GameStop ends PlayStation 2 trade-ins as of June 1, used stock to be sold 'for several months'

Trace Hagan | Gaming | May 6, 2013 4:28 PM CDT

If you still want to trade-in your aging PlayStation 2 game console, now would be the time to do it. Ahead of the PlayStation 4 launch, GameStop has confirmed that they will stop accepting PlayStation 2 games, accessories, or consoles for trade-in. The hard deadline is June 1, so you better get all your old gaming equipment to GameStop soon.

We can confirm that as of June 1st we will no longer be accepting the PS2 console or its related product for trades. We know that the 12 year old system is a popular one and for many gamers, GameStop is the only place to find a great selection of its games. We will still offer a wide selection of the PS2 hardware, accessories and games in many of our stores and online for several months, based on remaining stock from trades.

We are very excited about the upcoming PS4 and are making room in our stores for it and other new platforms expected this fall.

Continue reading: GameStop ends PlayStation 2 trade-ins as of June 1, used stock to be sold 'for several months' (full post)

Intel debuts Silvermont microarchitecture, features higher performance, lower power draw

Trace Hagan | CPU, APU & Chipsets | May 6, 2013 2:31 PM CDT

Intel has announced the new Silvermont microarchitecture that, as you would expect, brings with it increased performance and decreased power draw. The new architecture will rely on Intel's 22nm Tri-Gate SoC process to realize these performance gains and power draw reductions.

Silvermont is aimed at a wide variety of applications that need low-power CPU's. This means we should see Silvermont showing up in smartphones, tablets, and even datacenters once it is released. Silvermont offers up to three times the performance of current generation Atom processors while consuming five times less power.

  • A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.
  • A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.
  • New IA instructions and technologies bringing enhanced performance, virtualization and security management capabilities to support a wide range of products. These instructions build on Intel's existing support for 64-bit and the breadth of the IA software installed base.
  • Enhanced power management capabilities including a new intelligent burst technology, low- power C states and a wider dynamic range of operation taking advantage of Intel's 3-D transistors. Intel Burst Technology 2.0 support for single- and multi-core offers great responsiveness scaled for power efficiency.

Continue reading: Intel debuts Silvermont microarchitecture, features higher performance, lower power draw (full post)

Microsoft says next-gen Xbox Always-On DRM will not affect Blu-Ray playback or single player gaming

Charles Gantt | Gaming | May 6, 2013 1:04 PM CDT

There has been more controversy and drama created over Microsoft's next-gen Xbox console featuring Always-On DRM. We have even seen one employee resign after he went on a ranting tirade on Twitter about the subject. Such a touchy topic has led to a lot of bad publicity for the Redmond, Washington based giant, and today we are finally hearing some official words on the topic from Microsoft.

In an internal Microsoft e-mail sent to all full-time employees working on the next-gen Xbox, the company has seemingly began shooting down the idea of always-on DRM for certain aspects of the system.

"Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game."

Continue reading: Microsoft says next-gen Xbox Always-On DRM will not affect Blu-Ray playback or single player gaming (full post)

Buffalo begins shipping high capacity DriveStation DDR USB 3.0 hard drive

Charles Gantt | Storage | May 6, 2013 12:32 PM CDT

Earlier this morning Buffalo announced the release of its DriveStation DDR, a new step forward in the external USB hard drive market. The DriveStation DDR is a USB 3.0 external drive that features a massive 1GB of DDR3 RAM cache for faster transfer speeds.

Buffalo says that the DriveStation DDR is capable of transfer speeds up to 408MB/s, which is 2.3x faster than the average USB 3.0 transfer speed. The DriveStation was first unveiled at CES 2013 and was shown off in a sleek black finish. The drive includes Buffalo's Backup Utility, EcoManager, SecureLock for drive encryption, and RAMDISK which creates a RAM disk on Windows based PC's.

Hajime Nakai, chief executive officer at Buffalo Technology, said:

Continue reading: Buffalo begins shipping high capacity DriveStation DDR USB 3.0 hard drive (full post)

ASRock's Z87 motherboard series gets unveiled, some boards will feature 802.11ac Wi-Fi

Anthony Garreffa | Motherboards | May 6, 2013 5:49 AM CDT

We're seeing more and more details from motherboard manufacturers and their upcoming Haswell-capable motherboards, with ASRock walking into the spotlight today with a bunch of details on their entire Z87 lineup of motherboards.

ASRock will be releasing 11 motherboards in the Haswell range, with top three of these boards featuring the Z87 Express chipset: the Z87 Extreme11, Z87 Fatal1ty Professional and Z87 OC Formula. The Z87 Extreme11 is available in the /ac option, which is on-board 802.11ac Wi-Fi for some seriously high-end wireless networking. This is ASRock's best board, and features everything you'd need - Thunderbolt, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, SLI/CrossFire compatibility, and more.

