Keyrock

The guardian of Eternal Prison, Resident Evil 5 Jill Valentine. I did it! Battle's over... but wait... This time it's really over. 9 guardians down, I'm definitely in the home stretch now.

The Andy Dalton Era is upon us! Edit: At least it's a W, I guess.

Qapla'

Assisted barrel roll

@ComradeMaster We don't know yet how well Zen 3 is going to overclock. I expect it will be better than Zen 2, even the XT refresh, but 4.9 GHz across 16 cores is a big ask. I hope you can pull it off. If I can get 4.8 GHz across 12 cores I'll be thrilled.

Surtr, the guardian of Icefire Treetop: There is a lot I love about this game and I think the vast majority of it is very well designed. This is not a well designed boss fight. The concept is cool in theory, but there's way too much RNG involved. After a few failed attempts and finding out that the weapon fairy is actually counterproductive in this battle, I figured out how to manipulate Surtr's AI, so at this point I had the battle solved, but it still took me many more tries, even with the help of the healing fairy, because the RNG of the falling blocks can just straight up screw you over and put you in unwinnable positions. When I finally won it wasn't because I played any better, it was because I got a favorable block falling pattern. 8 guardians down. I'm just happy to have this battle behind me. Judging by how full my inventory is, I have to be fairly close to the end.

Alder Lake is what interests me from Intel, not for a desktop, but I may be in the market for a new lappy in a year or two and littleBIG seems extremely well suited for a lappy. I'm also looking forward to seeing Intel's discrete GPUs.

It's October, time for the annual batch of spooky games.

I'll be the one laughing when your copy of Cyberpunk 2077 takes 5.67 seconds to load and mine takes 5.42 seconds.

Yeah, but imagine how big my ePeen is going to be. Plus, the added speed might not matter much, but what about 5 years from now? I'm old enough to remember people saying "why would I ever need more than 40 MB of storage?" Brings back memories of that BLAZING FAST 486 DX2 processor.

As it turns out, faster memory controllers have hit the market. Samsung's 980 Pro is already available, featuring Samsung's own memory controller with 7000 MB/s read and 5000 MB/s write (for reference, PCIe 3.0 SSDs top out at 3500/3300) max transfer rates. What I'm waiting for is the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, featuring the brand new Phison E18 memory controller and 7000/6850 max transfer rates, plus a BEEFY heat sink. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus isn't on store shelves yet, but hopefully it arrives soon. I'm sure the price of the 2 TB model will make my wallet scream in agony, but that should be enough to cover my needs for the life of the rig I'm currently building (hopefully 5-6 years) and make those 200 GB games (you know they're coming) load nice and snappy like.

I'm sure AMD will fill out their lineup with more budget-friendly options eventually, but I doubt we'll see them this year.

Yeah, it would have been nice if they kept the prices lower, but AMD is in a position now that they don't have to be the budget brand, so the price hike is not unexpected. Oh well.

I usually get the Smuckers (no brand loyalty, that's just what the stores in my area have readily available) natural peanut butter. It's just peanuts, a tiny bit of salt and nothing else. I even prefer the taste to "regular" peanut butter because it's less sweet. The only down side is that the oil separates after it sits for a while and you have to stir the oil and the nearly rock hard chunk of peanut together.

What if I make a Star Citizen joke instead?

I'm looking forward to independent benchmarks. I'm sure AMD used the most advantageous settings possible for their own benchmarks, as does every manufacturer, but if those figures are representative of the broad picture and not just edge cases then Intel have got their work cut out for them. Hopefully Rocket Lake delivers, I want a competitive Intel. In the meantime, I'm excited to get my hands on probably a 5900X (must resist urge to buy 5950X) and build my new monster desktop.

Yeah, I would expect a future release. I don't know if this is just 1 person making these games, but I know it's a small studio with very limited resources. I'm just happy there is an alternative to EA's whale milking operation at all.

I have thought about picking up Axis Football in the past. It's been far too long since I've owned a football game and I can't bring myself to pick up any of EA's increasingly sad whaling games. The fact that Axis has native Linux support is also a plus. Can you name your own team and/or design the logo?

Here's a link to today's livestream, for convenience: Give me the good news, Lisa Su.

I am curious how much performance Intel can squeeze out of 14nm+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In 2030 AMD will be putting out 1 nm chips while Intel will be putting out 14nm+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I keed, I keed, I hope I keed

The Guardian of Hall of Malice Before you even reach this guardian, you have to go through a boss rush of about 10 sub-bosses. Most are not that hard, but it's a brutal grind regardless. The Echidna battle itself is really hard, I got my ass whooped many times without even coming close to beating her. It's basically a bullet hell fight, plus she has tons of HP. After much frustration I had an idea. I brought along the weapon fairy to the battle. I wasn't sure if the game would allow me to bring a fairy to a guardian battle and if the fairy could damage a guardian. Turns out the answers are yes and yes. It's fitting the weapon fairy is next to me on the victory screen, since she did at least half the damage. I almost felt like I was cheating. Still, it wasn't like I hacked a file to do this. If Nigoro didn't intend using a fairy during a boss fight, they shouldn't have made it possible. Plus, I'm not very good at hardcore platformers, I need all the help I can get. 7 guardians down.

Can someone explain to me the popularity of Panda Express? Local chinese food restaurants are ubiquitous, you can't walk two blocks anywhere in the US without running into one. They are dirt cheap, it only takes 10 to 15 minutes to prepare, and there's a 95% chance that it will be better tasting than Panda Express. Why would anyone EVER go to Panda Express rather than Dragon Wok, or whatever? Do Americans really crave below average orange chicken? What am I missing?

The Dallas Cowboys seem to be employing a plan where they let the opponent score at will for half the game then hope that the opponent self destructs in the second half. It's a bold strategy. The coaching genius of Mike McCarthy. While the other coach is playing checkers, he's playing with finger paints.

I remember watching a let's play of the first game, it looked jank as ****. The most notable thing about it was that you played as Not Jody Foster and got chased by a mostly naked old guy. Sadly, it looks like you won't be playing as Not Jody Foster as much in this one. Hopefully there will be at least as much old man naked ass as in the last one.