the pressures present down to 660 km.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed Monday by the Russian leader.

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"Sick" is a well-made, well-executed, and smarty-written pandemic home invasion slasher that plays like "The Strangers" for the COVID-19 era. The film features great and smart characters that make choices you don't really see in the genre, with creative camera work that uses its one location in inventive ways.

Doing movies set during the pandemic is no easy task, particularly horror movies. For the most part, they tend either to be too shallow to properly explore their historical context, or they treat the pandemic as a distant joke rather than an ongoing crisis. Indeed, most pandemic movies end up feeling very gimmicky, but that is not the case with "Sick." Though it is far from the first pandemic horror movie, it manages to use the specific time period of April 2020 and the feeling of isolation and paranoia we all felt to place the audience in the mind of two young women who find themselves in a home invasion thriller, isolated and paranoid. Granted, there is a third act reveal that either makes or breaks the movie with how it handles the pandemic, but even that is a good conversation starter.

Remember April Of 2020?

We start with a rather dark and horrific scene set in April 2020, a time when most of the country and the world was sheltering in place. Director John Hyams manages to hit the right balance between humor and horror, with jokes about early pandemic protocols and our weird beliefs — like scrubbing down groceries with disinfectant, petty arguments about bacteria's ability to travel more than six feet outdoors, the sight of empty toilet paper shelves, or the internet's weird and horny obsession with CNN anchors and CDC authorities (take a shot any time Anderson Cooper mentions Dr. Fauci! remember that?) — but there is also plenty of grim and horrific reminders of the gravity of the situation, from constant mentions of immunocompromised loved ones to the rising toll of infected and dead.

The movie stars Gideon Aldon ("Blockers") and Bethlehem ("Flatbush Misdemeanors") as Parker and Miri, two best friends who decide to shelter in place together in a remote cabin owned by Parker's dad. The two have varying degrees of adherence to COVID precautions, with Miri refusing to enter Parker's car if she isn't wearing a mask, because she is afraid of compromising her dad, while Parker was recently caught posting Instagram photos of herself kissing strangers at end-of-the-world parties.

An Effective Thriller

Of course, things go south once strangers arrive at the cabin wielding serrated knives and with killer intent. Hyams shoots "Sick" with the same manic energy and knack for creative camerawork he gave "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning," while fully using negative space for full nightmare-inducing effect. Most of the scares are telegraphed a mile away, but it is still a delight to see them executed so well, with shots of the killer walking silently in the distance before disappearing, or doors slowly opening causing most of the jump scares. And that is the film's biggest achievement, how well executed it is. 

"Sick" finds ways to make the old feel new, while the script, written by Katelyn Crabb from a story by Williamson, feels like a modern reaction to "Scream." This is a movie Randy Meeks would be proud to watch, one where the characters zig whenever they would normally zag in a lesser horror movie, where they react smartly to their situation and find ways to thrive, like distracting the killer by throwing a rock far away so they don't murder your best friend but you also don't give away your position.

Then there's the COVID of it all, which starts mostly as background that grounds the movie in reality but ends up being an essential part of the plot. "Sick" works well as a standalone thriller before you bring in the real-world connection, but once it becomes apparent that the movie is trying to say something, the tone changes from a movie set during the pandemic to being a full-on pandemic movie. Your mileage may vary on whether this is a good thing, but you can't blame "Sick" for at least trying to start a conversation.

/Film Rating: 7 out of 10

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The post Sick Review: The Strangers for the Covid Era Is Actually Really Good, And Far Too Real [Fantastic Fest] appeared first on /Film.

Wherein we discuss Beavis and Butt-Head, the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Return to Monkey Island, Better Call Saul, Cobra Kai, Sandman, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The Little Mermaid. Starring Ryan Scott, Justin Haywald, and Ryan Higgins.

With Nvidia preparing to roll out a new family of GPUs, IGN treats us to an extended video showcasing what Nvidia's RTX technology can do to an older game. That older game being Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in this scenario.

So, here's Morrowind with ray tracing:

NVIDIA RTX Remix is an easy way for modders to create RTX Remasters of classic games. Watch the tool in action as we capture and remaster The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. We can't wait to see what classic RTX remasters you'll make next!

In Olivia Wilde's sophomore feature "Don't Worry Darling," we become, well, quite worried quite quickly, thanks to an incredible, heart-pumping lead performance by Florence Pugh. The actor is known at this point for her skill in these types of roles — the ones where the leading lady is desperate to escape whatever she fears her fate is — so her turn in the idyllic and uncanny thriller was primed to be excellent, no matter how the rest of the film turned out to be, and it did not disappoint. In fact, Pugh does some of her most effective and terrifying work yet in "Don't Worry Darling," thanks to its harrowing concept.

The film follows Pugh as Alice, a beautiful housewife who spends her days cooking, cleaning, and loving her too-handsome husband, Jack (Harry Styles). Their lives in the utopian 1950s style California desert community as part of a mysterious group called The Victory Project is, in a word, perfect. That is, until Alice starts hearing and seeing things that make her suspicious of what goes on in Victory, and how her husband might be involved in whatever seems to be going wrong. "Don't Worry Darling" is as it purports itself to be, a feminist anthem about gaslighting and autonomy, which is why it almost seems as though Pugh was destined to lead it. The film gave her room to settle into terror in a way only she seems to know how, and it made space for some particularly upsetting scenes.

Sickness And Saran Wrap

Pugh's most disturbing scene in "Don't Worry Darling" comes towards the middle of the film, when her unexplainable visions paired with seemingly unconscious actions of self-sabotage come to a head. Up until this point in the film, Alice has been grappling with things she doesn't fully understand yet; all she knows is that these things are driving her to act strangely and dangerously.

After a fight with her husband during which she tries to get him to understand why she feels there is something wrong going on in Victory, Alice can be seen packing up sandwich materials with saran wrap in her kitchen. Once she packs up the last bit of provisions, she takes the saran wrap and starts to envelop her face in the plastic covering. Once she has enough of it secured, she adjusts it to make sure no air can get through. Obviously, that's not something someone of sound mind would do — and she acknowledges this moments later when she rips the plastic from her face in a frenzied panic. Something is obviously very, very wrong.

What makes this scene so effective, especially among the other impulses that Alice faces in the lead-up to this moment, is its brutality. Suffocation is a cruel and terrifying way to die, and to be in a mental state where you would choose that for yourself is a dire situation. It's Pugh doing what she does best, sinking into the belly of where despair and horror combine before trying desperately to claw her way back to the edge. It's damn good acting and, frankly, it's just a taste of what she does in this film.

Skills On All Sides

Pugh acts her tail off in this scene. It's deeply unsettling to watch her smooth over the saran wrap and make sure she's suffocating, before sinking into the decision she's made — but a major part of what sells her top-notch performance is the creative work behind the camera. 

This scene in particular is a marriage of the elements, one that truly proves that filmmaking is a collaborative effort at heart. Wilde's directing calls for close-ups in this scene, forcing us to be as in the moment with Alice's efforts as we don't want to be. The focus is on the mouth, the way it gapes and struggles for breath as the plastic billows in and out. It's also on the hands, the way they trap Alice and free her in varying moments of ease and fear. Matthew Libatique's cinematography aids in the visual storytelling here with immersive cuts and strong focus. Plus, the film's sound design and score do well to punctuate this scene in a way that feels urgent, eerie, and tense. The sound design and score of "Don't Worry Darling" deserve a lot of praise on the whole — John Powell's work is particularly effective and evocative throughout — but they are on full display in this moment in a way that really sets up the tension.

Ultimately, Florence Pugh's "Don't Worry Darling" performance is full of compelling acting and strong character work. Almost any scene could be considered disturbing in this film, where the insidiousness of truth is hiding around every corner for Alice to find, if only she can remember. One thing is for certain, though: this disturbing scene is one you simply won't forget.

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The post Florence Pugh's Most Disturbing Scene In Don't Worry Darling appeared first on /Film.

Washing machines—is there anything they can’t do? Just kidding: There are plenty of things you shouldn’t wash in your machine. Plus, the machine itself has to be washed, which is tedious. Still, there are some surprising uses for yours, even if it’s not usable for every situation. Here are a few ways you should be…

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During AMD’s ‘together we advance_PCs’ event at the end of August, the company unveiled its Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors, with four SKUs aimed at the mid-range and high-end market segments. After whetting the audience's appetites with that announcement, tomorrow AMD will be officially releasing their long-awaited next-generation CPUs.

The launch of the Ryzen 7000 series brings a lot to digest, for casual fans and hardcore hardware enthusiasts alike. For their newest lineup of chips, AMD has given their desktop CPU platform a top-to-bottom update, not only releasing new CPUs, but releasing an entirely new platform, socket AM5 around it. As a result, for the first time in a few generations these chips are not drop-in compatible with existing AMD motherboards. But at the same time it has allowed AMD to deliver on a collection of platform improvements, ranging from DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support to improved power management capabilities. AMD has even managed to sneak an entry-level Radeon RDNA2 architecture-based iGPU into the chip.

This post contains spoilers for "House of the Dragon" and its source material, "Fire & Blood."

If there's one thing Daemon Targaryan (Matt Smith) can't do, it's hold down a successful longterm marriage. Not only did his first wife die of an unfortunate horseriding accident -- poor Daemon must've been so devastated when he heard the news -- but now his second wife, Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell), has shuffled off this mortal coil. 

Technically, Daemon and Laena's marriage lasted a good 10 years. But the show's time skips led to us only getting a small handful of scenes of the two together, which made it feel as if this period of Daemon's life was just as insignificant to him as his first marriage to Lady Rhea Royce. But despite her limited screen-time, Laena at least goes out on a memorable note. Knowing she's dying from childbirth complications, she chooses to have her dragon Vhagar burn her to death with its dragonfire.

Her death is notable in that, despite "House of the Dragon" being fairly faithful to its source material, Laena's death is changed significantly from her death in the books. There, Laena simply dies from conventional childbirth complications, much like Aemma Targaryan (Sian Brooke) dies in the show's first episode. 

It's not the only death change, either: in the show, Laenor's paramour Joffrey is murdered by Criston Cole at the wedding in last week's episode. As the showrunners explained, in the books, "Joffrey is murdered by Criston Cole out of a jealous, wounded rage at a tournament." It's a method of murder that gives Cole far more plausible deniability than the method he goes about in the show. 

So, why exactly did the showrunners decide to alter these characters' deaths?

Giving Laena Some Agency

A major motivation behind Laena's death scene was the showrunners' understanding that the time jump had hurt the character a little. "We didn't get to spend as much time as I think we would have preferred to with Laena," showrunner Ryan Condal explained, "so we wanted to give her a memorable out that felt active and in her character." 

And who is Laena as a character? She's a dragon rider. We see she's taken great pride in the fact that she's claimed the biggest dragon in the world, who she's clearly grown attached to. She's also someone who is largely independent and more than willing to speak her mind, even in public situations. Laena is also very much aware of what's happened to pregnant women before her, like Aemma, who died through no choice of her own at the hands of a husband who was focused on getting another heir. 

In George R.R. Martin's book "Fire & Blood," the narrator states that Laena attempted to reach her dragon to fly it one last time. The show seems to take the stance that the narrator was wrong about Laena's exact intentions. (The book is told from the perspective of historians who are simply going off recorded accounts at the time.) Maybe she wasn't trying to go for one last ride; maybe she was trying to do what the show version of Laena did, but didn't make it in time. Ultimately, the results are still the same: Laena still dies at a tragically young age. But at least the show lets her go out with the dignity Aemma was never afforded. 

