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New 360 chips on their way
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 28th August 2007
The new 65nm CPU version of the Xbox 360 is now on its way, apparently.
Then, on top of all that, there's also the kerfuffle about the new Xbox 360 chipset which has the enviable 'Codename: Falcon' on it.
According to Mercury News, the new Falcon chipset may be even closer than previously thought and is now in the process of being shipped from China.
The new chipset is hoped to increase the reliability of the console, which has fallen under repeated critiscism for hardware failures - something Microsoft has tried to address after-the-fact.
The new chipset will use a 65nm CPU, which is smaller, thinner and cheaper to produce than the current 90nm version in all current Xbox 360s. The new chip should also be a bit cooler, thus stopping all those pesky red rings of death which seem to kick in just when you were about to save for the first time in five hours.
However, in an odd move the GPU chip will remain at 90nm rather than slimming down with the CPU. According to Dean Takahashi of Mercury News:
“The board does not include a 65-nanometer version of the ATI graphics chip for the Xbox 360. That version of the graphics chip is coming later.”
But is it the GPU or the CPU which is behind all this overheating nonsense? The addition of a new heatpipe to cool the GPU would seem to suggest that its the graphics card which is the culprit and that the new CPU may therefore not perform as hoped, but since we aren't thermal analysts, we can't be sure. What do you think? Let us know in the forums.
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Comments (22)Stats: 0.033 seconds
I would love to own an Xbox360 (I have the means to buy one tomorrow if I wished), but I'll be damned if I'm gonna support something which clearly is trouble, due to bad thermal design. :( Lets hope they get it right in the end.
The 360 is getting crazy, it has more revisions then *insert funny anecdote here*
I remember having to turn my PS1 upside down or on it's end for it to work :p
Anyway: good that new chips are on the way but it's the GPU that needs to lose those nm
For example, my friend had his housed in the basement with the AC on, a Nyko air cooler running at all times, an external fan also cooling it as well & had it by itself in the middle of the floor and it still gave out and I can tell you it wasn't the CPU cores, but the GPU. I can tell you that no matter what else they did to cool it, for as much as they played it, it still would've zonked and of course it was past the 1 year warranty and it wasn't the Red Ring so they are now without a console for approx 2 months & $100 for S+H.....so this is the other side of someone who also thought highly of the 360 and how great it was and how only a small % of people were affected and also how if only used casually it would last through the years it needed to and that it wouldn't affect anyone or my friend for that matter...but in the end it was almost inevitable...it was going to zonk out sometime.....so as long you know that there are people out there who own the exact same setup as what you will be (except for the revised CPU Core die-shrink & heatsink if you wait) and are having/had problems.....then you understand the risk....hope this helps......
make you buy x amount of versions instead of a smaller number of versions?
they introduced hdd's to consoles so games can be patched (i.e. no more need to release working ones)
they revamp the consoles regularly so you buy a new one more often....
hey... somehow they have to make money....
*hugs the pc*
This isn't a new procedure. The original xbox had eight different version updates. The first edition was a POS compared to the final revision, but when the first version came out the xbox was considered a joke. Very few people bought the first rev, so the crappyness wasn't known. It wasn't until Xbox Live took off that people started buying the Xbox, and by then they had worked out most of the hardware flaws.
Conversely, the first rev Xbox 360 had high interest from the moment of release, and it's flaws were immediately obvious. If it wasn't for the tech sites like this one following it so closely, you wouldn't even know this updates were happening.
Microsoft isn't the only company that does this either. Nintendo did it with the original NES, the gameboy, the gamecube, and the Gameboy DS. Sony has done it with both the PSO and the PS2. These revisions usually were coupled with price drops.
This is why I've been waiting to buy a 360. I knew that by the time I was ready to get one (when Halo 3 comes out), they would have improved on it. Not to mention that the price would drop. :/
Not that i think any of them were aweful, just ways of cutting prices tbh (the first ones are built like a tank)