There are a few other boards in this series: the Z87 Extreme 9(/ac), Z87 Extreme6(/ac), Z87 Extreme 4, and the micro-ATX Z87M Extreme4.

Continue reading: ASRock's Z87 motherboard series gets unveiled, some boards will feature 802.11ac Wi-Fi (full post)

The next version of Android will be another iteration of Jelly Bean, will arrive as Android 4.3

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | May 6, 2013 5:30 AM CDT

Most have been expecting Google to unveil Android 5.0 "Key Lime Pie" at Google I/O in a couple of weeks, but ahead of that HTC have teased an event scheduled for May 16 in San Francisco, where HTC developers will talk about new features on Android 4.3.

These new features will include Bluetooth Low Energy and Open GL ES 3.0. The members of the group will be receiving "an overview of the BLE specification and take us through the new APIs with some hands-on demos with various devices, heart rate monitors, key finders, and multi-sensor kits (temperature, pressure, humidity, accelerometer)".

We should see a new Neuxs phone unveiled at Google I/O with Android 4.3 inside, as well as LTE capabilities and hopefully, expandable storage. I'm guessing we'll also see a screen bump from 4-inch to 4.7-inch or so.

Continue reading: The next version of Android will be another iteration of Jelly Bean, will arrive as Android 4.3 (full post)

Gigabyte's Z87X-UD3H smiles for the camera, Haswell is getting close!

Anthony Garreffa | Motherboards | May 6, 2013 12:57 AM CDT

PC & Tech Authority have just posted a bunch of pictures of their exclusive look at Gigabyte's Z87X-UD3H motherboard, and boy does it look good. The Haswell-capable board features a slick color scheme consisting of black, grey and blue.

The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H comes with three full-sized x16 PCIe slots, three x1 PCIe slots, and still, a PCI slot. There's eight SATA ports, 4 DIMM slots, on-board power/reset/CMOS clear buttons, and a SATA power connection that will give the motherboard more power if needed. Gone are the usual molex connectors for some more power, thankfully.

We should know more about this board in the coming weeks leading up to Computex in Taipei.

Continue reading: Gigabyte's Z87X-UD3H smiles for the camera, Haswell is getting close! (full post)

US citizens' phone calls, and all electronic data is captured and recorded by the FBI, accessible by the government

Anthony Garreffa | Hacking, Security & Privacy | May 5, 2013 9:26 PM CDT

Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent claims that there is a 'Person of Interest'-type surveillance network used by the US government to monitors their citizens. Clemente talked about this when he appeared on CNN Wednesday night.

The discussion turned to the Boston Marathon attack, and past telephone calls with Katherine Russell and her deceased husband, suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The former FBI agent said those conversations would be available to investigators. Clemente discussed the issue in an exchange, below, with host Erin Burnett:

BURNETT: ' Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?'

Continue reading: US citizens' phone calls, and all electronic data is captured and recorded by the FBI, accessible by the government (full post)

Ouya shipments are ahead of schedule, all backers will receive their consoles before the end of May

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | May 5, 2013 3:39 AM CDT

Ouya have pushed out 'Project Update #25' and included inside is an update on the shipping status of their Android-powered console. For the week just gone, they have "successfully eclipsed 50 percent of units shipped and remain ahead of schedule to complete all shipments by the end of May".

Because they are this far in the game now, Ouya have completed their first production run, with all of their tools operating as needed to get all of the Ouya units to consumers. Other events this week for Ouya include the Limited Edition consoles rolling off the production line. International shipments have been slowed down because of an issue with the power adapter, which was caught early enough to be rectified before units began shipping.

The Limited Edition Ouya consoles should begin shipping in the coming days, meaning I should get mine in the next couple of weeks!

Continue reading: Ouya shipments are ahead of schedule, all backers will receive their consoles before the end of May (full post)

Acer's 8-inch Windows 8 tablet pops up on Amazon, gets removed

Trace Hagan | Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones | May 3, 2013 5:29 PM CDT

Earlier today, Acer's upcoming, yet still unannounced, W3-810 tablet popped up on Amazon. It was then pulled down in short order, but not before pictures, specifications, and pricing information was grabbed. The W3-810 was originally seen in a leak that took place last month.

The W3-810 will set back potential buyers a total of $379.99 and is powered by a 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor. The 8.1-inch tablet runs Windows 8 and has a screen resolution of 1280x800. The device features 2GB of RAM, which should be enough to keep up with the slightly under powered Atom processor.

The device was listed with 32GB of storage, a 2MP front and rear camera, one micro USB 2.0 port, and one micro-HDMI port. Amazon listed the weight at 1. 1 pounds and battery life as 8 hours.

Continue reading: Acer's 8-inch Windows 8 tablet pops up on Amazon, gets removed (full post)