Latest News - Page 2704

Just how well as Grand Theft Auto V performed since its release last year? Well, on the Xbox One and PS4, retailers have received 10 million copies since it hit the now current-gen consoles around two-and-a-half months ago now.

When GTA V launched for the PS3 and Xbox 360, Rockstar sold a huge 11.2 million units in 24 hours, with a total of 45 million units being shipped since it launched. The PC version isn't even out yet, but these numbers will only increase on March 24. Don't forget the news of GTA 6 being under development, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, should it?

NVIDIA caught headlines last week with its VRAM issues on the Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 970, but it's a new week, with new memory-related issues. This time, it's AMD and its Radeon GPUs and a very specific game, on a very specific OS.

Radeon users are seeing memory leak problems on Battlefield 4 with Windows 8.1, with WCCFTech confirming the issue with AMD's Head of Global Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock. Hallock acknowledged the issue in Battlefield 4, of which it only affects gamers running Windows 8.1. AMD is working directly with DICE on the issue, but with the game being over a year old and many DLC packs in, and the fact that AMD were and still are heavily partnered with DICE, this shouldn't be happening.

AMD will address the memory leak issues in a new beta driver that will arrive soon.

When Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility out from under Google's nose, we didn't know what would come of it. Well, increased sales is a huge part of that, with Lenovo's new FQ3 2014/5 results showing us just how well Motorola is doing.

Motorola has sold over 10 million smartphones in the last quarter alone, which is up 118% from the same quarter of last year. We don't know the breakdown in numbers for the Moto X and Moto G, but we have to expect that those two phones have been selling rather well for the company. Lenovo is now positioning itself to launch Motorola into the Chinese market, which should see those numbers continue to climb.

Lenovo also expects Motorola to make a lot of money moving into the next four to six quarters (12-18 months), where as of this quarter the Mobile Business Group, of which Motorola operates within, posted an $89 million loss.

One of the many League of Legends tournaments being run is being operated by Garena, which operates LoL tournaments in places such as Southeast Asia, Taiwan, the Philippines and more. Well, they're hosting an all-women eSports competition, but there's just one catch.

The host has put a limit on the amount of LGBTQ people allowed to participate per team, as it would offer the team an "unfair advantage". You might think we tripped over a language barrier here, but there is only one lesbian or trans woman per team in Garena's upcoming all-women Iron Solari League tournament. The tournament will take place at the end of the month in Manilla, Philippines. Garena has talked with the competitors of the first leg of the Iron Solari competition, as well as LGBTQ members in the League of Legends community. The organizer said that it wanted to be inclusive, but adds that "there are arguments and concerns from other participants who disputes that Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered Women members may probably have some unfair advantage".

What we need to see here, is that Garena is just telling the world what it's doing, without explaining why. Kotaku brings up the question in their article: "How does being lesbian, trans, or queer in any other way confer an advantage in a video game, a virtual space where physical characteristics cease to matter?" That's right, as they're all human beings at the end of the day with a normal brain, hands, fingers and reflexes. It's great that Garena is doing an all-women League of Legends competition, but this is definitely something that should raise some questions and red flags.

Chip manufacturer ARM wants to keep powering smartphones, and expects its Cortex A-72 processor to power devices available in 2016. At least 10 companies have licensed the processor, which is reportedly at least 3.5 times faster than ARM technology sold in 2014. ARM product designs are present in more than 95 percent of smartphones available worldwide, and Cortex A-72 should help keep the company's dominant lead.

"The ARM Cortex-A72 processor sets a new standard for delivering a premium mobile experience and is expected to be the highest performing CPU technology for mobile SoCs [system-on-chips]," said Noel Hurley, GM of the CPU group at ARM.

In addition to the Cortex-A72 processor, ARM is promoting its Mali-T880 graphics chip which should also find its way into consumer devices in 2016.

The bitcoin cryptocurrency may be able to generate a large amount of buzz, but still has a major sales and marketing problem.