Joffrey's Unfortunate Demise

It feels weird to say this as a "Game of Thrones" fan but man, Joffrey's death was a bummer. He thought he was about to enter a perfect longterm set-up with Laenor, only to get murdered by angry incel Ser Criston Cole. The main change between the show in the books is that this time around, Cole commits his crime publicly. As co-showrunner Condal put it, "We just had him do it out in the open."

The change here makes the situation a lot more frustrating. In "Fire and Blood," Cole kills Joffrey at a tournament where the act can be interpreted as an understandable accident. In the show, there is no benefit of the doubt to be given to Cole, which makes the lack of consequences for his behavior far more frustrating. 10 years have passed and Cole doesn't seem to have suffered any repercussions or have been made to atone for his actions in any way, and Laenor is still having to regularly, politely interact with the man who killed his lover. 

But much like with "Game of Thrones," the unfairness here is sort of the point. "It's a brutal world. It's a violent world," Condal said, one where bad people in positions of power get away with these sort of things all the time. Cole, with his ongoing alliance with the increasingly dangerous Alicent (now played by Olivia Cooke), is shaping up to be the sort of love-to-hate character that "Game of Thrones" had in spades. We don't know what this change means for "House of the Dragon" going forward, just that much like the show's predecessor, we know the series won't shy away from the darkest parts of its characters.

Read this next: 10 Shows That House Of The Dragon Fans Should Check Out Next

The post Why House Of The Dragon Episode 6 Changed A Character Death From The Book appeared first on /Film.

"Don't Worry Darling" may have failed to impress overall, but it still offers plenty to discuss, including the bonkers ending. Themes about womanhood, autonomy, and technology knot together, accentuated with a dazzling performance from Florence Pugh as Alice. Harry Styles stars opposite as her workaholic husband Jack, alongside a cast that also includes director Olivia Wilde (as Bunny), Chris Pine (as Frank, founder of a community called The Victory Project), and KiKi Layne (Margaret). The tight-knit community, straight out of a 1950s copy of American Homes and Gardens magazine, is too pristine for its own good. As they say, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. 

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique brings a crispness to the visual storytelling, and when events take a turn for the worse, so does the cinematography. There's an especially suffocating dread that seeps into the edges in even the brightest of frames. As Alice loses her grip on reality, her mind wanders through bursts of hypnotically strange images that suggest something wicked is brewing beneath the surface. Throughout the film, the visual style directly compliments a growing unease and the characters' measured devolution. We've selected the 10 most unsettling moments in "Don't Worry Darling," from Alice's inescapable hallucinations to the big third-act reveal. Don't worry, darling, it's just a list, but do BEWARE OF MAJOR SPOILERS!

Discretion Above All Else

Frank, Victory Project founder, gives an insidiously chilling monologue to greet a new couple entering the community. Commanding the crowd, he asks one resident named Bill (Nick Kroll) about what the antithesis of progress is. Bill responds: "Chaos." Frank repeats the word, and then the others in a creepy cult sort of way. As Alice (Florence Pugh) will later point out, it's about control versus independence.

Frank continues to spout a charming yet eerie spiel about expectations men put upon women. From keeping a tidy home to making sure their husbands stay happy, it's a dystopian nightmare, but above all else, Frank and the men expect discretion. Discretion could mean a myriad of things, including what's really going on in headquarters or within each couple's residence. Sometime later, Alice and Jack (Harry Styles) steal away inside Frank's home. Jack fusses with his tie and Alice offers to help. Soon, they hook up in Frank's bedroom. The risk of someone walking in is of no real concern ... until Frank inches into the frame and watches them. He utters nary a word, only watching from a short distance. Alice notices, and Frank makes a "shhh" sign with his hand. If you need your first real red flag 一 ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

The Story Of Margaret

Over garden cocktails, Bunny tells a haunting story of their next-door neighbor Margaret, who claims there's something dark and sinister at work in the community. The story goes that Margaret took her young son out into the desert, far from the residential block where Victory Project headquarters lies, and fell into a daze.

When she awoke, her son was gone, and Margaret believes they took her son away as punishment for stumbling upon their plot. The film excels in casting the audience right inside Margaret's head with hazy flashes depicting Bunny's words. It's as hypnotic a sequence as it is perfectly unsettling. There's also the implication that Margaret has been irreparably affected by living in the cookie-cutter community, from an emotional and mental standpoint. Yet no one is concerned enough to find out exactly what's going on, and that might be the most disturbing part of all.

Stepford Wives

The entire basis for the community is perfection and symmetry. The men leave for work at precisely the same moment every single morning. The wives vacuum their living rooms and the television set plays the same spooky cartoon. The days seem to topple into each other. One day doesn't feel much different from the next.

Even in dance class, everyone's movements are swan-like and in unison. "There's beauty in control," the instructor says. Striving for such excellence in every part of life should be upheld. When a new wife named Violet (Sydney Chandler) visits the class, a cloud of dread seems to fall across the other wives. At all costs, they must adhere to strict guidelines about presenting themselves, as evidenced when the instructor corrects Alice's posture and chin placement. Taking obvious influence from "The Stepford Wives," "Don't Worry Darling" boosts everything up a notch in the unsettling department. The cleanliness of the community isn't enough: The wives must be the picture of literal perfection.

Unexplained Plane Crash

Alice feels bored with life, so she takes the trolley out to town and then to the end of the line. While the driver makes a turn, Alice spots a lone biplane that's caught on fire and billowing spoke. She watches as it crashes into a faraway mountain, and her attempts to get the driver to follow are unsuccessful. "We need to stay here where it's safe," he says, repeating a concerning refrain found throughout the film.

Alice instead hops off the trolley and heads out on her own. She walks and walks and walks until she's in the same head fog that Margaret described. Hair disheveled and pouring sweat, she climbs higher and higher until she comes across a metal portal. She meets only glass windows and places her hands on the surface. Her mind is instantly thrown into a frenzy, as the cage surrounding her mental facilities chips away and she recalls long-forgotten memories. Frank's voice can be heard spouting "we crave order" over distorted images of 1920s dancers and other peculiar pictures Alice can't quite place. Almost in an instant, she wakes up back in her own bed at home as though nothing had happened. Jack is busy in the kitchen cooking up some pot roast and green beans, and he simply shrugs off her concerns as nothing more than a dream. The film can best be described as a gaslight hell.

Alice's Wonderland

Alice tumbles through a host of other weird and unexplainable trances. While cleaning one of their glass windows, a spot appears that won't come out. Alice scrubs and scrubs. Little does she know, the wall has begun closing in behind her. Picture frames dig into her back and nearly crush her skull. In a flash, her body jolts backward and it all fades away. Everything is as it should be. In another moment, she settles into the sofa in the living room to watch television. During a pool commercial, she spies herself flailing in the water and is quickly yanked into the water herself. She's not struggling, though, merely floating in another place, bubbles reversing into her nostrils. Once again, she seems to rouse from a waking nightmare.

Throughout the film, Alice goes through countless more mind trips. She nearly drowns in a hot bath after a total sinking far below, then later reaches a breaking point and wraps her head in Saran Wrap until she rips it back off. All these smaller moments are unsettling on their own, and piecing them into a larger puzzle gives greater psychological weight to her state of being as well as to what may actually be going on behind the curtain.

Margaret's Tragic Fate

Alice imagines seeing Margaret inside the glass walls during dance class in another hallucination. Margaret appears scared/anxious and slowly inches closer to the glass, mimicking Alice's every move in the process. At first, the viewer assumes that Margaret is possibly trapped inside Alice, but she quickly reveals herself as being her own person. Margaret then proceeds to bash her head repeatedly against the glass until it splinters into a web-like design.

Later that day, Alice spies Margaret on top of her roof and approaches her. As she screams her name, Margaret takes out a knife and slits her own throat, blood spurting everywhere. She then turns and flies back to the ground, dead. The doctor and the other powers that be later claim Margaret is quite alright and has been stitched up. Alice questions every point of their story, repeating over and over again what she witnessed. In a separate conversation, the doctor admits that Margaret has some severe mental problems that have led to permanent treatment somewhere outside the community. Margaret's death is nothing short of frightening, especially considering how easily the circumstances surrounding her story were swept under the rug. While KiKi Layne had limited screen time, her presence was captivating. Once she departed, her absence rang like a deafening siren.

Frank Comes To Dinner

"My god you fascinate me," Frank whispers to Alice. During a dinner party, Frank surprises Alice in the kitchen and tells her how long he's been waiting for someone to "challenge me." He then reveals his condolences that Bunny didn't believe her allegations that something's off with the Victory Project. Frank inches closer to Alice, telling her that he's happy she's "preparing dinner like a good girl." The moment is as gross as it is downright unnerving.

Later, Alice doesn't hold back when it comes to confronting the other couples. She begins by asking Violet how she met her husband Bill (Douglas Smith), and it becomes clear the romantic meeting (dropping her ticket and Bill bending down to pick it up) has been recycled with countless other newlyweds. This bombshell causes a ripple through the guests, most noticeably with Bunny, yet Frank eats up every single moment of it. Despite many reactions to the film, "Don't Worry Darling" delivers its commentary with relentless, sharp-toothed terror.

Abduction Of Alice

After agreeing (quite reluctantly) to run away together, Jack sells out Alice to Frank in a devastating turn of events. Alice packed up a getaway bag and hopped in the car. Jack looks obviously dejected. Alice glances up to see men in red suits dashing towards them, much to her horror. She begs not to be hauled away and declares she'll be good for him. Like most of the film, Florence Pugh rips your heart out with her resounding screams alone.

Alice is taken to an undisclosed location and strapped into a hospital bed. Leather handcuffs dig into her skin, while she writhes and attempts to break free. She's then given electroshock therapy, a cruel punishment to wash away all her memories and what she knows about the Victory Project. Flickering between images, the recent past bleeds into Alice's distant past of working as a nurse and going home to a humble apartment in the city. Possessing long, stringy hair, Jack sits hunched over his computer and looks far removed from his clean-cut look in the '50s hellscape. In this scene, two things are suggested: Alice is right about everything, and something far more troubling is at play. We don't yet know the full extent of Frank's sinister world, but we will soon. It's already enough to make your blood run cold.

The Victory Project

The third act drops the ultimate twist: Not only is The Victory Project a facade, but it's actually an immersive virtual reality experience. In real life, Alice has been kidnapped and tied down to a bed with an electronic scanning device attached to her eyes. Believing her to be unhappy in life, Jack took her hostage and trapped her inside a simulated world to live a perfect existence. For their part, the men can only log a certain number of hours inside the simulation and are required to leave for work promptly at the same time every single morning.

The Victory Project is the ultimate gaslighting. The wives are hushed into submission and forced to adhere to traditional gender roles far removed from modern progress and liberation. The finale also reveals Bunny knew everything from the beginning, but she's unsure about the other wives. Unsettling doesn't begin to describe this revelation. It's a dystopian horror.

The Final Chase

All the chips are down when Alice kills Jack for what he's done, then runs for her life. She burns rubber in Bunny's car and zips off straight for headquarters in the desert. A slew of men in red suits charges after her. After causing a head-on collision between three vehicles, Alice furthers the distance between her and the others, eventually coming upon the metal gateway to the real world. When her car pops a tire, she makes her way on foot and barely manages to high-tail it up the winding gravel road.

