What sets the new model apart is a focus on the emotions rather than the specific content of the social media texts being analyzed. In a paper presented at the 20th International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, the researchers show that this approach performs better over time, irrespective of the topics discussed in the posts.

There are many reasons why people don't seek help for mental health disorders—stigma, high costs, and lack of access to services are some common barriers. There is also a tendency to minimize signs of mental disorders or conflate them with stress, says Xiaobo Guo, Guarini '24, a co-author of the paper. It's possible that they will seek help with some prompting, he says, and that's where digital screening tools can make a difference.

"Social media offers an easy way to tap into people's behaviors," says Guo. The data is voluntary and public, published for others to read, he says.

Reddit, which offers a massive network of user forums, was their platform of choice because it has nearly half a billion active users who discuss a wide range of topics. The posts and comments are publicly available, and the researchers could collect data dating back to 2011.

In their study, the researchers focused on what they call emotional disorders—major depressive, anxiety, and bipolar disorders—which are characterized by distinct emotional patterns. They looked at data from users who had self-reported as having one of these disorders and from users without any known mental disorders.

They trained their model to label the emotions expressed in users' posts and map the emotional transitions between different posts, so a post could be labeled "joy," "anger," "sadness," "fear," "no emotion," or a combination of these. The map is a matrix that would show how likely it was that a user went from any one state to another, such as from anger to a neutral state of no emotion.

Different emotional disorders have their own signature patterns of emotional transitions. By creating an emotional "fingerprint" for a user and comparing it to established signatures of emotional disorders, the model can detect them. To validate their results, they tested it on posts that were not used during training and show that the model accurately predicts which users may or may not have one of these disorders.

This approach sidesteps an important problem called "information leakage" that typical screening tools run into, says Soroush Vosoughi, assistant professor of computer science and another co-author. Other models are built around scrutinizing and relying on the content of the text, he says, and while the models show high performance, they can also be misleading.

For instance, if a model learns to correlate "COVID" with "sadness" or "anxiety," Vosoughi explains, it will naturally assume that a scientist studying and posting (quite dispassionately) about COVID-19 is suffering from depression or anxiety. On the other hand, the new model only zeroes in on the emotion and learns nothing about the particular topic or event described in the posts.

While the researchers don't look at intervention strategies, they hope this work can point the way to prevention. In their paper, they make a strong case for more thoughtful scrutiny of models based on social media data. "It's very important to have models that perform well," says Vosoughi, "but also really understand their working, biases, and limitations."

Source

Apple will be holding its next event online on March 8th, the company announced today with an invite featuring the “peek performance” tagline, and multicolored Apple logo that could hint at the colors of new devices.

The company didn’t disclose further details about what the virtual event will entail, beyond the timing set for 1PM ET / 10AM PT.

However, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, who is often a reliable source for Apple rumors, speculates Apple may announce a low-cost iPhone SE. The new device, he suggests, will arrive with 5G, a faster A15 CPU chip, and better cameras. It will share the same design as the current iPhone SE, however, which means the new SE may also retain the Touch ID feature.

Meanwhile, Gurman also theorizes Apple will announce the latest iteration of the iPad Air. The new tablet is expected to arrive with a new CPU and 5G for cellular-equipped models. Apple, Gurman postulates, could additionally roll out the new iOS 15.4 update, making it possible to unlock Face ID-equipped iPhones and iPads while wearing a face mask. A Universal Control feature is additionally expected to make its debut with the new update, which would mean users could use one keyboard and mouse across multiple iPads and Macs.

It’s also rumored another Mac with Apple-designed chips may arrive in March, but that won’t be something we’ll likely see at this particular event. Neither will we most likely see the new iPhone 14 models, AirPods, Apple Watches, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac Pro desktops rumored to launch later in 2022.

Apple officially announces ‘Peek Performance’ March 8th event

The world’s biggest chipmakers are coming together to create a new Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) system for integrating chiplets together in future semiconductor designs.