"Bitcoin has a sales job to getting people to trust it, which is ironic because it was set up to be a trustless system," said Paul Vigna, co-author of "The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order, in a statement to CBS News. "It is sort of opaque and hard to understand and esoteric because it is so new."

Bitcoin won't go away any time soon, and there is around $50 million bitcoin-related transactions carried out per day. It's an extremely small figure compared to the entire financial market, but is an indicator that people remain interested.

Opposition fighters trying to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have fallen prey to one of the oldest social engineering tactics: hackers use fake Facebook and Skype profiles of young, beautiful women to target rebels, inviting them to chat. Pictures are exchanged, though the hackers load images with malware able to copy chat logs and steal strategic information.

The tactic continues to work on oblivious Syrian fighters, continually chatting with pro-Assad hackers - and the results have been devastating. A FireEye report revealed 7.7GB of data has been compromised, along with more than 12,000 contacts and 31,000 Skype conversations.

"We are really seeing the convergence of traditional methods of espionage and Internet communication tools," said Richard Turner, EMEA VP of FireEye, told CNBC. "The evidence of that is the use of the attractive lady avatar to generate interest and open up individuals to deliver malware and compromise their communication."

This is the first time that the tablet market has seen a year-over-year shipment decline, with -3.2 percent growth - shipping 76.1 million units during Q4 2014, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet tracker. Despite the shipment drop during Q4, there was still 4.4 percent overall shipment growth throughout the entire year.

Apple continued its domination of the tablet market, shipping 21.4 million units and controlling 28.1 percent of the tablet market. Samsung was No. 2, (14.5 percent), Lenovo (4.8 percent), ASUS (4.0 percent), and Amazon (2.3 percent) rounded out the top five tablet hardware manufacturers.

Meanwhile, iOS controls 27 percent of the mobile tablet OS market, with Android now making up 66 percent control.

Gaming company Razer has updated its Blade gaming laptop, now including the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M and Intel Core i7-4720HQ CPU.

The QHD+ Model starts with the following specifications: Intel Core i7-4720HQ Quad Core CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 16GB RAM, Microsoft Windows 8.1, 128 to 512GB SSD options, and a 14" IGZO QHD+ (3200x1800) screen. Prices start at $2,199.

Meanwhile, the Full HD Model has the following specifications: Intel Core i7-4720HQ Quad Core CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and 14" IPS Full HD (1920x1080) screen. Prices start at $1,999.

While Uber continues to dominate the industry, it is still facing a very uphill battle with its various lawsuits, bans, privacy issues, bad PR and reports of even sabotaging competitors. This hasn't stopped Google from reportedly developing a competitor to Uber.

Bloomberg is reporting that Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond has teased that the Mountain View-based search giant could be working on its own Uber alternative. Uber executives have reportedly seen screenshots of a new ride-sharing application that Google is working on, something that is currently in use by select Google employees.

What better way to compete with Uber than with its own self-driving autonomous cars, that you could book through your smartphone? This could be the future, but there will be various legal problems Google (and other companies) will need to sort out. But for now, Google could unveil an Uber-like service, eventually replacing it with a fleet of autonomous vehicles.

We know that AMD is currently preparing the launch of the Radeon R9 300 series, but between now and then what to add-in board (AIB) partners do? Do they continue ordering Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 and other 200 series GPUs from AMD? Well, that's where we are today.

DigiTimes is reporting from a source close tro them that some of AMD's AIB partners are reducing orders for current-gen Radeon GPUs as there is growing anticipation for the next-gen from AMD, as well as citing reduced demand for Radeon R9 200 series cards. DigiTimes has said: "Since AMD is already planning to unveil its next-generation GPUs in the second half, the sources believe the GPU vendor will have a chance to regain some of its lost market share in the second half of 2015".

The bigger tease is that AMD would reportedly launch its Radeon R9 380X as early as late this month, or early March according to VideoCardz. We might not see that happen, but with less Radeon R9 200 series cards on shelves around the world, AMD could surprise NVIDIA and the world by capitalizing on the GeForce GTX 970 VRAM issues.