Once at the top, she stops for a second before stepping forward and placing her hands on the glass. A red neon glow emanates from within and transports her consciousness back into her body. The screen cuts to black, and she heaves a sigh of relief and exasperation. She survives by the skin of her teeth. It's a moment of triumph, but it's not without a glistening edge of darkness. What about the other women? Do they finally get their own vengeance? With Frank dead, and his wife Shelley (Gemma Chan) reclaiming her life, it certainly seems The Victory Project is destined to burn from the inside out. We know better, though: Where there's one cis white egomaniac, there are a dozen more to take his place.

Read this next: Sci-Fi Masterpieces With Endings We Love To Complain About

The post The 10 Most Unsettling Moments In Don't Worry Darling appeared first on /Film.

The Debian Project is currently voting on the state of non-free firmware on Debian. The vote will decide if Debian will include non-free firmware in future official releases.

A new era is upon us, an era that involves a reenvisioned focus on performance and efficiency leadership in the CPU landscape. There are two companies that are battling hard to hold the throne of this segment but given the incremental (and sometimes revolutionary) changes that each chipmaker is bringing to the field in a span of few quarters, there's no decisive victor. In return, the consumers keep on reaping the benefits of this heated battle between red and blue which is the most intense it's ever been.

While Intel may have managed to take the performance, value, and efficiency throne from AMD with its 12th Gen Alder Lake lineup, AMD isn't going to sit silent. They planned two brand new CPU launches this year, one being a demonstration of how 3D V-Cache can allow gamers to benefit from faster performance in a mainstream package. But that's just one chip, The bigger and the main CPU launch has always been scheduled for the second half of 2022 in the form of Ryzen 7000 and it's going to fundamentally change everything for the Ryzen Desktop CPU platform.

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In the five years of Zen, the company went from performance leadership to core leadership, efficiency leadership, and gaming leadership. And today, the red team even manages to secure the clock speed leadership, something that we thought was impossible against a rival such as Intel. The clock leadership will be short-lived considering the competition has planned chips that are 6 GHz capable launching next month but it's an impressive feat for AMD regardless.

Intel 12th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPU Prices:

Intel CPU	Cores / Threads	Clocks (Max)	Price (MSRP)	Prices (Newegg) - 01/11/2021	Prices (Newegg) - 01/11/2021	Price (MSRP)	Clocks (Max)	Cores / Threads	AMD CPU
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	$749.99 US	$799 US	4.7 GHz (105W)	16/32	AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
Intel Core i9-12900K	16/24	5.2 GHz (241W)	$589 US (K) $564 US (KF)	$649.99 K $629.99 KF	$559.99 US	$549 US	4.6 GHz (105W)	12/24	AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Intel Core i7-12700K	12/20	5.0 GHz (190W)	$409 US (K) $384 US (F)	$449.99 K $419.99 KF	$394.99 US	$449 US	4.7 GHz (105W)	8/16	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
Intel Core i5-12600K	10/16	4.9 GHz (150W)	$289 US (K) $264 US (KF)	$319.99 K $299.99 KF	$309.99 US	$299 US	4.6 GHz (65W)	6/12	AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

So this year, AMD has decided to launch a second architecture overhaul, and oh boy! It's a big one. Enter AM5 & Zen 4, a brand new architecture with a prime focus on efficiency and multi-threading performance, and comes with a brand new platform that is outfitted with next-generation features such as DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. The AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" lineup will include the top to bottom Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 CPUs.

Main features of AMD's Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs include:

• Up To 16 Zen 4 Cores and 32 Threads
• +29% Performance Uplift In Single-Threaded Apps
• Brand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)
• Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD
• 25% Performance Per Watt Improvement Vs Zen 3
• >35% Overall Performance Improvement Vs Zen 3
• ~13% Instructions Per Clock (IPC) Improvement Vs Zen 3
• Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 Socket
• New X670E, X670, B650E, B650 Motherboards
• Dual-Channel DDR5 Memory Support
• Up To DDR5-5600 Native (JEDEC) Speeds
• 28 PCIe Lanes (CPU Exclusive)
• 105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)

AMD is not just going up against Intel's 12th Gen but also the upcoming 13th Gen Desktop CPUs. The company sent us their Ryzen 9 7950X flagship and also the mainstream Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs for review. So let's get started at what AMD has to offer on its brand new AM5 platform.

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Before we talk about CPUs, we have to talk about the platform itself. The AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs will be migrating to a new home known as AM5, the successor to the long-lasting AM4 platform. It marks a fresh start for the Ryzen Desktop family and as such, existing Ryzen CPUs starting with Ryzen 1000 & all the way up to Ryzen 5000 won't be supported by the new platform we will tell you why it is so.

The AM5 platform will first and foremost feature the brand new LGA 1718 socket. That's correct, AMD isn't going the PGA (Pin Grid Array) route anymore and now focusing on LGA (Land Grid Array), similar to what Intel uses on its existing desktop processors. The main reason to go LGA is due to the addition of enhanced and next-gen features such as PCIe Gen 5, DDR5, etc that we will get to see on the AM5 platform. The socket has a single latch & gone are the days of worrying about pins underneath your precious processors.

In terms of features, the AM5 platform will initially support AMD's Ryzen 7000 'Zen 4' Desktop CPUs and extend that support to future Ryzen CPUs and APUs. The platform offers DDR5-5200 (JEDEC) memory support, up to 28 PCIe lanes (Gen 5 standard), increased NVMe 4.0, and USB 3.2 I/O lanes & we have also heard chatter about native USB 4.0 support which will be a game-changer.

A new feature called EXPO (AMD Extended Profiles for overclocking) will allow enhanced DDR5 memory OC on the new platform, similar to Intel's XMP. It has been a rough road for AM4 to offer decent DDR4 OC capabilities but that has more or less been sorted out by now, we can only expect DDR5 to have a much better OC and compatibility experience compared to DDR4 on AM4 platforms. Furthermore, it looks like the platform will only be DDR5 compatible and we won't see DDR4 options as we do on Intel's existing platform. But with DDR5 prices and availability improving, that won't be that big of a deal for most high-end consumers for who AMD will be aiming first.

AMD X670 Series Platform

The AM5 compliant AMD 600-series motherboards are currently being prepped up by the board makers, The 600-series lineup will initially consist of three chipsets, the X670E, X670, B650E, and B650.

In terms of features, the X670E (Extreme) is designed for the higher-echelon of motherboards with unparalleled capabilities, and extreme overclocking, and will have PCIe 5.0 support for both GPU and storage.

The X670 motherboards will be very similar in offering enthusiast-level overclocking but PCIe Gen 5.0 support for storage and graphics will depend on manufacturers. It is likely that some board makers will go to the cost-effective route and enable PCIe 5.0 support only for the GPU while keeping storage limited to PCIe 4.0. Both X670 chipsets will come in a dual-PCH solution on the motherboard to allow for the increased I/O for the next-gen platform.

AMD B650 Series Platform

Finally, there are the B650E & B650 chipsets which will be aimed as a mainstream motherboard solution with the Extreme series featuring both PCIe Gen 5.0 and M.2 while the non-E boards will adopt only PCIe 5.0 slot designs.

The B650 motherboards will be the successor to the B550 motherboards and come in a similar price range. Compared to the X670/E offerings, the B650 chipset will come in a single PCH design. The motherboards will carry support for RDNA 2 iGPU too which will be featured on Ryzen 7000 'Raphael' CPUs and offer both HDMI / DP outputs.

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You can check out our full roundup of all the X670E & X670 motherboards that have been revealed so far here.

One of the highlighted features of the AMD AM5 600-series platform is SAS or Smart Access Storage. This technology will enable GPU decompression with supported Microsoft DirectStorage games. Although there aren't many of those out there yet but expect industry-wide support for this on newer platforms.

SmartAccess Storage gets you out of the load screen and into your gameplay

Traditional game loading takes a significant amount of compute power to decompress the game’s data, requiring the CPU to do the decompression and data transfer, which introduces latency and takes up considerable system resources.

To help bypass these bottlenecks, AMD has created SmartAccess Storage, a suite of technologies supporting Microsoft DirectStorage that utilizes Smart Access Memory with new AMD platform technologies along with Radeon GPU asset decompression to improve both game load times and texture streaming.

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AMD AM4/TR4 Chipset Features and Specifications:

Wccftech	X670E/X670	X570	X399 Refresh	X399	X470	X370	B450	B350	A320	X300	A300
CrossfireX/SLI	Triple CFX/2-Way SLI	Triple CFX/2-Way SLI	Quad SLI/CFX (Max 6 GPU Support)	Quad SLI/CFX (Max 6 GPU Support)	Triple CFX/2-Way SLI	Triple CFX/2-Way SLI	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
PCIe Gen 5 Lanes	24 (with Ryzen 7000 CPUs & above)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
PCIe Gen 3/4 Lanes	TBD	30 +16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU)	60 (With Threadripper CPU) 4 Lanes Reserved for PCH	60 (With Threadripper CPU) 4 Lanes Reserved for PCH	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU) 8 (with Bristol Ridge)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU) 8 (with Bristol Ridge)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU) 8 (with Bristol Ridge)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU) 8 (with Bristol Ridge)	16 (with Ryzen 7 CPU) 8 (with Bristol Ridge)
PCIe Gen 2 Lanes	N/A	N/A	8 PCIe Lanes (reserved)	8 PCIe Lanes (reserved)	8 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	8 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	6 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	6 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	4 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	4 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)	4 (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)
USB 3.1/3,2 Gen2	TBD	8	2	2	2	2	2	2	1	0	0
USB 3.1/3.2 Gen1	TBD	12 (PCH + CPU)	13 (PCH+CPU)	13 (PCH+CPU)	10	10	6	6	6	4	4
USB 2.0	TBD	N/A	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	0	0
SATA 6Gb/s	8	8	8	8	6	6	4	4	4	2	2
SATA Express	TBD	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	1	1
DDR5 DIMMs	4	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
DDR4 DIMMs	N/A	4	8	8	4	4	4	4	2	2	2
Overclocking Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
XFR2 Enhanced	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Precision Boost Overdrive	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
NVMe	Yes (Gen 5.0)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Form Factor	ATX	ATX, MATX	ATX, MATX	ATX, MATX	ATX, MITX	ATX	ATX, M-ATX	ATX, M-ATX	M-ATX, Mini-ITX	Mini-ITX	M-ATX, Mini-ITX

Meet The LGA 1718 Socket - How Long Will This One Last?

As mentioned earlier, AM4's reign is finally over and the AM5 socket is here now. The new socket moves from a PGA (Pin-Grid-Array) design to an LGA (Land-Grid-Array) layout. The new LGA 1718 socket offers more pin connections to the CPU, allowing for more communication channels with the board itself and enabling support for enhanced features that the new platform has to offer.

As for longevity, AMD hasn't promised anything but they have stated that they want to see the new AM5 socket last at least four to five years, similar to AM4. While there has been a lot of controversy regarding Ryzen support on the initial AM4 motherboards, I believe that AMD has learned and will not follow the same route as AM5. With that said, the AM4 platform will still continue forward & will be supported in the foreseeable future (possibly with newer hardware and software launches).

Cooler Compatibility With AM5 Socket

The AMD Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs will feature a perfect square shape (45x45mm) but will house a very chonky integrated heat spreader or IHS. The CPUs will be the same length, width, and height as the existing Ryzen Desktop CPUs and are sealed across the sides so applying thermal paste won't fill the interior of the IHS with TIM. That's also why current coolers will be fully compatible with Ryzen 7000 chips.