Virtually every major name in processor technology is onboard with the standardization effort, including foundry owners like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung and major players in semiconductor-adjacent spaces, like AMD, Arm, Qualcomm, Meta, Google Cloud, and Microsoft.

As the name alludes, UCIe is aiming to take the same broad ecosystem model PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) has used for years, expanded over to chiplets— tiny, more specialized chips that only do a few specific functions.

The goal with UCIe is to create a standard for connecting chiplets together, making it easier for companies to mix and match different chiplet components when building SoCs. The idea is that tech companies will be able to simply slot in different chiplet components into their designs, similar to how you can simply slot in any PCIe compatible accessory to your computer (regardless of the individual companies that made each part).

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to make a modern system-on-a-chip (SoC). Integrated monolithic chips, the most traditional method, pack all the bits and pieces of a semiconductor into a single printed piece of silicon.

Chiplets take a different approach. Instead of making one big chip with all the components on it, chiplets break things up into smaller components that are then combined into a larger processor.

There are a few benefits to the chiplet system. Chiplets can lead to less waste (for example, if a core doesn’t work, it’s easier to throw away one of two eight-core chiplets than it is to lose a full 16-core monolithic chip). There are also benefits in chip design, allowing companies to shrink down critical components (like CPU cores) to new, smaller processing nodes without having to shrink down the entirety of the SoC to match. Lastly, combining chiplets together lets companies make bigger chips than they could with a single, monolithic design.

AMD’s recent Zen 2 and Zen 3-based Ryzen chips are some of the most prominent examples of modern chiplet designs: each Zen 3 processor, for example, is made out of 7nm eight-core chiplets for the CPU / GPU components from TSMC, combined with an I/O chiplet built on older nodes from GlobalFoundries.

The UCIe project is still very much in the early stages, though. Right now, the standardization process is focused on establishing rules for interconnecting chiplets together into broader packages. But there are plans to create a UCIe industry organization that will eventually help define next-generation UCIe technology, including “chiplet form factor, management, enhanced security, and other essential protocols” in the future.

That means that there could one day be an entire chiplet ecosystem that would let companies build a custom SoC by shopping around for different components to suit their needs — just like you’d build a gaming PC. And that’s a big benefit for companies like AMD or Qualcomm as they look to design and build even more powerful and complex chips going forward (which, in turn, is good motivation for foundries like TSMC and Samsung to get on board, too.)

A new standard could let companies build processors out of Lego-like chiplets

The "generally available" version of the Microsoft Store is nested inside microsoft.com, but it seems like the firm is also working on an updated version over at apps.microsoft.com. This was spotted by @FireCubeStudios on Twitter, courtesy of @SapphirePublic.

The new page is titled "Windows Apps Preview", which is in line with the naming convention of the current experience which is dubbed "Windows Apps" and doesn't include the "Preview" text, obviously. The updated page serves the same goal of offering an online portal that you can use to explore content when you don't have access to a device that has the Microsoft Store installed.

The design language of the Windows Apps Preview is closer to Windows 11 with all the new minimalist icons and rounded corners. It isn't quite as flashy as the actual Microsoft Store app and doesn't have dark mode either, but then again, it's in preview. There are some other aesthetics missing too, so it doesn't line up exactly with the current Microsoft Store experience but the intent is clear. The core functionality, including reviews, ratings, app descriptions, and an install button is all there.

What's rather interesting at this stage is that portal only offers apps, no games, movies, or TV shows. Clicking on the dedicated option for either of these categories in the drop-down takes you to the generally available web portal on microsoft.com. That said, a notable improvement spotted by Windows Central in this iteration is that the unpackaged Win32 apps are listed too. It's likely that Microsoft will further polish and expand this experience in the coming weeks and months before formally announcing it.

The Microsoft Store has a new web portal with Windows 11 design

MediaTek might have just beaten out Qualcomm to claim the biggest market share of any chipmaker for Android phones in the United States — at least, according to one analyst group.

According to IDC’s quarterly mobile phone sales tracker, as Q4 2021 MediaTek chips account for 51 percent of all Android phones in the United States, compared to 47 percent for Qualcomm, as spotted by PCMag. Those numbers are a stark inversion from the previous quarter, where MediaTek had a 41 percent market share to Qualcomm’s 56 percent.