Sure, your flashy new GeForce GTX 980 has 4GB of VRAM, and so does the one next to it in SLI. But while you have a total of 8GB of VRAM between two cards, only one set of VRAM is being used, it's not being combined. That is, for now. Things could change according to a recent tweet from AMD's Robert Hallock.

Hallock teased that with the upcoming APIs in Mantle and DirectX 12, two GPUs in SLI or Crossfire could possibly act as 'one big' GPU. Hallock said: "Mantle is the first graphics API to transcend this behavior and allow that much-needed explicit control. For example, you could do split-frame rendering with each GPU ad its respective framebuffer handling 1/2 of the screen. In this way, the GPUs have extremely minimal information, allowing both GPUs to effectively behave as a single large/faster GPU with a correspondingly large pool of memory".

"Ultimately the point is that gamers believe that two 4GB cards can't possibly give you the 8GB of useful memory", he continued. He added: "That may have been true for the last 25 years of PC gaming, but thats not true with Mantle and its not true with the low overhead APIs that follow in Mantle's footsteps". This isn't confirmation that memory stacking is going to happen, but it's a much better direction to be heading in, that's for sure. Especially with 4K and beyond gaming, VRAM is more important than ever and wasting 4-8GB of VRAM on SLI/Crossfire setups is just silly.

We haven't even received GTA V on the PC yet, which was delayed from January to March, but now we're hearing the first rumbles of GTA VI. Yes, that's Grand Theft Auto 6.

During a talk with Develop, Rockstar Games' President, Leslie Benzies said: "We've got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do. We don't know what GTA 6 will be, but we've got some ideas". Benzies continued, somehow thinking that teasing the world of one of the biggest franchises of all world would be fine, adding: "It comes from the idea first. Where is it going to be set is the first question. Then that defines the missions; you're doing different things in LA than in New York or Miami. The map and story get worked up together, and the story is a basic flow of how it works out so you can layer the missions in".

Now we have the pleasure of imagining where Rockstar could take GTA VI if it wasn't held back in shackles by the previous generation consoles. What could GTA IV turn out to be like if it were built from the ground up on the Xbox One, PS4, and the PC? What if Rockstar made it with the PC as the lead platform, with VR in mind and then just baked down to the consoles? I'm obviously making too much sense with that last bit, so I'll leave it at that.

H1Z1 and Planetside 2 developer Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has announced that it has snapped away from Sony, where it is now operating as an independent company.

How did this happen? Well, an investment management firm based in New York City, Columbus Nova, bought the company out from Sony for an undisclosed amount of money. The studio has said: "This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multiplatform gaming company".

Yes, you read that right. SOE can now make games for the Xbox, mobile, and many more platforms. Jon Smedley, President of SOE has already said "Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile, and more!". From this day forward, SOE is now known as Daybreak Game Company, with the new studio saying: "This name embodies who we are as an organization, and is a nod to the passion and dedication of our employees and players. It is also representative of our vision to approach each new day as an opportunity to move gaming forward".

We've been hearing the rumbles of an insane video card from EVGA for quite a while now, but here it is: the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0. From the name alone, you can see that this is the top tier Maxwell-powered GTX 980 from NVIDIA, but the entire package is going to blow you away.

First and foremost, we have a custom designed PCB which has been tailor made to push things right to their breaking points. Under LN2, the new EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0 was capable of an insane 2.2GHz GPU clock, and 8.9GHz on the memory. Comparing this to the stock speeds of 1291MHz for the GPU and 7GHz for the GDDR5 RAM, this is an impressive result for EVGA and KINGPIN. The custom designed PCB is showing its strength here, but it'll be more interesting to see what it does with its ACX 2.0+ cooler.