Coming to the CPUs now, we have managed to get hold of the final specifications of AMD's Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPU family which, as expected, are going to feature four SKUs based on the Zen 4 core architecture. Once again, these SKUs include:

• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
• AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
• AMD Ryzen 5 7600X

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So before getting into the core specifications of these four SKUs, we have to point out that the AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs are based on a TSMC 5nm process node with a CCD die size of 70mm2 compared to 83mm2 for Zen 3 and featuring a total of 6.57 Billion transistors, a 58% increase over the Zen 3 CCD with 4.15 Billion transistors, The CPUs adopt the Zen 4 architecture, bringing with it a 13% IPC uplift but the majority of the performance benefit comes from the higher clock speeds and a higher TDP that is supplemented to each chip versus the prior generation.

AMD has highlighted a +29% Single-Threaded, >35% Multi-Threaded and >25% Perf/Watt increases when comparing Zen 4 to Zen 3 cores. The IOD is fabricated on the 6nm process node and houses an iGPU which comes with 2 RDNA 2 Compute Units running at up to 2200 MHz as detailed here. It features a die size of 124.7mm2 which is almost the same size as the Zen 3 IOD which measured at 124.9mm2.

AMD Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPU Render (With/Without IHS):

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As per AMD, the main improvements for IPC come from a new Front End & Load/Store + Branch Predictor that makes up for 80% of the gains while the L2 cache structuring and Execution Engines offer the remaining 20% uplifts.

AMD also highlighted that AVX-512 & VNNI add up to 30% faster FP32 (multi-thread) inferencing performance and a 2.5x gain in INT8 (multi-thread) CPU performance uplift. In addition to the larger caches, the Micro-op cache has been increased from 4 KB to 6.75 KB, the L1I and L1D cache stick to 32 KB, the L2 cache size has doubled to 1 MB and now runs at 14 cycles instead of 12 while the L3 cache also features slightly higher latency, going up from 46 cycles to 50 cycles. The L1 BTB has also been increased from 1 KB to 1.5 KB.

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Compared to Zen 3, Zen 4 architecture is also going to be really efficient, offering 62% lower power at the same performance, and 49% more performance at the same power. The CPUs also feature 50% less area versus the competition (10nmESF Alder Lake) thanks to their 5nm process node and up to 47% higher power efficiency.

AMD Ryzen  'Zen 4' Desktop CPU Features:

• Up To 16 Zen 4 Cores and 32 Threads
• +29% Performance Uplift In Single-Threaded Apps
• Brand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)
• Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD
• 25% Performance Per Watt Improvement Vs Zen 3
• >35% Overall Performance Improvement Vs Zen 3
• ~13% Instructions Per Clock (IPC) Improvement Vs Zen 3
• Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 Socket
• New X670E, X670, B650E, B650 Motherboards
• Dual-Channel DDR5 Memory Support
• Up To DDR5-5600 Native (JEDEC) Speeds
• 28 PCIe Lanes (CPU Exclusive)
• 105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)

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The CPUs will come with an optimized cache restructuring, featuring double the L2 cache (1 MB vs 512 KB), a shared L3 cache like the previous generation, support for DDR5 memory with EXPO (AMD's Extended Profiles For Memory Overclocking), PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics card, and M.2 SSD support. Overclocking features such as PBO and XFR will also carry over from the past chips. So with all of that said, let's get on with the specifications.

AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU Box Packages:

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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16 Core "Zen 4" Desktop CPU

Starting with the flagship of them all, we have the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X which retains its healthy 16 core and 32 thread count from the previous two generations. The CPU will feature an impressive base frequency of 4.5 GHz and a boost clock of up to 5.7 GHz (5.85 GHz F-Max) which should make it 200 MHz faster than Intel's Alder Lake Core i9-12900KS which has a boost frequency of 5.5 GHz on a single-core.

It looks like AMD is extracting every ounce of Hertz that it could within that 170W TDP (230W PPT) for the Ryzen 9 chips. As for the cache, the CPU comes with 80 MB of that which includes 64 MB from L3 (32 MB per CCD) and 16 MB from L2 (1 MB per core). The flagship is going to cost $699 US which means that it will be priced slightly higher than the Core i9-12900K while offering a significant performance leap in multi-threading apps such as Chaos V-Ray of up to +57% and doing so with up to 47% higher energy efficiency.

In terms of gaming performance, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X will be offering up to 35% higher uplift in games such as Shadow of The Tomb Raider versus the Core i9-12900K.

AMD also showcased the performance of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X against the Intel Core i9-12900K in both gaming and content creation tasks. The CPU was anywhere from -1% to +23% faster in the gaming benchmarks and +36 to +62% faster in creation workloads.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12 Core "Zen 4" Desktop CPU

Next up, we have another AMD Ryzen 9 chip, the 7900X, which as the name suggests, would come equipped with 12 cores and 24 threads. The CPU comes with an even higher base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock adjusted at 5.6 GHz across a single core. The CPU retains its 170W TDP and gets 76 MB of cache (64 MB L3 + 12 MB L2). The CPU will be positioned in the same ballpark as the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X but with performance that would shake the ground from below the Core i7-12700K. The Ryzen 9 7900X will retain the same prices as the Ryzen 9 5900X while offering better processor capabilities.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8 Core "Zen 4" Desktop CPU

Moving over to the Ryzen 7 family, here we have the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, an 8-core and 16-thread part. AMD positions this as the sweet spot for gamers and as such, the CPU will feature a base clock of 4.5 GHz and a boost clock of 5.4 GHz but at a lower 105W TDP (142W PPT). The CPU will get a 40 MB cache pool which consists of 32 MB L3 from the singular CCD &8 MB L2 from the Zen 4 cores.

Now one interesting thing to mention is that there is so far no update by AMD on a Ryzen 7 7800X chip. It is likely that AMD wants to replace that part with a successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D with Zen 4 cores (3D V-Cache). If that was the case, we can expect an update later this year to the CPU lineup since the V-Cache parts have been confirmed for a late Q4 2022 launch by AMD themselves. The Ryzen 7 7700X will be priced at $399 US and will be competing with the Core i7-12700K during launch.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6 Core "Zen 4" Desktop CPU

Last up, we have the most budget-tier chip (if you can call it that but the pricing won't be reflective of that), the Ryzen 5 7600X. This will be a 6-core and a 12-thread part that features a high 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.3 GHz single-core boost frequency. The CPU will also run at a 105W TDP (142W PPT) which is much higher than its 65W predecessor though once again, that's the sacrifice you've to pay to achieve the faster clock speeds. The CPU will carry 38 MB of cache that comes from 32 MB of L3 and 6 MB of L2 on the die. This chip is going to be priced at $299 US and will be offering a 5% performance gain over the Core i9-12900K in gaming.

AMD will be bringing back its PBO and XFR overclocking features to the Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 CPUs along with enhanced DDR5 memory and overclocking support through EXPO technology. The CPUs will also come equipped with RDNA 2 iGPU with up to 2 Compute Units running at 2.2 GHz which would be usable through HDMI 2.1 FRL and DP 1.4 connectors on the latest AM5 motherboards. In addition to the CPU & GPU, there will be an expanded instruction set for AI acceleration (AVX-512 anyone?).

AMD Ryzen 7000 'Raphael' Desktop CPU Specs (Official):

CPU Name	Architecture	Process Node	Cores / Threads	Base Clock	Boost Clock (SC Max)	Cache	TDP	Prices (TBD)
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X	Zen 4	5nm	16/32	4.5 GHz	5.7 GHz	80 MB (64+16)	170W	$699 US
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X	Zen 4	5nm	12/24	4.7 GHz	5.6 GHz	76 MB (64+12)	170W	$549 US
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	Zen 4	5nm	8/16	4.5 GHz	5.4 GHz	40 MB (32+8)	105W	$399 US
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X	Zen 4	5nm	6/12	4.7 GHz	5.3 GHz	38 MB (32+6)	105W	$299 US

AMD's EXPO tech which stands for "Extended Profiles For Overclocking" for Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs will be aiming for the high-end "Extreme" series 600-series motherboards in the X670 and B650 family. The profile will be an extension for XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) which will also be available on the AM5 platform but to benefit from higher speeds, AMD has designed the EXPO technology.

Based on what AMD has shown, EXPO will enable one-click DDR5 overclock support on AM5 motherboards and offer up to 11% faster performance at 1080p resolution. The EXPO memory kits from various memory makers will be designed to hit low latencies of around 63ns and there will be a range of public certification reports that will provide users with full specifications and OC settings that they can work with.

New for the Ryzen 7000 Series Desktop processors and optimized for AMD Socket AM5 motherboards, AMD EXPO technology provides users with advanced profile settings for DDR5 memory overclocking. When optimized for high-performance gaming, consumers can expect to see up to 11% faster gaming performance with AMD EXPO technology in F1® 2022.

AMD EXPO technology was designed to achieve higher gaming performance from pre-configured overclocking profiles and is easy to implement. PC enthusiasts who want to understand the finer details of an AMD EXPO technology-enabled module can find public self-certification reports, which clearly lay out the module’s full timing table, components, and the system configuration used to finalize the memory’s specifications. AMD is offering EXPO technology to its industry memory partners without royalties or licensing fees.

AMD EXPO technology arrives to market alongside the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, with offerings from ADATA, Corsair, GeIL, G.SKILL, and Kingston. Over 15 AMD EXPO technology-enabled memory kits will be initially available, with memory speeds up to DDR5-6400.

via AMD

As for the first EXPO products, AMD announced that their memory partners such as ADATA, Corsair, GeIL, G.Skill, and Kingston, will have a total of 15 kits at launch with speeds of up to DDR5-6400. The native speeds will be rated at:

• 1x1R - 5200 MT/s
• 1x2R - 5200 MT/s
• 2x1R - 3600 MT/s
• 2x2R - 3600 MT/s

We also had previously reported that DDR5-6000 will be the sweet spot for AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs based on the Zen 4 core architecture using the EXPO technology. The DDR5-6000 memory kits that are optimized with EXPO support will offer the best performance with the lowest latency in a 1:1 FCLK mode.

Now as per Robert, we now know that the default FCLK for AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs is set to 1733 MHz. Robert also states that memory overclocking is a little bit different with Ryzen 7000 since 1:1:1 (FCLK:UCLK:MCLK) isn't important anymore. It is mentioned that to achieve the best results, you should leave the FCLK to auto and overclock the memory modules and memory controller in 1:1 mode. There will be some corner cases where users will be able to get better performance results by hitting over 2 GHz FCLK speeds but those aren't a big priority, as AMD mentions.

At the native setting, DDR5-5200 will operate in a 2:1:1 mode or 1733:2600:2600 clock. Robert also confirmed something that we had stated early on that DDR5-6000 will "Roughly" the sweet spot & by sweet spot, he means the best compromise to cost/stability/performance/availability/ease. So as of right now, we have the following sweet spots as mentioned directly by AMD:

• Ryzen 3000 "Zen 2" Sweet Spot - DDR4-3800 (Official AMD)
• Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" Sweet Spot - DDR4-4000 (Official AMD)
• Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" Sweet Spot - DDR5-6000 (Official AMD)

It is stated that DDR5-5200 C28 kits should go really well with Ryzen 7000 too as they are pretty fast but there aren't a lot of kits in those configurations available right now.

As Robert states:

The reason why we say "AUTO:1:1" is now ideal because the FCLK will automatically change depending on what memory speed is in the DIMM slots. There's no "one size fits all" ideal fabric frequency. For example: JEDEC 5300 fclk goes to 1767, 6000 RAM should go to 2000 fclk. Each memory speed has its own optimal fclk, which is why I'm gently guiding people to not worry about what the fclk is because it's going to change with RAM speed and the AUTO setting will usually give the most performant result unless you have an astonishing overclocker.