There are conflicting reports, however: Counterpoint Research’s own report puts the Q4 2021 split at 55 percent for Qualcomm, and 37 percent for MediaTek, so it’s possible that Qualcomm is still holding on to its crown for now.

MediaTek isn’t as much of a household name for smartphone processors as Qualcomm (which has long been the dominant force for Android phones in the US, especially for high-end flagships). But the company has been steadily building out its presence in the US in low- and mid-range devices, including the LG Velvet or the Moto G Pure.

The trick for MediaTek is convincing manufacturers and customers alike that its more premium chips — like its flagship Dimensity 9000, which the company says is more powerful than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 — are worth trying out as it continues to try to break into the high-end Android device market.

That said, MediaTek isn’t resting on its laurels, either: the company has announced a trio of new chips that will look to further its aims of offering more powerful 5G chips. At the top of the market are the Dimensity 8100 and Dimensity 8000, which are trickle-down cousins to the more powerful Dimensity 9000 flagship.

While both of those chips be built on TSMC’s 5nm node (instead of the 4nm process used by the Dimensity 9000) and use less powerful CPU and GPU cores, they’ll offer some of the AI and 5G features debuted on the higher-end platform. Additionally, the company also announced a new 5G-capable Dimensity 1300 chipset, an upgraded version of the company’s Dimensity 1200 model with improvements for AI performance.

All three of the new chips are set to debut in smartphones sometime in the first quarter of 2022 — where they’ll presumably look to help MediaTek continue to grow in the US (whether it’s actually beaten out Qualcomm or not).

Update March 1st, 3:30pm ET: Added additional information from Counterpoint Research to note that there are conflicting reports as to whether MediaTek has actually overtaken Qualcomm in US market share.

MediaTek might have overtaken Qualcomm in US Android marketshare

Hands-on: Gmail’s new sidebar feels like a big banner ad for Google Chat

In his Power On newsletter, Gurman has said that the rumored foldable could be an iPad/MacBook hybrid with either a physical keyboard or a virtual one. However, sources close to Gurman said that Apple would settle on the touch screen keyboard for the MacBook/iPad hybrid. Gurman wrote:

I’m told Apple has indeed been exploring a dual-screen, foldable MacBook/iPad hybrid that would take the second approach. It would trade in the physical keyboard and trackpad for a fully touch-screen base.

Previously, analyst Ross Young said that Apple could launch a MacBook with a foldable display in 2025. Gurman, however, has shared no information about the possibility of the device debuting in 2025.

If all this is true, Apple would be a late entrant in the foldable laptop market as PC makers such as Asus and Lenovo have already released their first-ever foldable screen laptop PCs in the form of Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold and ZenBook 17 Fold, respectively.

Intel is another company that seems to have big plans for foldable PCs. At CES 2022, the company announced Intel Evo for PCs with foldable screens. The company also said that foldable screen PCs that meet the Intel Evo specs requirement might hit the market later this year.

Source: Mark Gurman

Leak sheds more light into rumored foldable iPad/MacBook hybrid

Apple may be working on a device with a 20-inch foldable display, which Apple tracker Mark Gurman describes as an “iPad / MacBook hybrid” in Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter.

Gurman says that Apple is, indeed, exploring the possibility of a folding device of the sort, backing up the claims of Ross Young, the CEO and analyst at Display Supply Chain Consultants. Last week, Young brought attention to Apple’s supposed plans to develop a device with a large, folding screen, and Gurman has added some more depth to this rumor.

Gurman claims the device will feature a dual-screen display that omits a physical keyboard and trackpad — navigating and typing on the device will be entirely touchscreen-based. In terms of a potential release date, Gurman cites Young’s prediction of 2026, around the same time Apple’s rumored car is set to launch.

