Maxon and its Cinebench R15 benchmark have been a big part of CPU benchmarking for quite some time now, with Cinebench R15 launching all the way back in September 2013 but the company has finally released a new version of its benchmark with all of the advancements of Maxon's Cinema 4D technology inside.

The new Cinebench R20 benchmark is a CPU-only benchmark, with Maxon removing the GPU benchmark portion out of the new run. In the new CPU benchmark it's also much more stressful on your hardware, with Maxon noting that "Cinebench R20 uses a much larger and more complex test scene than R15, requiring about 8x the computational power needed to render it. The test also requires about 4x the memory. Therefore, R15 and R20 results cannot be compared".

AMD unleashed its super-threaded Ryzen Threadripper CPUs in 2017 and continued that trend last year, and will have even more cores and threads in the third-gen Zen 2-based Threadrippers arriving soon. We need benchmarks like Cinebench to continue to expand and grow with next-gen CPU offerings, and here we have it. But there's one gigantic problem.

If you are a PC user and have never heard of VLC Media Player then you must of been hiding under a comfy rock somewhere, this media player is the go-to application for video streaming content in all of the whacky formats you can get.

VLC Media Player recently reached an awesome milestone, the program has been recorded to of been downloaded now over 3 billion times. The above Twitter post from founder of VLC's parent company, VideoLan, Ludovic Fauvet showcases VLC reaching 3 biillion downloads. The President and Lead Developer for VideoLan, Jean-Baptiste Kempf sat down with VentureBeat to discuss the success of VLC and what the developers have in-store for it in the future.

Kempf says that he plans to bring VR support to the application, this will add 3D interactions, stereo sound and add a virtual theatre feature. VLC recently rolled out an update that pushed the version of the program to v3.0.6, included within this update was support for HDR videos in AV1. Kempf says that when update 4.0.0 is ready it will be bringing playback improvements in scaling and video quality of HDR files. Looking towards the future now, Kempf also mentions that he would like to bring the media player to the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. I don't know how possible this idea would be, but it would be good to see VLC on both of these platforms.

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Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system developed and released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released on July 29, 2015. It is the first version of Windows that receives ongoing feature updates.

Windows 10 is designed to be compatible with the hardware, software, and peripherals you already own. And always-enabled updates help you stay current on features and security for the supported lifetime of your device.Windows 10 gives you absolutely the best experience for doing what you do.

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Gaming just got even better with Windows 10. Not only do your existing games work great, but now you can play and connect with gamers across Xbox One and Windows 10 devices. From the best casual games to a new generation of PC gaming, Windows 10 is built for games you love. Download Windows 10 Pro here first , after you installed it, then to activate the code.

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Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system developed and released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released on July 29, 2015. It is the first version of Windows that receives ongoing feature updates.

Drake's new album dropped a couple of days ago and it was beyond a mega success on two of the largest streaming platforms in the world: Spotify and Apple Music.

Apple Music tweeted that Drake's new album 'Scorpion' was streamed over 170 million times in 24 hours, while according to the numbers on Spotify Charts, we're looking at another 130 million streams. This means that Drake's new album was streamed over 300 million times in 24 hours, which is mind boggling.

Apple took to Instagram to announce that Scorpion was the #1 album in 92 countries, while Drake's new album consumed nearly the entire top 20 of Spotify's own Top 200 chart.

I don't know an enthusiast who doesn't know what GPUz is, and in my workflow it's used daily, but now TechPowerUp releasing GPUz v2.8.0 that includes a huge list of improvements.

The team has worked on driver crash issues for AMD's new Raven Ridge GPUs, with new GPUs like the Radeon RX 460 Mobile, RX 560 Mobile, RX 570 Mobile, RX 580 Mobile, RX 550 based on Baffin LE now supported under GPUz v2.8.0. For the change log on GPUz v2.8.0:

• Fixed crashes and other issues on AMD Ryzen Raven Ridge
• Added DXVA 2.0 hardware decoder info to Advanced Tab
• "Disable sensor" menu item now properly called "Hide"
• Improved VRAM usage monitoring on AMD
• Improved rendering performance of NVIDIA PerfCap sensor
• Improved AMD power limit reporting in Advanced Panel
• "MemVendor" is now included in XML dump output
• Fixed NVIDIA PerfCap sensor drawing outside its area
• Fixed "BIOS reading not supported" error on NVIDIA, on some motherboards
• Fixed HBM memory type detection in Advanced Tab on Fury X
• Fixed temperature misreadings on Vega
• Fixed "Digital Signature" label getting truncated on some hidpi screens
• Added support for RX 460 Mobile, RX 560 Mobile, RX 570 Mobile, RX 580 Mobile, RX 550 based on Baffin LE

You can download GPUz v2.8.0 here.

What was once thought to be impossible has been done, a developer known C Bel has created a 3D DOOM-like engine only using Microsoft excel formula.

C Bel took to Gamasutra to announce the creation and explained in great detail how he went about designing and constructing the 3D engine through only using excel. According to the notes provided on the Gamasutra post, the spreadsheet engine is meant to be a DOOM-like representation, which to be fair deserves quite a lot of praise as the resemblance can very well be seen.

Contrary to popular belief, the engine currently supports a number of different functionalities, such as real-time raytracing, occlusion calculation and basic illumination rendering. Full a full breakdown on the creation C Bel has made, visit the full article here.

VLC is one of the most-loved open-source pieces of software that transcends space and time, and has been the most anti-bloat, anti-BS super-lightweight software in Windows' history. Well, the new v3.0 "Vetinari" update has some massive changes in store.

We're looking at HDR10 support, and hardware-accelerated 4K/8K video on everything from smartphones, to PCs. VLC 3.0 works with Blu-ray's Java-based menus, and is even optimized for the notch on the new iPhone X. There's also Chromecast support for all devices and even in formats "not supported natively", while audio passthrough for HD audio codecs is featured in VLC 3.0 as well.

VLC 3.0 even supports 360-degree video and 3D Audio, while the new Vetinari update provides hardware decoding by default in order to hit that 4K and 8K playback, while 10-bit color and HDR are welcomed.

You can grab the new VLC 3.0 right here.

Microsoft has made some big changes to their next version of Office, with the company announcing that Office 2019 will be released later this year, but only Windows 10 users will be able to enjoy it.

Office 2019 will only work on select Microsoft operating systems, including:

• Any supported Windows 10 SAC (Semi-Annual Channel) release
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) 2018
• The next LTSC release of Windows Server

Now that we know Office 2019 will only work with Windows 10, what happens with Office 2020 when it's released? Well, Microsoft are doing this so that both Windows and Office are tied to each other for the very latest updates, especially in the wake of security bugs in Meltdown and Spectre.

Microsoft explains: "Software that is more than a decade old, and hasn't benefited from this innovation, is difficult to secure and inherently less productive. As the pace of change accelerates, it has become imperative to move our software to a more modern cadence".

Amazon has officially launched a Alexa skill that will allow for users of Alexa to control Twitch using their voice. This new Alexa skill has numerous uses such as asking for specific channel activity and a list of popular game being viewed.

This is not a surprise for Amazon to integrate Twitch into their Alexa skills as Amazon own Twitch, buying the streaming giant back in 2014 for $1 billion. The Twitch Alexa skill is designed to complement gamers that use Twitch regularly, Twitch has done this by giving users the option to enable notifications of their favorite channels going live.