And "get the highest possible fclk" is no longer the rule like it was on AM4. In short.

In addition to these, MSI's in-house overclocker, TOPPC, has revealed that EXPO memory kits will be fully compatible with Intel XMP profiles. Simply put, Intel XMP memory can still support EXPO but it is worth it to have an EXPO-enabled kit to ensure the best possible profile for AMD's Ryzen 7000 CPU lineup.

As for the first EXPO products, AMD announced that their memory partners such as ADATA, Corsair, GeIL, G.Skill, and Kingston, will have a total of 15 kits at launch with speeds of up to DDR5-6400. The native speeds will be rated at:

• 1x1R - 5200 MT/s
• 1x2R - 5200 MT/s
• 2x1R - 3600 MT/s
• 2x2R - 3600 MT/s

2 of 9

The AMD EXPO DDR5 memory kits will launch alongside the Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs and AM5.

G.Skill is one of the top memory manufacturers known to gamers and enthusiasts in the PC industry. The company has been specializing in the memory industry for several years and its memory kits are very popular among the masses. There are memory lines from G.Skill that have been the eye-catcher since the company was formed, Trident and Ripjaws.

Both of these series have now become the choice of enthusiasts and overclockers as they come with an impressive specifications list and some of the best design schemes on the market. With the launch of the DDR5 standard, G.Skill is introducing its brand new Trident lineup, the Trident Z5 NEO, which comes in high-speed flavors with Samsung ICs and many options to choose from.

For this particular testing, G.Skill sent me its Trident Z5 NEO 'F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5N' 32 GB (16 GB x 2) kit which comes with clock speeds of 6000 MT/s. The memory kit consists of dual 16 GB DIMMs which make up a total of 32 GB in capacity. Following are the full specifications of the kit I'll be testing:

Horror director Mike Flanagan has some interesting ideas about the genre. "Horror affords us the opportunity to really look at ourselves and the things that scare us... as a society and individuals," he once told The New York Times. His characters often face literal ghosts. But just as often, they confront their haunting past mistakes -- lingering memories of grief or trauma. Ahead of the release of "The Haunting of Bly Manor," Flanagan said: "I really wanted to play more with ghosts as an expression of emotional wounds... how the past and present can echo each other." These themes inform the vast majority of his work -- from his early films like "Absentia" to his later television shows. Some projects are more successful than others. However, all of them are worth a watch -- if only to see a filmmaker fine-tune his ability over time to wield the tools of horror like few other directors today.

Flanagan's "The Midnight Club" drops on October 7. Like his previous television series, it's an adaptation of a horror novel. Christopher Pike's "The Midnight Club" follows a group of kids who promise to contact one another from beyond the grave. Based on the trailer, the show promises to be just as thrilling and incisive as Flanagan's other work. Meanwhile, let's look back at his extensive career to see just how his films and TV shows shake out. Here are the 10 best Mike Flanagan horror movies and shows, ranked from worst to best.

Before I Wake

It's not usually a great sign when a movie sits on the shelf for years, and that's what happened with Mike Flanagan's melancholy "Before I Wake." The movie was shot all the way back in 2013, and then the release got shuffled repeatedly as Relativity Media collapsed. Instead of hitting theaters, Netflix premiered the film in early 2018. After all the build-up, the movie is...fine?

"Before I Wake" follows a couple (Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane) mourning the loss of their son. They decide to foster a young boy named Cody (Jacob Tremblay), but they soon realize Cody has a gift: whatever he dreams becomes real. For a while, this means beautiful butterflies and visions of their son. However, he manages to manifest his nightmares too. More than anything else, Flanagan is great at creating lovable characters. He gets performances out of his actors to match. Tremblay is fantastic, as his wide-eyed gaze is simultaneously full of wonder, pain, and loss.

Soon Cody becomes plagued by a figure he calls The Canker Man -- a pale, gaunt monster that he claims ate his mother. The creature design is a bit too silly to be scary — which makes sense, as it's a child's nightmare. But as a result, several of the film's horror sequences fall flat. Unfortunately, the movie loses steam around the one-hour mark, and the final act feels more denouement than climax.

Absentia (2011)

"Absentia" is about Tricia (Courtney Bell), whose husband has gone missing. After seven years, she decides to declare him dead in absentia. Her sister Callie (Katie Parker) visits to help sort through the bureaucracy of that and its emotional toll. But a supernatural mystery unfurls when Callie goes for a run through a nearby tunnel and finds an emaciated man (Doug Jones) who is surprised she can see him.

This is Mike Flanagan's first feature-length horror film. Like "Before I Wake," it's a movie brimming with ideas that don't always coalesce. Callie is a recovering substance abuser who finds solace in religion, while Tricia is pregnant and has struck up a relationship with the detective (Dave Levine) assigned to her husband's case. Many of the concepts in "Absentia" appear in the director's later work. Tricia experiences hollow-eyed supernatural visions that aren't ghosts exactly but manifestations of grief and guilt. "Absentia" is about trying to move on after tragedy -- a theme Flanagan will return to repeatedly.

Flanagan funded the film with a Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately, "Absentia" is held back by its low budget. The lack of money for special effects means that many scares are of the "cut to black" variety, missing the unflinching eeriness of his later work. The detective subplot feels cliché. While Parker and Bell are excellent, other performances are not. "Absentia" shows a lot of promise, but little else.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Dr. Sleep

Some of the best directors are masters at taking other people's stories and spinning them into cinematic gold -- like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." Mike Flanagan is too. 

While many of Flanagan's first films revolved around original ideas, the director's career hit its stride when he started adapting other people's stories. He has an incredible eye for breaking a story down into its essential elements and then rebuilding it into something wholly original. "Doctor Sleep" is a great example of this: It balances being a solid adaptation of Stephen King's (not-great) novel and a sequel to Kubrick's 1980 film.

In "Doctor Sleep," Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is all grown up. The kid from "The Shining" now works in a hospice, easing the residents' deaths. After his abilities attract the attention of the True Knot — a psychic cult that feeds on the suffering of others — Danny rescues a young girl named Abra (Kyleigh Curran), who has the shining too. Inexorably, they become drawn back to the Overlook Hotel.

King famously hated Kubrick's "The Shining," but Flanagan can't avoid its iconography. "Doctor Sleep" is at its best when it examines the psychic scar that "The Shining" left on cinematic horror. (That carpet! The axe wound in the closet door!) The rest of the story is a bit convoluted, but Flanagan does the best he can with what he has. Again, Tremblay stars in a particularly horrific and standout scene.

Oculus

In the context of his career, 2013's "Oculus" feels like Mike Flanagan still figuring out his formula. His characters walk in and out of memory, haunted by apparitions and by the psychological echoes of the trauma they experienced in the past. The film's supernatural occurrences center around an ominous mirror that has a storied history of claiming victims. Siblings Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) blamed the mirror for the destruction of their family when they were younger. After being released from a mental hospital, Tim discovers that his sister has reacquired the horrible home furnishing that tortured them so long ago. He wants to let his memories go and move on, but she wants proof of what happened to them.

"Oculus" moves between timelines. Actions in one timeline affect and speak to the horrors in the other. While many of the scares are effective, and the movie has back-to-back compelling moments, its twisted timelines and convoluted storytelling ultimately hamper the emotional effectiveness rather than heighten it.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Ouija: Origin Of Evil

A prequel about the origins of an evil board game sounds silly, but Mike Flanagan's "Ouija: Origin of Evil" is anything but that. The film wants to shock and scare you as much as possible to make up for its premise, and it succeeds. The original "Ouija" was a post-"Conjuring" studio dreck, but Flanagan takes the bones of that story and refashions it into a delightfully-eerie possessed-kid movie. Lulu Wilson is fantastic as the creepy Doris, a little girl who learns to channel spirits with the help of her charlatan-fortune-teller mother's Ouija board. "Ouija: Origin of Evil" takes place in 1967. Although they digitally shot the movie, Flanagan added film grain to shots in post-production (per FreshFiction.tv). Effects like cigarette burns to indicate reel-changes, split diopters, and more makes "Ouija: Origin of Evil" feel like a movie from the '60s.

Here is the inflection point where Flanagan's troupe of actors starts to coalesce. Annalise Basso was in "Oculus," Kate Siegel starred in "Oculus" and "Hush," and Doug Jones is back from "Absentia." Also, this is Flanagan's first collaboration with Elisabeth Reaser and Henry Thomas, who would later appear in "The Haunting of Hill House," among other works. Flanagan's stories are about how trauma echoes through time, so re-using the same actors in new configurations adds intriguing layers to the film.

Hush

"Hush" is Mike Flanagan's most straightforward thriller. There are no ghosts, and definitely no physical manifestations of grief or trauma. There is only Maddie (Katie Siegel), a novelist who is deaf and living in the woods. Unbeknownst to her, there's a masked man outside (John Gallagher Jr.) her home, stalking her. Later, she writes on the window in lipstick: "WON'T TELL. DIDN'T SEE FACE. BOYFRIEND COMING HOME." But there is no boyfriend, and he knows it. In response, he removes his mask. She's sure seen his face now.

"Hush" is a fantastic cat-and-mouse game of a movie, with participants in its devilish dance trying to outsmart one another. The man has an advantage — he can hear her every move — but Maddie knows her home, and she knows what tools she has at her disposal to outwit the intruder. Flanagan wrings incredible, live-wire tension from this mismatch -- occasionally taking us inside Maddie's point-of-view: all of the sounds drop away and make us feel what a frightening situation this would be for someone unable to hear. But ultimately, her disability becomes an advantage.

Both lead performances are excellent, although it's with noting that Flanagan could have cast a deaf actress rather than his hearing wife. (Flanagan and Siegel now say she wouldn't play the role were they to make the movie today, per Indiewire). Flanagan's filmography has made many moving, complex examinations of loss and love. But this one's downright scary.

The Haunting Of Bly Manor

"The Haunting of Bly Manor," the second installment in Mike Flanagan's "Haunting" anthology, caught a lot of viewers by surprise. Unlike "The Haunting of Hill House," which often aimed for straightforward supernatural horror, "Bly Manor" was something different. In a behind-the-scenes video for Netflix, Flanagan defined the series as "a love story... a gothic romance." Flanagan's "Bly Manor" is an adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw" and several other Henry James ghost stories. The director infuses classic horror literature with detailed characters and a modern eye to form a touching story about queer love.

In "The Haunting of Bly Manor," Victoria Pedretti plays a nanny who is hired to tutor two creepy kids. The house is populated by other service people like the housekeeper Hannah (T'Nia Miller), the cook Owen (Rahul Kohli), and the gardener Jamie (Amelia Eve). Of course, there's a ghost named the Lady in the Lake (Kate Siegel). Those two categories of characters significantly overlap by the end of the series.

Rather than being "scary," "Bly Manor" double down on being haunting -- it's sad and deeply unsettling. Overall, it's a rewarding experience as this show contains some of the most sympathetic characters Flanagan has created. Miller is particularly excellent as Mrs. Grose. But it's Pedretti and Eve who carry the show as its central couple. A deeply-empathetic masterwork, "Bly Manor" is well worth a watch.

Gerald's Game

In Netflix's "Gerald's Game," Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) and Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) head to a remote lake house to spice up their sex life. Gerald handcuffs Jessie to the bed, and the two play out a rape fantasy roleplay. But when Jessie wants to stop things, Gerald has a heart attack and dies -- leaving Jessie handcuffed with her dead husband on the floor. No one will be looking for them for a long time. Left alone with her thoughts, Jessie remembers a long-repressed incident of sexual abuse at the hands of her father (Henry Thomas), which occurred at the eerie height of a total solar eclipse.