Lenovo has already done something similar with its ThinkPad X1 Fold, which sports a 13-inch display that folds in the center to become a touchscreen laptop. But as my colleague Monica Chin notes in our review of the device, Lenovo hasn’t perfected the technology just yet. With a potential release set as far back as 2026, Apple has quite a bit of time to get things right — that is, if the foldable device ever materializes.

Apple is reportedly working on a device with a 20-inch folding display

Pesky Windows 11 requirements

Microsoft has started showing a watermark on unsupported machines running Windows 11 via the Insider Program. The company introduced this "System requirements not met" watermark in the bottom right corner of the desktop wallpaper, and for some, it may seem seem similar to the "Activate Windows" watermark. However, the latest watermark only appears on the wallpaper and does not overlay over other apps or windows.

It is currently unclear if Microsoft plans to roll this watermark out to the generally available (GA) version of Windows 11, but if the advisory is bothering you, we have a handy guide here detailing how to remove it. It is important to note that this watermark is in addition to a cautionary message that Microsoft already displays in the Settings app on Insider PCs.

Recently, the Redmond tech giant cautioned that it will make it mandatory to have a Microsoft account and an active internet connection when setting up a Windows 11 Pro device. However, we do have a partial workaround for this hurdle as well, and you can view all the details here.

PWA hub in Microsoft Edge

We already know that Microsoft is testing Skype Meet Now integration with its Edge browser, but now we have learned that the company is also building a dedicated hub for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Essentially, Microsoft is encouraging users to install PWAs of their favorite websites and then giving them a dedicated hub so you can manage them with ease. It's not clear when, or if, this apps section will become available in the Stable channel, but if you're eager to test it out, you should give Edge Canary a go. That said, this is being rolled out in a controlled manner, so not everyone on Edge Canary has access to it yet.

And while we are talking about browsers, be careful in visiting and downloading content from websites. Security researchers have discovered a botnet dubbed Kraken that can infiltrate your PC, mark itself as an exclusion in Windows Defender scans, and then download malicious payloads and steal your information. You can find all the important details in our coverage here.

Windows 11 Dev Channel build 22563

Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 Dev Channel build 22563 this week. While it's not quite as major as the one preceding it - build 22557 -, there are definitely some nifty enhancements here and there such as a Tablet-optimized taskbar, dynamic widgets, and a new group policy for managing Windows Update notifications. There's a long list of bug fixes and known issues too that you can check out here.

While we are on the topic, many people are facing issues with File Explorer crashing when using the Win + X shortcut. Although Microsoft seemingly hasn't acknowledged the problem and its scale yet, an unofficial workaround is already available.

What Microsoft has acknowledged instead is that some files may not get deleted even after triggering a factory reset in Windows 10 and Windows 11. The company is investigating the issue and is working on a fix, but has offered some mitigations in the meantime.

In news related to files, Microsoft is making some significant changes to the OneDrive Files On-Demand experience in macOS, based on user feedback from the previous release of the OneDrive sync client. Check out all the details here.

Dev Channel

• A new report claims that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was opportunistic, noting that it began the process days after news of the sexual harassment cover-up involving CEO Bobby Kotick broke
• Paramount's upcoming Halo series will show Master Chief's face
• Microsoft-owned company Bethesda is shutting down its game launcher and moving its services to Steam
• Bing received a few travel-centric features this week
• U.S. Bank has announced a partnership with Microsoft and chosen Azure its primary cloud platform
• Microsoft has announced new security capabilities for multi-cloud environments and a public preview of CloudKnox Permissions Management

Under the spotlight

Neowin News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe reviewed highly-anticipated title Elden Ring this week. His 4,000+ word piece about the game is filled with praises about the game's mechanics, its well-crafted environments, and rewarding gameplay design. Regardless of whether you like Souls-likes or not, Pulasthi's spoiler-free review is worth checking out, give it a read here.

Meanwhile, Neowin's Asher Madan published a mini-review of Ziggurat 2 played on the Xbox Series X. He described the game as one of the best roguelikes ever so if that genre intrigues you, do check out his review here.

Next up, I took a Closer Look at three areas in Windows 11 Dev Channel. The first relates with enhancements to the Task Manager which features a modern design, dark mode, and a couple of nifty features.

