Xbox 360 Elite Internals

[BRiT]

I have to agree though, download speeds are still < 1Mb/s in a lot of places, and even with "8Mb/s" lines a lot of people don't actually achieve these speeds.

I dont know why one having a 8Mb/s line couldnt achieve those speeds. I live in the burbs of non-tech-savy city and the cable provider offers 12Mb/s bundle. I can always achieve those speeds sustaining at 12.3Mb/s when using a proper content provider like Usenet. Some of my friends from tech-savy cities are provided with 30Mb/s bundles by their cable provider and using the same content provider like Usenet are sustaining at 28Mb/s. One is even fortunate to have FIOS and using the same content provider is peaking near the max of that.

You might be mistaking the limitation of the content provider with that of the broadband provider. When the two are paired properly, it enables obtaining DVD-sized content in under an hour and HD-DVD-sized content in a couple of hours. Also with x264 encoding, a full 720p AC3 tv show like LOST is only 1.07 GB in size, without any quality difference from the raw 720p-HD stream.

From what I'm seeing, the only bandwidth provider that fails to deliver what they advertise are the DSL providers. Cable and FIOS provide the bandwidth they advertise.

 

[cameltoe1009]

My 10mb line hardly reaches those levels in Chicago.

Where do you intend to store those 25gb movie downloads? Are you gonna dl, watch, then erase? What about playing online while downloading? Lag? Downloads pause while playing online correct? So it may take even longer if you intend to use the device as intended. I mean you pay 50.00 a year for Live, so I think you may want to play online, no?

 

[Rangers]

I have some doubts about that.
You really don't want to download 25+ gigabytes on ADSL. It takes a bloody long time and I don't think it's anywhere near fast enough to stream the movie in realtime.

When I compare a mess like this wiht the convenience of just popping a round piece of plastic in the drive I can't help but come to the conclusion that phyiscal formats won't be going the way of the dodo any time soon.

Especially as DVDs are now becoming commonplace even in supermarkets at cheap bargain bin prices and bluray discs will end up there as well one day. You go shop for groceries and pick up a couple movies as well for a small sum of money.

As opposed to waiting a day for one movie to download so you can watch it and tying up your internet connection in the duration so you can't game or nothing at the same time.


Maybe in that future when we all have flying cars and jetpacks on our backs and personal force fields and rayguns and stuff THEN internet connectons will be fast enough to transfer HD movies in a trivial amount of time. But by then today's HD formats will probably be coarse in comparison. Particulary the 24fps framerate will probably become a bottleneck at some point.

There's convenience points in both ways. But I think, as a user of 360's movie download service, the convenience factor definitely favors downloads, such that I usually will watch a movie on Xbox, that I might not consider worth renting from blockbuster.

SD movies are VERY fast on XBL, because they allow you to play them after they've buffered enough, which for SD movies is typically 10-15 minutes, that's essentially realtime.

HD is another story, you usually have allow several hours between beginning the DL and watching those. Yet it's still more convenient imo. You just start the DL in the afternoon to watch that evening, or however you want to do it. You can also play the partially dled HD movies once they have dl'ed enough, you dont have to DL the whole thing. Also HD movies on XBL are 4-7GB, not 25. Of course picture qaulity is not as good as Blu-Ray/HDDVD.

I think the greatest strength discs have is as archival..sorry but there's just times when you want to physically OWN a movie forever. You dont really have that option with downloads.

 

[-tkf-]

I circled the differences here in case the gif is too quick for ya...and you really care about what they changed: http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=360elitemobocircledev7.jpg


Removing voltage regulators, resistors, and even changing the inductor coils is indicative of something, but it's hard to say much without knowing the specifications of the components.

Does anything hint at a cheaper manufactoring, or does those components add to the price, being better quality?

Manufactoring cost in this case does not include CPU and GPU the better yields that might be the case.

 

[Tap In]

There's convenience points in both ways. But I think, as a user of 360's movie download service, the convenience factor definitely favors downloads, such that I usually will watch a movie on Xbox, that I might not consider worth renting from blockbuster.

SD movies are VERY fast on XBL, because they allow you to play them after they've buffered enough, which for SD movies is typically 10-15 minutes, that's essentially realtime.