Stephen King's "Gerald's Game" novel is known as one of King's most unadaptable books, considering most of the story plays out through conversations with the voices in the solitary main character's head. However, Mike Flanagan's film adaptation gets the job done. Jessie's voices are manifested as visions of her dead husband and herself, letting Jessie examine her problem and its possible solutions through dialogue. This choice puts the film's themes squarely in Flanagan's wheelhouse: He loves a ghastly vision representing trauma.

Gugino and Greenwood's committed performances understand the idiosyncratic rhythms of King's dialogue more than the most King adaptations. The film's climactic gore effect is one of the most grotesque in horror cinema. Overall, the film is an absolute masterclass in streamlined yet emotional horror.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

The Haunting Of Hill House

"The Haunting of Hill House" was Mike Flanagan's first foray into crafting a limited series for television. It marked an exciting new path for the filmmaker. For my money, he's an even better television creator than a feature film director. "Hill House" stands as a powerful testament as to why. Flanagan boils Shirley Jackson's seminal novel down to its essential elements -- a haunted house, a family name, a line of dialogue — and then refashions everything into a wholly-original, multi-generational epic about a family scarred by the trauma of living in a house populated by ghosts.

The show's highlight is its sixth episode, "Two Storms." The episode shifts back and forth between present and past, showing the Crane family dealing with (fittingly) two storms. Most of "Two Storms" is made to look like one long take, seamlessly traveling through time as events in the past inform the present and vice versa. Whereas earlier Flanagan projects struggled to balance his unique brand of visions moving through twisted timelines, "Hill House" is plotted perfectly, reaching emotional crescendos that somehow continue to top themselves.

Also, it's really, really scary. Flanagan fills his frames with ghostly apparitions, faces, and figures hidden in shadows. The show's main ghosts — the Bent-Neck Lady, the Tall Man, and more — are instant-classic horror monsters. While most of the show is more elegant and elegiac, there's one particular jump scare that's one of the most frightening ones ever filmed.

Midnight Mass

"Midnight Mass" is Mike Flanagan's most complex and emotionally-stirring work. It's also his most existentially frightening. He gets some of the best performances out of his actors, delivering some of his most poetic writing... and it's his first original idea after half a decade spent in adaptation! "Behind Stephen King is a great place to hide," he told The New York Times. "This is much more frightening."

The limited Netflix series focuses on the isolated community of Crockett Island. As the story begins, two men arrive. After serving time for a drunk-driving accident that took a woman's life, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns to his hometown. Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) is a charismatic priest coming to take over the local parish. Both have brought demons with them to the island. Riley becomes haunted by visions of the woman he killed. But Father Paul's demons are literal. It's a stunningly intimate portrait of a community whipped into the mania of a religious revival. But it's also a deliciously-demented creature feature, spinning into original and twisted mythology.

When "Midnight Mass" hit Netflix, there was much conversation about whether Flanagan's elaborate monologues were helping or hurting his story. For me, Flanagan's monologues are a feature, not a bug -- like Stephen King's idiosyncratic dialogue. I'm someone who loves watching actors act, and "Midnight Mass" is an absolute treat. We witness stars like Rahul Kohli and Linklater deliver career-best performances that are poetic, haunting elegies about life and existence. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Read this next: All 59 Stephen King Movies Ranked From Worst To Best

The post The 10 Best Mike Flanagan Horror Movies And Shows, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Squish or be squished in this shrunken backyard survival game from Obsidian Entertainment

After two years in Early Access, it's time to check back in with Grounded now that it's been fleshed out with more bugs to battle and harvest, more impossibly large backyard sights to seek out, and a fully realized story — complete with an eventual ending — to uncover.

Having only dabbled in the early build, back when there were hardly any threads to follow, I'm surprised how far Grounded has come thanks to ongoing updates and a big final push for the 1.0 launch on PC and Xbox. Originally, the familiar yet creative-up-close shrunken world was its biggest asset — and it still is to this day. But now, the whole survival loop feels cohesive, with plenty of thoughtful touches you'd expect from a passion project.

Since the game's work-in-progress debut, some players never really left, and they've got magnificent (and painstaking) home bases to prove it. As for me, I started fresh with a new save file and got to exploring. Little did I know I'd be in for a 30-hour adventure.

[caption id="attachment_345543" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{It's worth repeating that Grounded has an intricate Arachnophobia mode with multiple comfort thresholds.}[/caption]

Grounded (PC [reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Released: September 27, 2022
MSRP: $39.99

Even with familiarity from my Early Access playthrough, this is still one of the most interesting worlds I've gotten to know in a survival game, right up there with Subnautica.

Chopping down towering blades of grass and hauling planks like a lumberjack, scurrying through ant tunnel labyrinths with a torch in hand, scavenging for half-buried scales in a koi pond with water fleas nipping at your feet — it's an unforgettable lens for such an established genre. And the more I play Grounded, the more I'm weirded out looking down at my own backyard. What tiny creatures are out there, and just what are they up to?

It's an absorbing game, in other words — the kind you can keep coming back to session after session whether you're "mostly here for the story" or you're ready to settle in and get cozy as a miniature architect. I'm far more in the former camp, and admittedly, Grounded has an overly drawn-out pace at times. But in the end, I'm glad I stuck with it, and I'm excited to thoroughly investigate every area, from the toxic trash heap to the children's sandbox to the smoldering spilled grill and creepy crawlspace under the shed.

So much of the game is getting to know the land, its surprisingly ruthless inhabitants, and the resources that'll keep you alive day-to-day and rarer finds that can help you find a way out of this conundrum. With that knowledge base (and smartly positioned hand-made shortcuts), you can cut down on a lot of the back-and-forth tedium. Wiki refreshers help, too. But either way, Grounded is not a game to rush through without proper preparations.

[caption id="attachment_345544" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{There's no wasted space, and Obsidian makes the most of its '90s backyard theme.}[/caption]

Early on, I was shocked by how hard-hitting and dangerous Grounded can be, even when I was trying to mind my own business and keep a low profile. The early game is harsh.

With makeshift armor, no permanent stat increases or perk-like Mutations unlocked yet, and a puny "weapon" that big (and even medium) boys can shrug off, you shouldn't go picking fights. You've got to be ready to book it, then bandage up as needed. Spiders are ferocious, of course — more so than any arachnids I've seen in a game before — but the same goes for bombardier beetles, mites, larvae, and mosquitoes, among many other threats. Several foes can even gang up on you, sometimes to a comical degree.

In one-on-one fights, there's a distinct rhythm to bouts, including "perfect blocks" that open up your opponents. Combat is fun once you're strong enough to have more margin of error. Each enemy has a memorable personality and particular "tells" that you can master, which I liked — but skirmishes started to feel less engaging the longer I played. Expect mashy chaos from time to time. There's also ranged combat with bows and a huge assortment of arrow types, as well as bombs. Crafting gear out of your prey is entertaining in that Monster Hunter sort of way, and pieces have different perks and weight ratings. Certain sets are needed for navigating fumes and underwater caves.

With more excursions under your belt, a stable place to call home and craft at, and better gear sourced from the bugs you are able to pummel, Grounded gets easier over time. Bless the life-steal weapons. With the exception of a few boss battles (some of which are optional) and a late defend-three-points-and-pray mission that got really dicey, most of my struggles were frontloaded. Things might've been smoother in online co-op, which is the ideal way to play — but I got through it all alone, and with patience, you can too.

[caption id="attachment_345542" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{You'll unlock beneficial Mutations just by doing stuff day-to-day. Keep an eye out for a four-leaf clover and a D20.}[/caption]

Thankfully, Grounded has multiple autosaves to fall back on, death isn't the worst (more of an inconvenience), and you can freely save outside of combat. I'd recommend doing so often. It's possible to set a respawn point at (easily built) shelters, and if you're taken out, it's a matter of fetching your lost backpack to regain your on-hand items. That said, this is an exploration-heavy game with a lot of running around — avoid any repetition you can.

While hunger and thirst meters are a consistent threat, for the most part, fresh water is plentiful — just smack a blade of grass to release a high-up droplet — and food doesn't strictly have to be cooked, though roasted aphid is far better sustenance than a handful of plucked mushrooms. If you neglect these needs for too long, an ominous countdown will begin. This timer was only a problem for me once, when I was stranded deep in an uncharted area for story reasons. But generally, out in the open, everything's in reach.

Big picture, the main considerations are scouting out a good central location for your home (or homes), since you'll keep coming back to unload your backpack and craft building-dependent creations, and also maintaining a healthy reserve of materials. Armor and weapons degrade and can be repaired with the right ingredients, but it's possible to strategically upgrade them (using rare but not finite stones) when they're almost kaput.

It's worth noting that Grounded has three primary difficulties — I'd honestly recommend the lowest, Mild — as well as a Creative build-cool-shit-stress-free mode, Creative with Bugs, and Custom modes with lots of granular you-do-you options. There were times when I thought about bumping my save to a custom game due to obnoxiously aggressive insects and stamina constantly running low, but I resisted; it's a one-way conversion.

If you're struggling, gameplay-based Mutation unlocks are a fun RPG-like touch, and changing your build on the fly can go a long way. You'll also want to smash giant teeth (Milk Molars), which award points to permanently benefit your max health, stamina, hunger/thirst burn rate, and max item stack sizes. There's never enough inventory space!

[caption id="attachment_345540" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{Remember to keep a backup torch in case night falls while you're far from home.}[/caption]

I've gone long enough without getting into the story, haven't I? I'll keep it light.

The storytelling gives meaning to your exploration, and it's sufficient motivation to see where things go (there's a "good" and a "bad" animated ending), but the writing is better viewed as a playful, funny, clever bonus than as your sole reason for playing. Expect a lot of audio recordings but minimal interactions with NPCs and some scattered flashback cutscenes — the vast majority of Grounded is everything I've described up until this point.

Without spoiling anything, I'd say that if you're usually survival-wary and are only interested in Grounded because of Obsidian's well-established name, be cautious. There was enough narrative substance here for me as a survival fan, definitely, but you might not feel the same way. I liked the central abduction mystery and the opposing sides.

In the beginning, you'll get clues about several labs with chips you need to recover, and if you're brave, you can go "out of order" — I love that sort of freedom.

Much later, you'll be funneled toward the upper yard, above the retaining walls. You can do your own thing as long as you want, but it does pay to explore these labs to the fullest for resources and other goodies. Eventually, the limiting factor was less "where do I go next?" and more "where do I find these highly specific parts to craft a high-tier hammer to smack something and progress the story?" When I mentioned a pacing slowdown, this was it. Even though the next section seemed tantalizingly within reach, getting geared up was a seemingly small roadblock that snowballed out of control for hours. So many errands.

I get it — this is classic survival gating — but in these moments, I longed for a more organic approach, as seen in Subnautica. With quicker traversal (or even a one-way "warp home" ability), there would've been much less busywork in my playthrough. If I could do it all again, I would build more "waystations" to supplement my main base and pick better spots for my staircases that stretched up to lofty biomes. Hauling grass planks can be tedious as a solo player, especially if you don't have the most efficient armor equipped.

[caption id="attachment_345539" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{If you're not much of a builder, a utilitarian base will do just fine — don't worry about raids.}
[/caption]

I should say, I love the way Grounded handles blueprints — it's a step above most of its peers. You can analyze materials to unlock related recipes, sure, but that's not the only way. There are also quests to take on, collectibles to find, and points to spend. With all of these methods in play, it's a steady blueprint rollout that never feels overwhelming.