Then, I talked about improvements to the user experience in Snap Layouts. There are minor changes but they add up to enhance the overall experience.

Finally, I discussed all the major changes present in File Explorer recent builds of Windows 11 Dev Channel. You can now pin individual files to Quick Access and also have the ability to get an overview of OneDrive storage directly in File Explorer. There are a couple of other neat improvements too and you can read more about all the latest stuff here.

While this is primarily a roundup of Microsoft news, we sometimes highlight our other original pieces of content too. If you're on the lookout for a robovac, do check out Neowin co-founder Steven Parker's review of the Zigma Spark 980, that costs just $299.

Microsoft Weekly: Pesky Windows 11 requirements, build 22563, and Edge PWA hub

Valve just launched its Steam Deck handheld console, but it seems like the company's already coming up with a plan of action for a "Steam Deck 2", or at least that's what GamesRadar+ speculates the sequel to Valve's compact gaming PC will be called. However, there is not a lot of substantial evidence to support this speculation.

Initial bits of information suggest that the company aims to offer users an even more powerful portable PC gaming experience with capabilities that "you won't find on a desktop", suggesting virtual reality might be at play.

In an interview for Edge Magazine, Valve's co-founder and president, Gabe Newell stated:

The first step is to let you play the great games that exist today. The second iterations are going to be more about: What are the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desktop or laptop gaming environment?

He further noted:

One of the things [Steam Deck] represents is battery-capable, high-performance horsepower that eventually you could use in VR applications as well. You can take the PC and build something that is much more transportable. We’re not really there yet, but this is a stepping stone.

Newell also pointed out that the most expensive version of the Steam Deck, featuring 512 GB of storage and an anti-glare screen, was also the most popular with gamers who pre-ordered the device.

Commenting on the overwhelming popularity of the most expensive version, Newell stated:

That’s an example of us being a little surprised by what our customers are telling us. They’re basically saying, ‘We would like an even more expensive version of this,’ in terms of horsepower capabilities or whatever. You know, that’s why we always love to get something out there and ship it. Because we learn a lot from that, and it helps frame our thinking for Deck 2.

Moreover, he said that the company is also thinking of ways by which it can make further use of the portable form factor. To know more, we'll have to wait until there are further statements from the company.

Source: GamesRadar+ via TechRadar

Steam Deck 2 will be even more powerful, offer surprising features

Intel has announced the launch of the Intel NUC 12 Extreme, and the Intel NUC 12 Extreme Compute Element, code-named Dragon Canyon, and Eden Bay, respectively. It is a highly modular desktop PC kit that has been developed to deliver "phenomenal performance" for high-end gaming and content creation tasks.

The Intel NUC 12 Extreme provides high performance and capabilities that professional creators and gamers require in a compact and modular form factor, with the new 12th Gen Intel Core desktop processors, capacity for full-size 12-inch discrete graphics cards, and a full range of I/O ports including Thunderbolt 4.

Talking about the Intel NUC 12 Extreme, a spokesperson from Intel stated:

The Intel NUC 12 Extreme brings Intel’s new performance hybrid architecture and a socketed motherboard to the NUC line for the first time. For those who want a powerful system with a small footprint and more versatility than ever before, the Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit is an outstanding option.

The latest Intel NUC comes with features including performance hybrid architecture and access to faster PCIe interfaces, accelerating load times, all in a footprint capable of fitting on any desk. The modular Intel NUC 12 Extreme Compute Element allows enthusiast gamers and creators to produce their own small form-factor designs, enabling users to configure the system footprint to their liking.

The NUC 12 Extreme provides breakthrough speeds with up to a 12th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, featuring eight Performance-cores (P-cores) and eight Efficient-cores (E-cores), 24 threads, and over 5.1 GHz turbo boost max frequency.

In addition to these features, it also includes Intel UHD Graphics 770 (32EU), support for over 64 GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 MHz SODIMMs, support for PCIe Gen5 x16 graphics cards, support for over three PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSDs, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211, and a 10Gbps Ethernet port standard; and supplementary 2.5Gbps Ethernet port on Intel Core i9 processor SKUs.

