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House of the Dragon season 3, episode 3 entirely revolves around the newly ascended Queen Rhaenyra attempting to rule the Seven Kingdoms, though she's faced with a myriad of problems, from the big (the treasury is empty), to the small (the Red Keep is overrun with rats).

Across the runtime, we see the queen's grip on her composure slackening as the reality of ruling sets in – especially when, in one moment, she mistakes a servant for her son Jacaerys, who perished in the Battle of the Gullet .

While this is a standout episode of House of the Dragon season 3 , some fans think we should have seen something like it earlier in Game of Thrones season 8.

"Great episode. My biggest problem with the character arc of Daenerys in the final season of GoT was how abrupt and poorly paced it was, and I couldn't help thinking that an episode just like this one tonight (S3E3) is exactly what Daenerys needed," says one fan on Reddit . "The pans and flashes to rats roaming around unchecked, the music playing all through the episode with small sharp violin/piano notes, all awesome small details to convey sanity and good decision making eroding. If an episode focusing on all the things weighing on Daenerys' mind in the final season of GoT had aired, I think the conclusion to her arc would have felt much better executed"

One of the biggest criticisms of Game of Thrones season 8 is that Daenerys's Mad Queen arc was incredibly rushed, culminating in the Mother of Dragons burning down King's Landing for no real reason at all.

"Daenerys needs this and much, much more in that final season," agrees another person. "Her character felt so well and truly fucked over it broke my heart."

"Daenerys should have overthrown Cersei in the season 7 finale so that the entire season 8 could be dedicated to the White Walker conflict and her Mad Queen arc. Would've been so much better," says another person.

"Yes absolutely this is what she needed in Mereen," agrees another fan. "The whole point is that Rhaenyra is slowly descending into madness. We needed more of an arc for Dany to do that. People point to moments of 'madness' in earlier seasons but she didn’t do any worse than any other male ruler," says someone else.

Not everyone agrees, however. "I'm not sure why people think Rhaenyra is descending into madness. You can be stressed out without going mad," points out one person.

"I don't think the story should have ended with Daenerys losing her mind at all… it means the only female rulers of Westeros were 'mad queens,' which is an unfortunate implication," says another fan.

Emma D'Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra in the show, has previously teased that a downfall might be on the cards , explaining that they and showrunner Ryan Condal were interested in exploring "a movement towards tyranny," adding, "but in particular making that journey legible."

House of the Dragon continues weekly on HBO in the US and HBO Max, Sky, and NOW in the UK. Keep up to date with our House of the Dragon season 3 release schedule .

For even more, check out our House of the Dragon season 3 review or our guide to all the upcoming Game of Thrones movies and TV shows .

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As a manufacturing hub, China sees plenty of unique hardware projects—like this gaming Megazord . But there's plenty of innovation to be found beyond one-and-done projects like this.

For instance, back when the US Department of Commerce restricted the export of Nvidia's RTX 4090 cards , Chinese manufacturers got creative. The so-called RTX 4080M card was one result of that, featuring laptop GPU silicon on top of a custom desktop PCIe board (via Videocardz ). To be clear, this is not an unofficial Nvidia product and therefore doesn't enjoy official driver support or warranties.

In fact, Nvidia addressed the gap in the China market the 4080M attempted to fill with the export-only RTX 4090 D model back in 2023 . However, testing by Bilibili user 杰某 (Jie Mou) suggests this curio is at least worth a closer look.

The Bilibili user carried out testing on a machine with an Intel Core Ultra 270K Plus CPU mounted on a Maxsun Z890-A motherboard, plus 32 GB of DDR5 RAM. The 4080M achieved a graphics score of 18,614 in 3DMark Time Spy. Though that's not unimpressive in itself, what's perhaps more interesting is that it did this by pulling a fraction of the power required by a traditional RTX 4080.

An official Nvidia RTX 4080 mobile can draw a maximum of 175 W TGP, though the unofficial RTX 4080M used only 100 W.

So yes, that would all be very impressive, were it not for the fact that the RTX 4080M is only available in China and currently costs between 2,700 and 2,800 RMB due to various component shortages. Very roughly equivalent to $400 or £300, this price tag makes it comparable to the going rate for both Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti and AMD's RX 9070 GRE in China.

The unofficial 4080M did hold its own in gaming tests pitted against the similarly priced RX 9070 GRE (Both cards also enjoy 12GB of VRAM). Though the RX 9070 GRE had the edge in most games, the 4080M enjoyed about 10 more fps in Delta Force (4K, Ultra settings). PUBG proved another interesting outlier, with the 4080M achieving 100 more frames than the AMD card (2K, Ultra).

All of that said, the 4080M arguably isn't the card to go for if you're based in China—unless you're building an ITX system where limited thermal headroom is a concern. Otherwise, the Bilibili tester says that PC builders are generally better off going with a newer, more performant card that's similarly priced (though personally I'm still compelled to give the 4080M points for its small form factor cuteness).

As for PC gamers based in the US, you can keep track of the GPU market's ups and downs with our graphics card price watch .

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Generation Z may be taking over the box office thanks to the releases of Obsession and Backrooms , but Disclosure Day is here to remind us that the old man's still got it. At 79 years old, Steven Spielberg returned to familiar roots with his recently released science fiction adventure film about extra-terrestrials and humanity's encounters with life beyond Earth's parameters. For better or worse, Disclosure Day , starring Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor , is antithetical to the dominant movies at the box office this summer, which reflect the sensibilities of younger audiences raised on the Internet.