And while I'm not a builder at heart, it's worth stressing that you could conceivably get into Grounded just for the construction side — it's intuitive, and the backyard sprawl makes for a great setting. To that end, even though I wish combat and traversal went a bit deeper given the scope and length of this game, I was so invested in this charming and surprisingly fresh miniature world that I didn't mind too much. There's a certain finesse.

With its 1.0 release, Grounded has so much to discover, and enough of a hook to justify the dozens of hours you might invest. Whether you're an exploration-minded player in search of landmarks and tucked-away treasures, or a castle-building fiend with a vision, you should ideally bring friends along for the ride. Still, playing alone, it was hard for me to walk away from Grounded, even in its slowest moments. I wasn't satisfied with my end-of-game score, so I searched for secrets and kept going, boosting my grade in the process. Even now, there are still more bugs to catalog and, inevitably, squash. Nothing personal!

While Obsidian isn't known for survival games, it ended up making a great one.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Grounded appeared first on Destructoid.

Interpol has issued a red notice for Do Kwon, requesting law enforcement agencies worldwide to search and arrest the Terraform Labs founder whose blockchain startup collapsed earlier this year. From a report: The collapse of Terra cryptocurrency (Luna) and the so-called stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) wiped out investors' $40 billion, prompting an uproar that caused the prosecutors to launch investigations into Kwon and his colleagues. He faces charges in South Korea, the prosecutors said Monday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
Genre: Drama / History
Size: 1.72 GB
Runtime: 3hr 47 min

Two aging fathers--one a King, one his courtier--reject the children who truly love them. Their blindness unleashes a tornado of pitiless ambition and treachery, and their worlds crumble. Tender, violent, moving, and shocking, King Lear is considered by many to be the greatest tragedy ever written. This will be an explosive, charged, and contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's epic masterpiece in the intimate setting of the Minerva Theatre.

AMD has lifted the review embargo for its AMD Ryzen 7000 Zen4 “Raphael” CPUs, and below you can find some third-party gaming benchmarks for the high-end model, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. Guru3D has benchmarked at 1080p Far Cry New Dawn, Watch Dogs Legion and F1 2020. In these three games, the new Zen 4 … Continue reading Third-party gaming benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X →

The post Third-party gaming benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X appeared first on DSOGaming.

Slowly but surely, "House of the Dragon" has been unraveling my sanity on a week-by-week basis. For the most part, I mean that in the best way possible: my brain has been completely taken over by thoughts of medieval politics and jokes about Matt Smith cosplaying as Legolas. The "Game of Thrones" prequel is firing on all cylinders, delivering the epic fantasy, gorgeous sets, despicable characters, and fascinating dynamics that we've been missing ever since its predecessor flew off the rails. But despite being a massive success and ramping up the intrigue with each new episode, "House of the Dragon" has also been struggling in one very unexpected area: the titular dragons. And it's driving me crazy.

Naturally, this Targaryen-centered saga has included many dragons taking to the skies of Westeros. There have been multiple utterances of the famous command "Dracarys," and even some dragon-based warfare to rival the war crimes of Daenerys herself. But in the grand scheme of things, we haven't gotten nearly the amount of face time with the dragons that this story requires. We didn't sign up for a show called "House of the Dragon" just to enjoy a couple of brief fly-by appearances — dragons are a crucial part of the Targaryen dynasty! The very first episode of the series sees young Princess Rhaenyra staring at the black bones of one of the massive mythical beasts while telling her father, "Without them, we're just like everyone else." When the smallfolk see the dragons, they think of this dragon-riding royal family, so why is it that we've spent so little time unraveling what that means?

Well, after five episodes of keeping us at arms-length from the dragonlore, "House of the Dragon" is finally delivering on the promise of its title. "The Princess and the Queen" not only introduces the next generation of Targaryens, but unpacks the importance of their role as Dragonriders.

This House Has A Dragon Problem

Before I get to the good stuff, I'm not quite done complaining. First off, this show has egregiously dropped the ball when it comes to dragon introductions, A lot of fanfare was made about the fact that "House of the Dragon" has 17 distinct dragons to tout, so forgive me for assuming we'd spend some time getting to know them. Instead, a casual viewer would have very little idea of when a dragon (let alone its rider) is being introduced into the story: the fifth episode sees two Velaryon dragons flying into a wedding, but never zooms in to reveal the riders — Rhaenys and her son, Laenor Velaryon? Why wouldn't we want to see Eve Best riding a dragon?! And why haven't we gotten the chance to really meet her stunning red she-dragon, Meleys?!

17 dragons means 17 personalities, and it's about time we get into the nitty-gritty of who these dragons are. If you're obsessively paying attention to the behind-the-scened details or spent some time reading "Fire & Blood," the tome that the series is based on, then you get to enjoy some wonderful tidbits that never really get explicit screentime — like the incredible detail that Daemons' dragon Caraxes has a deviated septum, making his roar sparse and giving him a chip on his shoulder much like the self-pitying rogue prince who rides him. That's the kind of dragon content that deserves the primetime spot! Does Rhaenyra's dragon Syrax think that Caraxes is lame? Do all the other dragons in the pit bully him when they're together? Is Rhaenys' dragon as above everyone else as she is? And with a name like Seasmoke, Laenor's dragon is obviously a badass, so where's his big moment?

The Apex Of Targaryen Power

We're still a ways off from actually spending time with the dragons, but the sixth episode at least lets us understand the basics of dragonriding through the Targaryen eyes. This is certainly a step it the right direction, because it's a crucial reminder that riding dragons is a key facet of the Targaryen identity.

Unlike in the days of Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, Dragons are an integrated part of society in "House of the Dragon." The family is at peak power (or, at least it was before the king started decaying) and takes care to make sure that each child with Targaryen blood understands the importance of their connection to dragons. It is royal custom to place dragon eggs in their cradle at birth, in the hopes that they will hatch and instantly form a bond with the infant. Together, they grow and the bond strengthens as they learn to ride and command the dragon. But not all dragon eggs hatch and when they don't, Targaryens must find another way to claim a dragon of their own. One such rider is Laena Velaryon, the rider of Vhagar.

Vhagar is a she-dragon of legend, one of the three dragons used to conquer Westeros by Ageon and his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys. Vhagar is the last of the three dragons and was mentioned earlier in the season by a young Laena, who was obsessed with the whereabouts of the warrior Queen's dragon. Since then, Laena set out to claim Vhagar as her own (the kind of offscreen moment that we should've been able to witness for ourselves). While we don't get to see any of that go down, we at least get to see an older Laena once she's fiercely attached to the dragon she's claimed.

How To Train Your Dragon (Targaryen Style)

The series still presents dragons as a thing of wonder. During their time in Pentos, Laena and Daemon astound the locals with their performative dragon-riding, reminding us that dragons are a rarity. The Targaryens are the last dragonriders left and they treasure that fact so much that it's the primary motivator for their incestuous history: they fear that marrying outside of their House and diluting their bloodline will eventually lead to losing their connection with dragons. Based on the fact that there are multiple instances of Targaryens having kids outside the family tree and still producing dragonriders, there's not a lot to back this theory up — but it's worth mentioning that they're so protective of that connection.

The sixth episode sees the young Targaryen and Velaryon children down in the dragonpits, following what I assume to be their everyday schooling routine. The most important class of the day is How To Train Your Dragon, in which they bond with their growing dragons and command them in High Valyrian. We learn from the dragon wranglers (a job that probably has a bleak turnover rate) that once the bond is strong rough, the dragons will only respond to commands from their rider. Isn't it cute when Jaecerys finally gets to say "dracarys" and Vermax burns a goat? One day, that sweet child might command his dragon to burn down cities. Adorable stuff!

A Critical Crisis Of Identity

Along with budding dragoriders like Jacaerys, Lucerys, Aegon and Baela, we also get a glimpse of the tortured Targaryen kids who have dragoriding in their blood, but no dragon of their own. Evidently, Daemon Targaryen (worst father of the year) favors his daughter Baela because her egg hatched. Meanwhile, young Rhaena is left to hold her childhood egg by the fire, feeling like an unwanted outsider because she lacks a dragon. The same is true of Alicent's second son Aemond, who makes the mistake of venturing into the dragon pits alone, hoping an unclaimed dragon will be his to bond with. 

As conflict continues to boil over in "House of the Dragon," the questions of who can ride a dragon, which side has more dragons, and how many riders they have at the ready will be crucial. We've been getting hints at this since the very beginning: like Otto Hightower's fear over Daemon stealing a dragon egg or even Viserys' excitement when Rhaenyra offers Aemond one of Syrax's eggs. Dragon eggs are a hot commodity, or as Otto put it, "dangerous weapons." Aegon the Conqueror took over all of Westeros (minus Dorne) with only three dragons. Together, Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion killed four thousand men on the field of battle, burning them alive with ease. Soon, there will be 17 distinct dragons on the board for the taking. So should one section of this family rise up against the other, the dragons may be a deciding factor — but only if they have a rider to tame them.

Read this next: Every Game Of Thrones Spin-Off Show In Development

The post Finally, House of the Dragon Highlights The Importance of the Dragons appeared first on /Film.

A tweet from Night School Studio announces a delay to OXENFREE II: Lost Signals. This actually became news at the start of this year when the adventure sequel failed to live up to its announced 2021...

Today marks the end of the review embargo on AMD's 7000-series. The first official evaluations of the new Ryzen CPUs have arrived. Here is your moment of Zen 4: Ryzen 7600X and 7950X review- Zen 4...

While much of AMD's briefings for the Ryzen 7000 desktop series were focused on gaming and other consumer workloads, one of the most exciting aspects for me with the Ryzen 7000 series is AMD now supporting AVX-512. But rather going for a 512-bit FPU data path and the possibility of reduced clock frequencies and power/thermal concerns, they employed a 256-bit "double pumping" strategy. When getting the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X in the lab, exploring the AMD Zen 4 AVX-512 performance was one of the areas I was most excited to evaluate. From the benchmarks about to be shown, AMD's initial AVX-512 implementation is promising and has me all the more excited for finding it on AMD EPYC "Genoa" processors.

Today the review embargo expires on the AMD Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors ahead of their retail availability this week. Over the past two weeks I have been testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X processors as the initial review samples (I should be receiving the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs this week, AMD is staggering their review seeding of the different models). In this article to get things started are my initial Linux gaming benchmarks with the Ryzen 9 7900X/7950X compared to an assortment of other AMD and Intel systems.

The review embargo just lifted for the AMD Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors ahead of their retail availability this week. As such there are a few Phoronix articles today looking at these Zen 4 processors under Linux and many benchmarks whole several more follow-up articles will be coming over the weeks ahead. For the launch-day review I have the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X processors. Let's take a look at the significant performance improvements to find with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 series under Linux.

AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak recently uncovered that a ~20 year old chipset workaround in the Linux kernel still being applied to modern AMD systems is responsible in some cases for hurting performance on modern Zen hardware. Fortunately, a fix is on the way for limiting that workaround to old systems and in turn helping with performance for modern systems...

Nick Desaulniers with Google who has been known for his contributions around compiling the Linux kernel with LLVM/Clang has recently taken to the challenge of being able to compile the Linux kernel under macOS...