HD is another story, you usually have allow several hours between beginning the DL and watching those. Yet it's still more convenient imo. You just start the DL in the afternoon to watch that evening, or however you want to do it. You can also play the partially dled HD movies once they have dl'ed enough, you dont have to DL the whole thing. Also HD movies on XBL are 4-7GB, not 25. Of course picture qaulity is not as good as Blu-Ray/HDDVD.

I think the greatest strength discs have is as archival..sorry but there's just times when you want to physically OWN a movie forever. You dont really have that option with downloads.

continuing this off topic discussion...

I have an HD DVD player and prefer DL 720p movies off of Xbox live.

it's easier and I really do not like physical media and think for the most part that purchasing movies is pointless. I have no problems with DL speeds either.

I am one of the customers that digital distribution will be targeting as it continues to expand over the next couple of years. it's inevitable IMO.

 

[AlNom]

continuing this off topic discussion...

And here I thought the extra replies in this thread would at least shed some light on a technical level what those component changes amount towards - they can't have changed all that just for HANA.

Maybe they're seeing different power consumption qualities as a result of a mature manufacturing process? It's not 65nm, but perhaps they made some tweaks for the current process node.


There hasn't quite been a removal of key capacitors -> they store charge or block DC voltage or allow only certain AC frequencies. They've changed components here and there, but that could just be a cost thing. It can be a quality issue, replacing the cylinder caps with electrolytic (lower left). The caps do have different voltage breakdowns...

There has been a removal of voltage regulators and at the same time the inductor coils have fewer turns kind of indicating a reduction in power or at least a smaller need for such components to maintain the voltage and current in the circuit. I'm curious as to why they shifted the inductor coils by 90 degrees (magnetic field). For a toroid coil, the magnetic field lines would run parallel to the cross-section of the coil.

The most interesting part is the reduction of components right next to the GPU. Those could either be caps or resistors - I'm not sure because I don't know what purpose they would serve here directly. A closer shot of them would reveal the printed values on them though. In the resistor case, it means they aren't impeding the flow of power but at the same time they're taking on a larger current and may heat up much more. In the capacitor case... well, it gets more complicated depending on how they wire up the components. In parallel, the charge capacitance increases linearly while in series the total capacitance is an inverse addition (1/C = 1/C1 + 1/C2 +...), but at the same time handling a larger voltage as the voltage is spread out in series.

Maybe they just used different valued caps... I don't know...

(^^ desperate attempt to bring teh discussion back on topic. )

 

[Rolf N]

They've changed the VRMs to higher operating frequencies (hence fewer coils, higher-quality capacitors and more symmetry). The small thingies near the big chips are IMO not resistors but buffering capacitors, just a different (faster) type. These have been reduced possibly, which would be okay after notching up the frequency, but they may also have changed the capacity per device and this way achieve the same total capacity with fewer capacitors.

The "naked" capacitor type seen lower left is a particularly expensive type btw. The replacement "blacks" that came in for the "yellow" are also much better capacitors.

I don't see much cost reduction there, if at all. The changes rather amount to more stable on-board power. Axing half of the right FET array and half the near-chip buffers (?) are the only potential sources of savings, but after factoring in the other component changes it won't do much.

edited: Two more things crossed the mind:
1)Wow is the text of the article worthless. The 65nm speculation was just stupid not-connecting-the-dots, but the "thermal efficiency" idea was the real wtf. Might as well just host the photos and be done with it.
2)Pics of the underside of the PCB?

 

[AzBat]

2)Pics of the underside of the PCB?

You're wish is their command...

Inside the Xbox 360 Elite Part 2

04/20/07 Reading many of the comments out there on the various news sites linking in to llamma we see a few common themes. Some positive comments on the animated gifs and the big question, "How about some shots of the back of the board?!?!" Sorry to keep you waiting! For convenience they have been labeled 1.0 original and 1.1 elite.

The interesting part to most is the area under where the CPU connects we see lots of changes around here but its mostly just smaller components in a tighter space. The Ball Grid Array size has of course not changed so although we see a denser arrangement of smaller components we should not take this to mean that it is necessarily the 65nm core.

Still ludicrous that they still think it's possible it might have 65nm core. They at least have more detailed photos if you don't like their commentary.

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/inside_the_xbox_360_elite_part_2.htm

Tommy McClain

 

[AlNom]

Thanks for the linkage AzBat.