Speaking of the custom designed PCB, we have a 14+3 Fully Digital VRM which will increase the stability, efficiency and the overall power capacity of the board, all while it runs at low temperatures of an average of 28C. The custom designed PCB has been made from 12 layers of copper, with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors backed up by a third, 6-pin PCIe power connector. All of this power will ensure that the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KINGPIN ACX 2.0 has enough power when it is receiving a total thrashing in the overclocking department.

The New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in a thrilling Super Bowl, and it looks like the game was a major success on Twitter and Facebook. There were more than 265 million posts, comments and likes on Facebook, generated by at least 65 million users, according to the company.

An interception to effectively end the game was the most popular Facebook discussion (1.36 million people per minute), while Katy Perry's halftime performance racked up 1.02 million people per minute discussing it.

There were more than 28 million tweets posted on Twitter related to the Super Bowl and Perry's halftime performance. Not surprisingly, Malcolm Butler's interception to seal the victory for the Patriots received 395,000 tweets per minute, earning the most generated Twitter moment of the event.

UNH-IOL has announced during the third NVM Express Interoperability Plugfest that twelve products were added to the UNH-IOL (University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab) NVMe 1.1b Integrators List. One item on the list that is sure to interest the enthusiast crowd is the Intel 750 SSD. News of the Intel 750 cropped up in a leaked roadmap, with release of the code-named 'August Ridge' product scheduled for Q4 of 2014. Of course, this time has passed.

There were no details in the leaked roadmap, but now we know that the August Ridge SSDs will feature the NVMe 1.1b interface. It appears, from the leaked roadmap, that the Intel 750 will be available in both the M.2 and 2.5" form factor, and come in capacities of 180, 240, 360, 480, and 600GB. NVMe will provide a low-latency interconnect that will allow Intel to finally break the SATA performance barrier. Even though the proposed release date on the leaked roadmap has passed, the Intel 750 SSD is clearly still on the way to consumers. It appears Intel is close to being the first SSD manufacturer with a consumer NVMe SSD on the market.

Another interesting inclusion is the Intel DC P3700 series of products (evaluated here). These products are already on the market with NVMe 1.1a, and will be upgradeable to offer NVMe 1.1b functionality with a firmware update.

In an effort to protect federal and private computer assets from cyberattacks, President Barack Obama wants to receive $14 billion in the 2016 fiscal year to put towards cybersecurity. The US government has increasingly called upon defense contractors and the private sector to provide next-generation software and hardware designed to help keep critical infrastructure safer from attack.

As part of his multi-billion-dollar cybersecurity effort, Obama wants to include additional intrusion detection and prevention solutions, along with increased intelligence sharing between the government and private sector.

"Cyber threats targeting the private sector, critical infrastructure and the federal government demonstrate that no sector, network or system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or government secrets and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity," according to a White House summary.

Microsoft pleased the world at large by announcing a free upgrade to Windows 10 for consumers with Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. Unfortunately, Microsoft will not be extending that same offer to enterprise users.

Microsoft has released a statement on the issue, "Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise are not included in the terms of free Windows 10 Upgrade offer we announced last week, given active Software Assurance customers will continue to have rights to upgrade to Windows 10 enterprise offerings outside of this offer - while also benefitting from the full flexibility to deploy Windows 10 using their existing management infrastructure."

Microsoft is releasing a new two-tier enterprise updating feature. The 'Current Branch for Business' feature allows users to defer new updates for 120 days while they are thoroughly tested in client versions of the operating system. The operating system will still receive up-to-date security updates.

Unsure if the Raspberry Pi 2 is for you? Microsoft are putting their might behind this latest product offering - announcing that it's "delivering a version of Windows 10 that supports Raspberry Pi 2."

The 2nd generation of Raspberry Pi offers a more powerful processor and twice as much RAM. Often toted by retro-game emulators worldwide as an optimum product, you could always install versions of Windows on the device, however Microsoft is now working to directly offer up an Operating System tailored for this tiny computer system.

There will be more information released later as to how exactly Microsoft will be supporting the Raspberry Pi 2, with them stating this will come "in the coming months."