Director Jorma Taccone's "MacGruber" was always destined to become a cult hit. The 2010 action-comedy movie is based on a recurring "Saturday Night Live" sketch in which Will Forte plays special ops agent MacGruber, the son of expert problem-solver Angus MacGyver from the popular 1980s TV show "MacGyver." Far from a chip off the old block, MacGruber is quite incompetent at his job and never fails to blow himself up while trying to disarm deadly explosives.

Taking things a step further, the "MacGruber" movie is a no-holds-barred satire of macho retro action film cliché. MacGruber himself (once again played by Forte, who also co-wrote the script) is depicted in the movie as a mullet-ed, rip their throat out first, ask questions later type with a dark backstory whose fiancée was killed by his arch-enemy, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). Of course, in one of the film's many NSFW exchanges, MacGruber reveals his tragic past is, er, much less derivative than it sounds.

With the freedom afforded by an R-rating, Forte, Taccone, and their co-writer John Solomon don't hold back when it comes to lewdly over-the-top gags either, from MacGruber having sex with the ghost of his fiancée in a graveyard to the rather peculiar de facto trick he uses to distract his adversaries. There was, however, one joke that Kilmer drew the line at — one that involved MacGruber tearing off a very different part of Cunth's anatomy than his throat.

'Let Me Stop You Right There'

Over the course of the movie, MacGruber constantly threatens to take his revenge against Cunth, promising him, "I'm gonna rip your d*** off and shove it in your mouth." In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment to mark the film's 10-year anniversary in 2020, Taccone revealed the original plan was, in fact, to pay off this running joke just the way MacGruber promised, at least until Kilmer shot the idea down:

"We wanted to shove the d*** into [Kilmer's] mouth. We pitched it so many times. I tried to tell him, 'It'll be beautifully shot. The dick's gonna come off, it's gonna go up [in the air] and the sun will be behind it, it's gonna be a silhouette, like really beautifully shot, and then it'll go into your mouth.' He's like, 'Let me stop you right there.'"

Despite Kilmer's refusal to sign off on this particularly gruesome gag, his evil-doing terrorist still meets his maker in a manner befitting the rest of the film (which is very knowing in the way it uses extreme humor to send up displays of machismo in action cinema). "MacGruber" itself, on the other hand, failed to make much of an impression at first, bombing at the box office and earning mixed reviews. In time, though, it found a cult fan base that was firmly on its wavelength, so much so it convinced Peacock to release a streaming series follow-up in 2021.

It's only too bad the "MacGruber" show wasn't able to snag the movie's super-fan, Christopher Nolan, as a director. One can only imagine how he might've handled MacGruber's predilection for tearing body parts off his enemies.

Read this next: The 18 Best Action Movie Actors Ranked

The post Val Kilmer Had To Pump The Brakes On A Particularly Gruesome MacGruber Stunt appeared first on /Film.

After testing the Ryzen 9 7950X, SiSoftware has also published their impressions of AMD's Ryzen 7 7700X & Ryzen 5 7600X CPUs.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X & Ryzen 5 7600X "Zen 4" CPUs Score Great Pre-Launch Reviews By SiSoftware

SiSoftware used its own benchmark software and entries made within them to round up the performance and efficiency of the upcoming Zen 4 CPUs. The tests are limited to specific tests in the company's SiSoftware Sandra benchmarking software. Additionally, the line graphs focused on the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X have typographical mistakes, such as the Ryzen 5 7600X at one point is labeled as the Ryzen 5 7760X, and the i5-12600K shows that it is an i7 processor is also incorrect. Grammatical errors aside, these tests are still our first look into the actual performance of the two processors.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X delivers a 39% and the Ryzen 5 7600X delivers a 48% overall performance improvement versus their predecessors. Talking specifically about the Ryzen 7 7700X, the CPU has great value compared to Zen 3 and matches its Intel rivals from the 12th Gen Alder Lake family. The power efficiency has also been improved greatly.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X (SiSoftware) Review Performance / Efficiency / Value:

2 of 9

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU Review Conclusion (SiSoftware)

Unlike the higher end models (7950X, 7900X) – our 7700X has more modest clock increases (vs. 5800X) and also maintains the same TDP/PPT (vs. 5800X) which does not seem to allow it the same large performance uplift we’ve seen in other Zen4s (7950X, 7900X). Still, we see 39% overall performance uplift which is pretty significant.

Also, unlike more core versions – our 7700X has the same number of big/P cores (8C/16T) vs. Intel’s ADL (12700K with 8C + 4c) and less overall cores. It thus cannot always beat ADL though it generally does consistently – unlike the previous Zen3 (5800X) that would generally lose against it. With future Intel’s RPL adding twice (2x) more little cores, performance may be more matched.

The launch (RRP) price is also a bit less, thus making Zen4 even better value than Zen3. It is now matching Intel’s ADL, while Zen3 was quite a bit more expensive.

Unlike the more core versions – TDP and Turbo (PTT) are the same, thus power efficiency is greatly improved. In practice, it is likely that Zen4 will consume more and require better cooling, but at least it is not a significant change vs. the old Zen3 version.

As we keep repeating (!) – unlike the higher end models – Zen4 (7700X) performance is not overwhelming against Intel’s ADL (AlderLake) – thus it is possible that RPL (RaptorLake) will be a lot more competitive at this level. We will need to wait and see. As consumers, we do need them to be competitive – otherwise we will see greatly increased prices even from the “underdog” as we have seen in the past.

via SiSoftware

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor shows comparable or slightly slower than the Core i5-12600K CPU regarding arithmetic benchmarks but performs better than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X in all tests by between seventeen to thirty-six percent. The AMD Zen 4 architecture shows a performance hike when matched against the Core i5-12600K processor in the vector SIMD benchmarks, except for one, where the results show that it only is slightly slower. In other tests, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is defeated by up to 86%.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (SiSoftware) Review Performance / Efficiency / Value:

2 of 9

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X CPU Review Conclusion (SiSoftware)

Like the higher end models (7950X, 7900X) – our 7600X has good clock increases (vs. 5600X) but also greatly increases TDP/PPT (61% higher vs 5600X) which makes less power efficient (-8% less) but still 48% faster overall.

Also, unlike more core versions – our 7600X has the same number of big/P cores (6C/12T) vs. Intel’s ADL (12600K with 6C + 4c) and less overall cores. It thus cannot always beat ADL though it generally does consistently – unlike the previous Zen3 (5600X) that would generally lose against it. With future Intel’s RPL adding twice (2x) more little cores, performance may be more matched.

A new AM5 mainboard is required – but hopefully it will last you many more updates than the competition – possibly Zen7 (!) with 64C/128T (!) if things progress in the same manner we’ve seen until now. DDR5 memory has come down somewhat by now and brings much needed memory bandwidth improvements and USB 4.0 is very much needed for (very) high speed external devices. Not to mention PCIe5 support for future NVMe and GP-GPU components.

Also keep an eye for the 3D-VCache version with much larger L3 cache (96MB vs. 32MB) if your data workloads are large.

“Good things come to those who wait” it is said; in this case AMD has definitely delivered!

As we keep repeating (!) – unlike the higher end models – Zen4 (7600X) performance is not overwhelming against Intel’s ADL (AlderLake) – thus it is possible that RPL (RaptorLake) will be a lot more competitive at this level. We will need to wait and see. As consumers, we do need them to be competitive – otherwise we will see greatly increased prices even from the “underdog” as we have seen in the past.

via SiSoftware

The AMD Zen 4 architecture outperforms the previous Zen 3 architecture in the image processing test due to the AVX512 compatibility and usage. In most trials, it is significantly over two times faster but does come short in some tests compared to the Intel Core i5-12600K.

There were also noticeable improvements from AMD in the inter-thread and core latencies in the same module, but the results were reasonably negligible. Regarding performance versus power, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X does not bode well as the TDP has changed from 65W to 105W in keeping with the improvement on performance per Watt against Intel's current series. In addition to these results, Videocardz has also published the Cinebench numbers for all four Zen 4 CPUs, the Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X & Ryzen 5 7600X. You can check them out in the chart below:

These are really strong figures against the Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 family and we can't wait to see the AMD Ryzen 7000 chips hit retail on 27th September so users can enjoy some huge uplifts in the single and multi-core workloads.

AMD Ryzen 7000 'Raphael' Desktop CPU Specs (Official):

CPU Name	Architecture	Process Node	Cores / Threads	Base Clock	Boost Clock (SC Max)	Cache	TDP	Prices (TBD)
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X	Zen 4	5nm	16/32	4.5 GHz	5.7 GHz	80 MB (64+16)	170W	$699 US
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X	Zen 4	5nm	12/24	4.7 GHz	5.6 GHz	76 MB (64+12)	170W	$549 US
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	Zen 4	5nm	8/16	4.5 GHz	5.4 GHz	40 MB (32+8)	105W	$399 US
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X	Zen 4	5nm	6/12	4.7 GHz	5.3 GHz	38 MB (32+6)	105W	$299 US

The post AMD Ryzen 7 7700X & Ryzen 5 7600X Are A Hit In Pre-Launch Reviews, Full Lineup Including Ryzen 9 7950X & 7900X Get Cinebench Benchmark by Jason R. Wilson appeared first on Wccftech.

The Rack, a VR pool game on Steam will soon go from free to paid so get it while you can. Once you claim the game and add it to your Steam library, you can keep it forever.

The post Grab the VR Pool Game The Rack on Steam While it’s Free appeared first on Indie Game Bundles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Daily Beast: Luis Eduardo Garrido couldn't wait to test out his colleague's newest creation. Garrido, a psychology and methodology researcher at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic, drove two hours between his university's campuses to try a virtual reality experience that was designed to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder and different types of phobias. But a couple of minutes after he put on the headset, he could tell something was wrong. "I started feeling bad," Garrido told The Daily Beast. He was experiencing an unsettling bout of dizziness and nausea. He tried to push through but ultimately had to abort the simulation almost as soon as he started. "Honestly, I don't think I lasted five minutes trying out the application," he said. Garrido had contracted cybersickness, a form of motion sickness that can affect users of VR technology. It was so severe that he worried about his ability to drive home, and it took hours for him to recover from the five-minute simulation. Though motion sickness has afflicted humans for thousands of years, cybersickness is a much newer condition. While this means that many of its causes and symptoms are understood, other basic questions -- like how common cybersickness is, and whether there are ways to fully prevent it -- are only just starting to be studied. After Garrido's experience, a colleague told him that only around 2 percent of people feel cybersickness. But at a presentation for prospective students, Garrido watched as volunteers from the audience walked to the front of an auditorium to demo a VR headset -- only to return shakily to their seats. "I could see from afar that they were getting sweaty and kind of uncomfortable," he recalled. "I said to myself, 'Maybe I'm not the only one.'" As companies like Meta (nee Facebook) make big bets that augmented reality and virtual reality technology will go mainstream, the tech industry is still trying to figure out how to better recruit users to the metaverse, and get them to stay once there. But experts worry that cybersickness could derail these plans for good unless developers find some remedies soon. "The issue is actually something of a catch-22: In order to make VR more accessible and affordable, companies are making devices smaller and running them on less powerful processors," adds the report. "But these changes introduce dizzying graphics -- which inevitably causes more people to experience cybersickness." "At the same time, a growing body of research suggests cybersickness is vastly more pervasive than previously thought -- perhaps afflicting more than half of all potential users." When Garrido conducted his own study of 92 people, the results indicated that more than 65 percent of people experienced symptoms of cybersickness -- a sharp contrast to the 2 percent estimate Garrido had been told. He says that these results should be concerning for developers. "If people have this type of bad experience with something, they're not going to try it again," Garrido said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.