The small thingies near the big chips are IMO not resistors but buffering capacitors, just a different (faster) type. These have been reduced possibly, which would be okay after notching up the frequency, but they may also have changed the capacity per device and this way achieve the same total capacity with fewer capacitors.

Ah... makes sense. I agree with your analysis that the changes are in the quality of components. The close-up shots show "Cxxxx" for those devices and confirms they are caps.

On the bottom of the board, it looks like they decreased the width of the ground at the rear of the motherboard, and generally used smaller components around the board. The other "significant" change is that black chip setup just above that RAM module on the back of the mobo - some sort of switch to BGA.

 

[Crossbar]

Semiconductor Insights take on the 360 elite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOeCbt1SQZo

EETimes comments to the video.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/...d=T5KDB5TFZ52GSQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=199202543

In the end, there are few hardware differences between the original Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Elite, said Quirk. "The system is the same size, the boards designs are very similar, and most of the components themselves are the same." The only real difference between the systems are the video-interface IC, which had to be revised to accommodate the HDMI output. The new functionality resulted in about a 35 percent larger die area to that of its previous generation component.

 

[Qroach]

man am I pissed, I'm now sending in another xbox (the second time). I'm not recommending this system to anyone until MS gets off their ass and revises the bloody motherboard! as far as I'm concerned every 360 owner is susceptible to this.

I think the software side is great, but they fucked up on the motherboard design and didn't fix the problem well over a year later.

 

[22psi]

man am I pissed, I'm now sending in another xbox (the second time). I'm not recommending this system to anyone until MS gets off their ass and revises the bloody motherboard! as far as I'm concerned every 360 owner is susceptible to this.

I think the software side is great, but they fucked up on the motherboard design and didn't fix the problem well over a year later.

Man that sucks! 65nm or bust seriously. I will hastily trade my current prem in once the 65nm comes out.

 

[RobertR1]

Man that sucks! 65nm or bust seriously. I will hastily trade my current prem in once the 65nm comes out.

Luckily the QC issues seem to be effecting their bottom line the gaming division, so I'm sure all eyes are fixed on it. Not to mention, their reputation amongst the community drops. I say luckily, because if they didn't draw certain eyes, they would likely be ignored. I too will be swapping my system out with a fall version (if I don't get sucked into the Elite first).

 

[a688]

man am I pissed, I'm now sending in another xbox (the second time). I'm not recommending this system to anyone until MS gets off their ass and revises the bloody motherboard! as far as I'm concerned every 360 owner is susceptible to this.

I think the software side is great, but they fucked up on the motherboard design and didn't fix the problem well over a year later.

How do you know its the motherboard?

 

[Rainbow Man]

but they fucked up on the motherboard design and didn't fix the problem well over a year later.

Is it really conclusively proven to be one single mobo issue that was fucked up?

I think miy 360 ought to have suffered from any such problem considering it's a launch unit and I've used it lots as DVD platyer where the fans kick back to low speed.

It's been sitting for half a day paused during the hottest days of summer and the air coming out the back bein galmost scorching to the touch.

It hasn't complained ONCE. Nor even flinched. Either I'm just the luckiest ugy on earth (unlikely!) or maybe there's a bunch of different problems that all lead to the ring of death..?

Peace.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It hasn't complained ONCE. Nor even flinched. Either I'm just the luckiest ugy on earth (unlikely!) or maybe there's a bunch of different problems that all lead to the ring of death..?

I think the theory is the design can aggravate other flaws to cause a failure. Think of it like a genetic dispostion to cancer. Some people have genes that mean they're more likely to get cancer, but that in itself doesn't cause cancer. From those gene carriers, a percentage develop the disease due to other factors working in addition to the genetic dispositon. In the case of the XB360, it appears the design has a dispostion towards some weakness. In units which have other flaws, they all combine to fail. For example, it could be the soldering process on some parts isn't fully robust in 1 in 5 units. This could be normal for all manufacturing including Wii and PS3. What's different is the XB360 X-clamp or other aspect can aggravate these faults to push them to fail, where in the other machines the design can accomodate the weaknesses.

That's an explanation. Dunno whether true or not, but it is the case that you can have a design flaw that doesn't mean 100% of machine with that flaw will fail. They would all just be a step closer to failure than a different design without that flaw.