From the second quarter of 2022, the Intel NUC 12 Extreme will be available for the users. For Intel Core i7 and Intel Core i9 , pricing will range from $1,150 to $1,450, respectively.

With NUC 12 Extreme "Dragon Canyon", Intel adds socketed desktop processors to the NUC family

Now that both Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment — along with their various franchises — are owned by Microsoft, Fallout: New Vegas 2 may be a reality in the not-so-distant future. On a Giant Bomb podcast, VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb said that the possibility of a sequel has been thrown around. He said the following.

This is very early, but people have begun to have talks and say these words in sentences, and these words are 'Obsidian' and 'New Vegas 2'. We're talking years and years away. There's at least an interest and conversations happening about making something like that actually a reality.

Grubb is known for accurately leaking a lot of stories like these, and has an excellent track record. Once Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2, and possibly Pillars of Eternity 3 are completed, we may see a Fallout: New Vegas 2 from Obsidian Entertainment. However, only time will tell because there are a lot of Microsoft exclusives in the works at both teams.

Interest for Fallout: New Vegas 2 reportedly building at Microsoft

BioWare promises Dragon Age 4 is coming along just fine

Horizon Forbidden West keeps players involved in the narrative for a few hours before setting them loose in its open world. Courtesy of Sony

Frankly speaking, there is nothing more exciting—or daunting—than an open-world video game. Fire one up and you’re quickly faced with enough real estate to lose hours of your life happily exploring or an abyss in which to get frustratingly lost and bored. The world map can be either friend or foe, but it’s often hard to tell at the onset which game worlds are going to be welcoming and enticing and which are going to be an unfun time suck.

Horizon Forbidden West is the former, a game that tackles the concept of an open world incredibly well. To date, I’ve spent about 75 hours in the game, and even though I completed the main story a while ago, I’m still eager to spend time in its deliciously crafted world. Guerrilla Games’ follow-up to Horizon Zero Dawn is the kind of game that stays on its rails for the first five to 10 hours, pulling you into the narrative before releasing you to explore. It creates structure and a sense of the goals for gameplay—the ideal introduction to a game built around wide-open spaces.

This kind of action stands in stark contrast to an open-world game like The Witcher 3, which, while expansive, is also just too overwhelming. A few days into the game, I threw down my controller in frustration when I arrived at a massive city and realized it would take hours to traverse all of its streets, talk to all of its NPCs, and finish the quests. I still enjoyed the game somewhat, but it failed to lure me in the way Horizon Forbidden West did.

It’s easy to assume I was sucked in by Horizon Forbidden West and not The Witcher 3 because I had loved Zero Dawn and my only exposure to the Witcher universe before the game was the Henry Cavill show on Netflix. I don’t think that’s the case. Even if we were comparing Zero Dawn and The Witcher 3, we’d still be having this same discussion because even when the Horizon world was brand-new, its structured style drew me in in a way that Witcher 3’s more feral gameplay does not.

The Witcher 3 is designed to encourage you to explore before you tackle the main story quests, to the point that you’re actually punished if you don’t fully investigate an area before moving on. (If your current level is above the quest level, you get minimal or no experience points for completing quests. Let me tell you how frustrating that can be when you’re a person who likes to be constantly over-leveled so you don’t die all the time and you don’t find this out until 15 hours into a game.) I know some people thrive in games built like this, where there are no real rules or limits and the possibilities are endless; I am not one of them.

For me, it’s exhausting. Going into a game where I feel like I have very little structure or guidance and am just expected to explore and stumble upon things to do without already being invested in the world feels overwhelming. With Horizon Forbidden West, once I was really immersed and loving every second of the gameplay, I started relishing exploring every nook and cranny of the map. I really enjoyed backtracking and being able to pace myself the way I wanted to. When I started feeling aimless, I could just move forward with the main story, but I didn’t feel forced to focus on anything in particular. 

