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Microsoft Revises Memory Placement in Latest Xbox 360 Hardware
While Sony’s hardware revisions for its PlayStation 3 console appear to almost always be in the interest of cutting costs, Microsoft’s changes to the Xbox 360 seem to be aimed at both cost and improving reliability.
The fresh-to-market new Xbox 360 “Go Pro” package now with a 60 GB hard drive may appear only to be the old model with 40 additional GB, but under the hood is a minor but deliberate change that could improve heat dissipation.
As discovered in the blog of Ben Heck, the latest Xbox 360 motherboards rolling off the line from a June 20 production does not feature memory chips that are mounted to the underside of the motherboard. Instead, it appears that the memory capacity of the chips that do share the same side as the CPU and GPU have simply been doubled.
This change not only saves Microsoft on production costs from having to place chips on the backside, but also cuts down on heat emanating from a place with no active cooling.
Aside from the change in memory configuration, the rest of the motherboard is unchanged. The layout is the same as the “Falcon” boards from the latter half of 2007, which swapped out the 90nm CPU for a shrunken 65nm chip.
The next major revision in the Xbox 360 hardware is codenamed Jasper, which will see the GPU move to the 65nm process sometime this fall. Most believe the heat generated by GPU is the root cause for most Xbox 360’s that fall to the “Red Ring of Death,” so while the incremental improvements may have improved reliability, it’s the arrival of Jasper that most are anxiously awaiting.
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Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
kman7607What does this mean for ppl who already own a 360 that occasionally fails? Do we bite the bullet and purchase an updated one? It's microsoft,they don't really care about one customers "old product" this is a "new and improved product" that you should be begging to pay for.
jaragon13It's microsoft,they don't really care about one customers "old product" this is a "new and improved product" that you should be begging to pay for.
A tad harsh there, all console makers make constant revisions to their product line as it progresses. Microsoft's changes just happen to be publicly displayed.
The PS2 DVD-Rom was revamped about 4 times over the course of its life cycle due to abysmal read speeds and reliability problems the earlier models had. Nintendo altered its GC numerous times, including actually removing functionality (they stripped out the Component video capability) when they noticed many people weren't using it.
This is all part of the process to make the products more reliable, and cheaper to product.