There’s no right or wrong way to do open worlds. Both of these approaches are valid and work for different kinds of gamers. But sometimes people put too much emphasis on the wonder of an open world, and the freedom to go anywhere. When that starts feeling like an obligation, it’s not freedom at all.

Horizon Forbidden West Does Open Worlds Right

PassMark is a popular benchmarking suite that measures the various aspects of a processor's performance as well as other PC parts too. The top PassMark single-thread performers are given in the image below.

As you may have noticed, we also included up to number 13 in the image that has Apple M1 Pro 10 Core and M1 Max 10 Core processors. We added these as the single-thread performance per watt of the new M1 processors is impressive considering they only take up around 35-40W of power.

Sadly for AMD fans, the story is pretty bad as the Ryzen chips are not even in the Top 25 since they are mostly all taken by Intel Alder Lake SKUs or Apple M1 parts. One can say that AMD has struggled to make a mark in the PassMark Top single-thread CPUs chart.

The first AMD processor comes at number 25 where the 16 core Ryzen 9 5950X makes an entry as it scores an average of 3,500 points. It is followed closely by AMD's 12 Core Ryzen 9 5900X and 8 core Ryzen 7 5800X.

Source: PassMark (Twitter)

Top 10 single-thread PassMark CPUs are now Intel only, AMD Ryzen nowhere in sight

Amazon’s Astro robot has been spotted in the wild... bringing people beer

The Call of Duty series is reportedly taking a break in 2023

Shadow Warrior 3 launches on March 1, 2022, and we haven't really seen a lot of gameplay that truly captures the essence of what to expect from the title. Luckily, that changed today. Developer Flying Wild Hog posted an almost 10-minute video showcasing the dragon's sanctuary.

The video features tense miniboss battles, jumping puzzles, and some bombastic action sequences involving swords. The dragon's lair is also quite colorful and features vibrant shades of blue and pink. However, the gameplay is where Shadow Warrior 3 shines. It seems much tighter, more responsive, and more thrilling than Shadow Warrior and Shadow Warrior 2.

Shadow Warrior 3 has only been announced for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. According to the Xbox Store, the title is also Optimized for Xbox Series X|S, but it's unclear what that entails at this time. Hopefully, we'll see a higher resolution or frame rate on Microsoft's new console. You can preorder it for $39.99 through Microsoft or the platform of your choice.

Shadow Warrior 3 gets extended gameplay footage, focuses on dragon's lair

A few days ago, we reported that Apple might be planning to release the headset at its WWDC event next year. Contrary to what we reported earlier, Digitimes now claims that Apple will launch the AR/VR headset as soon as this fall. The report also adds that the new headset will enter mass production in the August-September timeframe.

Moreover, the report claims that Apple has completed the engineering validation tests(EVT) of the AR/VR headset. In other words, Apple has finalized the prototype, which also explains why the company has given the go-ahead to make the headset in bulk quantities.

While the latest report may excite Apple fans, given that other prominent leakers are yet to confirm it, you should take everything that’s been said in the latest report with a pinch of salt.

As for the features and specifications, previous rumors suggest that the mixed-reality headset will be based on a new operating system called realityOS and will benefit from features such as Memojis and SharePlay. Also, it’s said to feature two 8K displays and Wi-Fi 6E.

Apple’s mixed-reality headset is expected to cost more than $3000.

Source: Digitimes (Paywall); via: MacRumors (1, 2)

Apple may announce its first-ever mixed-reality headset this fall

RIP Bethesda Launcher: Here’s how its nearly full transfer to Steam will work

SiSoft has also listed the specifications of the Arc graphics models, though the accuracy of the specs is a bit questionable here as the manufacturing process mentioned is TSMC 7nm even though Intel officially stated that it will be using TSMC's 6nm (N6) process.

The rest of the listed specifications match most of what we know so far about Arc. In this review, the Arc A380 graphics card was tested. This is the alleged 128 Execution Unit (EU) Intel Alchemist part also called "SKU4".

We first learned about this "A-series" naming scheme for first-gen Arc (Alchemist) GPUs back in September last year, and in December, the A380 SKU alongside others was also uncovered from Intel's driver.

Now, getting into the review itself, which is by the way, not a look at gaming performance. First up, we have a memory bandwidth test, and the Radeon RX 6500 XT really struggles here in download and upload bandwidth. That is expected given the narrow x4 PCIe bus of the 6500 XT. The A380 does okay here relative to Nvidia's RTX 3050 and the GTX 1660 Ti.

Up next, we have several general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) compute benchmarks (OpenCL / CUDA) using these four cards and as shown in the images below. The test comprises:

• Vector performance
• Image processing
• Scientific analysis
• Financial analysis
• Cryptography performance
• Hashing performance

SiSoft concludes in the end that the Intel Alchemist Arc A380 is an "OK" performer overall though "nothing special" as it expects this card to land at around $199:

Perhaps it was too much to expect a nVidia/AMD killer – but all in all it is a decent effort. YMMV.

Summary: OK for the price, nothing special: 7/10

Relatively speaking, the Arc A380's showing here is definitely more impressive compared to the recent Geekbench OpenCL leak of the flagship A700 series 512EU part. So it's possible that the final scores may be better for Arc as it looks like Intel is still tuning and tweaking the drivers.

Source and images: SiSoft via APISAK (Twitter)

Update: Added an image showing the SiSoft Arc A380 review's conclusion section

SiSoft posts first official review of Intel Arc Alchemist A380, says it's "nothing special"

Report: Qualcomm will support AV1 video codec in 2023

However, according to testing done by performance monitoring toolmaker CapFrameX, Nvidia's Ampere-based RTX 3000 cards are failing to save power. CapFrameX believes that the stock boosting algorithm for Nvidia is unable to efficiently control the core clocks and voltages for the tested Nvidia cards here as they were seen maxed out even with the framerate limiter in place.

In the image below on the right, an RTX 3090 was tested with a 60fps limit in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SotTR) and it was noticed that the GPU was consuming nearly double the power (~195W) using the stock settings. Meanwhile, a manually configured RTX 3090 (on the left) was using much less power at just ~110W.

The behavior was the same on the RTX 3070 Ti as well. 60, 120, and 144 fps locks were tested, alongside a no-limit scenario. These w conducted across two different resolutions, 1080p and 1440p. Aside from SotTR, Strange Brigade, DOOM Eternal, and Battlefield V were also tested.

Over on the AMD side, the Radeon RX 6800 XT was used for this. We reached out to CapFrameX regarding the driver versions used in the test. So far, we haven't heard back yet.

You may find more details on CapFrameX's original article linked at the source below.

Source and images: CapFrameX

Nvidia GeForce RTX cards clueless about saving power with fps lock, AMD wins easily

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, has claimed that Apple will launch as many as seven new Mac models this year:

• A new Mac mini with an M1 Pro chip
• A 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 chip, to succeed the 2020 model and sit below the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro in the line
• A Mac mini with an M2 chip
• A 24-inch iMac with an M2 chip
• A redesigned MacBook Air with an M2 chip
• A larger iMac Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max chip options
• A half-sized Mac Pro, the first with Apple Silicon, with the equivalent of either two or four M1 Max chips

Gurman previously claimed that Apple would launch a third-generation iPhone SE and a fifth-generation iPad Air at its March event. In his latest newsletter, however, Gurman claims that besides these two devices, Apple will launch at least one new Mac computer powered by the Apple silicon chips, and the likelihood is that it’ll either be the rumored high-end Mac mini or the new alleged iMac with mini LED display technology(via MacRumors).

As for which Mac computers will be updated first, Gurman believes that since the entry-level MacBook Pro and Mac mini are two of the oldest Apple Silicon Macs, these models are next in line to be upgraded with more powerful hardware than their predecessors.

Apart from new updated Mac computers, Apple is also expected to release iPhone 14, next-generation AirPods Pro 2, and more this year.

Apple to reportedly release as many as seven Mac models this year

Apple will reportedly debut an M2 chip with four new Macs this year